self supporting
Alongside these roles I have ongoing self-supporting ministry in Alive Church and Gateshead Deanery.
I have served in both stipendiary and self-supporting ministry, in urban, suburban, city and rural parishes, and in larger churches and cathedrals.
• I am married to Richard, a retired teacher, who is a self-supporting
In addition, I have trained (and worked in parishes with) self- supporting ministers and I reckon to understand their concerns too – not least the concern I often hear that they are not valued.
I am a self-supporting minister, serving my curacy on a part-time basis in the Buckingham Diocese and I am married with 3 young children.
TI of a Self-Supporting Curate.
Associate Self-Supporting Priest,
I have journeyed from being a Lay Reader to Priest, transitioning from Self-Supporting to Oversight Minister.
I fully appreciate and support a team of Focal and Self-Supporting ministers within my current context.
I hope to represent those who are often underrepresented, including women clergy and self-supporting ministers.
I can offer to General Synod the experience, skills and understanding developed in my working life as a company lawyer, prior to ordination as a self-supporting minister.
In 2021 I was ordained as a self-supporting curate at St John the Evangelist, Cambridge, where I led on the adoption of a new website and database with Hubb.Church and a new audio-visual system.
In 2024 I was appointed as self-supporting Associate Vicar at St John the Evangelist, Cambridge.
I also bring to the General Synod the perspective of a self-supporting minister with a role (in Homerton College) that is supplemental to parish ministry.
A healthy mix of stipendiary, self-supporting and other forms of ministry is important to enable people to offer their different gifts as valued parts of the life of the Church.
The first expression of that call was to partner with a university chaplain to plant a student congregation in Wellington, which I did in a self-supporting capacity.
This became a fruitful catalyst for both vocations and mission, in a predominantly self-supporting capacity.
In 2017 I was ordained, serving as a self-supporting curate at Upton St Leonards.
My journey has given me experience of ordained ministry in different settings, from self-supporting ministry alongside secular employment to leading a busy team ministry alongside clergy colleagues and lay leaders.
I am standing because I believe the voice of Self-Supporting Ministers needs to be heard — not as a separate voice, but as an important part of the whole Church.
I am a training incumbent and have just having signed off a self-supporting priest.
My wife is the self- supporting Associate Priest at St Mary Magdalene.
I am a self-supporting associate minister at St Mary’s in Chesham (Bucks) and am seeking your support for a second term on Synod.
o As a self-supporting minister o A minister in secular employment (MSE)
• Speaking for Self-Supporting Ministers
o More than a quarter of ordained ministers licensed in the Church of England are self-supporting o However, they are much less frequently to be found in any of its representative bodies o Although many issues facing clergy are common to stipendiary and self- supporting ministers o There are issues specific to self-supporting ministers which specifically affect their well being o It is important that there is a voice for these issues in General Synod o If elected, I would offer such a voice, speaking on behalf of all self- supporting ministers, regardless of role or theological tradition.
o I support a traditional view of marriage and family life o I support the role of women in ministry I trust that you can see that, as a result of my MSE experience, I offer a different perspective on some of the big issues facing the Church of England over the next five years and can bring valuable experience to Synod which is important given the increasing reliance of self-supporting ministers in the Church.
Whilst we are in a privileged position here in Belgium, when in France, I was self-supporting (working as an English teacher) until the church had grown sufficiently to take me on full time.
By voting for me, you will gain a representative who is committed to: Supporting vocations through further reforms to the discernment and ordination process, and advocating for greater opportunities for lay vocations beyond self- supporting ministry and youth work.
Furthermore, I believe more needs to be done to support the vocations of lay-people beyond self-supporting ministry and youth work - all vocations are assets to the Church, not just ordained ones.
My current role is as a Self-Supporting Minister with PtO in the Dioceses of St Albans and Ely.
I care deeply about safeguarding done well, about supporting stipendiary and self-supporting clergy, and about making Synod’s decisions understandable and workable in the parish.
A further reason for offering myself comes from my experience of being a self supporting minister.
Clergy wellbeing With diminishing numbers of clergy and increasing parish responsibilities and pressures, I will speak up for stipendiary, salaried, self-supporting and retired clergy in the diocese.
¢ Action for Self-Supporting Clergy
I was ordained on an entirely self-supporting basis at an early 3 and vulnerable stage in my career outside the church.
In 2023, I was licensed as a self-supporting minister (SSM) and became curate at Portsdown and Purbrook.
I am also part of a team looking at Self-Supporting Ministry in our Diocese, which accounts for 32% of our clergy numbers.
If we are to inspire new vocations, and support those already serving, we must care for those who often give sacrificially, including full-time, part-time, house for duty, self-supporting, retired clergy and chaplains.
Whether clergy be stipendiary or self-supporting, there needs to be sustainable patterns of ministry and structures in place that enable them to live well.
“Alice brings a distinctive and grounded voice shaped by her professional life beyond the Church, ministry as a self-supporting parish priest, and her own experience of disability – a breadth of perspective that I believe is a real gift to General Synod and God’s church.” Trudie Wigley
To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” WHO AM I? “ Since ordination, I have been blessed to serve God and the Church in a wide variety of contexts and in both stipendiary and self-supporting roles which has enabled me to walk alongside colleagues with empathy and through lived experience.
Having served as both self-supporting and stipendiary clergy, I have a very real grasp of the challenges that both contexts can bring.
These early experiences have culminated in me now being a self-supporting ordained priest, and curate in the Rural North West Kent Group of churches It was from my working class and deeply rich childhood and adolescence and through the prism of the suburban council estates and their communities within which I lived, that inspired an exciting sense of the numinousness of the everyday experience and a passionate spiritual awakening within me.
Alongside traditional models of stipendiary and self-supporting ministry, we need to be more creative about patterns of ministry and deployment, enabling people to find ministry that is sustainable and life-giving.
Parochial clergy (both stipendiary and self-supporting equally) must be set free to live the life to which they have been called rather than struggling with the ever-increasing demands of compliance and common fund and the burden that this places on us and on our people.
These experiences have given me a broad understanding of the varied challenges that stipendiary and self-supporting clergy face and the ability to work across traditions with respect and empathy.
I am a Self-Supporting Ordained Minister in the Diocese of Exeter and my current role is Canon Theologian at Exeter Cathedral.
• Strong partnership between self-supporting and
stipendiary clergy will be needed more than ever to ensure the best deployment of gifts and skills; I say this as someone who has had the privilege of working closely with wonderful self-supporting colleagues for many years.
To be a voice for clergy Our clergy, stipendiary and self-supporting, need to be valued and cared for.
In a church mostly attended by people aged 70+ and led by a self-supporting minister, I am aware of the increasing burden placed on volunteers to help churches worship and engage in the wider community.
I feel I can be a strong voice for the diocese having previously lived in Dorset, and later served as a parish priest as both self-supporting minister and in full-time stipendiary minister in the Dioceses of Durham, Canterbury and more recently, a return to Salisbury as Rector of Corfe Mullen.
Self-Supporting Associate Minister
Self-Supporting (Ordained) Ministry
I am a Self-Supporting Minister (SSM) at Clapham Parish Church, a parish on the edge of Bedford and in Sharnbrook Deanery, giving half of my time to ministry (officially).
Thus, the non-ministry half of my time is given to caring for (and transporting) my family; when I write I am ‘self-supporting’, I really mean ‘husband-supported’.
ministry, and currently TI for 2 part time and 1 self-supporting curate.