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Vocations down, vacancies up

18 October 2024

Madeleine Davies examines how the dioceses are faring in filling their posts

Michal Jarmoluk/Pixabay

In several dioceses, deployment plans have been drawn up in recent years to take a more strategic approach

In several dioceses, deployment plans have been drawn up in recent years to take a more strategic approach

WITHOUT a rise in the number of ordinations, the number of stipendiary clergy in the Church of England will fall to 5400 in 2033 — more than 2000 fewer than the target set under Renewal and Reform, and a 40-per-cent reduction on 2000 numbers, projections by the Church’s national Ministry Development Team suggest.

The figure was reported by the Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox, in a diocesan-synod address in July. The forecast was based on current levels of ordinations for stipendiary ministry (an average of 250 over the past two years) for the next ten years. Extrapolating from the trend since 2012 put the figure at 6100, while the most optimistic forecast of the Triennium Funding Working Group was 6600.

Numbers recommended for ordination have fallen from 591 in 2020 — the highest for 13 years — to 370 (News, 12 July). This is almost half of the goal set under Renewal and Reform in 2015: an increase in the number of candidates selected for ordained ministry from about 500 each year to 750. The goal was to create a “stable pool” of about 7600 full-time clergy by 2035. Meanwhile, numbers retiring have increased from 435 in 2020 to 531 last year.

In 2016, a General Synod paper (Renewal and Reform: Resourcing ministerial education), which warned of a “retirement bulge”, said that, if the 50-per-cent rise in ordinations was a “temporary peak”, before ordination numbers fell back to previous levels after 2023, then the pattern of decline would return. The Ministry Council has forecast that the Church needs 630 new clergy per year to achieve the outcomes in the Vision and Strategy projections (News, 14 July 2023).

 

THE projections have been made against a backdrop of concern about vacancy rates in dioceses. Dr Wilcox revealed the numbers after telling the diocesan synod that top of his “worry list” was the difficulty that the diocese was facing in recruiting for stipendiary incumbencies. In 2022, all 14 vacancies were filled, but, in the past year, “all too often we have failed to attract any applicants.” It had been a year since he had written an offer letter to anyone outside the diocese. He designated Sunday 29 September as a day of fasting and prayer for an increase in vocations.

Carl Hughes, who chairs the Archbishops’ Council Finance Committee, referred to the vacancy rate around the country at the General Synod in July as the reason that concern about having enough title posts wasn’t “currently an issue” (News, 12 July).

During the meeting, Amanda Robbie, the lay chair of Lichfield diocesan synod, reported a rate of 24.3 per cent. With the news that consolidated deficits were set to hit £60 million in 2024 (News, 21 June), she put it to Mr Hughes that, with lower rates, the financial problem would be even worse. It was, he agreed, “a dataset that we need to understand better”.

 

DIOCESAN annual reports (filed in 2023) show that Mrs Robbie’s surmise was correct. In York (where the vacancy rate stood at 16 per cent), the report observes that “unanticipated additional vacancies, whilst operationally challenging, once again had a positive impact on the operating shortfall”.

In Norwich, numbers were 15 below budget (“despite best endeavours to recruit”), and the annual report notes that, “had we filled the posts during 2023, then we would have seen a significant deficit.” One of the factors behind the reduced deficit in Chelmsford was “lower expenditure on stipends due to higher than expected vacancies, and improved income from the rental of surplus houses”.

While savings on stipends form part of the picture, annual reports also highlight the extent to which rental income from empty clergy housing can boost diocesan finances. Exeter diocese’s annual report said that the income received from renting out vacant clergy housing was still “performing strongly” and totalling more than £1 million a year.

 

IN RESPONSE to a request from the Church Times, some dioceses supplied more recent data, highlighting the extent of the variation. Budgeted vacancy rates ranged from eight to 12 per cent, and the number of vacant posts varied through the year.

In Durham, a rate of 22 per cent (24 out of 110) was reported, more than twice that of Blackburn (nine per cent) or Chester (seven per cent) — a statistic that suggests that this is not simply about a north-south divide. Canterbury reported 13 per cent, Rochester 13.5 per cent, Bristol 7.5 per cent, and St Edmundsbury & Ipswich 14 per cent.

