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.

Share/Bookmark

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.

Share/Bookmark