A Decade of Service: What I Learned as a Vicar in the Church of England

You can tell what an institution is like by the way it treats its own

Me and my wife Rachel after my ordination.

On a warm June afternoon in 2011, I stood outside the cathedral with my wife and family, clutching my holy orders. The freshly applied dog collar was tight around my neck and felt good. I was excited for this next chapter in my life.

After a decade of working in aviation, this new vocation was fuelled by my firm conviction that God had called me into the ministry and offered me an opportunity to make a difference. However, my experience with the Church of England as an institution was a different matter. I have always been told that you can judge an organisation by how it treats its people.

My guru and guide, who had led me through the discernment process, encouraged me and assured me, 'The church will look after you.' I was glad, as we gave up our council house and moved to Bristol for Vicar training. My ordination was not the culmination of a process. Instead, it kicked-start a fast-paced and rewarding ministry, which I loved. During my curacy (apprenticeship), I had a lot of training and followed around a more experienced Vicar. It was a lovely time where, I could take risks and experience everything ministry offered.

In 2014, I was given the keys to my first church as a Rector, and we moved to beautiful Somerset. The collar began to feel a little tighter. My mission was to get people to attend church in a culture that doesn't do church, which I managed to do. By the end of year three, we had a family service that packed out the church, often attracting over thirty children and their parents. I was the diocesan poster boy for a while, young and leading a Church which was growing. However, underneath, cracks were appearing. I put faith before money, but the diocese pressured me to collect more from my growing congregation. I resisted. In the Church of England, each parish is expected to pay the diocese an amount of money each year called a 'parish share', but we could not pay ours despite the growth. They wanted answers.

By 2018, the seventy-hour weeks began to take their toll. Toxic parishes and a hands-off approach by the diocese (except for the money requests) contributed to depression and burnout. I took time off and attempted to return repeatedly, but the result was always the same: burnout. It was a difficult time for both me and my family, culminating in moving parishes in an attempt to restart my ministry. This meant another move, this time to Suffolk, but despite the new start, I always felt one day away from a total meltdown. All our security was within the Church; this terrified me, and I felt trapped. Then Covid hit.

The virus was cruel to me and my son but somehow spared the females in the house. I managed to keep out of the hospital but was bedridden and delirious. When it finally left my body, the symptoms did not, and I became a statistic under the name of 'Long Covid'. Fatigue, mobility issues and other bizarre symptoms made my return to work impossible, and after several attempts, I made the almost unthinkable decision to retire due to ill health.

Leaving a job through ill health is challenging, but leaving ministry felt impossible. We did not have anywhere to live, and I was paid a 'stipend', which amounted to a small amount of money in recognition that the house came free with the job. The consequence of this was that the pension was tiny. I was worried but remembered my guru's words that the 'Church of England will look after you'.

When I decided to retire, I felt the hierarchy's attitude towards me change. I was told that we could not be housed within the church's pension housing scheme for retired ministers as they do not cater to families in our situation. I thought we would be made homeless and cried on several occasions. We complained; they relented but could only provide a small retirement home.

We have three children, including our oldest, who is an adult and disabled with several chronic conditions. We were told she could not be housed. Private rent was beyond us, and we had no assets to buy a house. I asked for help again and was made to feel like an enormous burden, but they would not budge. We had to rehome our oldest daughter with the YMCA on the basis that she would be homeless, where she has continued to find it difficult. Despite our support, she has been admitted to the hospital twice in recent months, and I feel guilty to have placed her in that situation.

I know I should be grateful that our new home will be lovely and the rent will be subsidised, but it is still double the amount of my pension. Despite my wife working full time, it will be hard for us to cope. The Church of England have over ten billion pounds in assets, so I figured we could be helped out. The response I got was to make sure our savings were below a certain level so we could claim benefits and a suggestion that we apply to charities outside the Church of England. The icing on the cake was when the Archdeacon called me post-retirement to tell me I should not be posting visits to football matches on my Facebook page as it 'looked bad', despite football being a lifeline for me and the fact that I am heavily reliant on mobility aids. I have been, and continue to be, devastated by these responses to our situation.

If you think this is sour grapes, then you would be right. I feel the Church of England does not look after the very people who work for them. I have wrestled with writing about this, but light should be shone into the dark recesses of an organisation that no longer seems fit for purpose and has lost compassion for the people who serve it.

The Church should be an organisation that models a different way, and I am sad and frustrated that it seems to do the opposite. It has been rocked by scandal in the past few days, proving once again that it is more concerned with reputation than doing the right thing. As the parish church, thousands of people are doing incredible things for their communities across our country. There are some brilliant Bishops and Priests who enable all this to happen, yet they are constantly hampered by an archaic system that sometimes demands more than eighty percent of a church's income every year. The fact that churches manage to pay this while raising money and keeping historic buildings from falling apart is astonishing and a testament to the people who serve.

I am now pondering what I will do next, given my limitations. I can still operate as a Priest if I want to, helping out in parish churches and supporting their work. However, the collar feels impossibly tight now, given my experiences with the national Church. Do I help those lovely people in their work whilst helping to keep the national institution alive? Despite my experiences, I do want the Church of England to be fit for purpose, but I realise that something might have to die before resurrection can happen.

Paul Clarke is a retired Anglican priest who writes about faith, sci-fi, and Long Covid. He is an author of two books and also the creator of a podcast charting his experience with chronic illness.