Ministerial Proposals for the South of Kendal Deanery

Over the past thirty years there has been a massive change in the way that the Church of England provides its priestly ministry to the nation. At its heart have been two abiding principles:

• That the geographical parish system should continue.
• That every resident in England is able to look to, and to call upon the services of their parish priest.

However, this has been in the context of a changing environment.

• Fewer candidates are coming forward for full time stipendiary ministry
• An increasing proportion of the clergy are of retirement age.
• The financial pressures on the church as a whole, particularly caused by the increasing cost of pensions, makes it unlikely that the church could afford to pay the additional stipends, even if additional candidates were to come forward.
• Shifts in population mean that historical allocations of clergy, not very satisfactory in the past, are increasingly seen as being unfair.

Though the church has recognised that there are other ways of exercising a priestly ministry than simply being full-time stipendiary, and the number of non-stipendiary, and house-for-duty priests, as well as active retired has steadily increased.

In response to the situation some churches have been allowed to dwindle and die. Less extreme has been to mothball a church, opening it up occasionally, but ceasing to hold worship on a weekly basis. As an alternative, adding more and more churches onto a single incumbent, has lead, in some places, to a single priest having the care of as many as thirteen churches.

More imaginatively, the concept of Group and Team Ministry has evolved. In a Group the legal relationships between the clergy and their churches remain unchanged. Each cleric remains responsible for their own church or churches, however the clergy and parishes covenant to work collaboratively together. Sometimes there may be arrangements for individual clergy to take responsibility for a particular function across the group, e.g. School contact, care homes, lay education. There will be an expectation that clergy will cover for each other during periods of sickness or holidays. There will be an expectation that Clergy will meet periodically to review the functioning of the Group.

The advantages of a Group include:

• It is relatively easy to set up.
• The relationship between an individual congregation and cleric is maintained.
• There is a minimum of day-to-day bureaucracy.

The disadvantages include:

• The Group has no leader, so it is difficult to establish goals and targets
• It is primarily seen as relationship between the clergy, with little growth in sense of community, or opportunities for service, by the laity
• It is vulnerable to changes in the clergy. A new priest coming in may not share the initial enthusiasm, or an existing priest may decide not to co-operate.

As a consequence, Groups often founder after their initial creation.

A Team is a more formal legal structure. It will have a Team Rector, and one or more Team Vicars. The Team Rector is ultimately responsible for the Team as a whole, while both the Rector and the Vicars will have specific individual responsibility.

Teams will tend to have the following advantages:

• All the human resources of the Team are made available to the Team as a whole, and therefore shared more effectively. This in turn means that ministerial gaps can more easily be covered, for example, on the retirement of a Reader.
• The team as a whole is less affected during the period of an interregnum than is a benefice with a sole incumbent.
• Clergy and laity are able to find broader outlets for service.
• Training and education that would be impractical within a single church become possible because of the larger numbers.
• Individual churches are less likely to feel isolated.
• Greater breadth of gifts and skills of clergy and laity mean that skill gaps in individual churches can be filled.

For the Clergy further advantages are:

• Clergy are able to support and encourage one another.
• It provides a useful Career structure. The status of Team Vicar, for example, means that Curates have an alternative to making the leap from an assistant post to full independent responsibility. Similarly, a Team Rector’s post can be a useful preparation for a senior position such as a Cathedral Dean, Archdeacon or Bishop.
• Curates are licensed to the Team, and can experience a greater variety of worship and practice than they would in a sole incumbency.

However, Teams can also suffer from disadvantages.

• They take time to create.
• They can create bureaucracy
• The relationship between individual churches and clergy can be unclear
• The relationship between Team Rector and Team Vicars can be problematic.

There are a number of different models for a team, and some may be more appropriate in one situation than another.

The Minster Model.

