All Curates great and small

Christchurch, Oxford, Petertide, already 3 years ago

It's been Petertide. In the Anglican church people have been getting ordained. It's nearly three years since 'my' cohort came through, and some of us are already moving on and leaving Curacy behind like a sloughed off skin. 

For a long while after I got ordained I used to get very nervous in and around large groups of clergy. Is this what we look like? How odd. Am I really part of this group? How on earth must we come over to outsiders? I'm slightly better nowadays, though I still maintain a possibly unhealthy desire to appear 'normal' at all costs, whatever normal is.

The shock of a female in a dog collar, such that the unsuspecting villagers of Dibley received on the arrival of the fictional yet iconic Geraldine Grainger, is wearing off.

Female clerics can still sadly be seen as 'problematic', though some traditional folk seem genuinely delighted with the development: once on being introduced in the parish to an older gentleman, I was given a visual once-over and greeted with the words 'ah ha.....considerably better looking than the last one'.

We come in all shapes and sizes these days. Eventually the media clergy stereotypes (elderly, male, ineffectual) will give way to something much broader and more interesting.  Beyond Belief; Barriers and Bridges to Faith Today, published by LICC, is already ten years old, and even their research indicated that the person on the street with very little church connection is aware of old churchy stereotypes giving way to something new and exciting. 

There is some statistical evidence that the Myers Briggs personality 'types' of clergy have traditionally been towards the introverted and 'feeling' end of the scale, away from extrovert and 'thinking'. Perhaps that is changing.

The recent media interest in Notts vicar Rev Kate Bottley (left) who joyfully led her wedding couple in a disco dance after their vows, perhaps wants to celebrate the face of young, female extroversion in the church, a church which is still sometimes ill at ease with what is perceived not to be suitably restrained or 'dignified'.

Splendid at Ascot

So we're extrovert, we're introvert; we feel, we think; we're idealists, we're pragmatists. Some of us are shy and retiring; some are loud; some are blonde and curvy; some are scatty and scruffy; some are, frankly, splendidly sartorial. Is there a place in the church for the distinctly eccentric? I hope so, but the selection process being what it is, I am not so sure.

I have been wondering about longevity in all of this. As colleagues get new jobs and map their calling and their (for want of a better word) 'careers' together in a complex theological and practical web, I wonder what we need to maintain joy and spontaneity at the core. One of the worst clergy stereotypes

Clapped out clergyman in Pinero's
'Dandy Dick'

 is of the old timer - world weary, been at it for too long without significant encouragement; seen it, done it. He (or she? less likely) is not a good advert for the church. One of the scary things about being a 'professional' christian is the feeling it all depends on you. It can feel a bit draining. And is probably completely misplaced. 

So I'm a Curate (still). But I'm also me. Ordinary. Entirely dispensable. And off on retreat tomorrow to prove it. 
Happy Petertide.

Lent for Extroverts 31: Counting the hours

How long is a working week? This is a loaded question for clergy, it would seem, especially the 'full-timers'. Living on the job and 'being' the job are only two factors amongst many which can lead to very heavy working weeks. None of this 'thank goodness it's Friday' lark they go in for on the radio (unless Friday's your day off, but then it'll soon be followed by 'Oh, no, it's Saturday/Sunday...')
I'll be honest: looking at some clergy who appear to be overworked or overworking, it's not a pretty sight. Is it like King Lear who claimed to be 'more sinned against than sinning'? With regards to over work, are there  genuine victims or can you bring overwork upon your own head?

So how many hours is a healthy working week? Don't try and glean the answer from those dreadful Church Times adverts for vacant posts. After reading two or three you will conclude that even should you work every waking hour of every day, and never take a holiday, you will never have the time needed to meet the hopes and aspirations of the crazed people who concoct the adverts in the first place ('You will have the spiritual care of all ages across the seven parishes, including the elderly, the sick, the housebound, the young families, the retired, the traditional, those in the two new housing estates, and the three large Church Schools (one failing). In addition you will be half time Diocesan Officer in charge of IME 4-7...') In other words, you will be utterly knackered.

I recently asked a load of full time clergy the question, and the responses ranged from 37 hours (that guy has is sussed) to 70+. Which is quite a range. I doubt many people count them up anyway; it seems a bit churlish. There must be a happy medium between clocking off half way through Thursday (which might be problematic for the congregation on Sunday) and working 15 hours a day six days a week, which, frankly, does not seem healthy.

