Priory News, May 1998

Elections and Things

A year ago we were probably all shocked and either dejected or delighted depending upon our political views following the most remarkable General Election result in recent times. Considerably more prosaically, by the time you read this the 1998 Annual Parochial Church Meeting will have taken place, along with the Meeting of Parishioners for the Election of Churchwardens, and as I write before these meetings I cannot say whether or not you will be in a state of shock, dejection or delight!

I can say, however, that many readers, and especially new members of our congregation, are likely to find the process mysterious and probably unnecessarily legalistic, so I shall attempt here to put some of this straight for you. The Church Representation Rules which govern the way we organise ourselves grow out of the status of the Church of England as the established church. General Synod’s decisions have a similar status to Acts of Parliament and the General Synod is based upon the foundation of a democratic system in the parishes and deaneries of the Church throughout the land, so any corruption or incompetence at parish level would threaten the right the Church enjoys to govern itself at national level.

The Rules ensure that any parishioner, whether church-attending or not, has a right to participate in the affairs of the parish church, but that only actual communicant members are elected to the Parochial Church Council. This means that it is church members who make decisions but they have to take into account the needs of the whole parish. The P.C.C. consists of any clergy and readers licensed to the parish, the churchwardens, any members of General Synod or the Diocesan Synod resident in the parish or on its electoral roll, the parish’s elected representatives to the Deanery Synod (chosen at every third annual meeting) and a number of elected lay people, the number determined by the annual meeting. These people take all the decisions needed to run the parish church’s mission and ministry and to look after its building, and may delegate as much as they see fit to a Standing Committee which the law requires them to appoint to look after affairs between meetings.

Churchwardens are the Bishop’s officers and, having been chosen by the parish are appointed on the Bishop’s behalf by his Archdeacon at a service called a Visitation. Until the swearing-in at the Archdeacon’s Visitation, the previous year’s wardens remain in office, although the newly-elected ones join the P.C.C. immediately after election and sit alongside the existing ones. It is not necessary to be on the church electoral roll to vote for churchwardens: it is sufficient to live in the parish and to be on its civil electoral roll by reason of residence, which is why the meeting for electing wardens is technically a separate meeting from the rest of the annual business, even though they are generally held together.

The Archdeacon’s Visitation takes place this year on 6th May at All Saints, Stamford at 7.30pm: please pray for all who will be taking up office as church wardens this year, and give thanks for the faithful service of those who will be reliquising office that evening.

Mark Warrick