Diocese has surplus of clergy

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 1

Diocese has surplus of clergy

Anglican clergy in Christchurch have been asked to consider seriously offers of positions in other parts of New Zealand.

The request has been made by the Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt Rev. W. A. Pyatt, as part of a costcutting drive to relieve the Church's “enduring financial crisis."

Other plans include the amalgamation of parishes and a curb on the hiring of clergy. Although Christchurch clergy frequently received offers from other areas because the diocese was known to be well staffed, few had accepted as yet, said Bishop Pyatt. The diocese, with 70 parishes and 120 active clergy, was overstaffed, he said.

In urban areas one clergyman to 800 families was an acceptable ratio, and in rural districts one to 400. While the Christchurch average was not much different, two parishes had fewer than 100 families living in them, and others had fewer than 180 families. The diocese could no longer afford that kind of extravagance, Bishop Pyatt said.

Contributions to the Church had not kept pace with inflation and about 10 parishes, no longer self-sup-porting, were being subsidised by others. Generally they were in poorer suburbs such as Aranui and Bishopdale, where parishioners had been hit much more solidly by the recession and unemployment than in wealthier areas.

Bishop Pyatt said that although to reduce staff in those parishes would be the simple solution to the

diocese’s economic difficulties, it would not be an acceptable cure. “We have to be very careful that we do not take clergy out of the poor areas. They are more needed there because we have fewer lay leaders.”

Bishop Pyatt said that when he began as a minister in 1948, he was paid a stipend of $BOO a year. Clergy now received $14,500 and, although the money was about equal to what it had been then in terms of the cost of living, it was a lot for a working man’s parish to come up with. He hopes by the middle of this year to have trimmed at least four from the number of clergy in Christchurch. Either vacancies will not be filled as they occur or they will be filled from within the diocese.

Clergy will not be made redundant or dismissed. Neighbouring parishes

have been asked to discuss the possibility of merging but the pace will not be forced.

.“We want to see if they can come up with a rationalisation programme themselves, but we will not push it on anybody,” Bishop Pyatt said.

The aim is eventually to scrap at least six parishes so that the diocese will need fewer clergy. Bishop Pyatt said that although the programme was not “desperately urgent,” he hoped to “get quite a lot of it done this year." Asked whether wealthy parishes would be encouraged to link with poor ones, Bishop Pyatt said that in most cases this would be impossible. They tended to be remote from each other geographically and did not mix socially.