Pete Broadbent's comments on Ship of Fools are very apposite.

At a church I know, they have interviewed several curacy candidates this year. The first said he was not really now feeling called to parish ministry (so why was he looking? And did his college know he felt like this - if so, they should have been on the case re. talking to his DDO etc.). Other candidates came with a list of things they required in a curacy - not about housing, schools etc. but about ticking theological boxes. The comment of the incumbent after one such (telephone) interview was that he felt like he'd been grilled by the Spanish Inquisition.

I won't say where these candidates came from (but they were all from evangelical colleges - not just the ones you might expect).

As for evangelicals ministering in parishes of another tradition, well I've been ordained 21 years this year and served my first curacy in a 'central to high' team (with a very traditionalist catholic incumbent), my second in a central parish with a theologically radical incumbent, then did a year looking after two rural, parishes (one cenral, one mildly catholic charismatic) before finally becoming incumbent of a kosher evangelical parish! (Set in a slightly more mixed team). So this operating out of your comfort zone is not new - we have had more evangelical curates than curacies for years.

When looking for a first incumbency, my bishop (a saintly and sensible open evangelical) told me 'I need flexible evangelicals like you to serve in non-evangelical parishes because I have to keep the evangelical ones for people who can't cope anywhere else'. I think I said that was hard luck on the evangelical parishes concerned...

To save you searching, here's my post from SOF:

The complexity of the situation can be spelt out thus:

1. Some dioceses are not taking their full "allocation" of ordinands. If 20 of the 44 dioceses take one fewer, that immediately explains the mismatch.

2. Some ordinands move from self-supporting to stipendiary during training. This means that there are more emerging from training. And some delay a year - I'm ordaining one who finished training in 2008, and has been doing a lay chaplaincy for a year - another one to add to the numbers.

3. Some ordinands won't move north, or outside their comfort zones. They want a curacy in the conevo bible belt, and won't countenance going elsewhere.

4. Some rich churches could (and probably will) employ some of the unplaced as lay workers for a year and get them ordained next year. Pragmatic bishops will happily ordain them straight away. Those who play by the "rules" won't let them get ordained, which seems to me to be a dog in the manger approach.

5. There is a suspicion around that some conevos aren't really Anglican. From my recent visit to preach at Oakhill, I'd say that was unfair, though they may need a curacy to get with the programme of the CofE in all its breadth and wonder. But that's what curacies are for.

Basically, we have no proper strategy for workforce planning (and we have to live with an ethos among the clergy that hates that very concept because it runs contrary to calling, priesthood, and our way of operating when we had infinite resources). The unplaced were always going to be at the evangelical end, because that's where the majority of ordinands are coming from these days. The less choosy you are about not journeying up the candle or going middle of the road, the more likely that you'll find a job. If you want a pretty Protestant show, don't want to work with a woman leader, and won't wear the gear (stoles, vestments), the number of options you have are reducing all the time.

It needs sorting. I was urging my colleagues in the House of Bishops two weeks ago to be a bit more flexible, so that we can avoid alienating good ordinands and consigning them to the dole queue. But it's not in the nature of Diocesans to be very flexible. Here in London, we've already taken way over our numbers - but we can't afford the money to rescue all 11 of those still unplaced.

He is my bishop, and I am at serious risk of crawling, but I have to say that Pete's post seemed to me to contain pretty flawless logic.

There is a problem, but if everyone showed the same level of sense and flexibility, it could surely get fixed.

Bishop Pete is right, I think, that many ordinands (and clergy) don't seem to want to work outside the South East.. But the problem for this year's ordinands is that there are no more training posts being offered, anywhere, not just a lack in London and the leafy suburbs. 

Given that most must have given up a profession to respond to the church's call, costing them 2-3 years income, as well as the £30-60k MinDiv has spent on training them, it seems problematic to accept that they should not now be offered ANY post - not even north of the Watford Gap.

ps I heard on the grape vine that some dioceses have already helped by taking above their quota, so some others are being even naughtier than one might imagine. 

pps Dioceses must have published Ember lists by now...

Can I urge a slightly wider perspective - I agree that planning is important - but it is also important to have a good plan. Providing more curacies for evangelical curates in the kinds of evangelical parishes of which they already have experience will do little to prepare them for 'the world out there' when they come to seek their next post.

It seems to me really important that ordained clergy learn to serve with integrity in the real parishes which make up the Church of England - perhaps current disputes have placed undue focus on differences and identity markers.

The Ship of Fools discussion also has some worrying comments on gender bias with a suggestion that more women than men are being guided into the NSM route - which is shocking if true.

It is certainly true that courses are more 'female' than 'male' and colleges the reverse. Since most (but not all) NSMs train on courses, there may be something in the gender issue.

BTW between about 2000 and 2006, there were three colleges that were 50/50 men and women in the student body: Queens, Cranmer and (I think) Westcott. This would not now be true of at least one of these - anyone know about this?

Mark - the only surprising thing about the guiding of women more than men down the NSM route is that you are surprised about this; it has been the case ever since 1987.

