Video for July 2nd, 2026
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video.
One of the most gratifying pieces of correspondence I get are thank you letters. I’m not referring to those to me especially here, but to those dear people who’ve taken the trouble to write to me about the ministry they’ve received from clergy around the diocese. I try to pass the sentiments on to those whose ministry has made such a difference. The letters that are particularly poignant concern clergy walking alongside people and their families as they approach their death and beyond. This is just something that priests do, and just about manageable still, even with the pressures of multiple parishes to look after and the growing burden of compliance. We never really learn to deal with death in our culture. Someone to walk alongside you in those moments, not shy away from the pain and difficult conversations, and even during such tragedy to maintain hope, can transform a dreadful experience into one infused with meaning. So, a huge thank you to all our clergy, pastoral visitors and lay funeral celebrants who do this sort of thing week by week.
The journey of bereavement isn’t linear. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross observed fives stages which people go through: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. These steps aren’t linear. The feelings can co-exist. People can move back and forward between them. Even the acceptance stage isn’t settled. One of the things bereaved people often find hardest is their brave face six months to a year or so after the death has happened. Everyone else is getting on with their lives; their intense emotions continue within, but they feel they can no longer burden people with them. They suffer in silence and alone.
This journey happens in bereavement, but also in any type of change. I noticed all were present in a meeting I held with Bishop’s Council, Finance Committee and Rural Deans in June to reflect together what we need to be doing to foster a sustainable diocese for the future. We started off by confronting reality. We have 406 church buildings. If they close, the people worshipping in them don’t tend to go anywhere else. Spreading the jam ever more thinly doesn’t work. Ideas about mass closure as a solution to multi-parish benefices don’t work. They simply make decline worse – and create a huge liability for the Diocesan Board of Finance who become liable for the insurance. I mentioned the reduction in the available numbers of clergy deployable nationally last week, down to 5500 in 2034 from 8000 today. There will not be enough clergy to fill our vacancies (and for other dioceses also) as some benefices on their third or fourth round of advertising are beginning to discover. That problem is likely to become more widespread. Finally, finance, although on current trends we will likely run out of people before we run out of money! To be financially sustainable we would either need to increase parish contribution by roughly 25% and then continue to increase in line with inflation or reduce our stipendiary clergy count from 58 currently to 40-45 ish. Given that parish contribution to the common fund has failed to keep pace with inflation, never mind increase for the last 10 years and a reduction in clergy numbers to that extent would likely lead to a widespread collapse in ministry that doesn’t sound hopeful. However, if that doesn’t happen, or some variant in between, the diocese will be insolvent in about 10 years, with all our reserves spent and the only option selling houses to pay the bills. Denial would say, “This can’t be happening”, as a means of buffering overwhelming emotions – sadly it is our reality! Anger will say, “Why did this happen?” That anger can be directed to the ‘diocese’ the church commissioners or even at ourselves. We don’t want this to happen on our watch. Analysis of how we’ve got to here is complex and multifaceted, but it doesn’t help to dwell on it. Sometimes there will be a bit of bargaining, the ‘if only response’ often accompanied by guilt and regret. All those responses were evident at our meeting but less articulated was a feeling of deep sadness. I do believe there are some things we can do to turn things around, that have emerged from confronting reality, prayer, consultation and eventual discernment. If the Lord is with us and we are responding to his will, spectacular things are possible. Elijah was reminded when he had reached an absolute end of himself that made space for God to act in a way he didn’t when he was full of self-confidence. Jesus sent the disciples out two by two in ways that excluded success if they relied on themselves alone. We are most definitely in that place ourselves, but we are people of faith not statistics. I sense we are still a bit stuck in the ‘I wish it were different place’. It isn’t, but God is also with us in the place of sadness and re-orientation. Its not Ok to be in denial about reality but it is OK to be honest about the reality of our feelings about that reality. There will be a cost to changing, both in our expectations of one another and in the way in which we exercise ministry as clergy and laity. We do need space to grieve but we need to be ready for the time to move. I’ll say a little but more about that next week.
+Richard