Where do you live, vicar?
4 July 2023
Does your parish own a vicarage? Does the vicar live in it?
I have long been an advocate of clergy living in a vicarage nearby the church, and I have been privileged to live in some wonderful on-site clergy accommodation during my ministry. Last week, however, it was announced that I am moving to a new parish. I will not be living in the vicarage, even though there is a fairly splendid house on the church site.
Increasingly, clergy are making the choice I have just made, and deciding not to live in provided accommodation but to live in their own homes. And after several decades of provided housing I totally understand why. In the past, whilst enjoying many aspects of the large, attractive, well-located and well-appointed housing I have been privileged to occupy, I nonetheless regularly dreamed of living elsewhere. Why?
Because even the nicest vicarage can be a gilded cage.
Many vicarages are great buildings. Many others are not. What most have in common, however, is close proximity to the church plant. This can be a huge advantage for the clergy person and their ministry, but the same things that act as a plus (being near to the office, easy to find, easy to offer hospitality, etc) can also be a mixed blessing both for the clergy person and for their household. Particularly if it is next door to the church, the vicarage functions effectively both as a home and as a place of work, and boundaries can be hard to draw and maintain. Meetings often take place in the house, and the priest (or another member of their household) is expected to answer the door at all hours. Leisure is often interrupted. Many is the priest (and historically I have been one of them) who spends their day off getting as far away from the vicarage as possible. The vicarage is a place of work, meaning “down time” has to happen elsewhere.
When living in a vicarage one is also beholden to the parish for the state of the building, and to a certain extent for personal security. This isn’t always a happy arrangement. I have heard stories of clergy effectively being held to ransom by their churchwardens; having to ask permission and then wait an age even for the most basic of repairs, including leaking roofs, unsafe appliances, lack of heating, and other things that in a normal residential tenancy situation would be considered “emergencies” that the tenant could have rectified immediately at the landlord’s expense. I have been fortunate that this has never been my experience, but the stories are certainly out there. Moreover sometimes clergy living next door to the church become the targets not just of unwanted attention, but even of physical violence. On one or two isolated occasions I have experienced that myself.
All this begs the question: especially given the safety issues, ought vicarages nearby to the church building continue to be the norm? And what would a better alternative look like? There is, I think, a difference between a vicarage that is next door to the church, and thus obviously where the priest lives, and a vicarage that is a short distance away and that functions properly as a private home. The latter is much better and perhaps close to the ideal if accommodation is to be provided. However it is the exception (at least in my own diocese) and very few parishes are willing or can afford to provide accommodation for the priest just down the street when they have a “perfectly good house” on site.
An extraordinary percentage of clergy now self-report as exhausted, depressed and over-worked. Clergy retention is becoming a huge issue. Over the past few years I have come reluctantly to the view that on-site clergy housing is part of what has led to this problem. It is no surprise to me that many of my colleagues are voting with their feet, and choosing to live in their own homes rather than in those owned by their parish, in order to improve their own mental and physical health. I have sometimes looked down on such arrangements; no longer. Clergy are people, and people thrive best when their home is a place of safety and comfort. For some that will be a vicarage, for some others not. What is needed, I think, is the flexibility for clergy to be able to have a choice. The simple but pretty fundamental equation “happy priest = happy parish” suggests that parishes will benefit just as much as their priest if the right choice is made.
It needs to be asked, however whether an incarnational sense of “priest and people together” can survive the demise of the vicarage? I think that many have already decided that it can. I am about to live out the experiment for myself. I’ll be interested to see how it works out!
