THE Church of England should develop a technique to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a non-public member’s motion is to argue at next month’s General Synod meeting.
Proposed by the Revd Alex Frost, a priest in Burnley who left school at 15 and worked full-time within the retail sector to fund his ministerial training (Comment, Podcast, 26 April 2024), the motion calls on the Ministry Development Board to supply a “national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of individuals from working-class backgrounds”.
In his paper accompanying the motion, Mr Frost says that working-class people often find it difficult to reply to a calling to ministry due to middle-class expectations and assumptions throughout the Church.
”The first concern needs to be whether an individual is named by God to a given ministry,” he writes. “Whether they’ve tattoos or a powerful regional accent mustn’t be held against them.”
He gives examples of his own experience as an ordinand, having to make use of his annual leave to attend compulsory residential trainings, and frequently complete a 100-mile round trip after per week’s full-time work at Argos for a two-hour tutorial.
Many working-class jobs don’t fit the Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five pattern, he says, and are characterised by shift work and extra time. This often prevents working-class people from attending training that takes place solely during evenings and weekends.
Other barriers are cultural, he writes. He refers to at least one working-class candidate who was asked at their selection panel who their favourite artist was. When they replied “Eminem”, they were corrected by the interviewer, who said that they were in search of a painter, not a rapper.
Too often, Mr Frost says, the Church prizes solely academic achievement and qualifications, while the years of “practical, emotional, and life skills” accrued through working life which prepare working-class people for ministry are neglected.
Speaking at a press briefing on the Synod papers last week, Mr Frost said: “My vision can be to see an apprenticeship scheme for individuals who have a portfolio of labor moderately than a tutorial body of labor.”
The C of E had a “traditional academic way of teaching our ordinands, and that is an exciting opportunity to alter the model completely, to revolutionise it, to show it the wrong way up, and to be more attractive to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker”.
Some projects to beat these barriers are already in place, Mr Frost’s paper says, resembling the Peter Stream at St Mellitus College, which provides a bespoke pathway for people without significant educational qualifications to coach for ordination. But a greater diversity of coaching routes and alternatives to traditional college-based residential education is required, it says. At the identical time, more cash must be made available for poorer working-class candidates who would profit from traditional training, but cannot afford it.
“We mustn’t allow residential training to only be a practical option for many who have already got secure housing and financial independence,” Mr Frost’s paper argues. “There must be a shift in mindset in any respect levels to permit individuals who the Church discerns are called to serve to be supported to accomplish that.”
The same is true for lay leaders, he writes. Something as small as being unable to afford the bus fare to attend diocesan synod, or not having free Saturday mornings for Reader training, could block some people from a lifetime of potential service.
Mr Frost also suggests that a mentoring scheme might help, through which working-class ministers could meet candidates from similar backgrounds to help of their journey through discernment and training.
A more working-class C of E, which higher reflected the variety of the nation it sought to serve, would also help to spice up vocations and grow congregations, Mr Frost suggests, in addition to making the Church “simpler, humbler and bolder” within the language of its latest Vision and Strategy.
In a further paper to the Synod, the secretary-general, William Nye, says that research confirms that too few working-class persons are getting through the discernment process. About 24 per cent of candidates for panels in 2021-23 were working class, compared with a UK average of 39 per cent.
A separate piece of research into the experiences of working-class clergy was published in 2023, and this prompted all theological education institutions to be made to supply a plan to handle “classism” by the center of this 12 months, Mr Nye’s paper says. There can be other work under way, including higher measuring of the socio-economic impact in grants made by the Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment Board.
