NOVEMBER 2020 was not a great time to be retiring. My plans for stepping down from my position as Bishop of Dorchester had had to be significantly altered because of Covid, and a number of things that I had been looking forward to doing could not take place.
In the months that followed, I was asked on many occasions: “Are you enjoying retirement?”, and I found that a difficult question to answer. It was good not to be driven by the demands of a busy diary, and the flexibility that retirement gives is delightful; but I missed doing many of the things I had been doing as a bishop over the previous 20 years. In particular, I felt the loss of no longer working in a team.
Looking back, it took two to three years to get into the rhythm of a retired life, and I know that I am by no means unique in that.
I had some ideas about how things might develop, but what I had not planned for was the invitation, from the late Bishop of Guildford, to consider becoming the chairman of the Retired Clergy Association (Church of England).
This has proved both a joyful and challenging experience, not least because it forced me to look back at my time in active episcopal ministry, and to consider how well we had valued those priests and their spouses who retired in the Oxford diocese, and then to consider how to apply that understanding to retired clergy in the wider C of E today.
Looking over the country as a whole, I am conscious that the Church of England is more and more dependent on the ministry of retired priests to maintain the regular pattern of Sunday and weekday services in our parishes. No one knows what the exact figure is — whether it is one fifth of all services, or one quarter, or whatever. (The figures are there in the returns all clergy with PTO are expected to submit annually, but it seems that no one has the resource to do the research on this raw data to find out the true picture of what is actually happening.)
But, with the year-on-year reductions in the number of stipendiary priests, the lengthening of vacancies, and the increase in the need for cover for ill-health and stress-related conditions, it is clear that retired clergy are being looked to more and more to cover the gaps that these all leave.
I am aware that the majority of retired priests, conscious of their lifetime vocation — once a priest, always a priest — are willing to continue to serve in this way. At the same time, though, little thought is given by dioceses to how to support, value, and enable them in their continuing ministries.
There are some welcome exceptions to this:
- dioceses that have adopted the PTO pathway for safeguarding training rather than insisting on the Leadership one;
- dioceses that acknowledge the continuing pain of clergy who were required to sell their homes before entering ordination training;
- dioceses that ask retired clergy what particular gifts and skills they would like to continue to offer in retirement;
- dioceses that do not place overmuch stress on reaching a particular age, be that 70 or 80;
- dioceses that make available House for Duty and interim posts available to clergy beyond the age of 68;
- dioceses that ensure that expenses are paid routinely to those travelling far and wide in a deanery or multi-parish benefice, as well as offering fees that correspond realistically to what is being asked;
- dioceses that take the opportunity to include retired clergy in diocesan events, CMD training, and synodical debates;
- dioceses that take seriously the changing patterns of life and spirituality that come with the ageing process. . .
Dioceses, in other words, that look for best practice and constantly seek ways to affirm retired clergy and their spouses, and strive, in a counter-cultural way, to honour the elderly in a society and a Church that all too often view this age group in a thoroughly negative way.
WHEN he was Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey often used to say that you could tell a lot about how much a parish or diocese valued children’s and youth ministries by looking to see if they had a budget line for them, and how much was in it. There was something wrong if a Sunday-school teacher, or youth leader, was being asked not only to do all the preparation that their group required but was also expected to provide (from their own financial resources) the materials that would be needed.
Today, in many places, that lack has been addressed. But the same principles apply to the ministry of the retired-clergy officers in dioceses and deaneries. Where is the budget line in the DBF’s accounting for their ministry to their colleagues? Or are they expected to pick up the tab themselves and are, therefore, limited in what they can do? Sadly, we know that most are volunteer posts without a proper budget.
IT WAS on 3 August 1926 that Archbishop Randall Davidson made an impassioned plea in the House of Lords for the launching of a fund to enable clergy to have a pension in retirement. This year, we give thanks for the centenary of the Pensions Board and its predecessors, not least because of its wise husbandry of finances that has led to the substantial recent increases in clergy pensions.
And it remains a principle that, when clergy reach retirement age, they should be allowed to retire without any pressure put on them to continue to serve in public ministry.
But it is also a fact of life that the numbers of stipendiary clergy are dropping markedly, with a significant wave of further retirements about to come. All of which calls on the C of E, both nationally and at diocesan level, to think through what they are doing to support retired clergy, and to honour them for the people they are, and all that they can continue to offer, should they choose.
There is something amiss if some dioceses nurture retired priests — and even ordain new ones beyond the age of 70 — while others routinely freeze people out of public ministry long before they reach the age attained by Sir David Attenborough.
From my perspective at the Retired Clergy Association, this need to support and value our retired clergy should be addressed urgently during the archiepiscopate of our new Archbishop. If not, the parishes of our land will suffer severely.