Worthy of hire?

Lately I've been musing: reflecting on my position as an unemployed priest. My issues are a little complex: I didn't want to be unemployed; I wanted to continue being a chaplain at a HE institution but the money ran out so I could not continue. I have moved house to Durham with my wife who is training for ministry and she will be training for two years meaning that I need to discern what is the right way forward for me for two years. Two years is a period of time that most people or parishes or appointing bodies would consider too short to want to make an appointment; they would, understandably, like to think that they have a shot at getting someone with a bigger proportion of their lifespan to offer.

I had over the last handful of years begun to wonder about what my longer-term vocation might be. I had found the parish ministry I had been involved in not as fulfilling as I might have hoped; mainly because I began to realise that my sense of who I am before God is not very well suited to the kind of parish work I had been doing. What I had really felt alive to in ministry has been training, theological reflection, creative expressions of worship and church, cutting edge projects.

I don't see a future in which I am not involved in teaching/preaching and ministering sacraments; that's what I'm called to; it's just that I'm finding it hard to see my other primary callings really getting a lot of exercise in the kinds of parish ministries that I've seen and anticipate will be around in the coming years.

So much for the personal background. Have a look at this: it's is what the CofE webiste says about remuneration:
" Strictly speaking, most clergy are not employed. Most Church of England clergy recieve what is called a 'stipend' (currently averaging £16,910 in 2001), their housing and have a non-contributory pension scheme. Some clergy, however, are actually employed as chaplains, for example, to the Armed Forces, in prisons, hospitals and in the universities. Other clergy and accredited lay ministers serve the church without receiving any direct financial support from it. Deacons, priests and accredited lay workers may exercise such a non-stipendiary ministry in their parish and / or in the context of their secular employment."

So the system is set up to recognize two forms of ministry: stipendiary and sef-supporting. This is because a stipend is not about being employed but about being freed from being self-supporting so that full-time ministry is possible. Thus a CofE clergybeing's stipend is about having enough to live on not being paid what you're worth [in secular terms; of course, theologically, no-one is paid enough, if you know what I mean]. The bipolar system this sets up may need reviewing. My friend, Adrian Riley, expressed it well when he wrote to me in an email that the idea of paying one person to set up something 'emerging' church [comment on a York Diocese initiative] was fairly old paradigm [my words not his]. It named places where my thinking had been going.

You see, it looks to me like the CofE is going the way of more and more ministry becoming like what has been happening in Lincolnshire over the last 40 years or so: parishes combining so that there is more territory and there are ever more churches being resourced in presbyterla ministry terms by one clergybeing and perhaps one or two retired or even Self Supporting Ministers. Or, the other way is to put together a portfolio of things being covered by one stipend; so near here we have a parish priest who is in charge of two churches [and fractions of his time are notionally given to each] and is a diocesan offices [same deal]. Well, it seems to me that this is very inefficient at one level: what if the ideal ecumenical officer for the diocese isn't suitable for the parish[es] that are put with the job? Or If the local parishes don't really have the best part-time college/university chaplain? Of course you can make do and many do and that's okay. But what if we could do it differently? What if we cut the stipend thing out? Let's face it: it's eroding anyway; house for duty means that notional time/remuneration deals are being set up [a stipend becomes worth around .6 of a post while the houe is .4] and the desire to include lay posts in the church's portfolio are tending towards the same -'jobbification' of the ordained/professional ministry.

So here's the thought: Let's not assume that we have to find whole-time jobs: Let's assume that we could do at least some stuff part-time whithout having to find something else for them to do to make up the full stipend. Let's have a whole series of joblets and allow some people to be portfolio priests,deacons or lay ministers.

I'm going to have a go at teasing out my thinking about this a bit more so take this as a part one, to be continued ...