Recently the 2008/9 edition of Church Statistics appeared. This publication always contains useful information and last Spring we looked at the numbers in Licensed Ministry in this Diocese taken from the previous edition of Church Statistics and especially at the changes between 1998 and 2008.
This latest edition has a couple of interesting pie charts to illustrate the changes in clergy numbers over a longer period from 1994 to 2009. These charts, which I have slightly simplified, give the proportions of men and women serving as clergy in the dioceses of the Church of England. The decline over the period in the numbers of stipendiary clergy, from 87% to 73%, and the increase in self-supporting (non-stipendiary) clergy, from 13% to 27%, are both plain to see. In addition the proportion of women clergy has increased from 10.1% to 29.3%. Finally, although it’s not shown in the charts, the proportion of part-time clergy has increase from an estimated 1.1% of all stipendiaries to 3.9%.
Unfortunately Church Statistics did not give the numbers on which the pie chart proportions were based. However a bit of detective work using other tables for 1994 and 2009 establishes that the total number of clergy, both stipendiary and self-supporting, was 12,270 in 1994, and 11,660 in 2009. This is an overall decline of only 610 (5%), although the number of full-time clergy has fallen much more, from 10,450 to 8,230, that is by 2,220 (21%).
Canon Don Cardy