SEVENTY years ago last Christmas, my newly married parents were evicted. Having suffered a miscarriage, my mum was pregnant again, and the Rector of Bridlington Priory, the un-eponymous Canon Lamb, decided that a growing family would be too expensive to accommodate; so he dismissed my dad from his Church Army post. My dad left for a post in Islington, accommodated in a bombed-out flat. My mum returned to live with her parents in Chesterfield, where I was born.
Later, in 1960, my dad began training for the priesthood, and was awarded a local-authority annual maintenance grant of just £100. The Archdeacon of York declined to match that with a diocesan grant: “A little holy poverty will do them good.” I regularly missed meals, rarely had breakfast, and went to school ragged.
My parents accepted the hardship as part and parcel of vocation. My dad became a curate in east Hull, where I was a ragged child happy among other ragged children. But the experience drove my empathy for clergy families: that we should treasure rather than impoverish them.
THE Church rightly denounces the exploitation of workers, and yet it exploits its clerical workforce, whatever terms we may use, be it non-stipendiary ministry (NSM), self-supporting ministry, or house-for-duty . In short, we are expecting highly skilled people to slave away for nothing. Like the slavers of old, we come up with a self-justifying narrative: that the Church, which owns 200,000 acres of land, has limited resources to pay its staff, and that working for nothing is your true vocation.
As diocesan director of ordinands in York, I proposed a less exploitative NSM model. I sought out highly successful business gurus, inviting them to harness their very considerable skills running large parishes. Any salary would have tipped them over impossible tax thresholds, but the senior staff were unenthusiastic, since they feared that not paying priests would diminish their control of them.
For decades, I have felt like a lone voice in questioning the whole NSM philosophy, which is particularly cruel to women, with NSM inflicted on them because of their domestic circumstances. Why not replace NSM with sessional ministry (as successfully deployed in NHS chaplaincies), so that priests whose main employment was elsewhere could be paid pro-rata rates for leading worship or pastoral work?
Since 2017, I have exercised a voluntary ministry in our parish and beyond, joining that great band of retired clergy who deliver 40 per cent of the Church of England’s ministry for free. Yet, instead of being cherished, we bear the embedded hallmarks of an exploited people.
Along with convicted criminals and atheists, we are forbidden to serve on PCCs, and are thereby denied access to decision-making processes at parish, deanery, diocesan, and national level, while being expected to implement the often baffling decisions made. Should retired clerics in our diocese surrender their permission to officiate, they receive a five-page document that sets out in detail what they are no longer allowed to do, including the amazing admission that they are now more restricted than the laity.
HAVING charged nothing for leading Occasional Offices for the past eight years, I decided to seek a fee for officiating at a complex funeral, which took a week out of my writing time, my only source of income.
Our parish treasurer had not come across such a request before, despite several retired colleagues’ regularly taking Occasional Offices. The Byzantine York diocesan guidelines advise that only retired stipendiary clergy can be paid for casual duty; former self-supporting ministers were not eligible, “the bishops assuming that most retired clergy would not expect to receive a fee for assisting in the benefice where they regularly worship”.
It all reminds me of the business guru Alan Leighton, who always took food with him when visiting a zoo, despite the signs that said “Do not feed the animals.” “The animals didn’t write the signs,” he said. Why we can’t operate the system that we had at the comprehensive school where I chaired the governors, and pay retired professionals for providing cover rather than penalise them for being exploited in their past?
Stipendiary clergy offset expenses incurred in using their homes as offices against income tax. Retired clergy often use their homes as offices; so it would be helpful if they, too, could offset expenses against tax paid on pensions. Sadly, I have had no success getting support for such concessions, which would have cost the Church nothing.
Amazingly, retired clergy remain upbeat, delivering ministry with a glint in its eye.
Back in Bridlington, after my dad’s curate colleague was promoted, he immediately appointed my dad as Church Army captain in his moorland parish, housing us in his vicarage. It was an amazing act of generosity from a childless couple in their mid-fifties, who were introducing a bawling baby into their midst. We, even the exploited, are always met by grace, and grace comes from some surprising directions.
The Rt Revd David Wilbourne is an honorary assistant bishop in the diocese of York.
