The Church of England’s House of Bishops met yesterday and issued the following press release.
House of Bishops meeting March 2025
11/03/2025
The House of Bishops met online on March 11, 2025.
Bishops spent time discussing the recent meeting of General Synod in London, including reflecting on responses to the vote on safeguarding independence.
The House then discussed proposals for work by the Liturgical Commission – the body responsible for the Church of England’s worship – and commissioned future work.
The House considered the ongoing work of the Diocesan Finance Review and agreed that work should continue on ways to raise clergy stipends subject to recommendations to be developed by the Triennium Funding Working Group.
Bishops then discussed the process of discernment leading to ordination and agreed that Assessments for Psychological Wellbeing, already widely in use across the Church of England, should become a mandatory part of the Shared Discernment Process from later this year.
The House also spent time in groups, praying and reflecting on a passage from Isaiah 55.
The news about the psychological assessment of candidates for ordination becoming mandatory is welcome, but there is no word as to who will be undertaking these assessments? Let’s hope that these assessments will be conducted by properly trained and regulated professionals. I also hope that this development means the end of the so-called ‘traffic light document’, a tool so obviously open to manipulation and abuse (potentially by both interviewers – often working alone – and candidates) that it is staggering that it was ever given serious credence within the Church of England. Introducing compulsory psychological assessments is something that other… Read more »
Don’t pop your champagne cork too soon .i completely agree with you in principle but looking at the total pig’s ear they have made of safeguarding by forming it in their own image and running for cover at any suggestion of the I word let’s wait to see whether they partialise the assessment tool still further and carry on doing it in house
( for confidentiality purposes of course ).
No champagne corks being popped here, Susanna! As you say, it remains to be seen what the proposed alternative will look like in practice, and the extent to which it is fit for purpose. Crucially for me, will qualified and regulated psychologists be used, or will this be something else which the Church tries to keep in-house?
Indeed this is good news – back in the day during my own discernment process I was assessed by a psychologist, which was standard in my own diocese but quite rare across the C of E. Having grown up in a complicated family environment – significant early bereavement, parental divorce etc etc – it picked up a number of areas that clearly were not healed and needed some ‘deep work’ therapy. Nearly 2 decades later, with first-hand knowledge of the emotional challenges of ordained ministry I can’t imagine that I would still be in ministry without having gone through that… Read more »
Thank you for this, EagletP, and I think you write eloquently of the benefits of such properly-conducted psychological assessments.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in all dioceses, and I can speak at first hand about the manipulative ways in which the traffic light document was used in a diocese which did not engage professional / regulated psychological assessors on the basis of financial cost.
What is the ‘traffic light document’? I haven’t heard of it before.
Hi Janet, it is discussed in the CT herein: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/6-march/features/features/questions-of-propriety-in-the-discernment-process#:~:text=And%20all%20candidates%20also%20face,well%20as%20intimate%20relationships%2C%20divorce%2C
I don’t have a CT subscription. Can you give a brief description? Or at least its proper title?
I hope Church Times won’t object to my cutting and pasting one or two paragraphs from a larger article under fair use. It is a tool for DDOs to use when exploring a candidates suitability and vocation. “all candidates also face questions based on a “traffic-light” document supplied to DDOs by the Ministry Division, which suggests various lines of enquiry, including management of finances, experience of power dynamics in relationships, boundaries in pastoral situations, as well as intimate relationships, divorce, and sexual behaviour. The document, written with the help of a psychotherapist and a former member of the selection team,… Read more »
Thank you, Simon.
Hi Janet, a copy was submitted to IICSA: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215044125/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/12445/view/ACE026777_001_005_006_007.pdf
Thank you, James
Presumably the House approved the minutes of their January meeting, in respect of which they issued a summary on 20 January 2025:House of Bishops meeting – January 2025 | Thinking Anglicans. However, those minutes are not yet on the House of Bishops page of the C of E website: House of Bishops | The Church of England. The minutes of the HoB meetings in 2024 were only placed on the website shortly before the February meeting of General Synod, seemingly, as I suggested in a comment on TA on 10 February (House of Bishops minutes | Thinking Anglicans), in response… Read more »
David, those minutes for January are now up, on https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/hb25m1_20_january.pdf
They make very interesting reading; not least, on the 5GPs, the claim that the independent reviewer went beyond her remit? The agenda for March is also up.
And I am assuming the independent reviewer’s report to which they refer is this one, https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/independent_reviewer_report_-_watch_re_blackburn_appointment_process.pdf
Presumably the remit for the independent reviewer was to produce a report exonerating all those involved in running the appointment process, whereas she had the temerity to point out some faults!