What I Miss About Curacy

Before I say anything else I must state, in absolute terms, that I have the best darn job in the world. Whitton, Lundun Tahn, Boeing 747s, charging Stags - love it love it love it. The parish, its people, the community, all of it - love it love it love it.

Yet it is worthy of comment that I miss my curacy and miss it considerably. I think that these two things are not mutually incompatible, so feel able to open these thoughts out - in case they are of use to other folk (professionally or voyeuristically). 

Curacy (in the 'training role' sense) is a specific, once-only gift. I have often been annoyed by those who, without reason, have mumped about their training experience, the free house, the free professional on-site tuition, the willing folk of the parish who entrust some of their life's needs to the Noobie. There are, of course, those who have appalling curacies - but they are the small minority. I am not one such lad - mine was good, very good. 

What I miss about curacy is the envelope that surrounded me as I ministered. Perhaps it was a cocoon but it was a nice place to be. Part of that was found in being part of a Team Benefice, but knowing that one's first ministerial steps were over a soft landing was a specific relief and joy. That ''stableiser" thing in the first weeks and months gave way to simply being able to work alongside someone else who had to do a similar job, someone with whom things could be discussed and dreams dreamt. Being the Vicar changes that, subtly, with the job of incumbent being surround more in a sort of loneliness than the old life. Yes, I miss having a Training Incumbent and all the dimensions such a person brings.  

Having the buck stop with me, as it were, is a two-edged sword. I like to think I am an energetic and creative man, with a comfort for being decisive. I like having the buck stop with me, but it brings its own stresses and strains, as I am not one who is always as convinced by my own rightness as I might convey. In short, I worry, more than I used to as a curate. 

Curacy is a far more pastoral ministry I find. I am blessed indeed by the presence of another priest for whom pastoralia is a clear gift. I remember, as a curate, wondering if I was 'stealing' all the priestly stuff while the Boss dealt with strategy, money and the stones in the walls. He was very graceful, and I think I now know why. Modern incumbents are less about direct pastoral work than perhaps they once were. Mine is, by default (which is to say I didn't opt for a change in focus per se) a more strategic working life, and one where I have to trust much of the pastoral to the care of others. While in hindsight it seems obvious, it has been an unexpected change in my ministry. 

Whilst I am a pratt a lot of the time (or shall we say 'smiling fool'), curacy was a more appropriate platform to be the clerical clown, the funny man, the ball of slightly unhinged energy. Incumbency is marked more by the demands of being strong through changes, resilient in the face of direct criticism that is not found in training. I am the chairman of the board, promoted from marketting and entertainment! I think I look at it as having 'grown up' in ministry (although I am still a nutter from time to time).

Taking the lead is exposing and vulnerable. Hiding behind a leader is safe and comfy. That said, being in the front seat is exciting and nail-bitey and the uncertainties are compelling. People who said that the learning curve from curacy to incumbency is steeper than that from old life to curacy were right. 

But I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. 

Curacy ... a Guide

The Oxford Diocese Beauties - June 2008

For what are, I hope, obvious reasons (if you are more than a passing acquaintance to this blog), I have been thinking a considerable amount about the last three years and the profound honour of the ministry entrusted to my care. I can confidently claim my curacy as being a success - perhaps one of the most successful, not a claim I make lightly or carelessly.Within a breath of time, I will be a curate in a vicar's clothes, and a new and very different ministry will have started. I want, therefore, to consign some thought for posterity, as a tool of reflection for me, and maybe as a helpful tool for someone else later.

So, my Vernacular Top Ten Tips for a Kicking Curacy. 

1. Reaping and Sowing - the absolute truth of this ministry in training is that we get out in direct proportion to what we put in. We are called to work hard, to graft. A finicky over-focus on time off or study-time is not, I believe, what it is about. Those who have had the better curacies are the priests who have had to be reminded on many occasions about life/work balance. After all, ours is the best job in the world. We are not in sole charge of anything except perhaps our diaries, but get to go out do some vicaring and enjoying the rich blessings of ministry without some of the stresses and responsibilities of incumbency. 

