Clergy Anywhere's Everywhere

Like me, you are perhaps vaguely aware of the idea that people can be thought of as Somewheres or Anywheres.

https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21719429-david-goodhart-post-liberal-seeks-accommodate-decent-elements-identity-based

Ministry selectors are looking for people who will be deployable in the C of E, which as we know is a broad national church.

Many Ordinands are graduates. In fact at my theological college it seemed like an unreasonable number of people had been to Oxbridge.

And many clergy move away to Vicar factory to do a degree as they train for ministry.

They then move to a curacy, normally not in their sending parish.

Then they move to an incumbency. Where they rarely stay for their whole career. Another move or two would be not unusual.

So most of the clergy are probably Anywheres.

The communities they serve will be a mixture of Somewheres and Anywheres, but in very different proportions from place to place. In some places Somewheres will dominate very heavily.

And the clergy are still theoretically everywhere. Every soul, every blade of grass, has its responsible clergyman.

It might be fruitful, I think, to reflect on how the Anywhere Clergy might best serve everyone Everywhere, and particularly the Somewheres Somewhere.

It is perhaps especially hard for clergy families to put down real roots in a community (3 generations in the churchyard roots makes you qualify as a proper local here!) particularly when the understandable and helpful convention is that the vicar will move away from his former parish on retirement.