Curacies and How to Survive Them

By Matthew Caminer

It is common knowledge that many curacies run into difficulties and that this is something people often feel constrained from discussing openly. Curacies and How to Survive Them offers readers the opportunity to listen in on a series of fast-flowing conversations between a psychologist, a theologian and a clergy spouse, which explore frequently occurring dilemmas and challenges. Using fictionalised case studies, collated from the true stories of curates and training incumbents, the book offers principles and strategies for understanding and addressing some common issues. Its emphasis is on the dynamics and psychology of the critical relationship between curates and their training incumbents. Attractively styled in a way reminiscent of the highly successful collaborations between John Cleese and Robin Skynner, Families and How to Survive Them and Life and How to Survive It. The conversational tone offers an engaging alternative to academic, theological and ecclesiastical writing. By highlighting issues that are not generally discussed, it will be immensely useful to people who might otherwise feel isolated and helpless.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Apr 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780281073443

Book preview

First published in Great Britain in 2015

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

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London SW1P 4ST

www.spckpublishing.co.uk

Copyright © Matthew Caminer, Martyn Percy and Beaumont Stevenson 2015

Cartoons copyright © Adrian Bradshaw-Jones 2015

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The Scripture quotation marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The quotation marked KJV is taken from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, and is reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–0–281–07343–6

eBook ISBN 978–0–281–07344–3

Typeset and eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

Foreword by Sheila Watson, Archdeacon of Canterbury

Acknowledgements

About the authors

Introduction

The conversations

1 The nightmare curate

2 Yes, because it’s policy

3 Same old, same old

4 One of the gang

5 I know it’s your day off, but . . .

6 The workplace bully

7 Working agreement? What working agreement?

8 Day 200: still at sea

A more excellent way

Need help now?

Top tips and resources

Your support network

Curates

Incumbents

Dioceses

Congregations

Further reading

Notes

Search items

Dedicated to all those who have creatively struggled both as curates and incumbents, as did Jacob with his angel, to discover a fuller identity

Foreword

Eavesdropping on conversations is always tempting. This time you should give in to the temptation. Matthew Caminer, clergy spouse and management consultant, Beau Stevenson, priest and psychotherapist, and Martyn Percy, for ten years principal of a theological college, bring a wealth of experience to the complex question of training curacies. The result is an authentic, instructive and entertaining conversation about the path from ordination as a deacon to becoming a priest and a vicar.

It is easy to be anecdotal about ‘how it was in my day’ and critical of education and development in today’s world. The profile of candidates and incumbents has radically changed in the last 25 years. Former stereotypes of the curate as young, male and white no longer apply. Modern-day working agreements, policy documents and modern management are simple targets, when things go wrong. The authors do focus on where things go wrong, while acknowledging that many curacies go well and that tight corners can be the making of us. The book’s strength is that in so doing it highlights points of learning. The case studies take us below the surface to examine the complex and paradoxical dynamics in relationship, vocation and authority structures.

I was not surprised to read that most of the respondents in the underlying survey asked to remain anonymous. One of the most difficult issues in a training curacy is often the conspiracy of silence. There is a reluctance to name problems as they arise, whether it be curate talking to incumbent, incumbent to curate, or either one to the diocesan officer, archdeacon or bishop. The reluctance is understandable and often stems from the best of motives. Some are blind to the early problems. Others hope that it is a temporary blip and that things will improve. Many are wary of being misunderstood or seen as ‘trouble’ by bishop or archdeacon.

The book tellingly breaks the silence. The vignettes are perceptive – sometimes amusing, sometimes heartbreaking – sketches which, taken seriously, throw into relief what is happening underneath the surface. They challenge, for example, diocese, parish, incumbent and curate to check whether a policy of ‘wait and see’ is godly wisdom or an approach that runs the risk that the situation will escalate to a point of pastoral breakdown. Where curacies do run into difficulties the authors encourage us to serious reflection and mature action rather than ‘letting off steam’ to friends or colleagues or keeping a private record in case there is trouble.

In holding up such a mirror to us, there may, of course, be some discomfort. As they peel the layers from the onion, the authors do not claim infallible judgements but offer thought-provoking insights to make us have a closer look at how we relate as individual clergy and within the corporate body of the Church. Like all overheard conversations, you are likely to find yourself wanting to join in, sometimes strongly agreeing, sometimes disagreeing. The questions at the end of each chapter positively invite us to do just that. Treated superficially, these mini-questionnaires may seem as mechanistic as some of the policy documents for curacies. If we stop there, we do less than justice to the authors’ desire to ensure that all such tools are used as living documents by diocese and local church. I hope that many will take the trouble to follow them up.

At the heart of every curacy for curate and incumbent is that sense of God’s call – and at its heart is the deceptively simple call to live out our faith following the footsteps of Jesus. It is usually harder than we expect but more rewarding than our wildest dreams. It is always worth deeper reflection and prayer. You will find food for this journey here.

Sheila Watson

Archdeacon of Canterbury

Acknowledgements

This book couldn’t have come about without the contributions of many training incumbents and curates, past and present. The fact that they are not named does not diminish our gratitude to them for their being prepared to be vulnerable, frank and open. Thanks also to Archdeacon Sheila for her Foreword, and to Alison and everyone at SPCK for their wisdom and guidance; to all our friends at Ripon College Cuddesdon for hosting our meetings, and to everyone who has helped by reviewing the text, making suggestions and above all encouraging us in this project. Finally, a special thank you to Adrian Bradshaw-Jones for the cartoons which appear from time to time to exercise the other side of our brains, thereby helping us to work our way through some fairly meaty topics.

