« Back to Issue 37

Parsons, Priests or Professionals?

By Derwyn Williams.

Editor’s note: There has been some discussion in Ministry Today over the years about terms of service of ministers and clergy. This article responds theologically to the principle of establishing terms of service and will therefore be of interest of clergy and Christian leaders of all denominations, although it comes at the subject from a specifically Anglican point of view. The author raises our theological awareness of many of the dangers of measuring ministerial performance in the same way as a results-driven business environment.

Introduction

Reform of clerical working patterns is again under discussion, and the assumption is current in some quarters that this reorganisation must bring clergy closer to the models and ideas of the secular professional world[i].

While clerical working arrangements may not immediately appear the most promising material for theological reflection, they are in fact telling pointers towards ideologies prevalent in the church in each period of history, and worthy of investigation.

Professionalising The Ministry - Outlining The Proposals

New proposals for the working arrangements of the Church of England clergy are being put forward by the General Synod Review Group on Clergy Terms of Service[ii]. Their Reviews seek the creation of a system of clerical rights and responsibilities termed ‘Common Tenure’. This would replace both the ‘freehold’ form of office now enjoyed by vicars and rectors, and the ‘licensed’ status under which assistant curates and priests-in-charge operate. The freehold is seen by many as an overly secure form of tenure, which requires insufficient accountability from the clergy. By contrast, licensed clergy are generally viewed as being insufficiently protected, subject to dismissal by episcopal whim.

Common Tenure was developed not directly due to church initiative, but because of Government influence. Section 23 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 seeks to confer upon ‘atypical workers’, such as ecclesiastical office holders, a number of entitlements currently possessed by employees. These include the right to a detailed statement of terms of service, and the right to apply to an employment tribunal, for example, for redress against unfair dismissal[iii].

Common Tenure would establish a more highly codified set of clerical rights and responsibilities. It provides for formal job descriptions at appointment which would be subject to ongoing review and refinement[iv]. ‘Ministerial Review’, in which clergy discuss their ministry with a superior, would become compulsory. It would be more frequent and comprehensive than currently, with perspectives from lay parishioners on the ministry of their priest becoming a standard contribution to the process[v]. Clergy deemed to be failing to reach ‘the minimum acceptable standard’ would face a ‘capability procedure’. This would first aim to help them achieve an adequate ‘improvement in performance’[vi]. If, however, an unacceptable standard was consistently maintained, the procedure would ultimately lead to dismissal, subject to appeal at an employment tribunal[vii].

The proposals of the Review Group are not a church initiative to bring clerical working arrangements into line with the professions, though they would have that substantial effect. Indeed, the Reviews present such assimilations in a positive light, as in remarks on the (separate) Clergy Discipline Measure:

This will apply procedures similar to those found in many professional groups to clergy discipline.[viii]

Likewise, in transforming terms of service, secular models are to be looked to for guidance:

As part of its commitment to social justice, the Church has urged employers to treat their workers well. It would therefore follow that clergy ought to enjoy the same rights and protections that the church would urge employers to provide … The rights conferred by section 23 are generally seen as good practice and the Group can see no reason for not granting them to the clergy’.[ix]

The church must thus undergo a ‘change of culture’, to follow ‘the best human resource practice’[x], its capability procedure being ‘based on best secular practice’[xi]. The guiding logic of the Reviews is that the processes and assumptions of the secular world of employment are essentially benign or beneficial. Indeed some are perhaps even divinely sanctioned:

Romans 13, with its emphasis on submission to the supreme authorities and its description of them as “God’s agents working for your good” provides positive theological support for the use of Employment Tribunals.[xii]

The Reviews acknowledge that not every aspect of the secular employment world is appropriate to the clergy. The new system requires, for example, ‘an acknowledgement that, ultimately, the Gospel is not about meeting targets, but about being faithful.’[xiii] In addition, the Review Group refrained from recommending that clergy should be made employees, as some members had initially favoured. One reason given for this was a desire to preserve the clergy’s freedom to set their own priorities, rather than working subject to direct episcopal control:

An employment contract undeniably sits more easily than does the concept of holding an office with ideas such as exerting control and giving orders, the direction of work on a daily basis, and the setting of targets … There may be some unease, among laity as well as clergy, over whether they want an employer - whether in the form of the bishop … or a national employer - exerting that kind of control over their clergy.[xiv]

Nevertheless, the dominant discourse within the Reviews is of importing secular models of human resource management into the church, in order to assimilate its working patterns more closely to those of the wider employment world. This is to be done first because the Government requires it, but more positively because it is held to advantage the church. Benefit will come by enabling clergy to develop more healthily in ministry, and by swiftly addressing the problems experienced by a minority of ministers.[xv]

A ‘Professionalised’ Clergy - Progress Or Catastrophe?

