How bishops are viewed

For those who don't sub to the CT, you may have to wait a couple of weeks before you can view it. But it's worth the wait. It's a summary of Mike Keulmans' research on bishops and in particular some polling about how bishops are seen by some lay people, some clergy and some retired bishops. For me it was, on the whole, encouraging in that my supposition that most of us think that bishops probably ought to be able to exercise a more fully pastoral and 'coaching' role towards clergy was vindicated. The concerning thing was my other hobby horse about equalising of stipends was not. I'm wondering whether this is because actually the issues need more airing.

Anyway, to the nub of the matter. Mike concludes with this statement.

My conclusion, based on the survey statistics and the experience of the early Church, is that it is time to turn the deanery of 25 to 35 parishes into a diocese. We must leave behind all the expensive and irrelevant trappings inherited from medieval prelacy, and instead make the episcopal task more manageable and realistic so that practical demon­stration may be given to the essential warmth and care of the episcopal shepherd, who is meant to mirror the Good Shepherd himself

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I would suggest that this is worth taking seriously. That it implies bishops' stipends should be in line with other clergy and that we should have wider structures to share some minsitries and functions more widely than the mini-diocese. To me this suggests that my previous support of Gareth Miller's plan for ten provinces needs modifying: the dioceses need to be even smaller and perhaps something like four times as many.

Anyway, I wrote to the Church Times. We'll see whether they publish but this is what I wrote.

I wonder whether the results of Mike Keulmans' research fall within
the remit of the dioceses commission, because they really ought to.
Mike's suggestion on the basis of his research really should be part
of any wide-ranging consideration of our practice of episcopacy and
the radical option he points to should be given serious consideration:
that "it is time to turn the deanery of 25 to 35 parishes into a
diocese. We must leave behind all the expensive and irrelevant
trappings inherited from medieval prelacy, and instead make the
episcopal task more manageable and realistic so that practical
demon­stration may be given to the essential warmth and care of the episcopal shepherd, who is meant to mirror the Good Shepherd himself". This conclusion does seem to be warrented by the demands of the role as it should be. And it is not the first time that these columns have seen a call to recognise the deanery as a more appropriate span of episcopal care. Now I reckon that there is some discussion to be had about the number of parishes; at the other extreme I have in mind the example of a diocese in the USA where 90 parishes seemed to produce a vibrant entity for mutual support and mission (interestingly the campanion diocese of Bradford whose recent synodical motion has helped raise the issue for discussion).

This suggestion is added weight, I believe, by taking note of a significant trend and its implications: the pattern of clergy deployment and employment conditions. Increasingly we are seeing self-supporting ministries and part-time ministries of a variety of patterns becoming a more normal part of the ministry patterns in many areas. One of the challenges that has become apparent with these ministries is that they don't fit easily with patterns of mutual care and co-ordination which works ''best' for those with full-time availability. So it is easy for them to be sidelined and that is even more unacceptable when their numbers become proportionally greater. It is in those kinds of circumstances that a bishop with more availability to support clergy of a variety of ministry-patterns becomes important and strategically valuable. The obverse of greater localisation would also be to make sure that there are mechanisms for
sharing of ministries and resources more widely so that each mini-diocese isn't going to try to replicate current diocesan resources but can call on and contribute to officers to help with such things as legal advice, inter-faith issues or resource-development. So we may wish to consider arch-dioceses and/or provincial structures as units of wider sharing of resources.

One of the issues, of course, that this would bring to the surface would be the issue of stipends. Mike's figures show little support for equalising stipends with 'ordinary' clergy. Space may have prevented
him from elaborating on any indications of reasons for this. My guess is that it is an 'instinctive', culturally-influenced sense that seniority and responsibility should be rewarded financially. Of course, this reason would look far less convincing under Mike's proposal of smaller dioceses. Perhaps, though, it indicates also that we also need to have a fuller debate about the meaning of 'stipend' and whether 'responsibility' really washes in a stipendiary framework. With reference to the proposal to reduce the number of bishops in order to save money, it would surely be a better option to equalise their stipends with the rest of us and increase their numbers otherwise we're merely likely to be turning them into figureheads and civil functionaries and that seems a bad use of a stipend, all told.

So can be ask the dioceses commission to research and bring forward proposals for an appropriate span of care for bishops under different models of responsibility and of the measures needed to support such patterns of ministry?

Church Times - How bishops are viewed