Suffrage and the Church

I haven't been a priest for an awfully long time, and I have only been an incumbent for a very short time - but in the years I have existed within parish structures, I have been convinced of the cause of the gentle degradation of that noble body - the parochial church council.

I wrote a while ago about how, here, we will do things a little differently when the next session of the PCC begins. That was not all I believed needed adjustment for the Council to be effective in its work. The other factor, I believe, surrounds the right that the members of the electoral roll possess but rarely ever have a real chance to use - their vote. 

I am not talking of the pack animal arm-in-air type voting. I am referring to a meaningful election where everyone gets a chance to make a difference. The degradation of the valency of the parish council surrounds the following process:

• The PCC is overworked with the minutiae of parish life
• It becomes an unattractive proposition 
• Insufficient people stand for the vacancies at the next session
• To make up numbers arms are twisted
• Just enough people stand for election for the vacancies to be filled
• They get elected en bloc and very much en passant
• No-one remembered who was on the PCC if you ask them after the fact
• The PCC becomes detached from parish life
• ...and a cycle of insufficient nominations for vacancies perpetuates
• Start at the top

My feeling is that an election where, unfortunately, people may lose and not be elected is vital to the health of a PCC and in many ways to the parish. The reasons for this are simple - the people who have the vote are then caused to use it, and become an active part of the process rather than a passive member of the crowd. They get to exercise their responsibilities under that suffrage too. We had an election yesterday here, and yes, people were not elected. I bet that those who were at the meeting will be able to name the new PCC though - and that is a start in itself. 

When I was young (in my teens), the PCC of which I was a member was routinely formed in a contested election. It was, perhaps not by chance, a time of great growth in that parish. Oddly, growth seemed to diminish as the PCC seemed to stop being elected. This may be chance, but there is also a chance that it wasn't. Perhaps winning in an election was an attractive prize (it certainly felt good as a 17 year old), and maybe that sense of satisfaction was enough to get the parish 'heart' pumping - but whatever it was, it seemed to make a very considerable difference. 

Disposable Laity

Someone very close to me wrote a blog post recently about the fact that she is, after six years, laying down her role as Churchwarden. If you want an interesting perspective on life in church, please read Doorkeeper's post here. It is a simple post, expressed well and offers a side to parish life that many experience. 

The nice thing about being "the Vicar" is that (Common Tenure allowing) we can hover around in a parish like a bad smell for decades. Because we feel called to? No; because we enjoy it and it works for us or our families to stay. Let there be no illusion there. We stay for us most of the time.

In a well run parish, this is broadly where it ends, unless the small matter of a wage or salary is brought to bear - but again, very often those people stay not because of calling, but because of economic reasons. It is our wonderful laity who step forward to do jobs around church who are called to it. They are there through that calling, with any luck take some pleasure from it, but in all cases do it in the context of their freely given spare time. This is the case for the lovely person who might polish a brass every month, who serves at the Altar on a rota-approved basis, or the kindly person who simply prays for the parish and her life. It is the same for Churchwardens too. 

Churchwardens, in most parishes I think, have a tenure. That is to say that they can hold office for a given period of time, having then to relinquish it and give to the next person. This is a good thing on many levels as we all know of Wardens who were in post six or seven years after they were clinically dead. Accounts of Warden who gripped steadfast to their staffs for decades are not uncommon, and rarely accounts filled with glee and happiness. 

So, dear reader, we have members of our wonderful laity who give their time freely, as a result of their sense of God's calling who - in the end - have to stop that work and give it away. Many have no choice at all in that, including Wardens. 

Reading Doorkeeper's account is helpful because it reminds people like me that such transitions are not painless. When you give your all to something, it is difficult to stop if those years have been good (as they were in Doorkeeper's case). What do they do afterwards? How do they re-integrate back into parish life in a revised way after a period of holding much authority? How do they fill the many hours that they previously gave, not to the parish in question, but to God? Vicar's (myself included) preside over these moments, and I will do so this session with a Warden of my own who ran her own Interregnum. Doorkeeper's post is a timely reminder that it isn't just puffed-up priests who hurt when the job stops or has to change. We forget that to our peril and to the pain and cost to our vital lay volunteers. 

Killing the Old PCC

Kum Ba Ya, M'lud

Fret not, I am not about to emerge as the next headline after One Direction have moved aside. I have not strolled into church with my Ouzi Nine Millimeetah and popped caps into asses. No, none of that.

But ... the Old Order is no more. A new dawn breaks over Whitton.

Those of you familiar with the Parochial Church Council as an entity will know that it is a gathering of the willing who gather periodically to be talked at, either by the Vicar or else the Treasurer, or else the wind-bag who always has an argument for every occasion. They are normally constituted by the faithful and willing who, when they are elected are bright-eyes and fluffy-tailed. By the end of their tenure, they are The Haunted - characterised my sallow-eyes and rictus grin. They will have given up many hours of useful life and devoted it to sitting in and among the Windbags (see above), then dutifully getting on with the task in hand - or put another way, everything that needs doing around the place. 

