Having recently found myself in a conversation with someone who, in their mid-fifties, found themselves on the end of a 'too old' conversation when they made an approach for a clergy post I guess I should not be shocked by the clerical vacancy which proudly proclaimed that they wanted 'maturity not ancient!'.
I guess I should merely shrug and take as read the General Synod's document (GS 1979) on
Resourcing Ministerial Education in the Church of England and proposal 8:
Candidates over 50
Candidates who will be under 50 at ordination will continue to attend a BAP, to ensure national commonality of standards.
Candidates over the age of 50 at ordination will be selected locally by the bishop.
Candidates over 50 at ordination will not receive the standard pooled grant: the cost of their training will fall directly to the diocese.
Now what does this mean in practice I wonder? Let me offer the view I see from the place in which I currently hide:
First and foremost this means that anyone who begins the journey to ordination and looking to being ordained at Petertide (June) will need to be 47 (and something) when they begin their three years of training (if two years full-time deduct a year). Now taking into account the average time that those I have dealt with take to progress through the discernment process this means that those who feel a calling to ordaining ministry will really need to be no more than forty-five and a half to ensure that they qualify for the under 50 at ordination situation.
'So what's the problem?' I hear you ask.
The reply to which is the reality that already I am hearing of where some who are already training and paying for the training themselves because of their age; their diocese being unable to afford to pay from their own pool of money. This is what 'the cost of their training will fall directly to the diocese' really means. There's no money from central funds to cover the cost of those who will most likely bring 20+ years of stipendiary or non-stipendiary ministry and with the reality that there's less money in the diocese to pay for day-to-day operational costs.
When I asked someone in the vocations business they mumbled about 'cost-effectiveness' (meaning number of years in ministry divided by cost of training) and 'effective ministry' (meaning the complete cobblers that we can only effectively minister to those ±10years either side of our age!). It seems that the baseline by which we seek to support is moving towards the situation where calling is tempered by age rather than a clear and obvious sense of (confirmed by others and testing) vocation.
At one level I can understand the thinking behind this as we see contraction of training as it withdraws into something that seems to set aside the diversity of training that schemes and colleges provided and reconnects with the more common ordination examination approach of old. The good old CofE is trying to cut its coat according to its cloth.
On a different level we are seeing the CofE look to restriction of training and opportunity and, more serious to the good functioning of our denomination I fear, engaging in something ageist. Our hope is not in God's calling but the age of the clergy - and I have to say that having met some excellent young clergy I can understand their hope, but like the Curate's egg, not all of them are good and age is not the Philosophers' Stone that turns some of the young would be clerics to gold!
When this comes before Synod I can but hope and pray common sense (and a lack of ageist tosh) prevails!
You may now turn over your papers and discuss
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