Dignity at Work

I see that I haven’t posted under my “roaring” label for a couple of months. Does that mean all is well? Well, no not really. I’m just trying to get on with the rest of my life. Last week a couple of barbed comments after church included the statements “You priests are supposed to be the most caring people in the world, but you don’t care really!” and “You have ruined our church with that thing!” (a nave altar, approved experimentally by a large majority of the church council), plus the inevitable “lots of people feel the same way; I’m the only one who will say anything!” Not easy to relax in people’s company when that sort of thing can come at you out of the blue. Doesn’t make me want to go to a social event, or stick around drinking coffee after Sunday services.

Several things occur to me. First, most of you don’t know me. Maybe I am uncaring. Maybe I really am “lazy”. Perhaps I should just accept that I’m “unpopular”. I can tell you that I say my prayers, put in the hours, prepare worship carefully, follow up pastoral requests, spend time on my sermons, seem to get on well with people. But you don’t know.

And there is inconsistency here too. For example, I don’t think that I can both “force through” unpopular ideas and “railroad” the church council, as well as being “weak and vacillating”. Words like “steam-rolling” generally indicate the attitude of the speaker towards the event, policy or project; no-one describes the idea of a visit to Iona or setting up a childrens holiday club as having been “steam-rollered”, yet it gets far less consideration or discussion than a nave altar. (The words in quotes have all been addressed to me in public or private by members of one congregation during the past year.)

I’ve read through the Church of England report “Dignity at Work”, which came out last year but doesn’t seem to have seen much of the light of day since then. It offers the following definition of “unacceptable behaviour”:

“Any behaviour always involving a misuse of power which an individual or group knows, or ought reasonably to know, could have the potential effect of offending, humiliating, intimidating or isolating an individual or group”.

The suggestions put forward in the report, all about policies and discussions in synods and councils, and the appointment of advisors and arbitrators, are all fine in so far as they go. But at the end of the day, conscientious and caring individuals trying to do difficult and demanding work can be left in very isolated situations amongst people who do not behave well towards them. And, as I’ve said before, it is shameful that the Church is having to take advice from, and use models developed by, secular voluntary organizations and trade unions, when it should instead be offering a beacon of good practice to the world.

At least “Dignity at Work” takes a stronger position than one colleague who I began to talk to about what I was experiencing. He told me “the role of the priest is to be crucified”. I utterly reject that view. I know too that ministers have to be prepared to be “lightning conductors” for all kinds of bad stuff that people project at times of bereavement or crisis; but that should not be given as a general excuse for bad behaviour.

It’s not just me. We have a curate, who has tried out lots of imaginative new ideas and new ways of doing things, only to be told, in effect, we don’t want that sort of thing here. The treasurer said in finance committee that if the council voted to fund her project, he would resign (railroading?) When we had problems with the heating system last year, and when the sound system wasn’t working properly, people were wagging their fingers in the faces of the volunteer church officers responsible for these things. We’re not likely to find replacements for those who quite understandably get fed up with that sort of treatment. It’s time it stopped.