The idea of 'tentmaking' comes from St Paul's writings. He worked tirelessly to make the gospel known and to minister to the churches he had been responsible for founding or teaching. His 'tentmaking' was, famously, the trade by which he funded himself to do all this (I suspect there was also quite a degree of financial support for him from churches, and a certain amount of free accommodation in the form of medium-term hospitality.)
I've been reading a fascinating book Perspectives on Self Supporting Ministry: Tentmaking. Edited by James Francis and Leslie Francis (not, to my knowledge, related), it reflects on the concept and practice of ministries that do not command a stipend or direct payment of any sort to support them. The interesting thing about this collection of essays is that it is drawn from a wide cross-section of cultures and denominations in Africa, South and North America, Europe and Australasia. Theological, biblical-critical, social and personal comment is brought to bear on the phenomenon of ministry which is freely given and supported through secular work and whose focus may be primarily church and communtiy or workplace or some combination of both.
In his foreword, David Jenkins (previous bishop of Durham) questions the wisdom of the church placing too much emphasis on a solely stipendiary form of ministry (he quotes from an article written as early as 1926 questioning the 'making of the whole church a slave of the stipendiary system') and says,
If we worship a God of revelation, creation, incarnation, redemption and fulfilment who pursues His purposes and promises, revealed decisively in jesus, through the power, presence and perseverance of the Spirit, then the call must be, in the first place not to consolidate managerially under financial pressure but to seek to identify the prophetic questions which the financial pressures are forcing upon us.
The whole book encourages us to be a bit more radical in our thinking about how ministries of different kinds are valued and located within the church so that engagement with social reality is deeper. This is not simply about 'saving the church money', it is about fostering ways of life which give rise to effective ministry and which can be sustained by both the church and the individuals engaged in such ministries, long term.
It's well worth a read and there's something for everyone given the breadth of perspective.
Published by Gracewing 1998.
Showing posts with label NSM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSM. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Saturday, 24 September 2011
From Ripon to Rydal; SSM Conference
Today has been one of those days when you think, 'I wish I'd brought my camera' about 20 times! Leaving Yorkshire in bright sunshine at about 7.30 this morning, I drove over to Rydal Hall in Cumbria.
Skirting Ullsawater at about 9am, I watched gorgeous sun give way to thick, low cloud. By the time I started to climb up into the Kirtstone pass, I could scarcely see a few feet in front of me. Never having been to Rydal before, the journey began to feel like a bit of an adventure, especially after I took a wrong turn and ended up accidentally discovering a short cut through to Ambleside on a single track road above Lake Windermere (well, I assume the lake was below but I couldn't actually see it!) On the way back - lo and behold, glorious sunshine again with just a dusting of cloud on the hills! I wound my way up an aptly named road called The Struggle (20% gradient most of the way) and dropped down the Kirkstone pass, this time enjoying the wonderful vistas, getting into Glendinning just in time for tea and a scone before the cafes shut! And this is work?!
The purpose of the journey was to attend the regional conference for Self Supporting Ministers (clergy who give their time in order to minister in parishes and many other settings.) The main speaker was Revd Dr Teresa Morgan who has recently published the results of a national survey of SSM clergy. As well as telling us about her findings, she also gave a key note lecture about faith as it's understood in Paul's letters in the New Testament. Faith encompasses many things; if you look at the uses of the word in Greek and Latin, you begin to see how the original NT writers and later theologians invested a whole range of meanings in the word - trust, faithfulness, hope, confidence, a binding relationship in a legal sense. Stories where faith is exercised and spoken about show that in the NT the opposite of 'faith' is not generally 'no faith' or 'unbelief', but 'little faith'. Doubt and wavering faith seem to be on the same spectrum as enormous leaps of faith or indeed the faithfulness of Christ Himself to God and to us. Faith can be intellectual and propositional; it can also be emotional and invested in intuitive action. (The woman who touched Jesus' garment is a good example of how propositional belief and intuitive action can both be part of a single demonstration of faith - she thought, 'If I can only touch the hem of His garment, I will be healed' and she instinctively reached out and touched Him.)
