AN ANGLICAN priest who established a breakaway church in Cardiff was inadequately prepared for his responsibilities in the Church in Wales, having being appointed to lead a city-centre resource church a week after his ordination, a tribunal has concluded.
The Revd Ryan Forey — who admitted all three allegations set out in the charge — was ordained deacon in 2019 in the diocese of Portsmouth and began his curacy at Harbour Church, a church-plant of Holy Trinity, Brompton (HTB).
A year later, he was ordained priest in the diocese of Llandaff by the Rt Revd June Osborne, then Bishop of Llandaff, and appointed as Priest-in-Charge of St Teilo’s, Cardiff, which became known as Citizen Church (News, 21 August 2020).
Mr Forey became the Vicar of Citizen Church on 1 January 2022. On 27 October that year, he was certified by Bishop Osborne as having completed his curacy directly under her supervision.
On 22 December 2023, it was proposed that he go on voluntary study leave for six months. On 18 April 2024, he resigned his post.
The complaint was referred to the tribunal in November 2024 by the current Bishop of Llandaff, the Rt Revd Mary Stallard. The first allegation was that, while chair of the PCC between October 2020 and February 2024, Mr Forey had authorised payments from PCC funds to himself and his wife of £300 a month, “in lieu of parochial fees for occasional office services which were not conducted”.
The justification for this was that the nature of Citizen Church and its congregation meant that the clergy did not conduct many occasional offices and “therefore
they did not receive the fees that ordinarily they would have if ministering in a
more traditional parish context”. Also authorised was £500 a month in “clergy spouse” payments.
Mr Forey told the tribunal that he had a “genuine, albeit misguided belief” that the payments were permissible, “having seen similar practices used in previous churches he had worked at prior to ordination with no objection”. The payments were never concealed and were approved annually by the PCC.
The second charge concerned an online app, Citizen App. Despite concerns raised during development that it did not comply with GDPR and that there were safeguarding risks (because it displayed the names of children attending the church to other users), it was used between February and March 2023, with Mr Forey deciding that it would be a “backward step” to take it down. He told the tribunal that this had been a “particularly difficult time for him”, given that his wife was suffering a miscarriage.
The third charge was that he had established a church outside of the Church in Wales structure — “Be Church, Cardiff”, with staff and members of the congregation of Citizen Church — and “held or accepted the position of pastor without the consent of his Bishop”.
On 12 January 2024, he had a “difficult meeting” with Bishop Stallard and on the same day enquired about booking event spaces with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama for Be Church.
This decision was “born out of hurt, vulnerability, and a crisis of faith in his future in the Anglican Communion”, he told the tribunal, pointing to “ambiguity surrounding the accusations made against him, a lack of clarity and support from church leadership, and the nature of personal criticisms directed to him.
“He suffered from untreated ADHD and felt that establishing an independent church would enable him better to continue his ministry. He accepts he was wrong and is now determined to pursue his ministry within the Anglican Communion.”
THE judgment speaks of “substantial mitigation”, describing Mr Forey as “a talented and charismatic young priest who was operating in exceptional conditions.
“He was asked to move to Wales during his final year in training and actually moved very shortly after diaconal ordination. He was appointed priest-in-charge of a congregation a week after ordination as a priest. He therefore missed the structured support of a formal curacy, essentially because he was placed by the former Bishop of Llandaff immediately into an incumbency-level post.”
Beginning his post during the Covid-19 pandemic, the judgment says, meant “limited opportunities for oversight and mentoring”, while the PCC that he chaired was “similarly inexperienced” in governance.
The judgment concludes, nevertheless, that Mr Forey was “prepared to ignore the rules to which he was subject and pursued courses of action which he should have realised would have brought the Church in Wales into disrepute”.
It refers to “an element of arrogance and a readiness to minimise his own failings”. Mr Forey was “prepared to side-line the PCC to pursue what he thought was right”, and “went behind the back of the Church in Wales hierarchy” by failing to discuss his concerns with its leaders.
The penalty is a “monition” accompanied by a set of conditions: Mr Forey shall not hold an incumbency post in the Church in Wales until he has successfully completed a minimum period of two years’ supervision under the direct oversight of an incumbent with at least five years’ experience.
With the right guidance and supervision, there is, the judgment says, “no reason for him not to develop his ministry and be a considerable asset to the Church in Wales or another church within the Anglican Communion”.
The determination records that, after the draft penalty was agreed in July, Mr Forey asked for permission to share it with some C of E bishops “as soon as possible so he can discuss the ability to move on” and that this was agreed. He went on, however, to send at least one email about the penalty to a church leader before the decision was finalised.
