I’m a vicar: ask me anything!

[Holyannie]

Hello,

I’m a Church of England vicar in a semi-rural context. Ask me anything! (Weddings, funerals, Christenings or anything about what a vicar does day to day). 🙂

Really interesting thread. I’m a lapsed Catholic. I am lapsed due to my own experiences of abuse in my family. My parents basically pushed me out of my family through their behaviour in favour of their relationship with the abuser. 2 Catholic priests (uncles) in my own family participated in sweeping the abuse under the rug, 1 of them advised another family member never to mention it because of his experience of working with abusers taught him no good would ever come of speaking up. I called him out on what he had done by explaining to him the impact his choice to sweep away the abuse had on me and my family and he cut me off. Interestingly I recently heard that priest just got an extremely well deserved award for significant humanitarian work he participated in many decades ago. I guess that shows how human and capable of good and bad we all are.

Coupled with the Catholic Churches absolute inability to deal with abusers in their own ranks not to mind their preaching of a need for victims of abuse to forgive abuse that happens elsewhere without giving any useful guidance in anyway keeping victims of abuse safe. That betrayal definitely took any faith in the Catholic Church I had away from me.

How does your church handle abuse differently now? My situation is ongoing so clearly in my own experience the Catholic Church has still not at all faced up to this issue. Are you able to do any better in the Anglican Church or is this an issue you struggle to deal with as well?

What do you think about the role of God in climate change? It looks like we're headed for an increasingly uninhabitable Earth, with mass extinctions and mass migration of humans as large parts become unliveable.

Biblically, God said that he wouldn't do that sort of thing to humans again (Noah's Ark rainbow), what's your view on what is happening? A test? A punishment?

Good morning Vicar!
Not a question, just asking for prayers.
Bit of a long story (but I know you vicars are used to listening to us rambling on).
I am the granddaughter of a vicar and my GP were my heros. He died 25 years ago but my beloved grandmother only died 3 months ago. We held her beautiful funeral in his old church, officiated by the lovely lady curate (who had been a student of my gran in the 1980s). She became a nurse (probably a good thing, as I fainted outside the church and she leapt forward and caught me!) and was called to ministry 25 years later, and trained to be a vicar. Since the funeral, she has offered me so much care and pastoral support - I am so eternally grateful. We have prayed together, and she offers me a safe space to cry, grieve or be as broken as I need to be.

Anyway… her curacy comes to an end in September. But in May, the vicar in charge of the church was offered a promotion to the Cathedral which he has accepted. The church is now in vacancy and she has the chance of a lifetime to stay. So many want her to be appointed. She is so very stressed at the moment, everyone asking her questions, and you will know yourself that it’s not like a normal selection process in a company- it involves a lot of different people and a lot of time. She is still smiling on, reassuring everyone and is an absolute rock to anyone who needs her. I don’t know where I would be in the grieving process without her. Who knew such wonderful friendships could be born in such sadness.
So no questions but please can you pray for my dear vicar friend, for God to calm her mind, help her to be strong during the vacancy period and to put his spirit in the hearts of the selection panel. I can’t pray ‘let her be appointed’ as that is ultimately God’s decision and plan, but let her know she’s loved, after all the love and care she has shown me. I’d love to write her name but it’s outing.

We'll be welcoming a new vicar (and his wife, and their dog) to our church next month. What things would you recommend we do/don't do to help him settle in and feel welcome and comfortable?

this is fascinating. I was brought up in the muscular christianity of the Scottish Protestant Church with hellfire and damnation at every turn, especially for the Catholics. The first time I went into a CofE church I thought it was a Roman Catholic church with all the iconography, statues etc.
I believe that Jesus lived, perhaps several Jesus' lived and that he/they were great teachers and saw how the world could be made better but I don't believe in the divine.
My question: given that I don't believe in the divine but I do try to live a good life, would you say that your Christian God would still love me? Is it like the parent who still loves that awful difficult teenager who tells them that they hate them?
Also - what if it's actually not a Christian God who makes the decision?

@Mariposista she sounds lovely. But she needs to do what's right for her and her family. It may not be in her best interests to stay where she is.

@Toddlerteaplease you're absolutely right. However, in her case, it would be right for her. She wants to stay within the diocese, (so her husband can keep his job, which brings them their main income, the alternative may be living apart which both would hate), keep her son where he is, she loves the community and congregation. It was quite lovely, the other day they had a meeting to discuss the initial stages of the vacancy, and she told me she had decided not to attend (so as not to influence what/who they talked about - but I think her ears were burning), and the next day the archdeacon called her up to reassure her and say, in his way of putting things, that they were not messing her about.

Are you a parent? If so, are you raising your children to have a Christian faith?

Thanks for this. So not all of the CofE affirms women priests, but synod voted to allow them about 30 years ago now. Since we are all justified through the righteousness of Christ, the argument is at the altar all priests are in persona Christi, regardless of gender. In the same way a priest at the altar is in persona Christi if they don’t share another characteristic of Christ. We also look to the female biblical characters you mention such as Phoebe, Priscilla and of course Mary Magdalene, apostle to the apostles.