While the Reviews portray the church’s adoption of processes from secular human resources management positively, other Christian thinkers have made theological criticisms of such importations.

For example, the use of aims and objectives to organise and manage ecclesiastical activity has received substantial critique,. Ministerial objectives, defined in clerical job descriptions, will gain more formal and binding status under Common Tenure. They will provide important reference points for Ministerial Review, and, should a cleric’s performance come under scrutiny, the agreed objectives will form a basis for judging her competence in meeting ‘minimum standards’.

A management process which enshrines such objectives is likely to direct attention towards visible, measurable aspects of ministry, at the expense of the invisible and intangible. Church attendance, the establishment of visible Christian activities, and financial achievements are easier to measure and discuss, for example, than the cultivation of holiness or the quality of parochial pastoral care. As Stephen Pattison notes:

To be useful, outcomes must be specific, observable and measurable. The temptation is to concentrate on things which are easy to measure, things that are seen rather than unseen. … “If you can’t count it, it doesn’t count.”[xvi]

Of course, visible achievements which may be entirely appropriate aspirations for some churches and clergy. But an approach which inherently prioritises the measurable will harm situations where the genuine priorities concern the invisible, interior aspects of the Christian life. As well as tending to skew ministry towards the visible and measurable, the use of objectives may focus the clergy’s energy upon achieving the tangible measure of the defined objective, possibly at the expense of the intended spiritual reality underneath:

One can set targets for the number of baptisms or confirmations to be recorded in a given year, and possibly by aggressive means achieve them, but this will reveal nothing about the spiritual realities which lie behind them. What should be an indicator of a deeper reality may, by being turned into a measure of achievement in itself, become a substitute for such reality.[xvii]

Emphasising objectives as a basis for organising ministry can, theologians argue, have the destructive effect of turning people into instruments. The more important the objectives become, the more the individual to whom they apply becomes focused on achieving them. Consequently the humans among whom they work become seen as tools to use to achieve these ends. This can encourage a ‘narrow, instrumental view of people and of reality’[xviii], which is in sharp contradiction to the Christian belief in the dignity, uniqueness and sacred complexity of every human being.

The danger is presented then, that an increasing emphasis on defined objectives as a benchmark for reviewing ministry and judging clerical standards, stands in tension with priestly commitment to the unique individual care of their parishioners:

Any individual of genuine integrity will know that the performative appraisal of provider-customer relationships in health and education, never mind religion, inevitably creates a troubling tension in professionals who retain some sense of relative autonomy and a personal responsibility to their patients and clients. They will exist between the tactics required to increase productive score, and the human integrity which requires that we treat human beings as sentient, thinking, and moral agents: in other words, the latter implies that we should address human beings as ends in themselves, and not simply as the means of organisational maximization … On a more banal level, academics and priests can act like the policemen who rather than tackle serious crime will lurk at a tricky road junction and painlessly fill out a quota of charges and convictions.[xix]

In other words, a culture could be encouraged in which clergy attend to the tasks which address their objectives most directly and immediately, while neglecting aspects of ministry which may be more demanding, yet ultimately most crucial.

Ideologically, an objectives-based approach to organising ministry is criticised as encouraging a diminution of theological subtlety and a narrowing of spiritual vision. Enshrining a list which is short enough to be practical, of objectives which are measurable enough to discuss, could catastrophically collapse the church’s life into an impoverished list of ‘things to do’. Such an approach would, for Richard Roberts, constitute a flat contradiction of the mystery at the heart of faith. Of the Turnbull Report’s use of organisational theory he states that:

it is not theology as conceived in Trinitarian terms, in which the Church exists in tension between act and fulfilment, straining towards an unpredefined future. On the contrary, here we are being confronted with an efficiency test which tacitly assumes a closure of, and thus control over, what is to be transmitted in witness...[xx]

While the Reviews deny that the objectives within Common Tenure are intended as achievement targets[xxi], prevailing cultural assumptions make it likely that they will come to be so perceived, not least by lay Christians whose secular life in business, education or health care is organised on such a basis. Such a collapse of the church’s mission into managerial objectives would, for Roberts, constitute a repudiation of its very being. The church would have distracted itself from the central question which defines it. Within a church which adopts secular management philosophy,

bare performativity becomes the single, exclusive criterion which obviates the need to pose the question as to what it is that Christianity in the final analysis is all about.[xxii]

Pattison, too, has doubts whether a church managed along such lines could actually live out its vocation, specifically in the arena of pastoral care. As he describes:

Part of the properly religious role and witness of pastoral care may be to help deliver people from the narrow tyranny of aims, objectives and outcomes.[xxiii]

If pastoral care is offered from within a culture itself dominated by that ‘tyranny’, it will be ill-equipped to perform its role, for:

As professional care becomes more and more specialised and goal-focused, with clear aims and objectives, it may, paradoxically, be becoming less caring.[xxiv]

Moreover, Christian pastoral care, if it is to be Christian, must seek to communicate theological truths which challenge an ideology of management by objective. Christianity asserts, for example, that success is not the measure of human achievement; that God does not manage the world but gives it space for autonomy, chance, and unexpected outcomes; that the defining relationship for Christians is brother and sister in Christ, not client-customer or manager-subordinate, and that the church is on a journey towards the unknown[xxv].

