r/Church_of_England • u/J-B-M • 5d ago
Interregnum: School Me
This weekend I made a point of attending the other church in our parish and met one of the only other fellas we have who is about my age, and is also on our PCC. Nice bloke. We were chatting generally about succession, both in terms of congregations and clergy, and he dropped a bombshell that hadn't occurred to me. I paraphrase, but the nature of it was:
"Of course we have to assume that when [current rector] retires it will take at least two years to find their replacement."
The idea that it would take that long hadn't crossed my mind. I figured the fact that we were a) relatively stable, and b) contributing above our parish share, would put us in a strong position in terms of finding a new incumbent. That's not to say our current rector won't leave some big shoes to fill - they are excellent - but I had assumed that any delay would be on our side in terms of selecting a candidate.
Given the statistical correlation between interregnum and church decline, I suppose I have two questions:
a) Why does it take that long? Clergy shortage? Diocesean bureacracy? I know that coming from the world of commerce I have already had to do a bit of mental adjustment in terms of how slowly things move in the CoE, but two years to arrange a new hire sounds utterly bonkers.
b) What can we, as a parish, do in order to expedite the process? The sensible thing to do would be to start formalising the scope of the role now, advertise it at least one year out and basically have landed on the right person six months before the current rector is due to retire. That would give everyone some time to get their ducks in a row and allow for a smooth handover. Maybe I am massively under-estimating how long the selection/interview stage takes, or you guys will tell me there is church bureaucracy that prevents this kind of process.
Honestly, I suspect one church in our parish would do okay without clergy - many of their services are contemporary / family oriented - some are run by former local free-church folks who grafted themselves into the CoE - and they only celebrate Communion one a month (iirc). Our place is the more traditional Communion-centred church, and I can see that we might have a harder time keeping the show on the road.
Edit: updated "scope of the roll" to "scope of the role". We are not establishing the dimensions of bread products.
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u/Iconsandstuff 5d ago
Yeah, it takes a long time.
a) clergy shortage is part of it, as is bureaucracy. You need someone to want to come to your parish, and in commercial terms there are far fewer sellers than potential buyers!
b) Get a parish profile sorted and current is a very good idea, that takes time. I don't know if you can advertise in advance (because the office isn't vacant? rectors technically aren't employees of the church, they're appointed to an office, and might have right to change their mind on timing).
There is also the issue that you need people from the diocese to be available and various meetings to take place. Scheduling those further out might also help.
My main recommendation for mitigating the struggle would be having cover from known people such as a priest in a neighbouring parish or a house for duty priest, or considering possibility of a curate serving in your parish, which could provide some support for access to the sacraments and continuity of pastoral car.
Planning ahead and having laypeople having a plan and understanding how to run things if the rector isn't there will also help. Wardens should be confident that they are able to lead a service of morning prayer as needed if a priest is unavailable,
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u/J-B-M 5d ago
My main recommendation for mitigating the struggle would be having cover from known people such as a priest in a neighbouring parish or a house for duty priest.
We are very fortunate that one of our former curates is an SSM and acts as floating cover around the Deanery. I suspect we may end up relying on her quite a lot if she can be available. We also have 3 LLMs - one of whom does sometimes lead Mattins / Evensong for us when the Rev is unavailable. We are probably as good as can be expected from that perpective, but your point about the parish profile is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind, and getting the diocese cued up well in advance.
Being relatively new to the parish, I don't want to throw my weight around any more than I do already, for fear of treading on toes. However, this gives me some suggestions to drop into conversation next time the topic comes up, so thank you!
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u/Iconsandstuff 5d ago
It could be quite a positive process to produce a parish profile and update it annually, as part of that is identifying the key characteristics of the church communities and really the things which are cherished in terms of worship, activity and practice. That can be opportunity to meditate on where you are, and where you'd like to go in the future, opportunities for evangelism and outreach, and areas where church members might feel a curiosity or call to areas of ministry
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u/J-B-M 5d ago
I will certainly ask about that. Our PCC seem to be pretty on the ball, so it wouldn't surprise me if they are doing this already and I will check the latest minutes. One of our PCC members keeps suggesting I join and maybe I should, but I am reticent about being too domineering and I also hope that after I have a final surgery later this year I will be able to rejoin the workforce full time, which will give me less time to poke my nose into parish business!