Diocese of SheffieldThe Bishop of Sheffield, Dr Pete Wilcox

Some dioceses reported that retirements had increased after the pandemic: clergy had wanted to remain in post to see their parishes through the crisis. But, while some spoke of multi-parish benefices and part-time positions as posing recruitment challenges, several reported that it was difficult to identify a pattern.

“Sometimes, there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason,” the Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, observed. “What we may think is an attractive job doesn’t elicit much interest, and what we may think is going to be hard to fill brings in several applications.”

A Sheffield diocesan spokeswoman had similar feedback: “Many of the posts we filled in 2022 were . . . multi-parish benefices and posts in high-deprivation areas,” she said. “In 2024, we did successfully appoint to our largest multi-parish benefice (group of seven parishes), and it looks very likely that we will appoint to one of our most deprived parishes.”

A rise in retirements could itself be a recruitment challenge, a Rochester diocesan spokeswoman suggested, “particularly if an incumbent has been in post for some time, as there may be pastoral work to be undertaken to prepare a parish for recruitment, while some candidates may also be more wary of following a much-loved predecessor”.

The diocese of Hereford has ten vacancies against a budget of eight. Recruitment is a challenge, the diocesan secretary, Sam Pratley, said in August. “Our very rural diocese means that all nearly all roles are multi-parish, with a very high number of churches, schools, and parishes relative to the general population.

“Our church congregations are growing smaller and older, meaning many parishes struggle to appoint to key volunteering roles that would normally form teams to support our clergy. Pressure on finances means that an increasing number of vacancies are being advertised on a part-time or house-for-duty basis without any obvious reduction in the area of responsibility.”

 

IN BOTH official documentation and written responses, dioceses have been keen to allay the suspicion that vacancies have been deliberately extended for financial gain. “Our bishops and archdeacons are working hard with parishes during vacancies to discern what’s needed now and for the next generation, to create parish profiles, and recruit the next person,” the diocese of Derby reassured readers in a recent Q&A. “Current vacancy levels are not a result of delaying tactics to save money, but rather difficulties in attracting the right clergy, an experience which is being felt in many dioceses.”

It is true, nevertheless, that talk of a recruitment challenge comes in the wake of cuts to stipendiary posts in many dioceses, and, in some, reductions continue. This has raised questions about the consistency of the message sent to the clergy, and the extent to which the Church of England’s plans for stipendiary ministry — at national and diocesan level — are joined up.

In several dioceses, deployment plans have been drawn up in recent years to take a more strategic approach. In an address to her diocesan synod in 2019, the former Bishop of Newcastle the Rt Revd Christine Hardman, said that the diocese was “getting by” by having a growing vacancy rate.

“The trouble with relying on the vacancy rate is that we can’t control where vacancies are going to occur, and we also know that having ever longer vacancies leads to a drop in attendance,” she said. “We’re shooting ourselves in the foot if we carry on doing this. What we’re doing is reactive. We are not developing an intentional deployment strategy.”

Identifying the financial challenges, she set out plans to reduce stipendiary posts from 101 to 80 over the next three years. The vacancy rate was, on average, 22 per cent, according to the latest annual report.

Last year, the diocese of Bath & Wells announced plans to make savings of £450,000 each year by reducing stipendiary parish posts from 178 to 150. The diocese of Exeter’s strategy is predicated on a reduction in stipendiary clergy from 168 to 130 by the end of 2031, “if the historic rate of participant decline continues”. Derby has warned that it “cannot sustain stipended clergy numbers beyond 2025 unless we can better balance our budgets”. Lichfield’s Shaping for Mission Strategy included plans to reduce stipendiary posts by 30 (saving £1.75 million) by 2023. A diocesan spokesman confirmed this month that 23 posts had been cut, but said that the new strategy for 2024 to 2030 was focused on growth and encouraging vocations.

Many dioceses are in the throes of restructuring, and the rural/area deanery is often the locus of plans to “reshape ministry”. Recruitment in the diocese of Truro (the “top operational priority” according to the Acting Bishop) follows extensive reorganisation. While the diocese had appointed and licensed a record number of clergy — 15 so far this year — it had also lost nine. The diocese’s last annual report assumed a lower vacancy rate in future, “as it is hoped that the rate of clergy leaving will settle”.

