The stipendiary clergy share system
A single clergy diocesan deployment formula was introduced in 1995 and continues to be approved by the House of Bishops. Its intention is to ensure that stipendiary clergy are distributed equitably amongst dioceses according to need. The diocese in Europe is not included because of the special nature of its chaplaincies.
The apportionment involves four factors for each diocese and uses the latest available statistics, weighted as shown in brackets:
|
Population |
(8) |
to reflect the number of persons for whom a pastoral responsibility is assumed; |
|
Area |
(1) |
to reflect the larger distances covered in rural dioceses; |
|
Membership |
(3) |
to reflect the number of Church members to be cared for. It is measured by: one-third Electoral Roll members plus two-thirds Average Weekly Attendance, adults, children and young people;* |
|
Number of churches |
(3) |
to reflect the number of services that need to be provided in different churches. |
All clergy in parochial or diocesan posts count towards the allocation unless their responsibilities are national, provincial or cover more than one diocese.
The share calculation takes part-time stipendiary clergy into account. There were 8,496 full-time stipendiary clergy as at 31 December 2006 and 277 part-time stipendiary clergy. The whole-time equivalent of the part-time clergy was calculated to be 136, thus giving a total deployable stipendiary workforce of 8,632. The distribution of stipendiary clergy across the dioceses as at 31 December 2006 and the diocesan share allocations are shown in the table Distribution of FTE stipendiary diocesan clergy 2006.
Note: *The average number of all attenders at church services throughout the week typically over a four-week period in October.