This email had contained “a number of inaccurate assertions about the process and procedure adopted, including a suggestion that the Bishop of Llandaff had interfered in the process late in the day, leading to a more severe penalty being imposed”. He had also asserted that the findings contained “no safeguarding concerns” and “no questions about [Mr Forey’s] leadership”.
The judgment expresses concern that his request for authorisation to resume a full ministry role and acquire the skills required “on the job” displays “a concerning lack of comprehension of the gravity of the matters he has admitted”.
In a statement published on Instagram last Friday, Mr Forey said that he and his family had endured “a season of gossip, rumours, and online trolling where fake social media and email accounts were created to fuel a narrative”. Planting and leading Citizen Church was “one of the greatest privileges of my life. . . We grew big, we grew fast, we got things wrong and we grew through that.
“I did make mistakes, I make no excuses for them. . . I’ve also learned from them. . . As painful as it is, I believe failure — in God’s hands — can become one of the greatest lessons in leadership. . . There’s a lot I would do differently if starting again and I hope I’ll be given the chance to show that.” He hoped to return to ministry in England.
THE case highlights the significant responsibilities that church-planters take on, sometimes only a few years after ordination. Within a year of its launch, Citizen Church was asked to plant in Senghenydd, Caerphilly. In 2023, another site, Citizen Pontypridd, was launched.
At Hope Street, Wrexham, the Revd Andy Kitchen and the Revd Rachel Kitchen were appointed as Joint Lead Ministers in the same year as their ordination to the priesthood, after a one-year curacy at HTB.
An SDF grant awarded to the diocese of London in 2017 was to fund the training of 15 planting curates — ten training at HTB — expected to plant in “strategic cities, in terms of size and student population” between 2020 and 2022, to increase their congregation to 1000, and to plant every three years (News, 29 March 2018).
In his book on resource churches, which documents their record in church growth, the former Bishop of Islington, Dr Ric Thorpe, writes that their leaders are “under huge expectations to plant something from scratch, lead through several stage of growth, develop leaders to ‘give away’, and do it again and again. There are not many who have the leadership competence, character, capacity and calling necessary.”
Last year, a resource-church leadership programme known as Camino, at St Hild College, was awarded £437,000 by the Ministry Development Board. Its director, the Revd Dr Christian Selvaratnam, said that the “normal journey of maturing as a leader is accelerated, perhaps even too quickly”, and that there was a need to avoid waiting for people to “crash”, which might be prevented by “doing a better job of preparing them” (News, 13 December 2024).
The course will include teaching on governance and fund-raising. Mr Forey told a diocesan learning event in 2023 that, owing to its rapid growth and building redevelopment, Citizen was faced with a significant deficit, despite a substantial rise in congregational giving.
The recipient of an allocation of £1.5 million from the Church in Wales Evangelism Fund over five years, Citizen also secured a £525,000 loan from the Llandaff diocesan board of finance in 2020. About half has since been converted to a grant, while the remainder is to be repaid over ten years (rather than five). In 2023, capital spend stood at almost £250,000 and staff costs at just over £300,000. Giving totalled almost £340,000.
The latest annual report refers to the leadership of Citizen having identified in 2023 the need for “significant improvement to the charity’s operation”, as infrastructure and process had been “outpaced” by rapid growth and planting.
Last October, it was announced that the Revd Mark Simpson, Assistant Curate (Associate Vicar), had been appointed Vicar.
IN 2020, the diocese of Portsmouth issued a press release — “Portsmouth’s largest church launches new church plant” — heralding the planting of Citizen Church, which was described as a “daughter church”. The then Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Revd Christopher Foster, recorded a video for the commissioning service held at Harbour Church.
He described in Dr Thorpe’s book having wanted to “continue the principle of supporting one another and to ‘pass on’ the model, in the same way that we in Portsmouth had benefitted and continue to benefit from the generosity of the St Peter’s Brighton team.
“So, in the summer of 2020, when the call and opportunity came in Cardiff to plant a church, it was a huge blessing to be able to work with Bishop June Osborne and for Harbour Church to gift a team to plant Citizen Church in Cardiff.”
On Tuesday, a Portsmouth diocese spokesman said: “The decision of the Church in Wales to make Ryan Forey an incumbent was not one made by our diocese. . .
“No payments have been made by Harbour Church, Portsmouth, to clergy, spouses, staff or volunteers along the lines suggested by Ryan Forey — either at present or in the past.”
The Church Times approached Bishop Osborne for comment.