It is striking that one of the lowest vacancy rates was reported by Blackburn, where bishops have made a public commitment to maintaining the number of stipendiary clergy. The diocese of Bristol has also committed itself to maintaining stipendiary-clergy numbers for the duration of its five-year plan, beginning in 2023, while the diocese of Hereford confirmed this month, that “extensive consultation” had resulted in a commitment to maintaining “current front line ministry numbers for as long as we can afford it”. It had initially been proposed that numbers be reduced from 72 to 55 given the diocese’s financial challenges.

 

AMONG those who have questioned the alignment of national ambitions and diocesan finances is the Bishop of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich, the Rt Revd Martin Seeley. “We have got a long-term Vision and Strategy and short-term pressures around finance, and those two timetables don’t meet,” he told the General Synod two years ago (News, 11 February 2022). “We need to try to find a way to mitigate the current situation that is prompting dioceses to consider cutting posts . . . through some form of financial provision.”

The Retired Clergy Association reported in 2020 that the number of retired clergy had increased by 36 per cent since 2000, while the number of stipendiary clergy had decreased by 22 per cent in the same period (from 9538).

Dr Wilcox has been among the most vocal of the bishops in drawing attention to the disparity of diocesan wealth, and the impact that this has on stipendiary numbers, which in his diocese fell from 155 in 1999 to 103 in 2019 (News, 28 May 2021).

Some central support has been made available. In 2023, the Archbishops’ Council distributed £9.4 million to support dioceses with the costs of 68.5 additional stipendiary curacy posts, in addition to £5.6 million of funding for additional clergy posts, to ensure that no suitably qualified curate was left without a post. But, in the wake of the diocesan-finances review, work is under way to explore what further measures may be needed (News, 21 June 2024).

It was, after all, the Archbishops’ Council that, under Renewal and Reform, warned of the dangers of a fall in stipendiary numbers. A paper for the Synod in 2016 reported that the number of stipendiary clergy in the C of E had fallen by about 1.2 per cent each year for the past 50 years to its current level of about 8100. Over the past 30 years, the average number of leavers from the system had exceeded the number of ordinations by about 30 per cent This trend was expected to continue as the Church faced a “particular retirement bulge in the near future”, 44 per cent of current stipendiary clergy being 55 or older. In some dioceses, as many as 30 per cent were over 60.

Noting the rising population, the General Secretary, William Nye, wrote in a blog that: “We will need enough clergy to maintain our mission of being available for all the people of England, in every place.” Dioceses’ cutting numbers had, he wrote, “not proved helpful”. Research commissioned by Church House that year had shown that a decrease in clergy was associated with a greater likelihood of decline in attendance growth (News, 5 August 2016).

 

IT REMAINS to be seen what form further support from the national church institutions will take. But the approach taken in recent years, under which dioceses must bid for funding, setting out plans that meet the approval of the Strategic Investment Board and Strategic Mission and Ministry Board (and align with the national Vision and Strategy), is already influencing the shape of stipendiary ministry on the ground. In Sheffield, £5.7 million was awarded from the Strategic Transformation Fund, for a strategy that includes a shift to the “oversight” model of ministry (Features, 10 September 2021).

Asked in 2023 whether SMMI funding could be used to prevent further cuts to stipendiary numbers, Mr Hughes’s predecessor, John Spence, emphasised instead “a totality of resource across laity, across stipendiary, maybe not stipendiary, across youth leaders who will often not be priests themselves” (News, 31 March 2023).

National priorities can be seen in the posts currently advertised in dioceses. In the diocese of Birmingham, which received £5 million of Strategic Development Fund money for its People and Places programme (News, 25 January), the four listed were: church-schools distinctiveness adviser; financial-sustainability project manager; information analyst; and children, youth, and families mission enabler.

Reiner/PixabayThe challenge to fill vacancies can be greater where most posts are multi-parish, with a high ratio of churches and schools to the general population

The diocese of Portsmouth has benefited from substantial SMMI funding — investment that has helped to recruit to the Isle of Wight, where half of all the stipendiary clergy posts were vacant two years ago, but all are now filled (News, 5 January). The diocese has budgeted for zero clergy vacancies next year. A diocesan spokesman explained: “If every stipendiary clergy post is filled, we will precisely match the expenditure allocated in the budget.”

It has also launched the “Michaelmas cohort”: an initiative that means that Readers, or ministers of other denominations, are ordained as deacons after training of one year. They typically go on to serve in benefices where experienced clergy are already serving.

