We'd like to have a parish priest.....

Anyone who has been involved in recruiting a new vicar knows the challenges. It's a time-consuming process, to say the least. There's likely to be a long interregnum as extensive consultation takes place, a detailed 'parish profile' prepared and complex legal, diocesan and patronage rules negotiated. But does it have to be like this? A Save The Parish supporter in a rural Cornish deanery writes.....


In our parish we’ve been in vacancy since the beginning of July 2025, and it would seem (from what I can deduce) that our vacancy is not likely to be filled any time soon. This situation (inexplicably to me) does not seem to be a matter of concern for the senior clerics in our region. 

I should say straight off that I have no experience of recruiting for a parish priest job role, and I’ve had no direct involvement in this particular recruitment process. So I have no relevant direct experience. But I do have a career’s worth experience of recruiting for senior positions in the real world - which must by now run to recruiting over 100 job roles.

I’ve found with many of the Church of England's processes - over the past two years that I’ve been working in a parish and in a PCC (Parochial Church Council) - that it’s best to step away sometimes and say ‘I know that’s how the church does it, but that seems absolutely daft to me.’ I find this helps me to keep my sanity and sense of perspective.

Our previous parish priest announced his retirement in April 2025, served 3 months notice, and left at the beginning of July 2025.

I naively said to church people in April last year - ‘that’s good, we have plenty of time (3 months) to fill our vacancy’. The answer I got - ‘you’ll be lucky if you have a new jobholder by July next year’ (i.e. within 12 months) now seems to be unfortunately accurate.  There are several things about the CofE’s recruitment processes that strike me as daft (and totally outdated). Just to highlight a few: 
 

  • The Diocese said we had to set up a Transition Team. The role of this Team was to develop a Benefice Profile and a Job Advert. I thought this would take a couple of weeks. In fact it took the best part of 6 months.

  • The Transition team had 8 representatives from our Benefice - two from each parish. There seemed to be no recognition from senior clerics of the imposition this made on these people’s time. Also no recognition that it’s near impossible to find dates for face-to-face meetings when eight parishioners will all be available (especially during the Summer months). And the church seems to be reluctant to use digital meeting platforms.
  • For all the church’s talk of ‘collaboration’, the final Job Advert was changed by a senior cleric - without consultation with the Transition Team - before it was published.

And don’t get me started on us having to pay to place an advert in the ‘Church Times’. I think the last time I paid for a Job Advert was in the 1990s.

Having said all this, I’m a very positive and optimistic person, and in our parish we all remain hopeful that we’ll have a new priest at some point in the future. 

And we’re confident that person will do a great job for our church and for our wider community.’

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