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Priests should be ‘released from overload’
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Date
28/02/09
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Clergy and parishes should work together to release priests from the overload of parish life and enable them to work more effectively using the gifts and talents God has given them - that’s the message from the new director of ministry development in the Diocese of Lichfield, who begins her new role today (28th February 2009).
The Revd Lesley Bentley, who will be licensed during a service in Lichfield Cathedral this afternoon, will be responsible for developing more than 400 clergy through training and resources; assisting the transition to new terms of service for clergy; and helping shape the future patterns of ministry within the diocese.
She describes her role as “helping the church to be the church,” explaining: “We live in changing times. Society is changing, and the church is changing too. Parish ministry is at the forefront of that change and I’m very excited about the future. God is doing many new things and my role is to help clergy and the whole church to work through that change.
“I want help clergy to work with their parishes to release them from overload, to step back, and have the freedom to act using the gifts and talents God has given them. But this isn’t just about priests; we need the whole church, clergy and laity, to develop their discipleship together. And this will mean new roles for lay people and new forms of lay leadership.
“There is no clear blue print for how to do this successfully - it is a time when we need to be discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit through individual prayer and worship together, through understanding of our culture and through seeing God’s working. The ministries of clergy and lay alike are developing, and will continue to need to develop, in new ways to enable us to work with the working of his Holy Spirit. It is this development that I hope to be part of in this diocese.”
The introduction of new terms of service for clergy, which has been approved by Synod and is current awaiting Parliamentary approval and Royal Assent, will see some changes to the way clergy are appointed; but Lesley Bentley, who spent 10 years as a member of the Archbishops’ Council’s Deployment, Remuneration and Conditions of Service Committee, says the changes could be good for clergy.
“The new rules aren’t about laying out rigid job descriptions, dictating how clergy will operate, what they will do and the targets they have to achieve. Clergy have always been seen as office holders, rather than employees, and these new job descriptions will be permissive, rather that restrictive. They will give clergy the freedom to act and to serve their parishes with the gifts God has given them. And the new Ministry Development Reviews will do just what they say - provide a mechanism for the development of clergy and I will be working with our priests to help identify training opportunities to meet their development needs which they have identified.”
Born in Nottingham, Lesley Bentley went to university in Lampeter, before moving back to the Midlands with her husband John. She trained as a psychiatric nurse before training for the ordained ministry. In 1982 she was ordained Deaconess in the Diocese of Derby in the same week that her father was ordained Priest in the Diocese of Ely. She was ordained as a deacon in 1987 and as a priest 1994. Over the past 26 years she has worked in a mixture of town and village parishes in the Midlands and Yorkshire.
She chaired the National Network of Diocesan Advisors in Women’s Ministry in the early years of women’s ministry as priests and served on the Deployment Remuneration and Conditions of Service Committee of the Archbishop’s Council. She was involved in the last stipends review and the last Church Commissioners Spending Review; and has been a member of the Continuing Ministerial Development Panel, working particularly with the area of curacy.
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