Clergy and Child Tax Credits: the Magic Phone Number

Because I lose this number every year I thought I’d put it on the blog. And I thought you might need it too. If you are doing a Child Tax Credit return and you are an Anglican clergy family (or, I’m told, a spy or other sort of strange profession, but I’m also told it only applies to Anglican clergy – a perk of the established church, perhaps), you don’t call the number they have on the Child Tax Credit form. That would be too obvious.

You have to call their special secret number: 0345 302 1493. And unlike the main number, it is only open Monday-Friday from 8.30-5pm. Today it is experiencing ‘high call volumes’. And you only have until 31st July to call them. But at least you won’t spend hours on hold to the wrong number first….

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Black Country Calling?

I was just noodling about to see how the local churches I mentioned a while ago had got on with finding new vicars. And the news is as follows:

• St Matthew’s Walsall are still on the hunt – if you’re quick you could still apply to be vicar of the main Anglican church in Walsall. The deadline is 28th May so you’d better get a move on!
• It rather looks like St Matthew’s in Tipton also failed to appoint – they are suggesting that you contact their patrons for further details.
• And Holy Trinity Heath Town’s website doesn’t say and neither does their Facebook page, so it’s not clear whether they have a new vicar or not, but [edit to reflect comment below] they *have* appointed and the new vicar is being licensed at the end of June.

If you are looking for an incumbency, or know someone who is, do consider the Black Country. We’d love to see more good gospel work in our neighbouring tow-uns. Pray for us in this neck of the woods – that visionary ministers would make the move to come and lead our churches.

The Black Country flag – bet you didn’t know we had one, eh?

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Come for the Cake. Stay for the Gospel.

It’s that time of year again! We’re looking for new ministry trainees – two of them in fact. Would you like to join us in the Vicarage after the summer? Our current intrepid attic dwellers are planning to move on before September (God willing) – so we will have space for gospel hearted volunteers who want to serve God’s people and reach out in our small part of the kingdom.

We can guarantee many opportunities to serve in all sorts of capacities – preaching, leading services, gardening, visiting, eating cake, tweaking the sound desk, street evangelism, geocaching with teenagers or hanging out with 80 year olds at lunch club, organising events and teaching the bible 121 for starters. You can live in a flat above our Vicarage and very likely meet Gone, our resident (when he’s not in prison) gentleman of the road. You can eat late night curry from the fabulous tandoori serving pubs up the road and play snooker with Nepali barmen and likely get to sample West African and Jamaican food with some of our church families. You will definitely get to know the Vicarage family well and discuss theology over coffee and ministry over wine and cheese. You’ll experience Vicarage life in all its ups and downs – the joys and sorrows of gospel ministry. You will get a day a week on the Midlands Ministry Training Course and regular supplies of homemade cake. We have an excellent relationship with Lichfield’s Diocesan Director of Ordinands, so if you are thinking of full time ministry in the Church of England, we can help you through that process, or you could just be wanting to do a year or two of Christian service before going on to other things.

The Vicar has posted more details on our church website. One of our current trainees was pointed in our direction by a reader of this blog. He’s off to his BAP for Church of England selection next month. Do you know someone who’d like to eat cake and serve alongside us?

The Vicarage looking pretty – come and join us!

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Plague Vicarage Catch-up

Apologies. We have had the lurgies. And hence the exciting 2014 regular posting phenomenon has gone a bit down the tubes, after lasting for all of about a fortnight. The Queen got sick and then kindly shared her bug with three of the four grown-ups in the house. BytheSea had the Daddy Bear version, involving treatment with antibiotics, I have had a Mummy Bear attack which has merely confined me to bed for four days, and the Vicar has had the Baby Bear lurgies and has felt terrible but still managed to lead a massive funeral and attend a 2 1/2 hr school governors meeting midweek plus all his normal vicaring duties.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that we’re on the mend and I’m able to have a small blogging catch-up.

FIRST: The winner of the caption competition – randomly generated as I found it too hard to choose – is Shaun. Please email me at thevicarswifey [at] gmail [dot] com to claim your prize of an e-book of The Ministry of a Messy House.

SECOND: Book news: The Vicar reviewed my book (I’m relieved to say that he liked it) – and Claire Musters posted her review on Christian Today (she seemed to understand the writing process in the Vicarage perfectly).

THIRD: Ace apps – I’ve been meaning to mention a couple of excellent free apps – the Bible App for Kids and PrayerMate for iPad/iPhone and Android (free until the end of March courtesy of London City Mission). My kids are a little on the big side for the Bible App but they have enjoyed noodling about with it. It looks like a fun way to get kids familiar with bible stories. Recommended for ages 3-8. And PrayerMate is a truly excellent way to order all your regular intercessions. Over the years I have used various versions of prayer lists and abandoned/lost them pretty regularly. PrayerMate is a superb app which enables me to keep my list fresh and has some whizzy features like alarms and prayer diaries from mission societies (all in iOS, some still to come in Android).

FOURTH: I have come across a couple of interesting programmes on Alba – the Gaelic language BBC service which we can get on iPlayer. There’s a gentle series about ministers’ wives in Scotland (Bean a’ Mhinisteir) and tonight we’re going to watch Reaching Out with Hope (Na Soisgeulaich) which is about three evangelical churches in Scotland reaching out to their communities, including Niddrie Community Church, led by Mez McConnell of 20Schemes. Two of our children have Gaelic names, but that’s the extent of my knowledge, but it’s okay – the programmes are subtitled in English.

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Collective noun for clergy wives

There were 115 minister’s wives at the conference I attended last week. It made me wonder what the collective noun for such a gathering would be:

And we're all as glamorous as Elisa too!

• An encouragement of vicar’s wives?
• A chatter of pastor’s wives?
• A manse of minister’s wives?
• A hoot of parson’s wives?
• A Sunday lunch of clergy wives?

What do you think?

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