It would be nice to hope that it was happening less than heretofore, but then the Church of England is still a structurally sexist institution, and has places where the prejudice aginst women is still also very really felt in the attitudes of its members (this is not me having a go at those who for reasons of principle cannot accept women's ordination - simply a statement of fact that that is what those attitudes do to the church as a whole).

I think those sexist attitudes, which sometimes have a very ugly face, are covertly permitted by the "two integrities" we currently live with. And the bias towards encouraging women into NS ministry is a kind of unhapy consequence. How good it would have been, and how much more theologically coherent, if we had simply consecrated a woman in 1994: then she could have been part of the ordaining episcopal sucession of presbyters thereafter. We still have a long way to go.

Just to clarify - I think the figures show that more women have gone into part-time posts and non-stipendiary ones than men. There is some anecdotal suggestion that this is so with married couples, both of whom are priests.

The reasons for this include may include various factors including age and willingness to move, which 'the church' might see as justifiable reasons - or at least as rational reasons - for the difference.

None of this is surprising.

The suggestion I picked up was that of male and female ordinands in essentially the same position, the female ordinands were more likely to be guided towards the NSM route - which is what shocked me - take away all the excuses ... and in the context of a discussion on unplaced curates too.

I think you are absolutely right Mark. And it was that encouragement - which I have heard said was, in one case, because "they might get pregnant at some point, which is structurally sexist.

As for the way the Church of England has treated married couples both of whom had a vication to stipendiary ministry - don't get me started!

I remember going to a meeting in a northern diocese in 1988 when all the couples who were married and ordained were invited. Of couse at that stage it was male priests and, newly-ordained, female deacons. We thought it was going to be a supprt event to encourage usin this new venture that we were all undertaking together. Instead we had a lengthy presentation by a senior member of the diocesan staff who explained to us that it was a bid thing that we should minister anywhere near each other - and to explain that there was no prospect of the diocese using us fully.

In another diocese, some years later,  my wife was about to be te first person to hold a part-time stipendiary post. This was stopped less than a week before the planned licencing, because the financial people in that diocese were frightened it would create a precedent.

There are still dioceses where two people who happen to be married to each other face financial penalties simply because God has chosen to call both of them to the ministry. Other clergy are married to doctors or lawyers or teachers or whatever - no one EVER suggests that their stipend is not needed and that they should work for nothing.

It makes me sick.

When I read that eleven ordinands might fail to get a title post I thought how glad I'd be if only eleven people completing qualifications in my profession (the academic profession) failed to gain employment.  But at that time I held my peace, although I knew liddon's theory that the 'worst' ordinands would be kept out of the parishes was nonsensical.

But now Jeremy is voicing discontent about clerical married couples finding difficulty getting employment which is coordinated to the degree they would like.  In the same diocese, for example.

I have to tell him about what we academics jokingly call the 'two-body problem'.  In brief, a university will usually only employ two married (or living-together) people if it has a need right then for exactly the work which each of them does, and if each one is the best applicant, in an open process, for the job he/she wants.  In very rare cases, more often in the USA than Britain, a university will offer a 'spousal hire':  this can occasionally work, but in my experience it is more typical for the 'trailing spouse' to encounter some resentment from colleagues on whom he or she has been inflicted.

So I'm sorry to hear it if a 'senior member of diocesan staff' back in 1988 laid it on a bit thick for Jeremy;  but I think he ought to start thinking about the needs of congregations first.  The 'two body problem' is a real problem, and there's nothing unjust about the fact that it's the married couple's problem, not an employer's.  

Sam - You misunderstand the source of my disgust. I am not asking for special treatment for couples in minstry. If there are not jobs adjacent or near then that is how it is: couples have to work out a way of making the available jobs work for them.

What disgusts me is the uneven playing field - being told that, as a matter of principle, the gift that is two people who happen to be married to each other and are both ordained WILL not be employed in the same diocese. The discrimination that means that both are not paid properly. The lack of flexibility with regard to working arrangements. The church of england is still miles behind almost any other significant employer in this regard.

Jeremy,

It does seem extreme that a diocese stated that it will not ever appoint both clergy spouses!     Though I suppose it might be reasonable that a diocese say it can't guarantee to offer a post to the ordained spouse of a newly appointed clergyperson..

It was the same in my professional life; whenever I moved for work we had to discuss and agree whether my wife would be prepared to risk leaving her employment and look for opp.s in the new location... or we wouldn't move..  For some friends of ours it was the wife who was the chief earner and the husband the "trailing spouse".   I guess that this outcome is just a part of the cost of commitment to each other.  After all, the chance that two suitable posts occur simultaneously in the same area is low and, I imagine, you would want a diocese to look for the most suitable candidate for other vacancies rather than favour a local clergy spouse over other applicants? 

ps I do worry about us getting too heavily committed to the "liberal" discourse on Human Rights when discussing these sorts of issues.  Our ultimate arbiter is God's truth.  If we get too caught up in the liberal "rights" discourse, rather than arguing for truth, we may well attract (or even provide justification for) even more intrusive legislative interference in the religious sphere.  This government seems to believe that religious freedom should be relegated to the purely personal sphere - ie governments have the right to regulate all aspects of religious organisations.  The idea that religious organisations should be free to act as corporate expressions of the religious beliefs (and religious rights) of their members seems to have been lost.