This typically arises where there is one large church (the "Minster") with small churches surrounding it. The clergy live near the "Minster". This is seen as a practical response where the greater part of the Christian service takes place in and around the Minster. This would include particularly Baptisms, Marriages, Funerals, Church Contacts, Pastoral care of Caring Institutions, and outreach to young people. It provides a core of clergy who meet each day to pray, support and encourage each other. It minimises travelling time spent by the clergy in meeting together. The disadvantages include the marginalization of the smaller churches.

District Model

Some or all of the Churches will be deemed to be District, rather than Parish Churches. The Team itself may be constituted as the parish. The DCC’s will have certain powers devolved to them, but others will be retained by the Team as a whole. Where a Team is composed of District Churches only, this will typically be to ensure the highest level of co-operation between the churches, acting effectively as a single unit. Often this will mean that the entire Team works from a common purse, on which more later.

The advantages include the greatest clarity of purpose, and most effective use of resources.

The disadvantages include the feeling in a congregation that "they" – the Team, won’t let us do what "we," the individual church, want.

Local Model

In the local model, each of the Parishes maintains its own identity. Clergy are spread throughout the Team, and an individual church will tend to look to a single individual as "their" Vicar. "Their" Vicar will lead worship in "their" church much more frequently than other clergy. Although policy and direction will be set for the Team as a whole, individual delivery of the policy locally will tend to land more firmly on the shoulders of the local cleric and congregation.

Advantages are:

• Church members identify more easily with an individual cleric
• The sense of responsibility for the parish (which is likely to be greater than that for the Team as a whole) is retained.

Disadvantages are:

• Individual churches (or clergy) can detach themselves emotionally from the Team.
• Less efficient use of the clergy and lay ministry

The Common Purse and Parish Share

The issue of the common purse cuts across all organizational models. The issue is whether the Team as a whole accepts responsibility for the finances of the Team, or whether each church retains sole responsibility.

The largest element of expenditure is generally the Parish Share (used to pay existing and former stipendiary clergy.) Under the new arrangements, the Diocese and Deanery will look to the Team to determine and deliver the Share. Although there is no provision to legally extract the money from a reluctant parish, the Diocese and Deanery are unlikely to look sympathetically at a Team Rector who blames one of the churches for failing to make the appropriate contribution. Similarly, the other churches of the Team are likely to apply moral pressure on the defaulting parish. Any church that doesn’t make its contribution always puts a greater demand on all the other churches, as ultimately those that do pay, end up picking up the cost of those who do not,

The Situation in the South of Kendal Deanery

Clergy Freehold meant that it was impossible for the Church as a whole to construct a coherent response to the challenge of changing demography, clergy and finance. The responsibilities of individual clergy could not be changed without their consent. So dioceses had to match their clerical resources to ministerial needs as best they could.

In 2003 the Pastoral Committee’s plan for this deanery was approved by Deanery Synod. It rejected the options of either closing churches, or of extending indefinitely the number of churches that an individual priest would be expected to care for. Instead it proposed that both churches and clergy should be put together into groups or teams. This has already happening in much of the deanery.

The opportunity to do this here now has, of course, arisen because of the retirement of Ron Metcalfe, but it is part of a wider process that has been underway for some years. There are consequences for all the churches as to how ministry will be delivered in the south of the Deanery in the future. No less importantly, this also provides us with an opportunity to make representations to the diocese about the level of clerical support required in this part of the Deanery.

The clergy (Stipendiary and Non-Stipendiary) of South Kendal met recently to discuss possible ways forward for these parishes, and to determine if we were of a common mind. This was then followed by a meeting to which the Churchwardens of the area were invited. These meetings were to ascertain the feelings of the parishes, but were not binding.

