A few more at the local church level...
Church wardens - have the legal responsibility for the
local church's finances, property and staff. This means it's their role to ensure
that the church's bills are paid on time, church buildings are properly
maintained, staff remuneration packages comply with employment laws and so on
and so on. The great thing about all this is that it serves the whole church
by taking so much off the vicar's plate. When people train for ordained
ministry through studying at a theological school and serving as curates, their focus tends to be
on theology and pastoral studies, not on organisational management. And this is
as it should be - pastoring and teaching should be the vicar's priority in the
parish. Good wardens, therefore, should complement the
vicar's skill set by bringing practical management competencies to
the service of the local church.
Nominators - are lay people who are set aside to search out a new vicar / rector when one is required. They often do this in collaboration with an external person assigned by the bishop. Of course, most of the time they do nothing at all, but they must always be in place because no one can ever say for sure how long a vicar will remain at the helm.
Synod representatives - are those members of the local church who have voting rights at the diocesan synod (~parliament). Licensed clergy are usually (although not always) members of synod and then there are a number of elected or appointed lay members too. (There are various extra-parochial people who get onto synod too, but that's a whole other story.)
Umm... I don't really have a great deal of commentary to give on these positions at this stage and there are heaps more that I've left out too - archdeacons, deans, canons, precentors, lay readers, chaplains... But if anyone's especially interested in these (!) they can all be googled. Time for me to wrap this set up and move on I think...
Thoughts on Theology-in-Practice for Anglicans and Episcopalians - plus some other stuff.
Follow up on question on previous post re incumbency committee...
ReplyDeleteWhy are Synod reps elected separately to Vestry? Why not choose a group from Vestry who are already elected? You risk getting 3 different groups with different ideas about the parish ethos, vision etc.
I think this is taps into a huge issue - lots of people with lots of opinions and lots separate spheres of authority, but often the right hand has little meaningful understanding of what the left is doing... eg. vestries making decisions about ministries that they don't really understand; nominators not being across the issues of the parish; synod reps not knowing what the parish needs from the diocese and vice versa...
ReplyDeleteThe challenge is to include lots of lay people while protecting against the dreaded 'siloism'. (Or better, making sure that the right people are siloed together and that the silos can communicate on relevant issues in relevant times in relevant ways... )
Tim, what is this 'siloism' of which you speak?
ReplyDeleteJust the idea of industrial silos applied to organisations (bit of a management buzz word I'll admit). Used to talk about different groups of people who work right next to each other and should work with each other, but who instead are metaphorically walled off from each other such that they don't interact well but tend to compete.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tablegroup.com/books/silos/