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| Icing on the cake at the Church in Wales HQ Source: Twitter |
The Church in Wales, home to the Mission/Ministry Areas, is advertising for a Head of Mission and Ministry, another senior executive post with a "Competitive salary commensurate with comparable roles across the organisation."
The role is "one of visionary leadership, strategy setting and dynamic operational management of a diverse range of activities. It involves working closely with the Bishops both corporately through meetings of the Bench of Bishops and individually as they lead their dioceses and oversee their portfolios."
The 2012 Church in Wales Review recommended (Recommendation XLVI) that: There should be a Board of Mission and Ministry responsible for all the spheres of work at present covered by the Bishops’ advisors...and that: There should be a Director of Mission and Ministry to direct the work, and an annual report and debate on their work by the Governing Body.
The Review also recommended (Recommendation XXII) that:There should be three administrative centres, one in the North and two in the South and South West...leading to (Recommendation XXV) that: The recommendations XXII, XXIII and XXIV should be reviewed after three years and a judgement made about whether the Church in Wales is best served by six dioceses with three administrative centres or whether it would be more effective to reduce to three dioceses, together with four area bishops.
At the current rate of executive expansion and declining attendance there will be far more chiefs than indians to divide the cake at the point of extinction.
One would have thought that a 'Head of Ministry and Mission' in a Church with Bishops would be entirely superfluous. This top-down corporate business approach is symptomatic of a failure in both ministry and mission which will never be remedied by someone on a 'competitive salary'. Thank goodness I ceased my giving to the CinW several years ago.
ReplyDeleteLW
You and me both LW and many others too.
DeleteI know many more who stopped their giving as a result of June's jolly junket to Spain last year. What good value for money that turned out to be, not!
The 'top-down corporate business approach' has something of a history by now within Anglicanism. A friend of mine was a member of the Church of England's General Synod when Bishop Carey became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1991, and he told me of his amazement when, at a meeting in Carey's early days, the Archbishop extolled a modern business model as something the C of E under his leadership would seek to adopt.
DeleteEven down, if I recall rightly, to envisaging his own role as the organization's chief executive and the diocesan bishops as the board of directors.
On that model presumably the parish clergy were the salesmen and local agents? But Carey didn't push the analogy quite that far!
An unnecessary appointment perhaps, yet not a new one. There has been a director of mission - David Jones, Enid Morgan, David Williams - for decades.
ReplyDeleteRob
Their results speak for themselves, decline heaped upon decline.
DeleteTotal waste of pew-sitters money.
Again.
Useless no doubt, but be thankful it's not doubling of the number of Archdeacons like the now Abp of York did in Chelmsford; better to have some innocuous graduate than the monstrous hordes of Archdeacons mutliplying like some alien invasion
ReplyDeleteWith hindsight this Diocese of Monmouth invitation for a Director of Mission and Archdeacon of the Gwent Valleys to join "a friendly and supportive Bishop’s Team and an effective Diocesan Office Team" makes interesting reading https://s3.amazonaws.com/cinw/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/01/job-profile-pdf.pdf
DeleteRemuneration & Benefits package
• Archdeacon’s stipend of £37,115 p.a.
• Final salary pension scheme
• 4-bedroom detached house in Abercarn village, with easy
access to the Archdeaconry and Newport (the administrative
centre of the Diocese)
• Expenses for all travel from home
The number of Archdeacons in the Chelmsford diocese increased from 4 to 7. The concept behind the increase was so that the Magnificent Seven could become more "missional".
DeletePP. This begs a question. Why hasn't one of the bishops take on this role? The dioceses all have top heavy administration, so the lead on mission could be a bishop.
ReplyDeleteThe other mission upsearge is the wide engagement of Church Army in the Province, the latest project in Newport. Sent the CA a mission focused Anglican charity? Surely a team of evangelists like we had in the 80s led by: Derek Jones, Brian Stares and Barbara Richards out of Penarth. But planned giving will be thwarted if these high executive appointments continue to appear.
Is the CinW trying to follow the devious strategy of her neighbour east of Offa's Dyke? See https://unherd.com/2020/08/the-neoliberal-revolution-within-the-church/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3
ReplyDeleteWhat does the CEO do? It likes like a line manager post for the senior provincial officer roles? It looks a ill-thought through supernumerary type role that confuses the reporting line. The role will involve numerous meetings in committees that are talking shops that try to reinvent the wheel constantly.
ReplyDeleteThe key elements seem to revolve around discernment and strategic management of St Padarn's institute. I wonder what Revd Prof Duff thinks of it all?
My opinion is that it is a complete waste of money and the post will get in the way of existing ones.
It's good to hear that this new example of the CinW attempting to reinvent itself as a business corporation is not going down well with the ordinary parochial clergy.
ReplyDeleteThe clergy aren't the ones whose hard earned cash is being squandered on such nonsense.
DeleteFor the most part the clergy are either supine or sycophants who just go along with the zeitgeist.
(1) Many (most?) clergy lead from the front by making financial contributions to their parishes, so it their "hard earned cash" as well as that of the laity that is being "squandered on such nonsense". (2) On what do you base your statement that "most" of them are "supine or sycophants"? (3) In today's equal-sexuality Church in Wales your pseudonym has a certain aptness -- I dare say many do.
Delete1) If so, more fool them.
Delete2) My own observations, e.g., all those who went supinely on June's jolly to Spain with barely a whisper of protest.
3) I'm sure you're correct. Says it all as it often seems there's more interest in buggery from the clergy than there is in Christian morals.