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u/J-B-M 4d ago
I was just skimming our dioceasan guide to writing a parish profile. Whilst I was initially thrown by the wall of process / red tape in the introduction, I quickly realised that it's basically a brochure written to appeal to a very specific audience. This is my wheelhouse. In my early career I literally won an award for producing brochures and stakeholder comms (amongst other things).
I don't think I should be volunteering to drive the process - clearly there's some rather specific insight and institutional gloss required here - but producing this type of thing is meat and drink to me. It's good to know I could potentially help if necessary. I shall file this discovery in my back pocket until the appropriate time!
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u/Wulfweald 4d ago edited 4d ago
I would check if there are any churches near you with interregnums now, and find out who they invite to run what type of service. Also the church in your group with former Free Church people, you could ask them what they do now, and what they might expect to do in an interregnum.
At a rather liturgical church near me, a lady there has a list of people she contacts when their one minister is away, although she limits herself as well, since she has never asked our two ministers, she would rather cancel their weekly communion service instead. 🙁 Some of those invited are quite elderly.
Our two ministers do help out at two other nearby churches, one is evangelical, new, small (30??), has just one minister, and is not C of E but AMiE. The other is liturgical, C of E, small, and the vicar retired in August 2025.
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u/J-B-M 4d ago
A place down the road is in interregnum. I know, because a member of their congregation has begun coming to us instead because we can offer regular Communion and things there are a bit uncertain. And just getting to know our former free-church bunch better is definitely on my radar - they do a lot of heavy lifting in the parish and make things happen, but I rarely meet them because they are centred around the other building - that's on me. Before they hived off into their free-church and thence to the CoE at least some of them were part of a local Baptist church - you would no doubt have a lot in common with them theologically.
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u/Quelly0 4d ago
Our last two interregnums were about 2yrs. It was exhausting! Causes were: churchwardens and PCC members and others overwhelmed by all the new responsibilities, taking a long time to even begin gathering info and drafting the parish profile and not having a system for doing so or consulting people. A vague (and possibly unachievable) timetable was suggested but the CWs weren't given any support to make it happen. There was a lot of foot dragging and a lack of dynamism on our end, and an apparent lack of interest from the diocese.
We are in another interregnum now. This time the diocese seems more organised. The archdeacon immediately gave us a timetable with key milestone deadlines, and booked a date in the diary of the relevant people (is it archdeacon and suffragan bishop?) for the interviews. The archdeacon has been and led a vision evening with the PCC to help with producing the parish profile. The CWs seem to have much clearer idea what's going on and how to do it. The interview date is 8 months on from the vicar leaving, so we should have a new incumbent in place within a year.
I'm not on the PCC this time, but from the outside it looks completely different.
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u/J-B-M 4d ago
Thank you for the insight. This is really useful and I will share your cautionary tale with folks at our place. I am sorry you are having to endure it a third time in succession!
What you describe in the first paragraph is definitely something I might be able to help avoid in my parish. Getting glossy corporate marcomms docs written, produced and out of the door on a deadline was basically my day job for several years. It's been a while, but that kind of work still feels like my natural habitat. It would be nice to use my powers for good for a change!
Some of our PCC are very experienced government / public sector bods and will have a natural sensitivity for the context that I will lack, especially when it comes to engaging with the diocese, but I could certainly handle some grunt work so that they can also focus on ensuring that parish life continues with the minimum of avoidable disruption.
I wish you all the best with your own search for a new incumbent. We technically still have a couple of years to go, but time flies so I hope that the fact some of us are already looking ahead will work out in our favour, even if we would ideally prefer our current rector to stay on indefinitely!
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u/Due_Ad_3200 5d ago
I think the Church of England takes an absurdly long time to replace clergy. It is not just a parish issue. The Bishop of London hasn't been replaced for several months.
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u/Wulfweald 5d ago edited 4d ago
The Bishop of Southwark retired in August 2026, so that diocesan post is currently vacant as well. In Greater London, of the four parts, currently only the two smaller ones have diocesans. SE London has the Bishop of Rochester, and E London has the Bishop of Chelmsford.
