Welcome to the Library

Material about worker-priests/MSEs is scant when compared to the multitudinous output about the ordained (or 'sacred') ministry.

I thought it might be helpful to draw together most of what I had found. Please let me know of others you think should be added: remember, they should be of direct interest to the MSE/WP vocation.

When I recently checked links on this page I was disheartened to discover a good number of sites have closed - for example NASSAM (National Association of Self Supporting Assistant Ministers - USA Episcopalian) and the Association of Presbyterian Tentmakers, along with a number of personal blogs.

The bookshelves

GENERAL

• Wikipedia entry - good starting point for those new to the theme
• So is this encyclopedia.com entry

• Gone fishing (in the middle of the workplace): an excellent article by Richard Spence. Worth reading, not least by stipendiary colleagues and those involved in nurturing vocations. Read it here

SERMONS, TALKS, ARTICLES ON THE WP/MSE THEME

• Faith in the workplace
  A talk given to Leicestershire Far and Near Club by Mark Wakefield (MSE, London)
• A Celebration of Self Supporting Ministry
  Address, St Margaret's Church Westminster Abbey, September 2011, Steven Croft (then Bishop of Sheffield)
• Challenging Clerical Stereotypes: reflections on the genesis of NSM
  An accessible and clear summary by Rob Fox (CHRISM Paper 11)
  "As we know, most NSMs have perceived their ministerial role to be in their local home parish. However at all times there have been a few NSMs who
  have expressed a conviction that their vocation is primarily within their
  workplace... But in the experience of NSMs with this vocation, it has become clear that Bishops and parochial clergy simply take no interest in what they are doing."
• What about the workers?
  Sermon, Feast, St Joseph the Worker, Hugh Valentine (MSE London)
• Generosity, humility, liminality: Sermon “A New Pattern of Priesthood” Celebration and Consultation
  Southwark Cathedral 17 May 2013 Steven Croft (then Bishop of Sheffield)
• Self-Supporting Ministry
  A talk given to a joint meeting of the Central London Clergy Chapters by Michael Redman (SSM, former lawyer)
• Seeing and hearing: the value of irregular clergy
  Talk by Hugh Valentine to a conference of Oxford SSM Clergy
• 'The worker-priest movement was a novel experiment by the Catholic Church in France'. Peter Collins reflects on an important but short-lived initiative. A 1995 article from Uniya.

AUDIO
Hugh Williamson is researching priest-workers, inspired by his father, Canon Tony Williamson. He has been interviewed in a couple of podcasts. One from the Church Times, another from Studs with Daniel Lazar.

SURVEYS AND ASSESSMENTS

• 2010 result of survey conducted amongst CofE SSM clergy by Teresa Morgan and Graham Lewis and reported in two linked articles in the Church Times April 2011. Download here. 'Morgan is critical of the Church for its lack of strategy with regard to SSM and especially of the failure of dioceses to consider SSMs in their planning processes. She dismisses the raft of alleged impediments to the effective use of SSMs often cited by Church leaders, arguing that her survey has empirically disproved them.' Source

• 2011 The Experiences of Ministry Survey. Nothing much that is explicitly about MSE/WPS except this on time off: 'It is common for clergy to take one day off a week most of the time. However, for some this is a rarity with ministers in secular employment least likely to take a day off a week.' See the full report here.
• 2013 from Southwark Diocese: Non-Stipendiary Ministry - A Strategic Opportunity (Preliminary Results). This is a survey of views and attitudes and it reports the (now well-worn and known) views that unpaid clergy tend to feel under-appreciated and under-utilised, especially concerning knowledge and skills they gain from their secular roles. PDF here.

WEIGHTIER TREATMENTS OF THE THEME

• Patrick Vaughan's 1987 doctoral thesis Non-Stipendiary Ministry in the Church of England: A History of the Development of an Idea. (Large PDF, around 9MB)
• A paper carried by CHRISM in 2001 by Patrick Vaughan (given as a lecture by him on the occasion of the EMMTC Day of Celebration, marking the closure of the East Midlands Ministry Training Course (EMMTC, 1973-2011)). Patrick was the first Principal of the Course, from 1977 to 1990.
  
• Raymond Eveleigh's 2011 MA Dissertation on NS ministry within the CofE

• Priests in Secular Employment by Richard Spence, A New Zealand priest (with links to a website containing his research notes).

• The Worker Priests...a Movement Fallen into Oblivion
  by Veit Strassner .  A comprehensive survey of the early RC worker-priests and their prohibition by the Vatican. NB The link-source appears to have disappeared - if you know where to find another source please let me know

• Worker Priests – Lost cause or cause celebre? Bishop John Mantle, via CHRISM. (John was a good friend to the worker-priest initiative and his early death was a loss to the church).
• John Rowe's early Worker-priests: A Rejoinder see frontispiece (right). Full text (PDF). See the book's 'Statement' of the Worker Church Group (1959) here
• Statement by the Worker Church Group (UK, 1957) PDF
• Ministry in Secular Employment in the C of E 1960-2000, Tom Keighley's King's London thesis.

OTHER

• 1968, a pamphlet from the Advisory Council for the Church's Ministry (ACCM)  A priest-worker ministry by David Wilson (Church's ministry series No. 12). It reads very much of its time. The writer had been ordained three years and continued to work in his family's bread-baking firm. Its strength is its personal testimony. PDF copy here.

HISTORICAL PRESS CUTTINGS ABOUT ENGLISH WORKER PRIESTS 1950s/60s
See here

OFFICIAL THINGS
This document appears on the CofE site with the note: This document is designed to assist DDOs, Bishops' Advisers and others who have a role in selecting MSEs for the Church of England. It was drafted by MSE John Lees and formed part of the Ministry Division's guidance for BAP Advisers in 2011. (John had a book published in 2019 by SPCK Self Supporting Ministry: A Practical Guide.  Although dealing with the wider group of unpaid clergy, it includes references to ministers in secular employment (MSE)).

Organisations

CHRISM a well-established and valuable "association for all Christians who see their secular employment as a primary field of Christian ministry and for those who would support and encourage that vision".

MSE/worker-priest blogs or sites
Bivocational Ministry (USA)
Mission de France

"I simply argue that the Cross be raised again at the centre of the market-place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage-heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek (or shall we say in English, in Bantu and in  Afrikaans?); at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves  curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died about. And that is where churchmen [sic] should be and what churchmanship should be about.

George MacLeod, Only One Way Left, The Iona Community, 1958

Blog mentions of the theme

• Mike Rayner on "Why I am no longer a Minister in Secular Employment"
• Priest-nurse Fi