Vicar's Family in Training » The CofE

Spot the difference

husband — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:42:38 +0000

Do you remember those “spot the difference” pictures you used to do as a child? Two similar pictures with a number of differences, some of which were fairly obvious and usually two or three which took a while to find.

Here’s an updated version of one of those, except that we have two ordinands instead of two pictures. We still have to spot the difference between the two. We have to imagine that it is a year till ordination and conversations are beginning about where the ordinands might go to do their curacy. You also have to bear in mind that no ordinand is permitted to look at more than one curacy at once. Nor is any vicar allowed to look at more than one curate once. Nor can an ordinand from one diocese look outside that diocese without it being “released.” Essentially this means you have irrevocable permission to bugger off. So it is entirely possible that jobs which are geographically close by are not available because they are in a different diocese. (It’s a bit like living in Berwick-upon-Tweed and wanting to go to school in Scotland) This is not remotely like a normal job recruitment process. It is supposed to allow for “discernment.” This may allow God into the situation, or it may just be a fancy way of dressing up an outmoded process with a spiritualised word.

Anyway, here are the two ordinands whose differences we have to spot.

Well, you might notice that one is male and the other is female. The one left is in black and white while the other is in colour. Still not got it? Perhaps you could try the thought that the man was probably inside when his photograph was taken where is the woman was outside in the country when she was painted. No, that is not it either.

You want a clue? There are some other people in one of the pictures. Does that tell you anything? You’re getting warmer now. yes, the female ordinand has a family (and in this case three dogs, a harp and a large Greek vase.)

So, what does this have to do with the Church of England and our two ordinands? Well, the answer of course is deployment. Who is going to find it easier to up sticks and move? No prizes for guessing.

One then has to ask whether the Church of England, or at least some bits of the Church of England, have noticed this? It sometimes feels as if they still think all their ordinands are young, single or recently married, and either childless or with preschool age children.

If the church wants to train married people with families, it has to engage with the question of whether and how to deal with the idea of moving those families around the country. It is a very long time since anyone from the dioceses asked this VHIT what he thought about this, and so far the signs that any of this is being taken into account are not very good.

Of course, in a normal job recruitment situation the occupation, ties and other factors surrounding the spouse of an applicant are strictly off-limits, and rightly so. But this is not a normal job recruitment situation.

I am hoping that God is in there somewhere.

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Balancing Act….

husband — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:59:12 +0000

Last week at General Synod there was a discussion on clergy pay, conditions, disciplinary procedures, performance management and so on. Issues which have dogged public sector organisations for the last 10 to 15 years. In the NHS the conversation was called “Agenda for Change” while in higher education it was called “Role Evaluation” and a “Single Pay Spine.” At Synod someone made the radical suggestion that clergy should have two days off each week. I have to confess that I hadn’t quite clocked that VIT was heading for an employment arrangement which requires six days a week, even though I’m fully aware that weddings happen on Saturdays and you can’t predict when you need to run a funeral. It’s one of those things where you have all the available information but you haven’t quite processed it properly (or if you have, you’ve done so and filed it somewhere inaccessible.) I’m also aware that I don’t work regular hours, nor regular days and that I’m away from home a great deal.

However, the church believes that, in giving clergy six weeks off each year (two of those weeks are usually taken immediately after Christmas and Easter) it is compensating a six-day week workload with a relatively generous holiday entitlement. In fact the holiday entitlement is only 7% more generous than the statutory minimum (from which the church is in fact exempt.)

There is a national problem with workaholic clergy who end up overtired and burnt out. A friend of mine who did some research in Northern Ireland with nonconformist ministers found that 10% of them were leaving the church each year for this reason.

At times, College seems to reinforce this – indeed the philosophy appears to be “you’re going to have to work like this once you’re ordained so you might as well learn how to do it now.” Theological Colleges are only servants of the Regional General Managers (sorry, Bishops) and the central Ministry Division, so they are limited to at least an extent in their flexibility. But I wonder how it would be if the philosophy changed to “it’s really important you have time to think, recuperate, read, pray – and maybe even play.” This week is College Reading Week – in many ways an attempt to do this. But it’s also half term for our three children and Ash Wednesday and although there is more flexibility than usual, it’s clear that this is not a week off. And although college holidays are quite long, six weeks of placements and essays have to be fitted into them

Life is complicated: the juggle between VIT’s course, the need to earn a living, the need (and desire) to spend time with the children and each other sometimes seems hard and it’s difficult to get the balance right, and even harder to know if you are.

