Clergy Wanted: Must be ...

Under forty with twenty-five years ministry experience!

Recently I got engaged in conversation with a few dog collars and for once we didn't get round to funerals but the conversation turned towards finding a new posts Hence the previous post on the process being like 'playing away from home!').

On of the interesting comments came from someone who had seen a place that took their fancy and so, as per the advert', they rang one of the churchwardens to discuss the post before they requested the application form and profile. Apparently the conversation went something like this (the would be applicant is in italics):

Good morning, I'm rather interested in your vacancy, could you tell me a little more about it please?

Certainly, how old are you?

I'm nn.*

Aaah, we're looking for someone younger than that.

So can you tell me a bit about the post anyway?

Yes, we have n churches and need a new Vicar.

And that being about it the conversation tailed off - leaving the would be incumbent fuming as the call ended.

Now, I'd like to say that I thought this was a work of fiction or perhaps an isolated misunderstanding or encounter with someone who had the wrong end of the stick at one end of the telephone line or the other. Yet it appears that what this represents is a slightly less polished delivery of what can only be regarded as ageism.

Now considering the fact that many of those I chat to are looking to continue in ministry until their late sixties (and beyond with PTOs) and with the changes in lifestyles and fitness and the like - and the fact that some of those in their forties are much older than some in their sixties - it really should be that ability and, most important of all, calling should be what we are looking at.

Now I don't want this to become some sort of crusade or campaign on my part but I am aware that there is something going wrong here and that it might be something not only institutional but something the church will not do well from should it be true.

I'd be interested to hear the experiences of those who consider themselves to have been on the wrong end of ageism and would love to hear from those who might have realised that they have engaged with it from the 'need a Vicar' side of the fence.

If we are really ageist then I am not just confused but and also saddened and disappointed.

* You can insert whatever age you fancy here - suffice to say that they were somewhere between fifty and sixty

Lent - Not Biblical

This was the upshot of a conversation I had with a keen Pastor from another church regarding Ash Wednesday and the journey that begins then and ends on Easter Sunday. They pointed out that nowhere was Lent mentioned in the Bible and so it is, 'Merely something religious and therefore wrong!'

In fact they said that they were trying to encourage people to consider putting the observation aside as something outmoded and outdated; after all, they said, 'it's not something the whole Church does, is it?'

And, with Ash Wednesday just a few days away makes for a really interesting, and potentially confusing, situation for those both within and outside the Church. after all. Apparently the keeping of Lent is, for some, nothing more than being religious: It is a meaningless imposition of dirt followed by giving stuff up and submitting to external pressures from the clergy.

Yet what I see is a time of reflection and, rather than giving stuff up, is a time of taking stuff on. A time to be thinking about the journey to the cross and preparation of the spiritual room that is ourselves for the coming of Jesus the risen Christ. This is what the two purple periods of the church are all about - self examination and clearing out the remnants, silencing the echoes of things, that impede our Christian walk. It is something of value rather than something imposed and religious. It is the very essence of being authentically Christian rather than submitting to something hollow and worthless.

As for not being Biblical - having pointed out that the word 'Trinity' was not to be found in the Bible and so, perhaps, might also attract the same 'religious' label as assigned to Lent - I received short shrift. In fact I think that my conversant was starting to think I was yet another member of an outmoded and repressive denomination caught up in mere religious observance rather than a quick and lively faith.

And that's the sadness because in Lent I actually find something of great spiritual value - a call to a self-discipline that opens my mind and heart and takes me onto the road that leads to the Cross - and it is in this that Easter becomes something personal and eschews everything that could be considered religious.

Oddly, those who effectively ignore the journey to the cross - choosing merely to celebrate the victory of Easter without contemplating the journey that leads to it, the awfulness of betrayal and separation from God that was crucifixion - it is them who are in their triumphalism being religious. It is they who in celebrating the victory without the cost, are making something less than it is of Easter and along with those who tell me that you cannot 'out Grace' are merely celebrating a God who become a celestial do gooding piggy bank where forgiveness without the cost of commitment and discipline are on offer.

And that is why my Lenten journey is so important - not because I am engaging in a moment of self- flagellatory denial or some self-imposed meaningless observation of an unbiblical practice - but an taking the time to consider the cost of the cross and in so doing take up my own cross and seek to follow Jesus, the Christ, in right living and thinking. Something I try to do every day but made all the more challenging as I celebrate the reward made possible by the journey of the incarnate God for me.

Not mere religion - to think that is to be truly confused.

'Too Old' - Ageism and the Church of England (1)

Having recently found myself in a conversation with someone who, in their mid-fifties, found themselves on the end of a 'too old' conversation when they made an approach for a clergy post I guess I should not be shocked by the clerical vacancy which proudly proclaimed that they wanted 'maturity not ancient!'.

I guess I should merely shrug and take as read the General Synod's document (GS 1979) on
Resourcing Ministerial Education in the Church of England and  proposal 8:

Candidates over 50

Candidates who will be under 50 at ordination will continue to attend a BAP, to ensure national commonality of standards. 

Candidates over the age of 50 at ordination will be selected locally by the bishop. 

Candidates over 50 at ordination will not receive the standard pooled grant: the cost of their training will fall directly to the diocese.

Now what does this mean in practice I wonder? Let me offer the view I see from the place in which I currently hide:

First and foremost this means that anyone who begins the journey to ordination and looking to being ordained at Petertide (June) will need to be 47 (and something) when they begin their three years of training (if two years full-time deduct a year). Now taking into account the average time that those I have dealt with take to progress through the discernment process this means that those who feel a calling to ordaining ministry will really need to be no more than forty-five and a half to ensure that they qualify for the under 50 at ordination situation.

'So what's the problem?' I hear you ask.

The reply to which is the reality that already I am hearing of where some who are already training and paying for the training themselves because of their age; their diocese being unable to afford to pay from their own pool of money. This is what 'the cost of their training will fall directly to the diocese' really means. There's no money from central funds to cover the cost of those who will most likely bring 20+ years of stipendiary or non-stipendiary ministry and with the reality that there's less money in the diocese to pay for day-to-day operational costs.

When I asked someone in the vocations business they mumbled about 'cost-effectiveness' (meaning number of years in ministry divided by cost of training) and 'effective ministry' (meaning the complete cobblers that we can only effectively minister to those ±10years either side of our age!). It seems that the baseline by which we seek to support is moving towards the situation where calling is tempered by age rather than a clear and obvious sense of (confirmed by others and testing) vocation.

At one level I can understand the thinking behind this as we see contraction of training as it withdraws into something that seems to set aside the diversity of training that schemes and colleges provided and reconnects with the more common ordination examination approach of old. The good old CofE is trying to cut its coat according to its cloth.

On a different level we are seeing the CofE look to restriction of training and opportunity and, more serious to the good functioning of our denomination I fear, engaging in something ageist. Our hope is not in God's calling but the age of the clergy - and I have to say that having met some excellent young clergy I can understand their hope, but like the Curate's egg, not all of them are good and age is not the Philosophers' Stone that turns some of the young would be clerics to gold!

When this comes before Synod I can but hope and pray common sense (and a lack of ageist tosh) prevails!


You may now turn over your papers and discuss