England's Clergy Find Other Jobs

Press, Issue 30996, 28 February 1966, Page 1

England's Clergy Find Other Jobs

“I believe that in England, within 25 years, at least half the clergv will be priest-minister-workers—priests who work on another ; ob,” said the Provost of Southwark Cathedral (the Very Rev. S. Southcott) in Christchurch yesterday.

“We believe that economics are going to dictate this anyway. We believe there is everything to be said for a variety of ordained men and we need them now,” he said.

At the Provost of Southwark, with a Cathedral Diocese of 3{ million persons, Provost Southcott is responsible under Bishop Stockwood, for the men who have been ordained and who continue with their secular work. He is also responsible for the men in the diocese who have been in the full-time ministry and who have gone into secular employment. The Provost’s description of a priest-worker was “a half-way-house man between the full-time priest-minister and the nian-in-the-pew and the man-in-the-street.” Dozen Men The Provost of Southwark said he regularly met a dozen men who had been trained in the Southwark ordination courses and who had continued on at their normal job. “I have a baker, a lawyer, engineer, bus inspector, a couple of teachers, a banker

and so on," he said. “Their main job is their job of work —their secular job.” Provost Southcott said that there were as many ways, of educating industrial men, as there were places made for work.

For example, at an iron and steel works, there were times when crucibles were cooling down or heating up. The men could be given Christian teachings while they were still at work in this instance.

But at other places, Christianity was preached mostly through small groups in the work area, or at educational work at the works, in cooperation with the works education officer. Provost Southcott said that in addition to these men who had been trained in the Southwark ordination courses, he had half a dozen men who had been ordained and who had given up their full-time job as priest ministers. They were now working in secular jobs. “1 have one man working in a glass factory,” he said. “Another man Is a child-care officer; one is an engineer and another is a teacher.” The Provost said that what he wanted was not necessarily more ordained priests, but more laymen who saw the point of being Christian out in the world. He wanted those who believed that God was much more interested in what went on in trade unions or in the Chamber of Commerce. “Jesus Christ was not born in a synagogue; he was crucified between two thieves—not between two candles,” said the Provost. Sense Of Mission “The church has lost its sense of mission and therefore of unity because it has been concerned more with the people who are in the church than with those who are not there."

Provost Southcott preached the evensong sermon in

Christchurch Cathedral last evening. He is in New Zealand under the auspices of “Parish and People,” a movement helping clergy and laiety in the renewal work of the church. He will meet Christchurch clergy today.

He will visit Dunedin this week before leaving New Zealand from Auckland for a month’s mission in the United States.