A new Parish Priest

What is Going On?

A priest-in-charge?

With the retirement of the Revd Canon Alan Gill, the Bishop of Salisbury has ‘Proposed the Suspension of Presentation of the Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour Benefice’. So just what does that mean to us?

Well, historically when a priest has been appointed to a parish (or benefice) he is given the ‘freehold’ and he is incumbent until he chooses to retire or move on. However, if the bishop is looking to the possibilities of reorganising parishes within his diocese he can ‘suspend the presentation’ and appoint a ‘priest-in-charge’. This means that the priest will in effect be on a less-than-freehold tenure, the suspension being for a period that can be renewed every five years. If after 10 years there has been no reorganisation, then the bishop must justify any further suspension or revert. Once appointed, a ‘priest-in-charge’ will conduct his ministry in exactly the same way as the incumbent with the freehold. So, in practice, there is little change.

So, then, it must all be about the possibilities of reorganisation here – just as it is (and has been) throughout the Diocese of Salisbury and the Church of England generally for the past 20 years or more.

In late November, the PCCs of Gillingham, Milton-on-Stour and Silton were invited to a meeting chaired by the Archdeacon of Dorset to explore (and ‘explore’ is the key word) how we might all work in co-operation in the future, as all Christian communities should. There was inevitably also the issue of the shortage of available stipendiary (full time) clergy.

We were told how our respective identities and traditions can, should, and would be respected, how lay ministry is increasingly valued, and how, increasingly, a rector/vicar/parish priest is a leader/enabler, rather than a leader/director.