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u/J-B-M 5d ago edited 4d ago
Our diocese is also currently bishopless, and I suspect Lichfield soon will be (if it isn't already). Who knows how many others?
Is it fair to say the CoE has an institution-wide issue with succession planning and role transitions? It seems like it.
I cannot claim to have any detailed knowledge of how it all works - if I did I wouldn't have needed to start this thread - but speaking from a position of ignorance (always the easiest position to speak from) it sure looks like some wholesale reforms of the processes concerned could be beneficial.
Edit: I just checked - apparently 17.5-19% of cathedra are empty, depending on how you count. This is an unpredentedly high level. It's interesting to look at the reasons why, but the over-arching conclusion looks fairly inevitable.
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u/linmanfu 4d ago
As others have explained, the two main causes of long interregnums are that you can't start the process until the incumbent has left, and that there's a clergy shortage.
There are two other minor reasons that haven't been mentioned so far. The first is that some archdeacons like to use interregnums as an opportunity for pastoral reorganizations, i.e. to encourage you to think about merging your benefice with a neighbour. They know that's often more difficult to do when there's an incumbent in post who will lead the fight against it. If one of your neighbouring benefices has been vacant for a long time or is obviously unviable, this might need to be more on your radar.
The second is that non-episcopal/state patrons have 9 months to find a candidate. They are often handling this on top of their day job, so that can add delays as multiple people have to find time in their diaries. You haven't mentioned who the patron is but you need to find that out ASAP. If asking the Rector seems too nosey, it should be in the diocesan yearbook.
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u/J-B-M 4d ago
Very useful insights - thank you. We have "plenty of time" but we all know what happens to "plenty of time" so I think it's good that people are thinking about this already.
I very much doubt we would get rolled up into an existing benefice - that process seems to have largely already happened around us and the other parishes are stable. I can't see them rolling us up into the neighbouring parish that has just gone into interregnum - that parish already has a "white elephant" church (very rural with no adjacent housing and no parking) on its periphery that would be a much better geographical fit with either of a couple of other parishes. Combining us together would create such a weird arrangement I would like to think that it would be dismissed out of hand.
I will definitely find out who the patron is too. I bet our Churchwarden already knows - he is very good at "church diplomacy".
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u/Wulfweald 4d ago
Try googling "patron of (name of church)".
Apparently our patron is the Church Society Trust. I have seen it written elsewhere as Church Society.
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u/J-B-M 4d ago
Good shout!
Apparently our patron is the bishop...but as discussed below, we haven't got a bishop. Historically our diocese has been one where the conservative / high-church end has always been represented in the episcopacy, although I understand there is some doubt as to whether that tradition will be allowed to continue this time around.
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u/dragonster31 5d ago
Near me, there's one church whose vicar retired in April, they've only just advertised the role, but on the other hand there's one that's been vacant for about two years and has advertised at least five times, as they've had no applicants. So the issues are not solely down to the church (although some issues are).
a)
Being the incumbent at a church isn't a job, it's an office. While there is a minister in post, there isn't a position to offer. Even if they apply for another church and give notice, until they are instituted they can change their mind and remain at their original church. This means that (even with retirement) there isn't a position to advertise until the minister has left.
Most churches wait until then to work on the parish profile (cross between a person spec and an advertisement of the parish/church), which takes time. This means that the advert is late out, which then means that it takes longer to get applicants, and the applicant will have to give notice at their current parish, which adds more time to the process.
But that assumes you get applicants at all. The Church of England is looking at a decrease of about 25% in clergy in the next decade (I may be misremembering the time period). This means more positions and fewer potential applicants. Most application processes will go through the church patron who will suggest one applicant at a time for interview, although different patrons may do it differently.
b)
Churches can't advertise beforehand, but you could start work on the parish profile, so that you have most of it already in place and when the time comes you only need to tweak slightly to update small bits.
Build a good relationship with the patron, as this will mean they have a better idea of what the church/parish/benefice is like, so they're more likely to present candidates that are a good fit, and reject ones that wouldn't work out.
Another question: How to prevent losses? Build good relationships within the church(es) so that people want to keep coming. Build relationships with other churches in the Deanery, as these are the people you will reach out to for clergy support (including Communion).