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Parties in Breweries

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:59:15 +0000

There’s a well known phrase about those who can not organise parties in breweries. The observant amongst you might have noticed from earlier posts on this blog that I have formed a less than favourable opinion of the ability of certain parts of the Church of England to manage anything.

So it was with great delight that I listened to VIT telling me about the Management Module she has just been doing on the MA part of her training. Our conversation sparked all sorts of interesting ideas, not only for VIT’s future management style, but for the company of which I’m a director as well. Issues of power, authority and control, and who exercised which and in what way, and how are they linked.

I’m genuinely reassured that this part of the C of E is taking these things seriously.

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Ground meat formed in a casing traditionally made from intestine

husband — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:31:17 +0000

Imagine a Tesco supermarket fifteen years ago, or maybe Gateway, Hinton’s, or Fine Fare. Now think of yourself next to the sausage counter. You might have found two or three different varieties, maybe thick or thin, and maybe 6 or 12 in a pack. But that’s about it. Now think about what’s needed to make those sausages. You only need one set of raw ingredients, and some wide sausage skin, and some narrow sausage skin. Pretty simple business then.

Go this week to any supermarket, farmers’ market – maybe even a butcher – and the number of varieties is only exceeded by coffee combinations in Starbucks. The sausage industry has diversified: there are mass produced sausages, hand made sausages, long sausages, short ones, Finest sausages, Taste the Difference sausages, chilli and beef sausages, cranberry and venison sausages and so on. Although (to be fair) you can probably make these all in the same machine, the ingredients vary wildly, and so do the resulting sausages.

I am increasingly convinced that most parts of the C of E recruitment and training machine – the system - can really only cope with recruiting, making and using standard sized and flavoured sausages, which is unfortunate if you want to be a sausage, but don’t quite fit the standard recipe (i.e. male, under 30, no kids, little experience in doing the kinds of things you might have to do once ordained.) I used the word system deliberately. In this context I mean a construct put together with the best of intentions which attains a life of its own, is hard to change, and risks failing to serve both the purpose for which it was intended and the values with which it was created. Individual components of the system can still be profoundly good, and some individuals may have a good experience of the system, but taken as a whole, it does not seem to be set up for variety or with imagination. There is no one accountable person or body looking at the whole system. Things (and people) fall through the cracks, and it’s no one’s job to sort it.

A system built to make interesting sausages – to take the raw ingredients – the skills, the talents, learning, life experience as well as the hurts, foibles and tender areas, would say “wow, what an amazing sausage we could make out of this.”

But my observation so far is that it can’t do this: MinDiv centrally, Bishops, DDOs, Selectors, PTE advisors and training courses are either too knackered, too poor, too scared or too busy to make interesting sausages. The system would much rather have safe sausages.

Of course, I must not forget the ultimate creativity and integrity of the Holy Spirit. But He works through humans and the systems they create, and I can’t help thinking that at times the system makes that really really hard. What can be done? An integrated system with a compelling vision in which everyone involved was treated as an equal would be a good start, since that would respect all the ingredients of the sausage to be, and that includes their families too.

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You are a Towel

husband — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:00:24 +0000

I have left VIT at home with the family to come away with our company to a remote part of Scotland. We are having what would normally be called a retreat, but since Michael Wolff, one of our facilitators, does not do “retreats”, this is a Company Advance. We are here to work out “Who we are” and “What are our values and our qualities.”

Michael has written a pamphlet entitled “You are a towel.” His premise is that if you go to a hotel and the towel in the bathroom is dirty you will blame the hotel. Then you will see everything else that is wrong with the hotel, the city and maybe even the country. You form opinions, unaware that all the way along you are editing them and making subconscious assumptions about everything else connected with that towel. However much the hotel might claim to be interested in customer satisfaction, if the towel is dirty and no-one is bothered, then you know the claim is rubbish. The vision and the practice do not coincide.

He then suggests that in our organisations, each of us is like a towel. The values and qualities each of us brings to our organisation have a huge impact on the organisation and on perception of the organisation. If that perception is not glorious, then what can be done? The solution, Michael argues, is not to sort the towel, since there will always be another dirty towel. Instead he argues it’s the vision and value of the organisation which needs to be understood and shared by and with all the people in the organisation. ‘Passionate companies engage everyone involved in their organisation by inspiration. Everyone knows that they are the company…. there are no bits or parts of the company, and no unimportant people. They have moved from “top-down” fragmented organisations to “centre-out” holistic ones.’ That’s what our little firm is – imperfectly – aiming for too. This way, even if the towel is occasionally dirty, the ethos shines through, and the dirty towel is forgiven for being dirty, because you understand how that happened, and anyway, someone will care enough to sort it out.

