How much are clergy worth?
Just before Christmas, Alan Bartlett's moving comments about clergy stress were published in the Daily Telegraph.
As a vicar, I know better than anyone why so many clergy are shut to the border…In my last iii months in the parish, for example, I conducted the funerals of 3 young women: ane died of a drugs overdose; ane of alcohol habit; and 1 of addiction to painkillers. Two left children backside, all three devastated families.
As the local vicar, I was part of the primary care team working with these and other local families in distress. I was too one of the very few professionals whose home was in the parish. The medics and the social workers and teachers, for perfectly proper reasons, virtually all commute in. Vicars alive in their parishes. What that meant last Easter – and delight don't read this as a hard-luck story – is that we had our car bricked 3 times in a calendar week. The windows were smashed. Nosotros had to take CCTV fitted to the vicarage.
Alan's reflection does non aim to exist a sob-story looking for sympathy, and he is very open about what a rewarding experience parish ministry has been, even in a deprived and enervating context:
All the same being a vicar is also, for many of us, hugely rewarding. In research done past the Cabinet Function in 2014, vicars came out as the happiest of all professions. My nine years in Gilesgate, Sherburn and Shadforth was i of the all-time jobs I volition ever practice. It was a privilege to be with people at those immensely of import moments, when they open up and share their lives with me and with God.
This correlates with a consistent phenomenon at the back of the Church Times: I have frequently been struck by how consistently the obituaries of clergy list their ages on death every bit in the late 80s or 90s. This contrasts with what I noticed amidst those retiring from factory shift-work when I worked at Mars in Slough, many of whom died in their 70s or fifty-fifty 60s, simply a few years after leaving work. Clergy seem to be unduly gifted with long life, and there is a very obvious reason for this: even though it sometimes does not feel like it, we have security, freedom and control over our own time similar no other occupation. Johann Hari puts his finger on this in his personal written report of depression and its causes:
It turns out if you have no control over your work, you are far more likely to go stressed – and, crucially, depressed. Humans take an innate need to feel that what we are doing, day-to-day, is meaningful. When you are controlled, you can't create significant out of your work.
Not everyone agrees with Hari'southward overall analysis, but this observation appears to be very well founded. And information technology touches on the paradox of the work of ministry building and its rewards: for every factor which suggests one truth nigh ministry, another suggests the exact opposite. And this, in turn, stymies effective word about the level of the clergy stipend, which is reviewed every yr by the Archbishops' Council. The very context of discussion demonstrates what an odd thing it is; I would be in a room, without a stipend myself, alongside many with a regular stipend, a few with a differential stipend considering of greater responsibility (existence a bishop or archbishop), and civil servants paid a skilful deal more any of the clergy present. I confess to finding it very strange sitting in a coming together, discussing investment ethics and strategy, adjacent to someone who had the previous calendar week been given a £200,000 bonus.
Don't forget to book your place at the the Festival of Theology on January 30th!
The Church of England terminal attempted a serious overhaul of stipends in 2001, when the reportGenerosity and Sacrifice came to Synod. This was my starting time year as a Synod representative (for Salisbury diocese) and I liked the fact that the report tried to combine some serious theological reflection (particularly on the meaning of 'double honour' in one Tim 5.17) with putting the clergy stipend into the context of current pay for other professions. What was less impressive is what appeared to be the skewing of the theology to defend the idea of differentials in stipends between 'senior' and 'ordinary' clergy. I cannot at present remember the details of the debate, merely the main recommendation on stipend levels was that stipend and housing together should be '80% of the starting salary of a caput teacher of a large principal school' and this was not implemented. At the time, that would have moved the stipend from around £16,000 to £20,000, an increase of 25%. Now, information technology would motion it from effectually £25,000 to somewhere near £forty,000, more similar a lx% increase—which is a reflection on the way that salaries for professions have moved away from median salaries nationally. over the last ten years, the incumbent stipend has slightly drifted from effectually the 47%-ile of national median salaries to around 44%-ile, which is why annual decisions need to exist made on a long-term and non an annual basis. But, with various financial pressures coming upwardly for dioceses, including the impact of the growth in new ordinands, no-one is going to welcome another reason to increase upkeep spending.