Depending on what you read, 50-60 hours seems expected, but I haven't come across much in terms of Diocesan guidance. Perhaps I haven't read the right papers, or perhaps we're expected to be grown ups and, like teachers, just do the work. But even teachers have a notional number of professional hours, whether they stick to them or not.

Some Dioceses recommend a 'sessions' scheme, particularly with NSMs, who are by default part time. You divide the day into three sessions (morning, afternoon and evening) and work two out of three. This appears sensible at first, especially if you have something in the evening and could do with some commensurate down time, let's say in the afternoon. Realistically, though, more work can be done when you're fresh in the morning than in a similar length evening; evening commitments are much more costly in terms of energy and missing out on family time or, shock, horror, social life (if you have one). So the hours in a day do not carry equal weight. And if you start making each session into a set number of hours (I've head it's three in some dioceses, four in others) you could end up working 6 hours a day anyway, which is quite a lot of hours for an unpaid part timer. For a 'part time' clergy mum with school age kids this is all the hours in between school runs. And you still have the shopping/cooking/cleaning/washing to do.

Which brings us to the difficulty of knowing where work begins and ends. If you're at home praying for the parish, you're working, right? If you're in a traffic jam on the way to a church meeting, that's hardly recuperation time; it's work again. An assembly might only take 20 minutes but the preparation beforehand and the lingering in the staffroom afterwards could turn it into two hours work.  It's why you need slack in the diary.

Perhaps a better way forward is to monitor the long term effect of the working week on you. Are you running just to keep still? Are you spending hours on things which other people could do? Are you able to envision new things and implement them, according to the unfolding Missio Dei or are you too busy having to maintain the status quo? If the Ignatian Examen is accurate, God's blessing is richly available through work, but not all work blesses - it depends.

How long is a clergy working week? Should we even be asking? It's as long as a piece of string and as short as your next burn out dictates.

Lent for Extroverts 23: Stressing about stress

I've been thinking about stress lately, reading books about stress and assessing what makes me stressed. As part of my ongoing Curate's training, I was asked to read a long report on clergy stress, written ten years ago by The Society of Mary and Martha, a retreat House who deal in giving stressed clergy a break when they are undergoing times of upheval or burnout.

I was slightly stressed about having to read about clergy stress, along the lines of the self fulfilling prophecy: even if I'm not too stressed right now, I might well become more stressed if I imagine half the things in the report happening to me at some point in the future (overwork; burnout; marital breakdown). A couple of years ago I read Yvonne Warren's The Cracked Pot (also 2002), about how Anglican clergy were (or, crucially, were not) coping with stress. It's either an unfortunate or a very accurate title, but reading it a few weeks before my Ordination, I ended up feeling like a bit of a crackpot myself.

There were a number of 'Epiphany' moments during three years training at Theological College (like, 'oh, gin is quite nice; why have I never drunk this before?' Answer: wrong churchmanship; and 'actually, perhaps it's true that all people who get ordained are looking for ways to heal unresolved issues in their lives, i.e. we're all mad'...oooh, too deep; moving swiftly on...) 

...But one Epiphany moment that really sticks in the mind is a question that we were asked during a lecture on self care and finding suitable support in a job that lacks boundaries and which by its very nature, involves dealing with people at life's breaking points. After outlining all the ways self care should be attended to - observe your day off; find ways to recuperate and refresh; see a spiritual director; put time into friendships outside the parish; find a work coach or counsellor if need be - the lecturer asked this: 'And guess who it is who is responsible for finding all this support? You.'

That was the crucial thing. If you're already overworked and under supported, it is unlikely you will have the reserves to do all or any of the above. Finding a spiritual director who suits is not always straightforward; you will have to find a list; look up various phone numbers and contact them; drive somewhere and it all takes energy. Which you don't have if you're stressed and overworked. 

Which is why there seems to be an observed disconnect between the apparent emphasis on care in the Ordained Ministry; the lack of self care that some clergy practice, and the fact that not caring for oneself, and long term ill health due to stress can go for so long without anyone in a senior 'caring' position being aware of it, till it's too late. 

There are such things as 'accountable friendships', but it takes a lot of courage to ask your friend and fellow clergy person 'How are you doing spiritually?' and not come across as patronising. And clergy competitiveness (what? yes, competitiveness), English reserve and being too busy even to get together with such a friend mean that it really does seem as though the responsibility for not getting long term ill through unregulated stressed, as per the hapless clergy in The Cracked Pot rests with......me.