'Like love', writes a reviewer, 'chaplaincy is a many splendored thing.' The Revd Mark Birch, Canon Rector of Westminster Abbey and Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, has been reading how 'chameleon-like' chaplaincy can be these days, (writes Debbie Thrower).
In Church Times he reviews Chaplaincy: Contemporary and global perspectives by Grace Thomas and Kim Wasey (SCM 2024).
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2025/21-february/books-arts/book-reviews/book-review-chaplaincy-contemporary-and-global-perspectives-edited-by-grace-thomas-and-kim-wasey The book spells out the challenges of ministering in institutions which often pay the chaplain's wages. No wonder chaplains sometimes feel under such awkward pressure to collude.
What is distinctive about Anna Chaplaincy for Older People, of course (which doesn't feature in the book incidentally) is that it is community-based chaplaincy which is not beholden to any single institution. A few, but very few, Anna Chaplains are paid for their time - at present in the network only around ten per cent receive remuneration beyond expenses.
The difficulties of measuring the effectiveness - the impacts - of what chaplains do is, nevertheless, common to all. Mark Birch puts his finger on the problem when he says: 'Chaplains are often the best at spotting gaps in provision, and there is evidence in this collection of the kind of innovation and responsiveness that can be transformative, providing ideas that the best institutions might then adopt.'
'But that does not take away from the sheer difficulty of an institutional landscape that can find no sensible metric to evaluate what chaplains do, which leaves chaplains in the uncomfortable position of trying to justify themselves to funding bodies that crave measurements to appease regulators.'
'If these funding bodies or regulators have no faith commitment themselves (or are not supposed to) then this rapidly becomes a 'crying in the wilderness': speaking words that simply do not register.'
Chaplains work, typically, on the margins even though Mark Birch's own context couldn't appear to be more at the heart of the establishment. But whether you minister on a North Sea Oil platform, a prison, a gym... or indeed a care home or someone's own private home, the conundrum of how to prove that one's time is well spent and of real value to the recipient remains.
'Singing with integrity' as one of the book's contributors describes it, is a constant challenge.
'There are no answers here, only valiant improvisations by those who seek to make love known on the margins of the Church.'
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