2. Loving them into the Kingdom - the phrase taught to me by my Incumbent, this just about sums up every moment of any ministry. In this case, I refer to the level with which curates must fall in love with our ministerial field, its people and its life. I am passionate about Aylesbury and I have set my heart to do whatever is in my power to add to its life. Our communities (parish or wider afield) are the greatest gift in the world to us. Any lesser a view means you can't fully embrace them as brothers and sisters. 

3. The grace to learn - curacies are training posts. We are always fledglings to one level or another, and a heart to learn and the grace to accept a lesson can only be the winning ways in this life we lead. We may arrive good at some things (by God's  grace), but the minute we forget that we are beginners is a moment of great peril. Only someone with a heart to learn can be taught. 

4. The Boss - I have spoken of this elsewhere, but it is still worthy of note here. To my mind, and in all normal circumstances (there are always exceptions, of course), our Training Incumbents know best. Even when they don't (and it is conceivable), their choices and directions are made for our development. Graciousness is about the best way of showing appreciation for that person who has or will devote a considerable proportion of three years to our specific personal growth. Rarely in any walk of life are any trainees so blessed by the experience, time and prayer of one person in such a complete way. If they seem to act like they know best, it is probably because they do. 

5. The people - often passive or unknowing in this, they are much of the source of our learning. Our first clumsy bedside encounters, the first funeral, the first assembly, passing comments that stick to us, feedback (there is a little in curacy) - all of these things improve us. Even conflicts (as there are in churches) are a source of a rich education, all the while remembering that we are part of the encounter. This speaks, I think, of loving the people into the Kingdom with a grateful heart. Even the most talented Training Incumbent can do nothing with their curate in an empty room or field. 

6. The unexpected - three years I would have stated confidently that I was not cut out for ministry in schools. I would have done an assembly a month as a box-ticking exercise and let those who I perceived to be better than me do that bit of the job. God knows better than us, and I thanks God for that because I couldn't have been more wrong about that first assessment. This is but one of a myriad examples that I could give you. Conversely, some things that I thought were "my thing" have become the things I gain least pleasure from now. A heart to accept the unexpected will, I believe, be regularly surprised. 

7. Pecking Order - the 'Curate in Ministerial Raptures' will always get this wrong: (1) Family (2) Self (3) Ministry. The second speaks not of the very thing I denounced in Point 1, but of a need to ensure that the battery is charged before it energises others. This is place for retreats, prayer, reading, study, or just a little of that elusive thing in a ministerial life - sofa time. However, the lesson it has taken longest to learn (if indeed I ever did), is that my family overwhelmingly trump every other thing. Yes, of course there are exceptions and missing meetings or key services in favour of baby-sitting just speaks of poor organisation. This Point refers to taking them as seriously as the work, and both need careful organising to exist (or even stand a chance of existing) side by side. 

8. Have Fun - I have known some curacies to founder, or to remain stunted and never to fully grow. They were all characterised by a lack of fun and enjoyment (that is not to say that such a thing was the cause of the 'issues'). Laugh with people, laugh at yourself, even laugh at and with you Incumbent - it's allowed. Ministry is not an opportunity to be professional poe-faced, because that is as attractive to the world as flatulence. Yes, some of the things we do or witness are just ridiculous, as are we at times - largely because this is a theatre of human-beings doing our best together. 

9. Trust God - perhaps the one that should have gone at the top, but the statement of the obvious that is often the obvious understatement. Those of us blessed with an ordained ministry will know how many hurdles we have hopped through to get to this point. If we think for a moment that we got here by own efforts alone, and not within the calling that carries us in our lives, then we are stupid and conceited. God got us here, and God will guide us on, if we let Him.

10. Ministry is Us, but different - emerging from three years of this, I can see that I am fairly well the same bloke that was trained, but that I have a few tool more to help me along the way. I have not turned into some Angel, become a better man, acquired a more robust conscience or made me any less able to make mistakes than I was before I took this collar. If anything, I am 'me', but in the right place. What I was good at before I am still good at, and what I knew I was poor at, I am still poor at (notwithstanding Point 6). I put this here because I wish I had known that at the start. Early ministry was, for me, characterised by a deep sense that I was failing to meet a standard that I had always assigned to priests. Early blogs posts here will confirm that. Now I am, finally, at peace that I was formed in a greater part by the life I lived before all this started, and that I must embrace that formation accordingly (and not shun it as I had been tended to do). 