The Church’s ethos – its value statement – is surely the command to love God and to love one another. Without this, everything else is pointless. But so far, my perception is that there are a lot of dirty towels in the C of E priestly recruitment process through which VIT has travelled so far, the system is very poor at working out whether or not they are dirty, (despite the perception created) and has little idea how to clean them if it wanted to. This suggests to me that the vision and the practice are some way apart. What has Mr Wolff to say about this?

“If you don’t see consistent experiences, clarity and integrity, you are not realising your full potential….”

So there is work to be done: a start might be for this organisation, the Church, to have recruitment, training and personnel placement and management processes characterised by consistency, clarity and integrity. If Michael is right (and I think he is) then this should give us something to pray for.

And, by the way, the towels in the remote house we are staying in on the Cowal Peninsula are excellent.

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Love, Honour and Obey, with red shoes

husband — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:26:36 +0000

When VIT and I got married she promised to Love, Honour and Obey me. (Yeah, don’t laugh but she did, wearing her red shoes and looking fabulous.) I had just promised to Love, Honour and Worship her. Whether or not you like the idea of a woman promising to obey her husband, there is a mutuality about this promise – she has to obey me – but I have to worship her. Hold on to that thought for a moment.

No one tells you when your other half becomes a VIT quite how much control is surrendered. Their own control over their life, and the VFITs over theirs. It’s partly practical – “you shall be at Morning Prayer” – but that’s really only a sign of something much bigger.

When someone is ordained (or when they’re licenced as a reader) they have to promise to obey their bishop “in all things lawful and godly.” Most parts of the church take this promise very seriously indeed. This requirement for obedience appears to extend to ordinands too, although VIT (as an ordinand) has never formally had to swear any oath of obedience.

So, here’s a question. Has the church thought about the mutuality of this obedience? Will the church, and its leaders in particular, worship their ordinands in return?

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Political suppression

husband — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:39:07 +0000

I’ve been trying to write a blog about vocation, interference, arrogance, uninformed decisions relayed by third parties, complete lack of negotiation on the part of someone who does not know all the facts and can’t be bothered to find out. And then I gave up since saying what I actually think at the moment would probably not be politically advisable. I have therefore suppressed myself – at least a bit.

Back to Pink Floyd again: Dark Side of the Moon this time.

“I’ve always been mad,
I know I’ve been mad, like the most of us are…
very hard to explain why you’re mad,
even if you’re not mad…”

If accused of being mad, it’s just as hard to explain that you are not mad, since trying to prove it only underlines your need to prove you are not mad, which must mean you are mad.

This is directed at the C of E, not Coverdale Hall by the way. They’re mostly still wonderful.

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Thoughtful comments on a bus fleet and rich brown

husband — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 08:23:44 +0000

Just a short one this morning. Excellent article in yesterday’s Observer on the noises emanating from the Vatican re disaffected Anglicans.

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Institutional Sexism?

husband — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:21:31 +0000

Today, VIT posted a note on her Facebook status expressing dismay at the Statement by the Bishops of Ebbsfleet & Richborough on the Apostolic Constitution on a Personal Ordinariate for former Anglicans. This, of course, is about Women Bishops and the battle royal that appears to be raging in the Church of England over whether or not women should become bishops and what should happen to the men (and it is mostly men) who disagree with this move.

Bishops are essentially the Regional General Managers of the Church of England. They meet together as the “House of Bishops” – one of the few remaining all boys clubs still in existence. At present, the majority of the church agrees that women should be allowed to be Regional General Managers. In fact the church’s General Synod has voted consistently on both theological and practical grounds to allow women to be Regional General Managers. However a small vocal minority (in fact divided into two smaller minorities who hold the same view but for entirely different reasons) disagree. The church is doing its best to come up with a compromise. The last time it did this over women priests it got an expensive mess where women were discriminated against, the dissenters got a pay off and the in-betweens who stayed got their own Regional General Managers – or Flying Bishops.