In other areas, dioceses are focusing on increasing the clergy at home. The diocese of Manchester, which reported, alongside the diocese of London, that it had “not had difficulty recruiting”, drew attention to efforts to support a large number of vocations, “resulting in a healthy pipeline of ordinands and curates who we expect to be able to appoint to roles within the diocese”.

In September, the diocese of Truro will send 12 candidates to train in September, far more than in any year for a long time. The diocese of Oxford highlighted the Caleb Stream, a one-year selection and training pathway for ordination, designed specifically for people with other experience of leadership (Features, 21 June).

At a national level, the Bishop of Chester, the Rt Revd Mark Tanner, says that the Ministry Council, which he chairs, is “very keen to look at pipeline, deployability, but then also caring for clergy well-being, as that matters, full stop, and also recruitment and retention”. Clergy numbers were a “very clear focus”, he said last month, but the Council also recognised that “ministry is more diverse than traditional patterns would indicate,” referring to the example of the 30,000 project to train youth and children’s ministers.

The cause of the fall in ordinand numbers — currently being explored by the Bishop of Stockport, the Rt Revd Sam Corley (News, 12 July) — was “bigger and more complicated than most of us think”, he suggested. “When you do a big drive, you do draw people out of the pool; so it gets shallower, and the pandemic has had ongoing effect. We are noticing people less willing to deploy to residential colleges. And it would be a lie to say that the LLF debates were having no effect . . . Clearly, parts of the Church are cautious about sending candidates forward. Some of the reported uncertainty about ‘Will there be jobs in the future?’ appears to be having an effect.”

Measures taken to address the factors behind the fall in ordinands would “take time to implement, but work has begun”, Bishop Corley said this month. “Prayer is key. So I warmly invite people to join me in praying that the Lord will continue to call people from a diverse range of backgrounds into all the many different lay and ordained ministries within the Church.”

 

IN RAISING the issue of clergy well-being, Dr Tanner echoes his predecessor as chair, Bishop Seeley, who, in 2022, warned that the Church was “in serious danger of creating impossible jobs . . . where the ministry for the cure of souls becomes the ministry of managing a team” (News, 11 February 2022). It followed a written question in the Synod which confirmed that, among the Church’s 2151 multi-parish benefices, there were 331 that contained more than five parishes, including one benefice of 29 parishes.

To explore further the sort of positions available to the Church’s shrinking number of clergy, the Church Times analysed the vacancies — both clerical and lay — published online in all 41 mainland dioceses on 25 September. The number ranged from none (Leicester) to 17 (Leeds). Of the total number of posts — 221 — 177 (or 80 per cent) were clerical. Of these, almost half (46 per cent) were full-time incumbencies. There were also 24 priest-in-charge posts and 23 house-for-duty.

Of the 171 parochial posts, 70 entailed responsibility for one parish, and a further 41 for two parishes. A total of 35 covered six or more parishes, including five that covered ten or more. When it came to the number of churches, 51 entailed responsibility for one or more churches; and a further 38 covered two churches. Forty-eight covered six or more churches.

This month, Mrs Robbie, the lay chair in Lichfield, said that clergy were “maybe quite restricted in what they want to do, so they want to stay in the same diocese, in the same episcopal area. Maybe it’s children’s schooling they don’t want to disrupt or elderly parents they’ve got to attend to. There are lots of things that restrict people’s movements. But there are lots of good jobs available.”

The diocese, a post-industrial area that wasn’t glamorous, had long faced recruitment challenges, she said. This had been exacerbated by a “crisis of senior leadership”: a new Bishop of Wolverhampton had only recently been appointed, and two of the archdeaconries were vacant. Nationally, it was not only ordinand numbers that needed to be considered, she said, but deployability.

A diocesan spokesman said that it had budgeted for a 15-per-cent vacancy rate and that the actual rate varied over time. But he agreed that a “spike of retirements” had occurred, pushing up the rate. He drew attention to a drive to increase vocations and attract curates (16 curacies are advertised online).

Last month, the diocese announced the appointment of a new Canon Missioner for Lichfield Cathedral, Prebendary Ben Whitmore, who would exercise “a temporary ministry on an interim basis” at churches without a parish priest, giving “specialised input over a period of time to help parishes which are in challenging circumstances but which have potential to grow”. He became Rural Dean of Wednesbury on 1 October: a deanery with 13 churches and one priest.

Mrs Robbie welcomed the appointment, but warned: “Ben is only one man, and there are a lot of Black Country places vacant.”

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