Yes, I’m a parent and yes, I see raising my child in the faith as part of my vocation as much as my call to priesthood. If he chooses to depart from the faith as an adult and go a different way we won’t love him any less. Statistically in the UK, only 50% of Christian children continue the faith as an adult.

Thanks for this question! It sounds like the kind of church I would apply for. I would say, make sure you are being honest in your parish profile so the vicar knows what to expect when they arrive. Also, the PCC and the congregation need to be realistic: a new vicar isn’t going to suddenly solve all the church’s problems and bring in loads of young families straightaway. So managing the expectations of the congregation is really important in this process. Hope it goes well!

@Holyannie that's you for starting this thread. Have really enjoyed reading through it!

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions, all the best to you and thank you for the work that you do.

The CofE I’m sorry to say also does not have a great track record historically with abuse. Safeguarding is so, so important and I feel so much anger and grief for those who have been hurt by priests. So we have robust safeguarding procedures and training in place now and the culture is changing, but we still aren’t getting it right in my opinion when it comes to helping survivors.

This is an important question. Climate change is being caused by human behaviour: selfishness, over-consumption and an unequal distribution of resources and I am complicit in that. I think God gives us free will and it grieves him that we are destroying the beautiful world he created. Yes that’s an interesting point about the Great Flood as floods happen all the time. Perhaps the promise is that God won’t flood the entire earth and destroy humanity entirely? But I think the onus is on us to try and change the course of climate change, although ultimately everything is in God’s hands.

Yes it is terribly sad really isn’t it? Thank you for your very honest response. Honestly I have yet to see any group, especially families who face up to people who behave like animalistic predators. It seems the very human reactions of minimisation and denial stop abuse from being handled properly anywhere.

From my own experience I have found though that some people live in a very safe world in their own mind’s creation that does not allow for the extent of trauma that other’s experience. They deny other people’s reality for their own ease and comfort and honestly from experience it the betrayal of having your reality denied is as painful as any other form of abuse you will experience as a person. It is abuse too and until we get a grip on that second level of abuse survivor’s suffer from, they will always struggle with fully addressing their trauma.

So many great questions! I’m just taking my son out (I’m on leave this week) but will come back and answer more later x

Interesting thread from someone who was brought up in a Lutheran protestant country .

I wondered if you as part of your training or later on have taken some counselling courses to support you in dealing with your parishioners?

I ask as I think some counselling strategies could be very beneficial for vicars.

2nd question is at funerals writing the sermon if there is an estranged child or a child living abroad and not present during your talk with the family but due to attend funeral, how do you go about this? Do you try to speak with this child in someway. Or do you go by what the family says.

So until he’s 18 does he have to be “in the faith”?

I've never understood why fundraising has to be such a worry for vicarage locally, when the charge nationally is so rich. It doesn't seem fair.

Good morning!

What are your views on divorced couples marrying in church?
My mum married again in 1995 and was only allowed a blessing in the church where as lots of divorced people are now re marrying in churches.
Do you look less favourably on people that have been divorced and wish to marry again in church or do you think that if you’re in love and wishing to marry in church then it’s fine?

Do you need to have three godparents? I read there should be three but I’ve only got two I want to ask for DD3
also do the godparents need to be confirmed or just baptized?

Hello, yes we did some training on listening as part of preparing for ordination, but I’m not a qualified counsellor and I would want to make that distinction. So I will sit and listen to people who want to share their problems and often that’s all people need, but I will refer them to a counsellor if it’s more serious or I feel they could benefit from proper therapy.

It’s really common for their to be complex family dynamics with funerals: I do this a lot. I do encourage people to try and reach out to everyone involved but ultimately it’s down to the next of kin so I wouldn’t go against their wishes. I have sometimes met estranged family members separately and prayed with them or met them in the church if they didn’t want to come to the family funeral but needed space to express their grief.

As he gets older and is old enough to be left home alone, it becomes a different scenario because then he might not want to come to church. In the CofE we have confirmation which people tend to go through from around age 11, and that’s when they formerly take up the Christian faith for themselves, before then they’re just kind of piggybacking along with their parents’ faith. I would definitely want that to be his decision. I was pressured into confirmation as a child before I felt ready and it put me off religion for a while. So I would want any kind of formal commitment to the faith to come from my son.

I find it interesting that people seem to object to the idea of bringing up your child within your own belief system and values, but don’t we all do that? We parent our child according to what we feel is right and they can choose to carry that on or make different choices when they’re older? In fact, I think it makes it easier to do that with formal religion because you can identify where the believes and values come from (church tradition, the Bible etc) and choose to reject them if you want to. Whereas if you are brought up with secular values from a range of places, it can be harder to identify where they have come from because they’re not so explicit?

How lovely 🙂 when we arrived at our current place there was a little welcome basket with tea, biscuits etc and that made us feel very welcome.