Monday 14 June 2021

"Gig Economy" Priest

 Retrieved from the Church Times jobs pages. The original ad has already been amended to lose the words "gig economy" in favour of stressing flexibility of income stream.

"This post might suit a ‘gig-economy’ priest with other sources of income keen to re-locate to a beautiful part of the world"

Magazine Article  from Reverend Angela

Dear Everyone. Thank you for welcoming me to your lovely parish. It is truly in a beautiful part of the world. 

I am looking forward to our service every Sunday at 9am. However if I'm late back due to running visitors back to the airport, I hope you'll be able to carry on without me. You know how the gig economy is. The taxi runs are quite often cash in hand and you can get some decent tips if they've had a few at the Square and Compasses before deciding it's time to go home.

Likewise you will see from our timetable of worship that we are holding a weekly Bible Study. Please note this will be every Wednesday evening, unless Imran's Curry House is holding a "2 for 1" week in which case I'm going to be busy driving Chicken Vindaloos around the suburbs of Bournemouth.

And apologies about missing the fete. Only St Stibbington's-in-the-Wold has a vacancy, and by doing that wedding for them I was able to claim the fee plus some really decent expenses. Nice little earner. Got a couple of funerals coming up in Weymouth, as well. Lovely.

This coming Sunday, I'll be looking forward to preaching on the Parable of the Zero-Hours Contracts, where the people the vineyard owner takes on early in the day are shattered from having been picking in the Amazon Warehouse all night, while when he goes to take people on later in the day they've all cleared off to deliver Dominos for Uber Eats.

In closing I'd like to reflect on those people who've told me that when they wanted a priest with "other sources of income", they were really thinking of someone who'd semi-retired from a job in banking or someone whose husband was a finance director, or something like that. Well, being able to be an incumbent because you're independently wealthy is more like the Jane Austen economy than the Gig one. If you'd wanted that kind of a priest, maybe you should have said so.

11 comments :

  1. Precisely. What an idiotic advert.

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  2. This is the future of the C of E .

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  3. Wow, I can't believe this is a real advert. Brilliant piece, thanks!

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  4. Hilarious, because true! Not only did I have to combat ne curacy with supply teaching, because someone decided I should be an NSM, but an archdeacon told me I was expected to develop a ‘vibrant workplace ministry’ as well!

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  5. Combine, not combat. Blooming spellcheck.

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  6. I suspect that if they expect an NSM to give up paid work for this job, they will be out of luck. However I read in the same edition that a 92 year old retired priest who also happens to be a Lord of the Realm is standing to be elected back into the Lords as a Peer from the real peers. He, if he doesn't get the Lord's gig, could be ideal to fill this vacancy, meaning he could deal with the PCC like the Speaker of the Lords.

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