LAST week in TCW I told you the terrible tale of how the Church of England Bishops and the Synod confiscated the land owned by the parishes for hundreds of years and used the money to finance their ever-enlarging bureaucracy. They also nicked the old vicarages and sold them off not to ‘those in poverty’ but to prosperous professionals. Today there are four times as many Bishops as there were in 1836 when eight times as many people attended church. There are also teeming hordes of Archdeacons and Assistant Archdeacons, Advisers, Consultants, Specialists, Officers and Clerks. Every parish church is obliged to hand over an ever-increasing annual tax to pay for the bloated bureaucracy.
In my article I gave you a general outline of what is happening nationally. I should like you to be better informed. So today I shall look closely at a particular diocese to show you how the ecclesiastical commissars are spending the money which the rapidly decreasing number of parishioners put in the collecting plate each Sunday. Here then are a few details about what is going on in the Diocese of Sheffield. Bear in mind that what is happening in Sheffield is being replicated in all 42 English dioceses.
In case you are thinking of applying, these are some of the jobs advertised on Sheffield’s website. Don’t worry, you are not required to be ordained or to have had a theological education – not even one as meagre as that of the current Archbishop of York – to become a Lights for Christ Enabler and be paid £25,520 for 28 hours per week out of the loot the diocese extorts from the hard-pressed parishes.
What does the job entail? What will you actually do? You will enable every baptised person to shine as a light. Your work will be part of a setting God’s people free initiative in which you will be expected to play a key role in support of the roll out of Lights for Christ. But the only stuff being rolled out here is barrels of jargon. You will, of course, like any secular social worker, develop networks and relationships and train a network of Deanery Enablers. When you’ve finished doing that, you will establish online lifestyle-based support groups and hubs.
People who talk that sort of inane psychobabble and sociologese are usually found in corporate meeting rooms. We expect better from the heirs of Cranmer and Tyndale.
Perhaps being an Enabler is not your sort of thing? Never mind, you might become an Information Analyst and assist the Diocese of Sheffield on its ambitious change journey. After lunch, you will be required to notice that We have been using data to inform our strategy with a range of quantitative and qualitative information. In accordance with standard practice, you will be part of a support team.
If you are consumed by ambition, you might even aspire to the rank of Digital Mission Development Adviser where you will find yourself in the forefront of transformational change. Your task will be to deliver our renewed, released and rejuvenated strategy, the main purpose of which is the implementation of online discipleship. There will be no gossiping by the coffee machine because you will be expected to embed a mixed-line approach going forward.
There is more . . . much, much more, page after page of exciting opportunities. But I can’t take any more. I have done my best to offer you a glimpse of the daily life of today’s Church of England at the local, grass roots level and I cannot tolerate any further atrocities. I have surfeited on them until I have sickened.
Only I must end by telling you the most important detail: The Diocese of Sheffield particularly encourages applications from disabled, black, Asian and Minority (BAME) candidates.
In other words, they discriminate against able-bodied white people. The usual Leftie racism.
