ABOUT a year ago, I gave thanks for 20 years in priest’s orders, and remembered my two curacies, the first of which was what you might call a curate’s egg.
Over the years, I’ve seen an increase in bad matches between curates and training incumbents — and, worse, an increase in gifted young clergy leaving the Church. This isn’t something that theological colleges talk about.
On my leaver’s course, we were told to take out life insurance and make our wills before ordination. Maybe that was meant to be a subtle warning. If so, we were all too excited to let it sink in.
I wrote about my curacy experience, and when things fall apart in a curacy, in Prospect magazine. I stated: “I would be happy to help design a study unit on what to do when things fall apart, with practical advice and theological reflection. I would even come and teach it.”
So, I’d begin with George du Maurier’s famous “curate’s egg” cartoon (Punch, November 1895), to break the ice. It wasn’t original to du Maurier: he filched it from someone else’s cartoon in another publication. But his is the version that became famous, and it’s worth attention.
The Revd Alice Goodman with the Revd Dr Robert Hawkins after his ordination to the priesthood at Ely Cathedral on 29 June. He was a Parish Assistant at Fulbourn and the Wilbrahams during lockdown. He is serving his title at St James’s, Cambridge
“True Humility” is the title, and, in case your irony meter has stalled, it’s ironic. The bishop knows that the curate has got a bad egg. He can probably smell the sulphur from halfway up the table. Does he direct the maid (she’s there in the background, in apron and cap) to fetch Mr Jones another?
No. Instead, he pokes gently at the curate: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.” How will Mr Jones answer? He’s hardly going to say, “Yes, my Lord, I certainly do.” Yet he knows, and he knows that the bishop knows, that if an egg is bad, it’s all bad. He just can’t say it.
Did Mr Jones eat the egg, though? Did he tell himself that God had ordained that he should share in the sufferings of our Lord in this way, or that eating a bad egg would contribute to his priestly formation?
The Victorians thought it amusing that Mr Jones tied himself up in obsequious knots, and so do we. ‘This f***ing egg’s bad!’ says a fierce-looking curate in an immediately recognisable parody, published almost a century later, in the very last edition of Punch.
Then, the first question: What would you do if you were that curate? What would you say? Points taken away for “I’m sorry. . .” and “I’m afraid. . .” “I wonder. . .” gets one point, especially if said in a way that demonstrates experience of Godly Play.
IN ANY group of ordinands at this stage of life, there will be some who already know that the way is not smooth. Some have had a hard time finding title parishes. One I knew, a holy, cheerful, unmarried woman from the Evangelical tradition, found that there were those who felt threatened by her competence (some of them other women), and others who were worried because she didn’t have a husband.
There’s always one ordinand who doesn’t yet have a place to go when Easter rolls around. Everyone else seems to be measuring the windows in the curate’s house, while the unplaced ordinand feels like a reject.
As I said, some ordinands already know the next part of the lesson.
At this point, I will ask everyone to turn to their copies of Bonhoeffer’s short essay “What is Church?” (No Rusty Swords: Letters, lectures, and notes 1928-1936 from the collected works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Vol. 1, edited by Edward H. Robertson, translated by E. H. Robertson and J. Bowden, Harper & Row, New York, 1965, 153-157).
In this essay, Bonhoeffer extends Luther’s understanding of the human being, as simultaneously justified and sinning, to the Church, the Body of Christ in the world.
Although most clergy in the Church of England know and love the story of Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s repeating “I hate the Church of England” three times every morning, the idea that the Church is always worldly, never perfect, worse in its sanctimoniousness than the godless world in which it dwells, is still foreign to us.
We tend to believe that we live and move and have our being as part of an institution that can be reformed and made perfect.
Here, I would hope we might have an energetic discussion, perhaps with whiteboard or flipchart. I’d point out that, for Bonhoeffer, the crucial word is “simultaneously”.
The Church is always, simultaneously, recognised as the presence of God in the world, and, as Bonhoeffer says in No Rusty Swords, “a union of religiously inclined, interested men [and women, I’d add], strangely fond of displaying their religiosity in their form of ‘church’.”
More of the matter of the curate’s egg, then, but enlarged.
The egg served to Mr Jones at the bishop’s table is bad if it’s not good. But the Church (and, for Bonhoeffer, “there is only one Church in all the world”) is always simultaneously addled and excellent.
WHEN you come to be ordained in that Church, you have already offered yourself. You’ve told the story of how you came to faith. You’ve filled in many, many forms. You’ve been repeatedly questioned, and discovered within yourself a frightening capacity for the latest jargon. And you’ve been recommended for training: a wonderful moment of affirmation. Your theological education has begun.
