Faith, Politics & Media

3DCoaching have conducted a survey of clergy who have applied for new jobs in the last year to understand their experiences of the application and interview process.

I’ve spent most of the last 10 years specialising in recruitment, so I know a bit about the theme of the survey. I was also one of the Parish Representatives when my church was appointing a new vicar, and involved in shortlisting and interviewing candidates. (It’s actually possible that some, or all, of the candidates we interviewed completed this survey). So I was naturally interested in what this survey had to say, and the results make for interesting reading.

I don’t know the specific reasons why my PCC voted for me to be one of the Parish Reps, and if my professional background had anything to do with it. Thinking about it, I don’t know if everyone on the PCC knows what I do for a living! But even with my background, I still felt the pressure. We had some support from our Patron (the body or person actually responsible for making the appointment, in our case a charitable trust), but other than a suggested list of questions, had no input from the Area Dean, an Archdeacon or a Bishop (largely due to, I guess,  the latter two posts being vacant or newly-filled at the time we were making the appointment).

During the first attempt to fill the post, where the patron was identifying candidates for us to interview, it was only myself and the other Parish Rep who were on the panel. Of course we made sure the candidate got to meet with the Wardens, other clergy in the Parish etc, but in the interview we were flying solo. For parishes who don’t have the luxury of a professional recruiter in their congregation, or even people with experience of conducting job interviews, then the whole process would be pretty daunting!

A lot of the “bad” clergy experiences referred to in the survey made me cringe. It should (you would hope) be fairly obvious that you wouldn’t keep checking your Blackberry during an interview. And telling a candidate that they’re not quite what you’re looking for, but then offering them the job anyway, does nothing for a person’s morale or self-esteem!

For senior appointments in the church, all the resources of the Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments in thrown at the vacancy, but Parishes (where the process is more left to amateurs) are left to find their own way. My experience as a Parish Rep may not be typical, but I wonder whether there shouldn’t be more support for parishes appointing clergy. Whether that’s Dioceses employing professional recruiters to take the pressure of the process away from the Parishes, providing some form of training for parish representatives, or even just making Parish Reps aware of this survey to point out the impact of their actions on the candidates.

Would you feel comfortable conducting an interview if you’ve never done one before? What help or support do you think you might need? Do you have any experiences of applying for church jobs, good or bad?

One of the biggest challenges for the Church is to help people understand the message of the Bible, in the context of what’s happening in the world, without diluting the Gospel. At the same time we need to offer a Biblical perspective on dilemmas that individuals and society at large face.

Religion and politics are often seen as incompatible, but if we look at the examples in the Bible that’s far from the case. There are many occasions where issues of secular politics are addressed, e.g:

• Joseph’s role in charge of the land of Egypt (Genesis 41)
• Moses leading the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 3)
• Daniel’s position in Babylon
• How Esther used her influence to save the Jews (Esther 5)
• Jesus’ teaching on paying taxes to Caesar (Mark 12)

Karl Barth, a 20th Century Swiss theologian, is said to have suggested that Christians need to read the Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other. His implication was that we cannot detach the Word from the World. Christian’s can’t live in a bubble where the secular world has no influence. Similarly, if we believe that the Bible is only concerned with issues of faith and religion, and not relevant to the whole of society, then we devalue the message of the Gospel.

The focus of this blog therefore is to attempt to provide some commentary, theological reflection and, more often than not, just some random thoughts about faith, politics and media…and issues where these three world collide.