George Herbert Visiting in Dibley

Paul Roberts really ought to turn this into a sustained article or book. Here's yet another great post that really reflects and expresses well the kind of experience I have had and the way I have come to think about it. This particular post concludes helpfully.

we need less clergy training (especially in training curacies) based around nostrums such as the visiting clergyperson. Instead we need some creative, common-sense and strategic thinking, in order to build up the human contact which is essential in all Christan work, by clergy or by others.

And this is recommended because earlier we are reminded

The myth of the visiting priest is further shattered by the realisation that when it used to happen with any frequency, it was either in small rural parishes, or where an urban parish had about three curates - quite common right up to the 1970s. Solitary parish priests with parishes of in excess of 10,000 people, who are feeling guilty for not visiting more, should be exorcised of the power of this nostrum.

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I well recall pointing out to a congregation I was leading that maybe some expectations of the clergy role were no longer realistic, using figures of clergy numbers and populations showing how the population has increased while clergy numbers have fallen, and how a church might have several full-time visiting clergy in the Victorian period where they might now have one and that one might be shared with a neighbouring parish or two. The expectations seem hard-wired into English cultural expectations, fed and nurtured by village-green nostalgic fictions on the tele. Even the Vicar of Dibley, for all the interesting things it did with clergy image actually reinforced an image of one vicar in a small community with a tiny congregation who somehow have been given the boon of this vicar being there full-time, unshared.

The trick is how to disenchant the CofE from its Herbert/Dibley dream to collectively face reality? If it doesn't happen then we will find the forces of nostalgia, eroding finance and unwillingness to let die what really needs to be put out of its misery will dragoon us into something that really is more about administering a religious theme park than the mission of God.

staring into the distance::as far as our eyes can see; Three posts on clergy life (3) - visiting: Filed in: ministry, Anglican, CofE, change, culture, misson, Christian, visiting