Many different forms of ministry are offered in the area: Stipendiary (i.e. paid), House-for-Duty, Non-Stipendiary and Retired Clergy, as well as Readers and Authorised Lay Ministers. Of these only Stipendiary Clergy, of incumbent status (i.e. excluding curates) are posts guaranteed by the diocese, and for that reason I will concentrate on them for the time being

Our first option, is to not to change. Our present arrangements continue indefinitely into the future. The advantage of this is that it is simple to understand, and maintains our existing relationships. The disadvantage is that it does nothing to harness the benefits that arise from greater co-operation. In addition the allocation of stipendiary clergy to parishes at the moment is on a fairly arbitrary basis, relating more to the accidental facts of when clergy have retired or moved, rather than to a coherent plan. Equally important, the parishes have the opportunity now to ask the diocese to make available an appropriate level of stipendiary clergy to the area to support the plan. If we simply agree to carry on as we are, then there will be little prospect of getting them.

Our second option to move towards a Group Ministry. The disadvantages set out above seemed to outweigh the advantages, particularly should a potential new incumbent decide that s/he did not want to participate. If co-operation is to work properly, the churches will have to act is they were a team. In which case, it could be argued, that they ought to be a team.

The third and fourth options involved the formation of a Team. There are advantages in a Minster style of ministry, particularly as the bulk of the people are to be found in the parish of Holy Trinity Kendal. However, the benefits of maintaining a tangible presence within the rural parishes was felt to outweigh the benefits of the clergy being located in one place. It was thought unlikely that the parishes would want to adopt a "Common Purse" but it was recognised that we will have to act together, particularly in the matter of the payment of the Parish Share.

However, there is a major issue with regard to staffing. The parishes in the South of Kendal are able to operate because of the existence of House-for-Duty, Non-Stipendiary and Active Retired clergy, and the existence of two Curates. None of these are guaranteed in the future. There is among the parishes only 1 full time, stipendiary cleric of incumbent status - that of the Vicar of Kendal. Tim Evans devotes 33% of his time to Theological Education, making an equivalent of 1.67 full time clergy.

Average Demands on each Stipendiary Priest of Incumbent status

Assuming that the demands on clergy relates to the normal Sunday Attendance, the size of the Electoral Roll, the Adult Population of the parish and the number of churches, then comparing the staffing and demands on the clergy in South Kendal with the rest of the Deanery, shows startling differences. In the following table, the first block refers to the current situation, the second to the position if an additional stipendiary was appointed to the South of Kendal Deanery:

Thus, for example, at the moment there is one stipendiary for every 202 of average Sunday attendance in South Kendal, against 134 for the Deanery as a whole. This would change to one for every 127, if an additional stipendiary was appointed.

Clearly, no one would want to reduce the staffing for the remainder of the Deanery, but a clear case can be put that if this Team is to have a reasonable chance of success the issue of staffing must be urgently considered.

The clergy and churchwardens believe that any proposal for the formation of a Team, should include a strong recommendation that for it to be viable there must be an increase in the level of staffing by one person.

The second major issue relates to the staff titles. It might seem natural for the incumbent in charge of Holy Trinity, as the largest church, to be Team Rector, and this may be the final position. However, there are problems with this, and in many other Teams the Team Rector has charge of one or more of the smaller churches. It can be difficult to attend full time to the needs of a major church, and also provide the direction and leadership required by the Team as a whole. In the nature of a Team Rector’s position s/he may well want to spend a substantial amount of time in all of the churches of the Team. In our particular circumstances it would impose serious burdens on a new cleric to be responsible, both for a major church, and the formation of the Team. For this reason it may be that one of the existing clergy (Stipendiary or Non-Stipendiary) may take the role of "Team Midwife" with a duty to bring the Team to birth, but without any expectation that person would ultimately become Team Rector.

In brief, the clergy and churchwardens present at the meeting favoured forming a locally based Team Ministry. We believe that it will give the best opportunities:

• For the clergy to work co-operatively together, supporting and encouraging each other.
• To provide adequate and appropriate pastoral care throughout the parishes.

However, any decision must be made by the churches as a whole and without the endorsement and commitment of the congregations, it will not succeed. Much more work must be done, and formal agreement sought, in all of the churches before a decision can be made, and a formal plan drawn up. Please think and pray about how best we can together serve God and our neighbours in the South of the Kendal Deanery.

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