I can’t help thinking this attempt to compromise over Bishops is doomed to failure. Most people think women should be Regional General Managers, rather fewer don’t. Those who don’t are threatening to leave if those who do decide to go ahead. This is where the problem gets more complicated because the question is where would the leavers go to. Until this week it was pretty unclear, but it appears that the said Bishops of Ebbsfleet and Richborough have been freelancing in Rome, trying to undo a few hundred years of history. The results of the freelancing appears to be open arms from the Pope to all would-be defectors. Not just clergy, but possibly even whole parishes who have been consistently taught by their priests and Flying Bishops that the world will end and their communion won’t be proper if it’s been tainted by a woman.

Bringing this firmly back home, my other half is, as you know, a VIT, and female one at that. At present she is training for what must be the only job in the land where the ceiling for women is not glass, but made of purple cloth and is at present entirely impenetrable. There is a point beyond which, at present, she may not proceed. Others, on the same training course, with more or less qualifications, will be able to be promoted, simply because there was more testosterone in their mother’s wombs and they ended up with a penis. (What would the church do with a transsexual bloke I wonder – could he be a Bishop?)

How can we invite people to join our church when they see women who are Prime Ministers, frontline fighter pilots, leaders of multi-billion-pound organisations, headteachers, chief executives of charities – you name it. Women can do anything except this. How can we answer the question “why have you joined this institutionally sexist organisation?”

The answer, of course is simple. Ordain women as bishops and the problem is solved. But what about the dissenters? Well, organisations change. Anyone who’s worked in the public or private sector any length of time knows this. In the NHS people’s jobs have changed over and over again; the NHS looks nothing like the organisation they joined 20 years ago. I think one of the problems is that the church is too ready to ordain people who have had no secular experience. They have nothing against which to calibrate “normal behaviour.” They join the church and think it will never change. God will never change, but the frail expression of his love outworked in the church is only as good as the sinners inside it.

I do feel genuine sympathy for those whose ethics, morals, philosophy or other convictions are hugely challenged by the idea of ordaining women as bishops. It’s a horrible thing to find that an organisation you joined has changed to the point where you know longer feel comfortable. I know – I’ve been there. The answer is simple: you put up and shut up, or you leave. Quietly. Without fuss. Without trying to take your whole department (or parish and school) with you, or trying to create a department within a department where only your rules apply and some other staff and customers are only allowed on certain conditions.. You take your skills elsewhere, wherever they are valued. That way you retain your dignity and everyone’s respect and affection. You don’t try to bring down the very organisation to which you’ve given many years of dedicated service.

Maybe the two Flying Bishops have done us all a service by asking the Pope to make it easier for those who can’t stay to move with dignity. But my earlier observation still remains: do it quietly, not in public.

The shortest verse in the Bible, supposedly is: Jesus wept. I fear he’s weeping now.

P.S. My dictating software transcribed Ebbsfleet and Richborough as “a bus fleet and rich brown” which I rather liked.

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Becoming a Vicar’s Family in Training

husband — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:33:18 +0000

Ever since I’ve known the Vicar in Training (VIT for short) she’s wanted to be a priest – no, more than that – she’s felt this inexplicable “call” to priesthood. It won’t go away. If she’d been applying for any other job she’d have told the Church of England to get stuffed long, long ago. But God is more persisent than that. So finally, 25 years after we met, and 22 after we married, she’s an Ordinand. This means she’s training to be a priest, and that means that the rest of us; husband, three kids, a dog and a cat are the Vicar’s Family in Training – or VFIT for short. (Actually that’s the registration of one of Richard Branson’s planes – but aviation can wait till later.) It’s going to take some adjustment, practically and emotionally.

The kind people at the training college – let’s call it Coverdale Hall – have arranged a thing for spouses (I guess there aren’t too many unmarried partners…) and in some cases their multiple and quite often small children. But as a forty-something male with a job which requires being away a lot I am not sure that a coffee morning with small kids (been there, done that, love that my children are growing up) or a morning Bible Study is going to do it for me. But that’s not to diss the idea completely. This, the welcome dinner, the fact that families can eat in college any time and for no extra charge, and the evening the college laid on explicitly for spouses, all adds up to the most pastorally sensitive things any church body formally involved in this process has done to this VHIT (work it out) for some time. So, initial reaction is BIG TICK TO COVERDALE HALL.

Tomorrow begins a new test: I’m away for nearly 48 hours for work. Can the VIT and the VKITs (I’m sure you can work that one out too) cope? I’m quite sure they can, but the logistics and the emotions are different to when VIT was simply at work.

And I’m genuinely grateful for the invitation to the coffee morning. Honest.

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