I hope that that education isn’t over. You will be reminded to continue to stir up the gift within you (2 Timothy 1.6), but it’s often hard to find time for study and prayer after ordination. You may well find that the post-ordination training you’ll be sent on is as useful for stirring up the gift within you as a small disposable spoon.
Whatever happens, good or bad, reflective ordinands know at this point that they’re already in over their heads.
Does everyone understand? You’ve been called by God to preach the good news of Christ to all the world, and to care for Christ’s own flock. That call has come through, and been ratified by a Church that is institutionally always simultaneously justified and sinning, and filled with people who are also simul justus et peccator.
If things don’t go wrong, it’s a blooming miracle. When things do go wrong, though, it’s grievous. Lives are ruined. Vocations are lost. Families are traumatised. You realise that you are the smallest and most dispensable cog in the machine.
NOW for a few tips for a happier and more functional curacy, and how to spot trouble early.
If you have a wise and sympathetic bishop, you’re lucky and blessed; but even the best bishop will have more to think about than your curacy. You will also have a diocesan director of ordinands (DDO). It’s good to act on the premise that your DDO has your best interests at heart, while hanging on to the hermeneutics of suspicion. It will be one of these two people who will point you towards your potential curacy.
How curates are matched up with title parish and training incumbent (TI) is a mystery deeper than the grave. It may be that you’ve been matched with an experienced TI in your tradition in a parish where you can learn the pastoral offices, community engagement, and schools work, and have a chance to explore your own particular strengths.
On the other hand, you may be sent to someone who really shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a junior colleague, but has done something for the diocese which warrants a prize, and you are that prize.
Or perhaps, you’re an oddity: you already do Thought for the Day, or you are simultaneously LGBTI and a member of an ethnic minority, and your DDO can’t think where to put you.
Most ordinands gratefully accept the curacy they’re offered. Sometimes, all seems rosy, and sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t, though, and the ordinand takes the line that Providence has sent them to this place, and, despite all evidence to the contrary, this is where they’re called to be.
Often, they believe that, if they tell their bishop, or their DDO, that the curacy doesn’t feel right, they will not be offered another, like Mr Jones with his egg.
At a time when there are fewer people coming forward for ordination, there is no reason that a curate should be afraid to say that they think the title parish on offer won’t work, and ask if they can visit another one.
If you have a gut feeling — that whiff of sulphur — that this is not going to work out, don’t hesitate to say so, and ask whether there is another place you might go. For some, that may mean being released by the diocese to seek a curacy elsewhere.
If this is the case for you, don’t be afraid.
AS YOU begin life as a curate, there are a few rules that can help you to maintain a healthy relationship with your training incumbent.
- Have a working agreement. This should stipulate times for supervision and study days, besides allowing for rest and holidays, and time to spend with your friends and family. Speaking of family: make sure they are protected as much as possible from the demands of the Church.
- You and your TI should pray together in church every day. Ideally, the morning office. It’s often difficult to manage the evening office as well, but the morning office is vital for your formation, and for your relationship. There’s no good reason that your TI cannot find time to pray the office with you, and vice versa.
- Get away from the parish with your TI regularly to talk and make plans. A day out, or half a day, every couple of months is good.
- Make friends with your fellow curates (that is the true purpose of ordination retreats and IME), and with your deanery. Don’t allow yourself to become isolated. Get to know people, and let them get to know you. This way, there will be people to speak up for you, and support you, if things go badly wrong.
- Continuing in that vein, maintain your friendships from other parts of your life. See your friends. That is one of the best ways of keeping a healthy perspective on your life as a curate. And make sure you find a spiritual director.
- If your TI wants you to fill in a time-chart as part of your working agreement, say no. Run like the wind.
- Read the Canons of the Church of England. They’re online: you can find them easily. Read them, mark them, inwardly digest them, and try your very best to stick to them.
- Keep up with all the safeguarding. Join the Faith Workers branch of Unite. Keep a journal.
- A good training incumbent is unthreatenable. Insecure training incumbents seem to be the cause of most of the failed curacies I’ve seen in the past two decades.
- The most important thing you can bring out of your curacy is a treasury of happy memories: memories of good working relationships, of unmerited affection, of all the times things went right, and of the times when things went wrong but you were helped to your feet again. You will need them when things get tough in your first incumbency.
Remember: you’re an adult, a mature Christian called and ordained, and the Church is simul justus et peccator. A curate’s egg.
The Revd Alice Goodman is Rector of Fulbourn and the Wilbrahams, in Cambridgeshire.