If such claims are true, they problematise the management by objectives of an enterprise seeking to deliver pastoral care. For:

Pastoral care must bear witness to the kinds of religious insights outlined above not only by word and works, but also in the methods and assumptions by which it structures itself.[xxvi]

For both Roberts and Pattison, a church whose internal organisation came to contradict its own theology would be fatally compromised in acting out its mission. With respect to the Reviews, such questions also need to be raised over the church’s proclamation of a theology of undeserved grace. The guiding ideology of Common Tenure is that clergy minister out of competence. Their position depends in fact on delivering measurable clerical activity to at least ‘minimum standards’. Theologically this sounds more like ‘justification by works’, than the strength-in-weakness which comes when tragically flawed human beings put their trust in a gracious God. It would take time for the ideological assumptions of new working arrangements to filter into the church’s thought-patterns, but there is at least reason to worry that the revised terms of service will, ultimately, compromise the church’s proclamation of a gospel of grace alone.

In addition, it should be asked what effect Common Tenure may have on Anglican theology of priesthood. Several recent writings[xxvii] on the theology of ministry have sought to defend, in different ways, the need for an ontological approach to understanding ordination, alongside the functional. While all who theologise about ministry would agree that the ordained clearly do particular things within their ministry (deacons offer pastoral care, priests bless, bishops confirm, etc.), these publications argue that priestly identity, for instance, is not comprehended by the sum total of the tasks the priest does.

Paul Avis, for example, locates the priestly office as one aspect of the overall ‘ordering’ of God’s people, through which Christ is represented to the church and to the world. Developing the idea of ‘holy order’ from Augustine, Aquinas and Bonaventure[xxviii] he argues that to be ordained is to enter a role within that overall order, not a discrete, self-contained identity. Avis’ work acts as a corrective to views of priestly ministry which see ordination as possessed by the ordained, rather than the whole church. But his thought also challenges primarily functional accounts of priesthood. While locating ordained ministry as an aspect of the mission of God - and therefore something which involves activity - Avis’ notion of priests participating within the church’s holy order precludes any wholly pragmatic conception of their ministry.

This concern that priestly being should not be overlooked is echoed by Christopher Cocksworth and Rosalind Brown. They describe the priest as symbol, a person who can be termed a sacrament; one whose being, by God’s grace, can reveal Jesus:

Presbyters … may be called priests because they indicate or signify the priestly identity of the people of God.[xxix]

They are, indeed,

… not just signs of the priestly identity of the Church, but effectual signs of its priestly life … we are often seen as walking sacraments through whom the presence of Christ can be touched.[xxx]

The term ‘walking sacrament’ clearly has dangers, but it may help recover a sense that a priest is somehow authentically being priestly and exercising her vocation whether or not she is doing the specifically ‘priestly’ acts which may be seen as the sum total of the priest’s task, on an excessively functional view of ministry.

Common Tenure risks gradually shifting understandings of priestly ministry away from the symbolic and sacramental, towards the functional. There is a danger that the priest is perceived as existing simply to perform certain functions and fulfil various objectives. Of course, such a transformation of understanding will not be immediate, nor perhaps ever thoroughgoing. But the more influence that job descriptions, and the process of reviewing and setting objectives exercise, within the priest-parish relationship, the more likely it is that sacramental conceptions of priesthood give way to functional ones. The mysterious concept of God’s grace being shown forth through the gift of holy order in the church will gradually become incomprehensible, as the managerial logic which demands self-justification by objective-fulfilment comes to exercise hegemony. The language of vocation to ministry - that one occupies an office in God’s church because He has called one to it - will steadily become impossible. The vicar’s position will progressively find legitimation from role-performance and achievement of objectives, to the point where other understandings become inconceivable.

