Should the office of churchwarden be abolished? It’s a mug’s game, anyway. [Answers, 9 November]
Your answers: Far better to make the churchwarden a stipendiary post, and unload on to this paid official all the management and organisational duties (referred to in business circles as “clerical” work, ironically) for which clergy are not trained, and frequently (in my experience) have little aptitude.
If the clergy devoted their time to the pastoral and priestly work for which they were ordained, one might hope that we could recruit more self-supporting clergy to parish ministries; so the scheme needn’t cost more in stipends.
Philip Belben
Nettlebridge, Somerset
When I became a churchwarden, I asked what my first priority should be. “Start looking for your successor.” And what sort of person should I look for? “Someone whose faith is strong enough to survive finding out how the Church of England really works.”
Timothy Beecroft
St Albans, Hertfordshire
Given that the office of churchwarden is established in statute, and at least some Parliamentary time would have to be given over to the consideration of its abolition, one feels that there are matters of greater constitutional and historical importance for our parliamentarians to attend to for the foreseeable future (aka the “B” word).
Gwilym Stone, Southampton
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