{"id":134501,"date":"2025-01-28T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=134501"},"modified":"2025-01-28T18:43:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:43:19","slug":"church-times-church-needs-more-working-class-clergy-c-of-e-general-synod-to-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=134501","title":{"rendered":"(Church Times) Church needs more working-class clergy, C of E General Synod to hear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member\u2019s motion is to argue at next month\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/general-synod\">General Synod<\/a>\u00a0meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposed by the Revd Alex Frost, a priest in Burnley who left school at 15 and worked full-time in the retail sector to fund his ministerial training (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2024\/26-april\/comment\/opinion\/c-of-e-is-spurning-the-gifts-of-working-class-people\">Comment<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2024\/26-april\/audio-video\/podcast\/podcast-fr-alex-frost-on-why-the-c-of-e-needs-working-class-leaders\">Podcast, 26 April 2024<\/a>), the motion calls on the Ministry Development Board to produce a \u201cnational strategy for the encouragement, development and support of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/topics\/vocations\">vocations<\/a>, lay and ordained, of people from working-class backgrounds\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his paper accompanying the motion, Mr Frost says that working-class people often find it difficult to respond to a calling to ministry because of middle-class expectations and assumptions throughout the Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201dThe first concern should be whether a person is called by God to a given ministry,\u201d he writes. \u201cWhether they have tattoos or a strong regional accent should not be held against them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchtimes.co.uk\/articles\/2025\/31-january\/news\/uk\/church-needs-more-working-class-clergy-synod-to-hear\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member\u2019s motion is to argue at next month\u2019s General Synod meeting <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/8ZAXzl6oaw\">https:\/\/t.co\/8ZAXzl6oaw<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fPHH7yexqQ\">pic.twitter.com\/fPHH7yexqQ<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Church Times (@ChurchTimes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChurchTimes\/status\/1884230803887923529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 28, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Church of England should develop a strategy to encourage more working-class people into ministry, a private member\u2019s motion is to argue at next month\u2019s\u00a0General Synod\u00a0meeting. Proposed by the Revd Alex Frost, a priest in Burnley who left school at<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=134501\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,389,168,435,184,177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-church-of-england-coe","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-parish-ministry","category-pastoral-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=134501"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134505,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134501\/revisions\/134505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=134501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=134501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=134501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}