Dr Morgan, who is a fellow in Ancient History at Oriel College Oxford, showed her versatility in both inspiring us as to how we go about our ministry and giving us an analysis of the facts and figures about the shape(s) of Self Supporting Ministry in the Church of England. I'm going to need some more time to digest the implications of some of the things we discussed. However for those of you who are particularly interested in the findings of her research, she suggested some directions for future development. I was moderately cheered to find that we have indeed been trying to work towards some of these things (or are currently doing so) in Ripon and Leeds Diocese.
Skirting Ullsawater at about 9am, I watched gorgeous sun give way to thick, low cloud. By the time I started to climb up into the Kirtstone pass, I could scarcely see a few feet in front of me. Never having been to Rydal before, the journey began to feel like a bit of an adventure, especially after I took a wrong turn and ended up accidentally discovering a short cut through to Ambleside on a single track road above Lake Windermere (well, I assume the lake was below but I couldn't actually see it!) On the way back - lo and behold, glorious sunshine again with just a dusting of cloud on the hills! I wound my way up an aptly named road called The Struggle (20% gradient most of the way) and dropped down the Kirkstone pass, this time enjoying the wonderful vistas, getting into Glendinning just in time for tea and a scone before the cafes shut! And this is work?!
The purpose of the journey was to attend the regional conference for Self Supporting Ministers (clergy who give their time in order to minister in parishes and many other settings.) The main speaker was Revd Dr Teresa Morgan who has recently published the results of a national survey of SSM clergy. As well as telling us about her findings, she also gave a key note lecture about faith as it's understood in Paul's letters in the New Testament. Faith encompasses many things; if you look at the uses of the word in Greek and Latin, you begin to see how the original NT writers and later theologians invested a whole range of meanings in the word - trust, faithfulness, hope, confidence, a binding relationship in a legal sense. Stories where faith is exercised and spoken about show that in the NT the opposite of 'faith' is not generally 'no faith' or 'unbelief', but 'little faith'. Doubt and wavering faith seem to be on the same spectrum as enormous leaps of faith or indeed the faithfulness of Christ Himself to God and to us. Faith can be intellectual and propositional; it can also be emotional and invested in intuitive action. (The woman who touched Jesus' garment is a good example of how propositional belief and intuitive action can both be part of a single demonstration of faith - she thought, 'If I can only touch the hem of His garment, I will be healed' and she instinctively reached out and touched Him.)
Dr Morgan, who is a fellow in Ancient History at Oriel College Oxford, showed her versatility in both inspiring us as to how we go about our ministry and giving us an analysis of the facts and figures about the shape(s) of Self Supporting Ministry in the Church of England. I'm going to need some more time to digest the implications of some of the things we discussed. However for those of you who are particularly interested in the findings of her research, she suggested some directions for future development. I was moderately cheered to find that we have indeed been trying to work towards some of these things (or are currently doing so) in Ripon and Leeds Diocese.
- Audit SSM skills and interests in the diocese.
- Plan and describe posts needed by Deaneries (we're just starting to do that.)
- Think about distributing SSM posts across the diocese so that we use SSM more in places where there are a good number of SSMs and liberate stipendiary time where there is less ministry.
- SSMs running parishes as a team or group (and before anyone says that isn't legally possible - that's exactly what we did in Nottingham in 1994!)
- SSMs choosing to specialize in managing vacancies.
- Functional working agreements (lots of discussion about how to achieve these in MSE situations.)
- CME and MDR offered to all SSMs (we do that already.)
- Encouragement for SSMs to develop their ministry and move posts from time to time.
- Senior posts could be open to SSMs.
- An SSM's ministry may change over time - the focus shifting from parish to workplace to diocesan life and back again.
- Think about vocations - especially among younger people.
- Survey employers of MSEs.
