by Tim Sigsworth, Telegraph
Communities without regular priestly care as ‘demoralisation’ takes toll on clergy numbers
Vicars are becoming an “endangered species” because of a “crisis” in clergy numbers, the Church of England has been warned.
A report by Save the Parish, a campaign group, found that the number of Anglican ministers and candidates for ordination is in decline because of “demoralisation”.
The crisis has left the Church of England at risk of no longer being “a Christian presence in every community”, according to the report.
“We give clergy multiple churches to care for, in which they struggle, making it ever harder to be a true parson: a person, whose vocation is to ‘be’ in a place and fully present to it,” it reads.
Statistics show that retired ministers now make up a majority of active clergy in the Church of England, with 8,368 being retired, 6,682 in paid positions and 2,440 in self-supporting roles.
Nearly half of the 6,682 paid priests are over 55 and approaching the mandatory retirement age of 70, the report found.
At the same time, numbers entering training to become a vicar have dropped from a peak of 591 in 2020 to 442 in 2025, far below the target level of 630.
The Church of England has previously calculated that this combination of ageing clergy and insufficient ordinations would cause the number of full-time priests to plummet to 5,400 by 2033, 40 per cent of what it was in 2000.
Read Parish Ministry: Addressing the Crisis in Stipendiary Clergy Numbers in the Church of England from Save The Parish