Church of England bishops believe that thousands of vicars are not up to the job, according to a confidential report.
It found that there are “serious concerns” at the top of the Church hierarchy over the quality of its clergy.
The internal report suggests that the standards of new clergy has dropped, because of the demands on the Church to fill vacant posts, while many vicars who have been in the job several years have lost their energy and enthusiasm.
To tackle the problems, the Church is to vet new applicants for ordination more vigorously and is considering changing the selection criteria and a pay review.
It has also introduced new guidelines for clergy in a bid to improve their preaching performances.
hardly revelatory. Half the pople I trained with seemd to have emotional and psychological issues or hangups. Most were poorly dressed with tragic hair do’s- if they cannot look after themselves and present themselves in an attractive manner- what chance that they will care for and present the Gospel attractively.
My daughter spent the last semester studying (” “) in London. She attended services at both St. Paul’s and Westminster and was disappointed at the poor showing of the priests. Vicars are only the start.
And greater than 50% of ordinations are now female. When a field is perceived as a women’s job, prestige falls and quality of applications falls in turn. Politically correct? No. Hard reality? You bet. I looked and they did not (and dared not) look at the question of poor quality vicars were female.
So where do they get their bishops from?
#2 – I don’t think anybody would go there for preaching. Choirs maybe, but not a stirring proclamation of the Gospel. Did she try John Stott’s church All Souls or St Helen’s Bishopsgate or Holy Trinity Brompton?
#3: You may have a point there, in that women are rarely compelling public speakers (a fairly universal fact of life, not my prejudice) and AFAIK, a great many seminarians in England are women in their 40s and 50s, who can be good pastors but are not going to be decisive leaders in a brutal world, any more than Tec women bishops have been – practically all disappointing liberals to a woman.
That would not surprise me all that much. I spent several months in England and visited several Anglican churches while I was there. I found the clergy tended to be one of two things: they were either phenomenal or they were dreadful.
I am thinking of one church in particular which shall remain nameless. It was bar none the worst liturgy I have ever seen, which is saying something seeing as I went to an Episcopal seminary where some funky stuff went down from time to time.
But, this particular Sunday in England, the priest mumbled his way through the 1662 Eucharist and some semblance of a sermon; there were literally 4 people in the pews, three of which looked older than Methuselah. All four were in varying forms of catatonia, only to raise their heads on occasion to mutter, “And with thy spirit.”
Then afterward, the priest went out by the side door and I expected him to come out and great me (or something). He could not have possibly missed the newcomer. I was actually interested in the building as it was lovely. I loitered around for like 20 minutes and I never saw hide nor hair of the priest, and I was wandering around trying to find him!
Luckily I still had time to wander down the street and hit up another Anglican church which turns out did the best liturgy in Cambridge, and the vicar of that parish was lovely. He even invited me and a few other newcomers to drinks at the vicarage after church. A study in contrasts that I will never forget!
Once I was with a group of clergy when we began talking about when the idea of becoming priests ourselves first began to dawn on us. With some embarrassment several of us admitted that we were sitting there in the pews thinking indignantly: ‘I could do better than that!’ – and then we began to think, well, what about it? Of course 20 years on we discover it’s not quite as easy as it looks.
robroy, indeed, and I imagine it is such a touchy subject nobody will dare address it. How to even talk about it without getting everybody upset?
I say, we had BET TER talk about it and damn soon. I have had had my fill of priests who would make better ewes and rams than shepherds. It really is time the church threw down the gauntlet and said, “Are you up to this? If not, go be a public school teacher or a politician or some other ineffectuality.” Men will rise to the challenge; women will rise to the novelty. Larry
I wonder if Archer happened on a parish where the priest had about 15 minutes to get to the next service. I’ve been in situations where I had to leave right after the service to get to another one and could not visit after church – but I tried to greet everyone before service.
I guess it might be hard to preach well if you’re not quite sure what you believe, or worse, don’t really believe the stuff you’re mumbling there up front. It’s [i]hard[/i] to get through a prayer book service if your theology is less than orthodox, or even Common Worship, no matter how fanciful your reinterpretation of the words.
I must say that here at Wycliffe Hall (Oxford) I think my fellow students are by and large an amazingly faithful, talented, and inspiring bunch showing little evidence of poor quality intake. It is hard to leave this place without knowing how to write a decent sermon and do a credible job delivering it. Most, I daresay, do rather better than that. But of course we have a passion for the gospel, and have a high view of scripture without fancy postmodern reinterpretation. Something, maybe, for the good bishops to look into.
Personally, I’d be quite happy to work in a church in the UK. It’s just hard to get an “in” somewhere if you’re not known to anyone.
Interesting article, also interesting is the unsaid. Remember, it is these same Bishops who ordained these clergy in the first place! When the system is set up to discourage anyone with a strong faith and actively discourages evangelicals or anyone else with any solid belief in scripture. When the training is designed to produce academic theologians and biblical scholars rather than parish priests. What are you going to get? Well know we know.
I wonder if anyone would be prepared to run a similar survey on the effectiveness of Bishops?
regards,
Jon R
#12: “When the training is designed to produce academic theologians and biblical scholars rather than parish priests.”
I doubt if it does that. Few of them come out of the system able to handle the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek or with much grounding in historical theology. More like maunderings on postmodernism, ‘faith in the modern world’ and ‘liturgy’. The Anglo-Catholic movement is virtually dead. Hundreds are being ‘trained’ in part time evening courses – mainly older women on a career change after their families have grown, or following a divorce.
Schools like Wycliffe and Oak Hill, I understand, have a much higher number of men in their 20s and 30s, and this is where the leadership of the livelier churches will come from.
It may likely be that the lampstand has been removed.
#5- I am willing to bet the good church was Little St Mary’s. If so it is where I was placed at college and the priest there is simply wonderful. I can also guess the other….but will decline from writing it out of politeness!
Isn’t this one of the contributing factors to the Reformation in the first place?
Rugby playing priest: You are correct, sir! Little St. Mary’s it was. Lovely place, miss getting to go there.
# 16 and # 17: Oh don’t be so coy. Could it be St B’s?
Surely not that other place up the passage, where to my astonishment they have a Goth service? (I was visiting the antiquarian bookseller next door.)
OOps for # 16 in the above post read 15.
#18:
“St B’s”?
Oh please,
don’t tease
for folks o’erseas!
Sorry Old Knot
But I really ought
Not
(And BTW I did not mean St Benet’s)
What goes around comes around. Aren’t many of these criticisms the same that Archbishop Cranmer was making about the Church in England before the Reformation? My fear is how much this is true for those in North America who may be sneaking-in under the radar into the various dioceses and jurisdictions which have separated from TEC and who aspire to form a new Province. This is the type of thing that must be nipped in the bud. Doctrinally there needs to be a major tune-up not only amongst the clergy but the laity as well.
yeah, breathing lessons….that’ll really help the content.