The level of work covered is very distinctive at such meetings. The wattage of the bulb for use over the Decani choir stalls, so that Old Mrs Miggins cataract isn't scorched; the pile gauge and weight of the carpet sample for the littlies to sit on so that their fragile derrieres are not assaulted by the curvature of medieval stone; the correct  brand of nasty powered-coffee for use after parish events with and without liturgy; the colour of the door knob to the parish office up the stairs that no-one can climb without crampons and a rope; oh, and the pre-payment and accrual basis of the accounts in the fiscal year to date (that only a graduate accountant can fathom). Get the idea?

Well, things they are a-changing. I have never enjoyed sit-in-circles PCCs where every minute detail of every irrelevancy is discussed to the Nth degree (by three people while the remaining fourteen lose the will to live). There is much to be learned by the models established by many school Governing Bodies. 

From now on, the members of my next PCC will all belong to a committee. There will be six committees that range across all of parish life (comms, finance, pastoral, hall, buildings and fabric, children and young people). They needn't run those committees, but be critical friends and communicators (in both directions of that). They will submit reports prior to PCC meetings so that we can read them and come armed to fewer meetings, not more. There will be no such person as a PCC member who does not exist on a committee. What would be the point? In the end, it won't be the onerous duty of a dozen or so press-ganged people to run the entire show; with smaller groups working in this way, half the parish will share the fun.

The Jewels of Ministry

A Note to God

Every once in a while, in good times and in bad, the Good Lord presents moments that shine brighter than any light. I am delighted that today provided one such moment for me.

Just as I started preparing lunch for the family, I received a call from a lady who had taken the number from the church notice-board by the road (that she managed to read it was a miracle in and of itself). She and her husband were celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary, and as they had been married in Ss Philip & James, could they pop by and visit the church as they were in the area?

Yes, of course, said I. When? This afternoon is fine. See ya then! 

They were with me in the church for the first time since they were married, took some pictures, commented on the changes (of which there were few apparently), and reminisced about their wedding day and the guests. Then Vicar Boy had an idea, one that I presented to them tentatively. They agreed

... and so we had a spontaneous Service for the Renewal of Marriage Vows (as I had the right book to hand). Irrespective of whose idea it was, it was a truly magical moment that made a couple older than my own birth parents newly weds all over again, and acted that way too. If this is parish ministry, then it is the best of things. 

An Altogether New View

Well, the eagle has landed - figuratively speaking. 

This is my first post from a new desk in a new house in a new town in a new part of the world. From my new desk in a new house in a new town in a new part of the world I also have a new view of a new street - a view that is absolutely nothing like the view represented in the image supplied. 

The boxes are nearly all emptied and flattened. The twins are safely installed in new bedrooms. The gerbils still gnaw loo-roll cores. The cats are back to soiling cat-litter. All in the world is good. We are blessed with a lovely house which much more space even than the house we have just vacated, though even now we feel like we have run out of space to empty the remaining boxes. 

Stress levels have been high. The first few days have been characterised by skin-stripping arguments, invective, bile and a sense that we may have lost a sense of 'normal' forever. Gladly, that sense is fast abating as routines re-build, old habits of play resume and the kids remove their self-applied red horns. If us adults have found it all a bit much, we must remember that the Twins Aculae must have had it all the worse. Peace begins to reign over the (now) sunny idyll that is Whitton.

I have placed my new desk in such a way as means I can look out of the window of my study. In the last house, this was of little advantage as the window looked out over a fence and a marauding Russian Vine. From my desk I can see who is at the front door, who is driving or walking along the road, which planes are landing at Heathrow; if I turn and look out of the window behind my chair (this is a 'two-windows-one-patio-door' study) I can see the garden (and the twins playing) and the church in-between the large trees that grace my glebe. The profound differences that mark curacy from incumbency are made manifest to me in the change of view I now have.

Curacy, for me, was a blend of working hard and then retreating the anonymous house to be 'normal', to spend time with the family and to shut out the world of the ministry to a certain extent. Getting that blend right was important, but the closed view from the old study window now reminds me of the express limits that existed in that form of ministry. Incumbency will, by definition, be different. I will be more visible to the world and the world more visible to me. I have to have an eye on family life while having a different kind of eye on parish life. Somewhere in there needs to be some 'me' time (and I opt to do that in the garden or kitchen these days). From my vantage point I see the world (and can close it out if I choose), am surrounded by Scriptures and gadgets, can see the kids and the church in the same glance. I feel like I am at home now. 

So far, we have been blessed by the card-sending of the card senders, thew wine-leaving of the wine-leavers, and have received a very wise document from a very wise man that describes and annotates the local facilities (read 'pubs'). A very wise man indeed (not least because he reads this drivel)! In short, we are in, and are settling. Some rooms will get curtains sometime, and others might be painted away from their current pink-all-over state. All in good time.