The paradoxes of the stipend arise from at to the lowest degree these half-dozen areas, in no particular guild.
a. ResponsibilityDo clergy practise a responsible task? No, of grade non, in terms of decision-making and fiscal management, in comparison with any senior professional person lay person inside the congregation. 1 of the ordinands that I taught had come from a task where he was sent to Brazil on his own with £10 million and told to recruit staff and build a mill. Thinking about the annual church upkeep must have seemed a bit of a come-downward. When I was 22 I was running a £22m production line and responsible for the lives of those on my shift. It e'er puzzled me when people talked almost 'large jobs' in church leadership past comparing. And even so, if I had made a airheaded mistake in a business concern presentation, and so my mistake would have been forgotten the next solar day. If I get the deceased person's proper name incorrect at a funeral, I will exist reminded of it for decades. Can there be anything more responsible than shepherding the people of God out of danger and into condom pasture by refreshing streams?
b. HousingLong gone are the days when clergy lived in a grand rectory which was the about splendid house in the town or hamlet. There are yet some impressive vicarages (which usually just makes them difficult to heat), only most people's experience of clergy housing hovers betwixt the grateful and the resentful, depending on relations with the diocesan staff member responsible for maintenance. Every bit I establish in my decade of living in a higher tied house (built in rather miserable 1970s breeze blocks) at that place is something rather infantilising about having to ask permission to make minor alterations. A clergy friend recently confessed to not doing anything with his garden, since 'well, it'due south not mine, is it?' even though he has lived twice equally long there equally nosotros have in our current house, which we (or rather the bank) 'owns' (see Ps 24.1). The main upshot for my generation is that living in a tied business firm meant having nowhere to live on retirement, in contrast with the majority of others of the same age. That has all changed for the generation that follows, where business firm ownership is a afar aspiration.
c. Work hoursPutting appropriate boundaries around work fourth dimension has ever been a challenge for clergy; the age of hyper-connectedness and the ability to read emails tardily at nighttime on one's phone has perhaps extended that challenge to others. But parish clergy need to live with the loss of weekend freedom in a mode that others exercise not. In that location is a sense in which 'the chore is never done', just there is also a lack of direct supervision which ways it is easy to be lazy or inefficient or both. A retired bishop once told me 'Half my clergy were lazy; the other half were workaholics.' It summed up the dichotomy rather well.
d. EducationIn times past, the clergyman, forth with the lord, the lawyer and the medico, would be one of the most educated in the local area. Until the expansion of College Education nether New Labour, in that location was still a noticeable deviation, in that around two-thirds of Anglican clergy were graduates, compared with possibly a quarter of the wider population. (Such measures are less obvious now that at that place are so many graduates.) Given that many clergy come from well-paid roles in their previous occupation, should that affect the level of stipend?
e. Context With the speedily growing levels of financial inequality in the country equally a whole, there are increasing contrast for clergy in different settings. Those working in poor urban estates might be some of the few actually in employment, and will normally exist the most secure and best paid in the parish. Those living in a wealthy London suburb will be the lowest paid by some considerable way. But abandoning a national structure for the stipend level would add to the difficulties of filling clergy posts in poorer parts of the state.
f. Theology The paradoxes of clergy remuneration go all the mode back to the roots of ministry in the New Attestation. On the i hand, some of the nearly important parts of Paul's ministry took identify when he was earning his own living in another mode, every bit a tent-maker. But when a gift was made which allowed him to devote his whole time to ministry (Acts 18.v), this opened up a new stage and new possibilities—and the giving of a gift to set him gratuitous to minister remains the theological ground for clergy being paid a stipend rather than being given pay as remuneration for a chore done or an function held. Paul never held on to this every bit a right, even though it was assumed to be his to claim for him and family members (one Cor 9.5). Christian leaders should indeed be held in 'double honor' (1 Tim 5.17), and the Greek word for 'honour'fourth dimension is usually now used for the cost or monetary value of something. And yet Paul also recognised the hardships and suffering involved in ministry of whatever kind (2 Cor 3–iv).
However these paradoxes are resolved, the question of clergy remuneration and provision volition continue to be part of discussions both well-nigh the affordability of ministry in diocesan budgets and issue of clergy welfare. Do post your own solution in the comments below!
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