Monday, 23 May 2011
Residentiary to Non Stipendiary
I have a new job! No, I haven't given up being Archdeacon of Richmond, but I have taken on the role of Adviser for Non Stipendiary Ministers in the diocese of Ripon and Leeds. (NSM's are ordained people who give their time and do not receive financial remuneration for their ministry.) In order to create the space to do this, I've laid down my role as a residentiary canon at Ripon cathedral. I rather like the symbolism of moving from one of the oldest and most traditional roles in the church to one of the newest and unformed! As the diocesan newsletter states, there are an increasing number of non stipendiary clergy and the exciting thing about these ministeries is that no two are quite the same.
I have long been an enthusiast for what I have always thought of as Self-Supporting Ministry. (I don't much like anything, including ministry, to be defined by a negative! Surely the concept of ministry freely given in response to a call is more inspiring than the tag 'unpaid'?) I am very much looking forward to meeting all the clergy who exercise this kind of ministry. It will take me some months to do this, no doubt, but it is going to be important to hear the stories of the different kinds of ministry they are engaged in and their experience of the church and its mission.
So perhaps I ought to tell my own story. I was a Self Supporting Minister, myself, for a short time while I was a lecturer at St John's College, Nottingham. My 'day job' was teaching a hundred and twenty ordinands and theological students and a much larger group of distance learners liturgy and pastoral theology and overseeing an MA course in Mission and Ministry. My other ministry was exercised through St Michael's and All Angels, a large church in Bramcote, Nottingham. St Michael's had an SSM team who, together with the church wardens and Readers and under the leadership the Revd David Edinbrough, himself an SSM, headed up ministry in the parish. The idea was that the parish would generate its own leadership, freeing up stipendiary ordained ministry to be used elsewhere in the diocese. My role mainly involved planning and leading worship, youth work and pastoral care. The church seemed to take to the 'experiment', as it was called, very well and lay led initiatives and leadership blossomed. A large number of people took responsibiilty very effectively for many aspects of the life of the church. It was, however, quite difficult when the church eventually returned to a more traditional form of ministry under a single incumbent because people had got used to thinking in a new way about the life of the church. And that points to one of the challenges thrown up by self supporting ministry. It asks us to think about ministry in different ways - as something more collaborative, more flexible, more rooted in being present to one another in creative ways and very conscious of life beyond the church. These things have been and are features of good ministry all down the ages, but non stipendiary ministry is raising questions for the church about how we reinterpret some of the more narrowly ecclesiologically focused understandings of ministry that have appeared over the centuries. St Paul and, indeed, all the apostles were SSMs! It is interesting that as the churches in the West emerge from Christendom to a more uncertain, less confident relationship with society, we are seeing a return to forms of ministry that have their roots in a missionary church. Flexibility, the willingness to be known as a Christian and to speak from wherever one is placed in society, and the ability to resource oneself for ministry or share the resources one has with others to enable ministry are key concepts, I believe.
As an incumbent, I also trained and ministered with an SSM curate and learned a huge amount about utilising gifts, especially the gift of time, effectively. I think we both came to see that the key to blending different kinds of ministry in a parish is to spend time and care on communication and trust building. Once there is real honesty of relationship, it becomes much easier to respond to the needs of an area in mission and ministry by using the distinct gifts and perspectives of different kinds of minister, welcoming the differing degrees of time, availability and experience that each person brings.
Many SSMs and NSMs minister mostly in their place of work and that is an area of ministry that I look forward to learning more about. Some SSMs have developed a ministry that is more to do with vision for an innovative project (for example an e church and an internet service offering friendship and pastoral care for the business community.) I hope we can listen to the creative and innovative among our ministers and see what can be developed - God has called us to reach into every corner of society and NSMs and SSMs are sometimes a lone voice, trying to draw the church's attention to important possibilities for mission, ministry and Christian presence.
These are some of the things that excite me about this new role! If you are interested in finding out more about this kind of ministry, see also my post dated 11th April The Gift of Ministry.