There is so much more that can be written and the experiences of others will vary, of course. I fail to see how I could have been more blessed, by the life, company, training and experience that I have had here in Aylesbury. More specific thoughts and thanks will be written later. 

Guide Me, Oh Thou Training Incumbent

One of my small claims of success in my former business life  was that for the company in the area in which I worked - London in this case - I was responsible for the identification of 40% of the staff newly promoted to management roles. This ranged from noticing, identifying, promoting, training and developing these individual men and women. This is something of which I am perhaps proudest, as I regard training and development to be a key duty of management. A decade later, no small number of these people are in full manager roles in large stores around London. I regard it as one my natural skills and one that I was called to use for the betterment of others in their careers. 

I am in a training role now. I am subject to training and development, and I consider it to be a God-given gift. Nothing less. 

To the best of my knowledge, in the Church of England, everyone who wears a dog-collar (notionally or in fact) has been the worthy recipient of a curacy. The role of curate (or more accurately, 'assistant curate' as the Incumbent is always the curate, having 'cure of souls' with the Bishop) is broadly a training role. Some retain this position after training, but on the whole, curates are those being trained into their ministry and out towards self-sufficient ministries such as incumbencies, sector chaplaincies, armed forces chaplaincies and so on. Curates are trained and developed by their 'Training Incumbents' - those priests of experience and relevant skill who are designated to oversee curacies. If I listen to some curates, Training Incumbents appear to be either woeful or wonderful - never occupying the middle ground. I am blessed with the latter. 

If I may be so bold as to say, for I am am manifestly not a training incumbent, the job of one is to receive a raw deacon, discern the skills and talents that they bring (often buried in soft soil during theological education while the Bible and Moltmann are discussed at length), apply them to things that are outside of the experience of the cleric in their care, and with any luck, hope that this discernment was right. In the case of my incumbent,   I work with a man who gives up many of the 'cherries' from the tree that I may enjoy them. Some things energise priests, and a good number of those things are placed in my hands, leaving him a lot of the hard-slog stuff. I do not under-rate or under-estimate the kindness of this, and as a result, I enjoy a very good training experience. The fellow that I work with has worked me out very well, knowing how it is that I tick - and has even found a way of doing the thing I don't normally take well, and 'putting me straight' on occasions. We both fill a large space by virtue of our personalities, but I sense that he stands aside many times to let me bask in the light and enjoy the experience of curacy. I have been exposed to such a wide range of experiences - school, civic, armed forces, church financial, techy - and so the list goes on. I have been given every chance and opportunity to discover things that I seem to have a gift for - and without the wisdom of my incumbent, not one would have been made manifest to me. I am truly and richly blessed by him.

Curacy is a rare gift in life. It is an extended period of on-the-job training. It needs to be received with generosity (for as natural leaders, we need to be generous enough to accept that we are not already the perfect priest). It also needs to be received with gratitude and humility, and for this reason I have a very considerable issue with curates who want to run the show at diocesan level or even higher. To be trained acknowledges the need, and to have the grace to receive it while it there. I believe that while not a universal thing, most curacies are good and positive, and surely one of the most significant sacraments that a priest could ever receive. 

We'll Meet Again ...

... oh no you won't!

This post is by way of 'homage' to the 'fresh meat' who are currently in the middle of their Leaver's Weeks etc. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the life of a priest, the process by which we arrive at our pious perfection is ordinarily by way of a theological college, be that as a full-timer or as a part-timer. That time must come to an end, and such a time is greeted in one of two ways: gladly or else with a sense of panic and mourning. Normal folks leave college glad of the experience, but champing at the bit to get back into real life, earn some shekels, eat in some privacy. Others feel 'called' to theological college, and for them, being dragged kicking and screaming from the bosom of the establishment is a grievous affair. The judges are still out as to whether the latter breed of ordinand is likely to flourish in the real world - I have my views and they are backed now by examples, but for now 'no names no pack-drill'. 

