THE pressure of parish share could cause anxiety, shame, and embarrassment amongst clergy, in keeping with the most recent report from the ten-year Living Ministry study.
Trust That God Will Work His Purposes Out: Wellbeing and alter management in ordained ministry, a qualitative study, builds on an earlier quantitative report, Holding Things Together: Church of England clergy in changing times (News, 23 February 2024). It is the most recent report from the study, launched by the national Ministry Team in 2017, which is following 4 cohorts over ten years: clergy ordained in 2006, 2011, and 2015, and people who entered training in 2016. Its aim is to assemble evidence about “what enables ministers to flourish in ministry”.
Drawing on focus groups and interviews with 55 clerics, it highlights the extent to which the Church’s wider challenges, from financial deficits to division over the Living in Love and Faith process, are impacting on clergy well-being.
The report notes “the extremely difficult financial situation of many parishes” — described by one participant as “hugely, hugely horrible” — and the “high awareness of stipendiary ministers of the connection between their stipend and parish funds, via the parish share”. This is, it says, “often emphasised to local churches by dioceses to incentivise them to pay their parish share in full, and, amid the present economic challenges, some participants report that their dioceses are reviewing the viability of parishes that don’t achieve this.”
For stipendiary clergy, this might provoke concern for his or her parish. One participant described pondering: “If we don’t pay our common fund, then once I move, then are they going to say, ‘Well, you may’t have a vicar any more?’ And I feel the responsibility for that.”
For some, the query of parish share could “provoke a way of shame throughout the diocese”. One commented that, when the diocese set out the associated fee of a stipendiary priest in a parish share request, they were “made to feel really expensive”. There was an assumption that the priest was the recipient of the associated fee (£70,000).
The report also explores the impact of the LLF process on clergy relationships, with collegial relationships at deanery and diocesan levels essentially the most discussed. Some spoke of “polarised” deaneries. One area dean commented: “People are inclined to be going into camps that aren’t deanery-based. It’s sort of the little huddles . . . there’s a danger of tribalism for the time being, and attempting to keep those lines of communication open is sort of tricky.” In some cases, nevertheless, clergy were “attempting to work through their differences together”.
In interviews conducted two years after the tip of the last national lockdown, participants spoke of the lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. At least 11 of the 28 incumbents already established in post by autumn 2021, spoke of an impact on their well-being, largely due to exhaustion. Two had already retired sooner than planned, while one other had brought their intended retirement date forward. One had left parish parish ministry, one other was considering leaving, and one other was “recovering in one other role”.
Across the Living Ministry study, essentially the most discussed issue affecting mental health has been workload. Participants proceed to report heavy administrative burdens. One full-time incumbent with two churches, who’s considering leaving ministry, commented: “I’ve turn into increasingly convinced that much of the way in which the job is structured is about as much as make you’re feeling such as you’re not, because there’s all the time one million things that you’re feeling like you possibly can and ought to be doing.”
When it involves congregations post-Covid, the report says that, in lots of parishes, “reduced levels of participation remain”. One incumbent commented: “Certainly post-Covid, people’s commitment to hanging on to do anything just seems to have withered away.” Another commented: “People have prioritised their lives in another way due to Covid. They’ve seen that what they invested time in before just isn’t necessarily what they need to speculate time in now.”
The second half of the report is devoted to vary management: clergy were asked to debate an example of a ministry-related change by which they were or still are involved. It provides extensive illustrations of the challenges of bringing about change, from PCCs questioning or refusing to endorse the proposed actions, to low levels of lay involvement (“I even have people on the PCC who hardly come to church”) to declining numbers of individuals capable of volunteer.
The report concludes by discussing the importance of trust, which “enables people to be open to embracing or initiating recent things without being held back by fear of failure, loss or betrayal. This is as much the case for clergy being inhibited from leading change by the necessity to self-protect from diocesan or parochial recrimination, as for parishioners resisting change that they fear may result in lack of identity or security.”
