The upshot of this has been that (for example), if London has 40 people coming out of college/course for stipendiary ministry and ordains 20 of them, there are 20 people looking for curacies elsewhere in the UK. But if those dioceses that are net receivers cut back on the numbers they take (usually for financial reasons), we end up with a lot of unplaced ordinands. There is no supply and demand formula - though we may need to invent one.

There is no dertermination of how many should  / could be recommended for training each year. All those recommended fo training can commence at the beginninmg of the next academic year. We have had some discussion of capping the number (to help with e.g. college and course budgeting) but have not felt it right to go down that route.

The HofB then has to try to produce enough stipendiary curacies - of course we know how many we will need a couole of years in advance as we know how many are entering training.

Stipendiary candidates are told that their sponsoring diocese may not have a post for them and they may have to go elsewhere. London and Oxford have thuis been net exporters for some years.

Re. Over-supply

We don't operate a policy whereby dioceses only produce clergy for themselves. Stipendiary (and some NSM) candidates are selected to train for the whole CofE - not just their saponsoring diocese. There is no guarantee of a post in that specific diocese necessarily.

I think there are a few issues here:

1. Those dioceses that over-supply ordinands can encourage those that they can't place to go to the Archdiocese of York

2. The northern bishops have to be challenged to appoint more clergy, not to retrench - and that means relaxing or abandoning the Stipendiary Clergy Share formula so that they aren't financially penalised for doing so (and the parishes will have to give more to finance this)

3. We may have to find financial packages to make it more worthwhile for people to move north

4. We need an entrepreneurial approach to appointing clergy. One of my ordinands who moved north didn't even get a non-stipendiary post because it was allegedly outside of policy. If there are people with the vocations and we've paid to train them, it's a scandal when they don't get used.

I appreciate that this is slightly off-track. But one of the points + Pete raises is getting clergy to address the challenge of moving North.

Writing as a stipendiary priest in the Carlisle Diocese, how exactly are clergy being encouraged to move North?

Kevin

Apparently the unpublished (online) C of E stipendiary clergy shares projection goes from 8406 in 2008 to the lower projection for 2017 as 6730 - a reduction of 20%.

We have to bear in mind that the incumbent status posts are somewhat lower than that because every diocese has to count in also curates and sector posts which will also include archdeacons + Church Commisioners funded posts.

The figures I started with from our local paper reporting (apparently almost correctly) what is having to be discussed in deanery synods, clergy chapters, PCCs are the diocese's projections - not seemingly finance driven, or so it is said.

As there are to be much fewer full time clergy "in the system" similar projections must be happening in all dioceses? Has anyone heard? Or have I still got it wrong?

Stuart - great to hear of the mission focus in Exeter, based on scripture as you say, and realism.....while we have to encourage all local churches to reach out and grow, is it not likely that those who  attach less importance to the verses you mention will be less driven to action and less sure of what they have to share with people and will, therefore, be likely to see less fruit?    Maybe we see something Darwinian happening....

Adrian, even as a child, I could not see the point of spending hours on jigsaws.....but I never tried to pretend pieces from very different puzzles ought to fit together ....perhaps the Covenant will lead to some separation of the pieces in the AC puzzle which do not sit comfortably with the 39 articles or the creeds..... and we can stop pretending we have a single puzzle which can be solved with all the pieces fitting.

Nersen, I get the sense that you only ever had one jigsaw set when young and no matter what picture or image you wanted to present you only ever rearranged the same pieces, forcing them together.

Liberal churches, in cities, that know who they are and what they are out to achieve, are also capable of identity and growth, though they also have other values upholding the people who are there and the people they serve who are not there.

Exeter diocese has committed to 25% growth in numbers (participation) over the next five years - with full awareness that this is an ambitious target. Fundamental to the approach here is an acceptance that growth comes locally, in each church, and that the right steps for each church community to drive growth will vary based on demographics, location, where they're starting from - and certainly churchmanship as well. It would be daft to impose a high church, evangelical or liberal model on churches which do not have that tradition - although there is an implied assumption here that every church will be evangelistic. It's expected that different churches will look to learn from each other's examples of growth - whether that's liberal learning from evangelical, evangelical learning from anglo-catholic or whatever.

The commitment to growth stems primarily from reflection on the Great Commission of Mt 28 (or Mk 16, Lk 24, Jn 20, Act 1) and on Paul's words (Rm 1, Rm 15) and on the approach of the apostolic church to planning its mission (eg Act 15). Secondarily, it also involves a frank acknowledgement that the church must grow or disappear. Whilst the CofE disappearing isn't necessarily a problem (although personally I'd regret it), the church in the broader sense disappearing would be, as its witness goes with it.

Bringing this round to clergy numbers, one strand within this is calling out more vocations to local ministry - by which I mean unpaid and within the local church community rather than any technical definition - be that ordained or any other type of ministry. This links to a realisation that models of ministry are changing and to achieve and sustain growth in the long term will need many more trained leaders/ministers than we could pay for in stipendary clergy.

Hi Clare.... the Bishop of London has always pushed hard for evangelism eg every church to run a course like Alpha or Christianity Explored to reach out and to get help from churches with experience in running such courses....there was not that much take-up from smaller and liberal churches in my deanery synod.   Trouble is that it is hard for some churches to run those courses when, if pushed, their clergy are going to tell people that they have big doubts about the authority of scripture or think it is just wrong on certain issues and other religions are equally valid paths up the mountain etc.   Reaching out is often unattractive to "liberals" as many do not see any real need for pepole to change their beliefs or behaviour  - and if they do have a go, they can easily end up undermining biblical material if people ask questions - it is not surprising that growth does not result.....  but it is very interesting that even in postmodern Britain, there is great church growth when people take a high view of the authority of scripture e.g. teaching that Jesus said John 14:6 and meant what he said  (rather than saying that he might not have said it and it does not mean what it says...that does not grow churches, for obvious reasons)