I have long been an enthusiast for what I have always thought of as Self-Supporting Ministry. (I don't much like anything, including ministry, to be defined by a negative! Surely the concept of ministry freely given in response to a call is more inspiring than the tag 'unpaid'?) I am very much looking forward to meeting all the clergy who exercise this kind of ministry. It will take me some months to do this, no doubt, but it is going to be important to hear the stories of the different kinds of ministry they are engaged in and their experience of the church and its mission.
So perhaps I ought to tell my own story. I was a Self Supporting Minister, myself, for a short time while I was a lecturer at St John's College, Nottingham. My 'day job' was teaching a hundred and twenty ordinands and theological students and a much larger group of distance learners liturgy and pastoral theology and overseeing an MA course in Mission and Ministry. My other ministry was exercised through St Michael's and All Angels, a large church in Bramcote, Nottingham. St Michael's had an SSM team who, together with the church wardens and Readers and under the leadership the Revd David Edinbrough, himself an SSM, headed up ministry in the parish. The idea was that the parish would generate its own leadership, freeing up stipendiary ordained ministry to be used elsewhere in the diocese. My role mainly involved planning and leading worship, youth work and pastoral care. The church seemed to take to the 'experiment', as it was called, very well and lay led initiatives and leadership blossomed. A large number of people took responsibiilty very effectively for many aspects of the life of the church. It was, however, quite difficult when the church eventually returned to a more traditional form of ministry under a single incumbent because people had got used to thinking in a new way about the life of the church. And that points to one of the challenges thrown up by self supporting ministry. It asks us to think about ministry in different ways - as something more collaborative, more flexible, more rooted in being present to one another in creative ways and very conscious of life beyond the church. These things have been and are features of good ministry all down the ages, but non stipendiary ministry is raising questions for the church about how we reinterpret some of the more narrowly ecclesiologically focused understandings of ministry that have appeared over the centuries. St Paul and, indeed, all the apostles were SSMs! It is interesting that as the churches in the West emerge from Christendom to a more uncertain, less confident relationship with society, we are seeing a return to forms of ministry that have their roots in a missionary church. Flexibility, the willingness to be known as a Christian and to speak from wherever one is placed in society, and the ability to resource oneself for ministry or share the resources one has with others to enable ministry are key concepts, I believe.
As an incumbent, I also trained and ministered with an SSM curate and learned a huge amount about utilising gifts, especially the gift of time, effectively. I think we both came to see that the key to blending different kinds of ministry in a parish is to spend time and care on communication and trust building. Once there is real honesty of relationship, it becomes much easier to respond to the needs of an area in mission and ministry by using the distinct gifts and perspectives of different kinds of minister, welcoming the differing degrees of time, availability and experience that each person brings.
Many SSMs and NSMs minister mostly in their place of work and that is an area of ministry that I look forward to learning more about. Some SSMs have developed a ministry that is more to do with vision for an innovative project (for example an e church and an internet service offering friendship and pastoral care for the business community.) I hope we can listen to the creative and innovative among our ministers and see what can be developed - God has called us to reach into every corner of society and NSMs and SSMs are sometimes a lone voice, trying to draw the church's attention to important possibilities for mission, ministry and Christian presence.
These are some of the things that excite me about this new role! If you are interested in finding out more about this kind of ministry, see also my post dated 11th April The Gift of Ministry.
Monday, 11 April 2011
The Gift of Ministry; NSM Survey
Would you work 30 hours a week on top of what you already do for the sheer love of it and in response to a sense of vocation? Perhaps you do a certain amount of volunteering or unpaid overtime or perhaps you follow an interest that you find absorbing and fulfilling. Did you know that 27% of the Church of England's priests minister for somewhere between 15 hours and more than 30 hours a week, but receive no financial support from the church other than expenses? (They are not paid a 'stipend' or salary.) In our diocese we call them 'Non Stipendiary Ministers', in many, they are refered to as 'Self Supporting Ministers.'