So, like teenagers at the end of GCSEs, there is the frentic 'you will keep in touch won't you?', and 'here is my Ember Card with my new address on it; come and visit soon, please'. This won't happen, and an ordinand is likely to retain maybe two close friends from college days. The rest will become memories, and that is quite normal.

So, some Cloakey advice for the Fresh Meat of 2010 (that was my nickname at College where I was, generally, the resident pain in the arse):

1. You get out what you put in (reaping and sowing?) - this is the maxim by which I minister in Aylesbury. It worked for me in my former working life and it is the case now. If you pour love and enthusiasm into your work, you will enjoy good times. If you clock-watch, adopt self-pity for prayer time lost, for example - you will not do at all well in a ministry that demands love and joy from you every stinking day of the week!

2. Always a Trainee - in your Curacy, you never ever stop being a trainee. I have seen and heard of curacies where the little dollink has spent his/her first week or two learning, and then the successive weeks dictating terms like an old pro. No mate, with humility you shall learn. With humilty you shall learn from not only your Training Incumbent but also from little Mrs Miggins who never speaks to you. The minute that you think you are better than the Incumbent is the minute you have resolutely failed.

3. It is a job of work - and needs to be treated as such. We have all had these misty dreams of a ministry spent in dusty books, on our knees praying, gawping at Icons - but that is what we do when we go on holiday. Where you are going is a coal-face, and you need to dirty your hands and take up the tools and work. Any notion that the job should 'feed you' is folly. We ministers do the feeding, we have to look elsewhere to feed ourselves. 

4. Have fun and do not take yourself too seriously - a healthy sense of irony and a healthy sense that you are 'but a worm' is no bad way of setting out on a day's encounter at the coal face. An expert in liturgy a fit priest doesn't necessarily make. Laugh about life, be thankful and never never never never never stop being grateful that God called you to do this work. Oh, the amount of priests I know who feel that they are there by right ....

5. Family first - in the great scheme of things, the Good Lord demands that you raise your kids and attend to the vocation of your marriage before all else. Do not render your kids orphans or your spouse partnerless. Many of the 'Fresh Meat' folk have young families - and yes, they will impinge on that Messiah Complex time. They will keep your feet on the ground, and they need to. Life in ministry has good days and bad for time at home - so be greedy for family time, not consider it a flexible padding until the next opportunity to go out and be jolly popular again!

6. Under promise and Over deliver - and never over promise and under-deliver. One may seem pants, but the other certainly is pants. 

7. Say NO - it won't kill you, really. Excessive Yesses might, however. 

8. Expect the Unexpected - if being Selected for training weren't mad enough, you will discover that life is a wide panoply of things that will bite you on the butt. They are good and bad in equal measure. Having a heart to expect the unexpected will serve you well. Try and avoid becoming set in your ways until at least the third month!

9. The Years - I was once told that they love you in the first year, hate you in the second and put up with you in the third. Remove the peaks and troughs and I can confirm this as fact. The heady diaconal days soon give way to 'business as usual' - expect it and don't be discouraged by it. 

10. What are you? This is where I might be controversial, but it is my Blog, so there. Are you going to be ordained as a modified Licensed Lay Reader or are you going to be ordained a Priest. Are you going to be an ordained 'minister'? All Christians are ministers. What I am saying is recognise the distinctiveness of your Charism. Ordination is not a promotion for a comeptant youth worker. It is not the front door to Preaching Central - ordination for you is to the priesthood. That is the job you have accepted from God and that is the job you must do. Administer the Sacraments.

Well, there you go - a little list for a Friday. Those who know me well will know how many of those I have lapsed in already. 

To the Leavers -  may God go with you to your new ministries, to your new homes and to your new lives. May He grant you strength to walk forward in your work and to remind you daily in whose strength you work. May your families be protected from your ministry and become an asset to it. Blessing to you all, you lucky lucky lucky lucky .... people.