Disraeli’s contempt for statistics should serve as a warning. To close church buildings and even out the supply of vicars is an irresistible temptation. Why not have a national Church that has one representative to 1,000 people – or 11,000 people, or 110,000 people? Easily done; no problem.
The statistical solution is based on the fact that one vicar is much like any other. This is true of rain-drops but not snow-flakes.
So we find a lot of pundits re-organising the church on the basis that members of the clergy are the same. Give this a moment’s thought. To say that one seasoned incumbent is identical with one raw curate is clearly nonsense. But are all clergy-persons imaginative, business-like, discreet, sedulous, patient, active. Clearly some are; others are not. This is merely to say that the clergy are remarkably like everybody else. That does not mean the same as everybody else or the same as each other.
I remember a remarkable Irish clergyman who had made models of every ship in the Royal Navy. Pacific by nature, he had powerful instincts. We all remember Teddy Boston, friend of the Emneth pioneer, Wilbert Awdry, who had a narrow-gauge railway in his benefice garden. There was a rural incumbent who had constructed a full-scale pipe-organ in his barn. He had left no room for an audience. A bishop who epitomised the happy union between steam and Gospel spent every spare moment photographing locomotives and railway miscellanea. Ordained venturers have spent time commanding and crewing sail-boats into the Arctic Circle and round the world. One enterprising incumbent staged a boxing-match to decide who was to be his successor. (Can my memory be true?)
Jack Russell was a north Devon incumbent who started a breeding programme during his time at Oxford that led to the production of one of the most popular dogs in the world. A sad day in my life was when a Jack Russell, full of stupendous energy, bounded out in front of my aged Austin Seven and the cable brakes could not do anything about it.
There are those with better contacts (and memories) than mine who could expand this list. It is not merely a round-up of eccentrics or humorists. It is part of the Gospel in action. It is what the Church of England is. It is diversity setting the pace in a parish. It is a demonstration of being both a human being and a person responding to the grace of God.
Vicars don’t all use the same English version of the Bible. They don’t all like the same hymns or worship-songs. The demand for wedding services, funeral services and infant baptism in church has withered but the Church of England ministry has proved itself capable none the less of finding places in its ranks for all sorts of gifted individuals. Long may that continue.
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