The Revd Dr Teresa Morgan, a fellow of Oriel College Oxford and, herself, an NSM priest, has produced a new survey of NSMs/SSMs in the Church of England. Many of them report a great deal of satisfaction in their role. Others feel ' ignored, overlooked and underused'. The report challenges dioceses to conduct surveys to find out how their NSM clergy are feeling about the ways in which their ministry is or isn't developed and to help them think about formulating proper strategies for deploying NSMs beyond their curacy (training) years. The survey shows that 46% of NSMs have only ever held one post. Curacy tends to be a good experience and then there is a certain feeling of 'getting stuck', an inability to move on in ministry and use valuable experience for the good of the wider church.
In some dioceses, NSM/SSM clergy are developing their ministry both in traditional roles (as, for example, Area Deans, Priests in Charge, Team Rectors) and in pioneering roles (as, for example, pastors of e churches and internet worship groups or by offering training, HR and finance specialisms within the diocese.) There are probably as many possibilities as there are NSMs. One of the keys to being creative about NSM ministry is developing good relationships of trust between NSM and stipendiary clergy - the roles may demand different approaches to ministry and the use of time, but both are equally valuable within the life of the church and both can be traced back into Christian history.
We have over 40 NSMs in our diocese who come from many different working worlds and bring a huge range of insights and skills to their ministry. I was an SSM parish priest for three short years while I was also a theological college lecturer. A team of three SSMs, together with a number of lay members of the PCC were given responsibility for a large parish in Nottingham by the then Bishop of Southwell. It was enormously hard work and called for the team to pull together in a big way under the leadership of one SSM priest who ministered pretty much full time, but it was very rewarding and meant that another parish in the diocese which did not have quite the same resources could have a stipendiary priest. It also encouraged a range of other people in the church to become involved in leadership and pastoral ministry. Just one example of the way in which NSM/SSM ministry can work.
You can read all about Dr Morgan's report in the Church Times (1st and 8th April editions) or go to
www.1pf.co.uk/SSM.html and click on 'Report 1' and 'Report 2'.
More about this in a week or two when I have digested the report! I'd be interested in your comments.
The Revd Dr Teresa Morgan, a fellow of Oriel College Oxford and, herself, an NSM priest, has produced a new survey of NSMs/SSMs in the Church of England. Many of them report a great deal of satisfaction in their role. Others feel ' ignored, overlooked and underused'. The report challenges dioceses to conduct surveys to find out how their NSM clergy are feeling about the ways in which their ministry is or isn't developed and to help them think about formulating proper strategies for deploying NSMs beyond their curacy (training) years. The survey shows that 46% of NSMs have only ever held one post. Curacy tends to be a good experience and then there is a certain feeling of 'getting stuck', an inability to move on in ministry and use valuable experience for the good of the wider church.
In some dioceses, NSM/SSM clergy are developing their ministry both in traditional roles (as, for example, Area Deans, Priests in Charge, Team Rectors) and in pioneering roles (as, for example, pastors of e churches and internet worship groups or by offering training, HR and finance specialisms within the diocese.) There are probably as many possibilities as there are NSMs. One of the keys to being creative about NSM ministry is developing good relationships of trust between NSM and stipendiary clergy - the roles may demand different approaches to ministry and the use of time, but both are equally valuable within the life of the church and both can be traced back into Christian history.
We have over 40 NSMs in our diocese who come from many different working worlds and bring a huge range of insights and skills to their ministry. I was an SSM parish priest for three short years while I was also a theological college lecturer. A team of three SSMs, together with a number of lay members of the PCC were given responsibility for a large parish in Nottingham by the then Bishop of Southwell. It was enormously hard work and called for the team to pull together in a big way under the leadership of one SSM priest who ministered pretty much full time, but it was very rewarding and meant that another parish in the diocese which did not have quite the same resources could have a stipendiary priest. It also encouraged a range of other people in the church to become involved in leadership and pastoral ministry. Just one example of the way in which NSM/SSM ministry can work.
You can read all about Dr Morgan's report in the Church Times (1st and 8th April editions) or go to
www.1pf.co.uk/SSM.html and click on 'Report 1' and 'Report 2'.
More about this in a week or two when I have digested the report! I'd be interested in your comments.
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