About the authors

Matthew Caminer is an independent management consultant specializing in process improvement. In addition to his professional work, he is a writer and speaker, regularly leading workshops for vocation seekers and ordinands, with their spouses, for theological colleges and dioceses. Matthew has been a diocesan work consultant, a consultant to parish teams, and a coach and mentor in the workplace. His first book was A Clergy Husband’s Survival Guide (SPCK, 2012).

The Very Revd Professor Martyn William Percy is Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. He was from 2004 to 2014 Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, one of the world’s leading Anglican theological colleges. A member of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oxford, Martyn writes and teaches on modern ecclesiology. His recent books include Anglicanism: Confidence, Commitment and Communion (Ashgate, 2013) and Thirty-Nine New Articles: An Anglican Landscape of Faith (Canterbury Press, 2013).

The Revd Canon Beaumont Stevenson is Pastoral Care Advisor to the Diocese of Oxford, a member of the Institute of Group Analysis and a practising psychotherapist. He helped co-found the Introductory Course in Group Analysis, and taught Pastoral Psychology at St Stephen House, Oxford. For many years he was Senior Chaplain of the psychiatric hospitals of Oxford and a member of the staff support team. As former diocesan training officer, he has a particular interest in helping clergy teams identify their common sense of vocation.

Introduction

Curacies and How to Survive Them may sound like an invitation to watch and listen while we explore strategies for escaping the gloom, failure and despondency that are presumably endemic in curacies. The real state of curacies is a little different. You only need to talk to people who have completed them to see that for many it is plain sailing and more, something to celebrate. Here’s a flavour:¹

‘I had a great curacy. My training incumbent was supportive and encouraging and did a great job.’

‘The freedom to discover my own way to be! Curacy has been less prescriptive than I anticipated and this has been a joy!’

‘My curacy was the making of me.’

‘Confirmation that I am in the right place, that so many people say to me to the manor born, I was called to be a priest. It’s just awesome.’

‘Taking Holy Communion, taking funerals, being a part of a church family who love me and I them.’

The list could continue, but even these few insights make the point: for the three years that most curacies last, the partnership between the curate and the training incumbent is often a very positive experience and a blessing to all involved.

Even the curacies described above will have had their ups and downs: that is normal in any training relationship. Sadly, however, some take a different course:

‘Denied opportunities to gain experience, not given adequate pastoral oversight or support by the training incumbent and told that, as a curate is only around for three or four years, I wasn’t a real member of the team.’

‘Lack of support from incumbent. Lack of any support from the diocese even though they knew things were difficult.’

‘Abused, threatened and bullied!’

We will look at examples of the problems experienced during curacies as we go through the book, but there is little doubt that they exist, and of their consequences. It was a frequently recurring theme when I was researching my book for clergy husbands,² and a recent book that tracks the experiences of curacies³ supports this: ‘Unfortunately, some curacies encounter difficulties, despite the best of intentions . . . you do not have to travel far in the Church of England to find a story about a difficult curacy.’

Many of the problems encountered during curacies are temporary and surmountable learning experiences from which everyone benefits. Occasionally, though, the situations are disturbing for everyone involved and require intervention, separation of the people concerned, or even serious decisions about future ministry. Even when it is only a transient phase, the experience can feel extremely uncomfortable at the time. If the curacy then takes a wrong turn, a lot of effort may be required to turn the situation round, and then not before there has been emotional fall-out. Tim Ling grounds curacies in this reality, describing a complex transition from the life before to the life after ordination:⁴

Anglican priesthood is at the same time deeply personal and irreducibly corporate; it is shaped by context but subject ultimately only to God. Little wonder that new entrants to the ‘clerical profession’ find themselves challenged by questions of authority, identity, ambiguity and practice.

Although difficulties in curacies are by no means a new phenomenon, the context for today’s Church and the way it operates is in a period of very rapid evolution. The demographic mix of those offering themselves for ordination has undergone a major shift, and new models of parish ministry are emerging to reflect changing attitudes to organized religion, falling numbers, depleted funding and a renewed emphasis on mission.

In the meantime, the combined influence of the Hind Report and Common Tenure, along with the relaunch of Post-Ordination Training as IME4-7,⁵ has resulted in new processes and new ways of thinking that colour all aspects of curacies. Like any changes, these take time to get used to, but some people have described the new approaches as prescriptive, over-engineered and mechanistic, with a strong touch of one-size-fits-all, overlaid with a skewed academic emphasis. The approaches are sometimes seen as bureaucratic, requiring extra work by training incumbents, while placing an increased burden on already stretched diocesan staff. For some newly ordained curates and their training incumbents, they induced a sense of ‘panic and disbelief’, as one curate put it, so soon after the euphoria of the service of ordination.

The Church is not indifferent to this, as demonstrated by ongoing work under the banner Resourcing Ministerial Education; and, in 2014, Ministry Division issued a report⁶ on the selection and training of training incumbents in recognition that things were not as they should be, that urgent action was required, and certainly rejecting a default assumption that if a curacy goes wrong it must be the curate’s fault. Simultaneously, individual dioceses