My discovery that our real needs are mysteriously met

Because clergy life was a constant challenge to make ends meet, it meant that for many of us the vocation to the ministry was a vocation to comparative poverty. You were forced by law to live in a house and grounds which you could not afford, and you just had to rely on God and a few people’s goodness to exist.

No Christmas dinner?
I remember so well the first year in my father’s vicarage in Blackburn in 1937. It was lunchtime on the Sunday before Christmas Day. My father put his hand in his pocket and took out a sixpenny piece which he put on the table. “That is all I have until I am paid in January,” he said. “I’m overdrawn at the bank to the limit, so I’m afraid it means we cannot have a Christmas dinner this year.”

A few days later, when my mother was going out of the front door to spend the last remains of her housekeeping money(for things like cheese and bread), there, on the doorstep, were two paper bags filled with all we could want for Christmas dinner! We never found out who had given these to us.

No holiday?
Roughly fifteen years later, when I was married and working south London, it was a year when we could not go to the Church Army holiday home (because you were not allowed to go two years running). For some reason I had not been able to fix up a ‘locum’ holiday for the period allocated to us for a summer vacation. “Whatever shall we do for a holiday?” my wife asked.

This was an important question, because clergy work 6 days a week, and we often started at 6am and would finish at midnight. Life was hectic and by the time summer came we were exhausted. I said “don’t worry”, if the good Lord wants us to have a holiday away from the house, He will provide it.”

A few days before we were due for our summer break, I received a letter from the Bishop of Southwark, saying that a solicitor in Sawbridgeworth had written to ask if any young clergyman and his family needed a holiday, and would they like to use his house for three weeks? He even left his German Aupair to help us.

How grateful we were!!

Can’t pay the bill?
On another occasion we had an unexpectedly large bill for over £100 and no money . Out of the blue came almost the exact amount from a source which would not normally enter our heads as a ‘benefactor’ in time of need. It was, in fact, a cheque from the Inland Revenue for income tax that had been overpaid!

God, Not chance!
I could multiply these examples. You just could not put these experiences down to lucky chance. What it meant in our lives was that we learned to trust God that he would provide whatever was really needed. As in the case of the holiday in Sawbridgeworth, we learned that if something could not be provided from our own resources, then the thing to do was to pray, to trust and to wait, and to know that if it was God’s will then the need would be met.

It’s different now!
Today, the policy is quite rightly followed that the parish pays the working expenses of the clergy, while clergy stipends (incomes) have gradually increased and levelled, so that all clergy get the same rate of pay, no longer dependent on the wealth or poverty of their parish. The income received by Anglican ministers these days is very considerably less than other professional people with the same higher education, but that is offset by their living in a house where the council tax is paid for them and the diocese takes responsibility for the maintenance of the fabric, (although not the interior decoration).

Mind you, when clergy retire they have then to find somewhere to live, and somehow find the money to rent or buy a house, because a clergy house is a ‘tied’ house and goes with the church, and must be vacated ready for the next minister.

This is still a real problem for some clergy, particularly if they have not been in the ministry long enough to qualify for a full pension, and if they do not own their own property. The Church of England Pensions Board has a number of options to help clergy find somewhere to live, such as part-ownership.

On the other hand, many clergy are now coming into the ordained ministry when they have had a secular job for some years, and usually their spouse is working as well, so they often have their own home already. These days, this means that a clergy family may have two incomes. This was unheard of in days past, when a ‘good’ clergy wife always stayed at home, looked after the house which was usually huge and a great deal of work, cared for the family, answered the door and the phone, got involved in parish life and generally helped her husband.

The modern clerical family therefore has more money in real terms than some of the past generations, and that makes life easier because the cost of feeding, clothing and educating families, paying rent or mortgage for their personal property if they have one, domestic bills, managing a car (or two) etc continues to spiral upwards.


So what?
By now you may be asking ‘What’s the point of all this?’ and I want to answer that question in my next posting.