In addition, the proposals also invite a shift in the theological conception of the bishop’s role. Within a more managerial framework, bishops will be tempted, or encouraged by others, to imagine themselves as managers, and to seek to emulate the role of a C.E.O.:

In the history of the Church, bishops have often been aligned to the prevailing cultures of power. …bishops still find themselves linked to the normative modes of organisational power that operate in secular society. Pre-eminent among these is that of the chief executive, presiding over other managers, who in turn regulate clergy and laity.[xxxi]

This should be avoided, however, if true episcopal calling is to be lived out, according to Ian Cundy and Justin Welby:

The bishop is called to hold authority while rejecting the normal human pattern of using it. …the lived out reality of leadership within a diocese is to provide a pattern of spirituality that forms the Christian community and is a source of power-in-weakness to transform the living of each member of that community.[xxxii]

Worldly ideas of powerful, executive leadership are to be rejected by and for the episcopate, because such a pattern is inappropriate to the type of headship needed in the church:

The decisive leader is a seductive vision, but even in secular thinking it is a style with relatively short-term success … Bishops are … desirable not because they provide strong leadership but because they are uniquely able to set a pattern of life and a structure that reflects the nature of the Church.[xxxiii]

For these theologians, a bishop should not mimic a senior manager, because of the shape given to his episcopal role by his unique vocation from God. The church should not imitate a managerial corporation, because its relationships are divinely created and serve purposes distinct from those which govern secular organisations. The drive implicit in Common Tenure, towards relationships ordered along secular managerial lines, and a conception of ministry driven by worldly notions of objectives and performance, is therefore deeply theologically questionable.

Conclusion

The effects of Common Tenure, if adopted, will not be immediate. Prevailing patterns of pastoral relationships, and vocational and sacramental understandings of ministry will long persist. However, when its practices become embedded, and perhaps extended, they will inexorably move the church towards new models of organisation, novel forms of relationship and changed patterns of thought. This should be resisted, as it will skew the church’s mission towards its visible aspects and encourage the instrumental treatment of persons within the church. It will tend towards a diminution of theological subtlety and narrowing of spiritual vision, and compromise both the church’s provision of truly Christian pastoral care and its proclamation of the Gospel of grace. It will tend towards dangerous shifts in the way in which priests and bishops are perceived. No longer symbols of the God-given sacramental order of the church, the former will primarily be imagined as providers of ministerial function; the latter as ecclesiastical chief executives. For the good of the church, these changes should be opposed.

Notes

[i] See Wilkinson, G., ‘The changing role of the vicar’ in Ison, D., (ed.) The Vicar’s Guide: Life and ministry in the parish (London, 2005), pp.1 - 8.

[ii] GS 1527 Review of Clergy Terms of Service: Report on the first phase of the work (London, 2004) and GS 1564 Review of Clergy Terms of Service: Part Two - Report on the second phase of the work (London, 2005). [Hereafter: GS 1527 and GS 1564 or ‘the Reviews’]

[iii] GS 1527, p. 11.

[iv] GS 1527, pp. 38, 39, 42.

[v] GS 1527, p. 41.

[vi] GS 1564, pp. 109 - 118.

[vii] GS 1564, pp. 45 - 47.

[viii] GS 1527, p. 9.

[ix] GS 1527, p. 12.

[x] GS 1527, p. 32.

[xi] GS 1527, p. 49.

[xii] GS 1564, p. 45.

[xiii] GS 1527, p. 40.

[xiv] GS 1527, p. 56.

[xv] GS 1527, p. 46; GS 1564, p. 109.

[xvi] Pattison, S., ‘Some Objections to Aims and Objectives’ in Managing the Church, p. 137. [Hereafter: ‘Objections’]

[xvii] Beck, B., ‘A Methodist Reflection on Structural Change’ in Managing the Church, p.118.

[xviii] ‘Objections’, p. 138.

[xix] Roberts, R., ‘Order and Organisation: The Future of Institutional and Established Religion’ in Managing the Church, p. 88. [Hereafter: ‘Order’]

[xx] Roberts, R., ‘Shall we become the Turnbull Report’ in Osborne, L. and Walker, A., Harmful Religion: An Exploration of Religious Abuse (London, 1997), p. 172.

[xxi] GS 1527, p. 40.

[xxii] ‘Order’, p. 94.

[xxiii] ‘Objections’, p. 134.

[xxiv] ‘Objections’, p. 146.

[xxv] ‘Objections’, pp. 141 - 143.

[xxvi] ‘Objections’, p. 143.

[xxvii] Avis, P., A Ministry Shaped by Mission (London, 2005) [Hereafter: Ministry]: Cocksworth, C. and Brown, R., Being a priest today (Norwich, 2002) [Hereafter: Being]: Guiver, G. et al., The Fire and the Clay: The priest in today’s church (London, 1993) and Priests in a People’s Church (London, 2001).

[xxviii] Ministry, pp. 88 - 93.

[xxix] Being, p. 26. (emphasis original)

[xxx] Being, pp. 29, 32. (emphasis original)

[xxxi] Evans, G., and Percy, M., ‘Conclusion: The Church: Management or Service’ in Managing the Church, p.252.

[xxxii] Cundy, I., and Welby, J., ‘Taking the Cat for a Walk? Can a Bishop order a Diocese?’ in Managing the Church, p. 46. [Hereafter: ‘Taking the Cat for a Walk?’]

[xxxiii] ‘Taking the Cat for a Walk?’, p. 47.