Nicolas Stacey
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Rev. Nicolas David Stacey is a priest of the Church of England and social activist. He was Rector of Woolwich in the 1960s, and Director of Social Services for Kent County Council from 1974-1985.
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[edit] Early Life
Nic Stacey was born 27 November 1927. He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and saw service on HMS Anson in the last months of the Second World War. He participated in the liberation of Hong Kong, and witnessed the devastation of Hiroshima shortly after VJ Day. He resigned his commission in the Navy to read Modern History at Oxford, and then trained for the priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College. During this time he represented his service, university and country in athletics, being president of the Oxford University Athletics Club, and participated in the British Empire Games (1950), and the 1952 Olympic Games. He was a semi-finalist in the 200 metres and a finalist in the 4×400 metres relay.
Ordained in 1953 he served his title at St Mark’s, Portsea, under Christopher Pepys, later Bishop of Buckingham. In 1958 he moved to be Domestic Chaplain (personal assistant) to the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr Leonard Wilson. It was during his time in Birmingham that he began to receive national attention, founding and editing a tabloid church newspaper, the Birmingham Christian News, which gained a reputation for comparatively racy journalism and a sensationalist approach to church news. This was a deliberate policy on Stacey's part, and became characteristic of his ministry. He said "We want to be a platform for the prophetic voices of the country. We want to show that the Christian faith is relevant to twentieth-century living and that the Church is concerned with all the activities of man".[1]
[edit] The "Woolwich Project"
In 1960 he was invited by Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, to become Rector of Woolwich. He remained there for eight years. When he arrived in Woolwich he found three Church of England churches with small and unrepresentative congregations. The seemingly intractable problems of poor social housing and the resistance of the working class to the established church meant that religious observance in Woolwich was declining faster than in the rest of the country. Stacey implemented a radical programme. He recruited a large multi-talented and multi-denominational team of ministers. He closed one of the three churches, and radically reordered the eighteenth-century parish church of St Mary Magdalen. The galleries and side aisles were enclosed and offices, meeting rooms, and counselling rooms were created. A discotheque was built in the crypt, and the church's youth club was so successful that local probation officers fought to get their clients accepted as members. A coffee bar was opened in the gallery. Within four year, 1500 people a week were passing through the church doors.
Stacey was not without his detractors. His abrupt style and ability to garner publicity for his project alienated some of his fellow clergy in the diocese:
- If Stacey thinks he can build the Kingdom of God by frying eggs on the altar and percolating coffee in the organ pipe he should think again.[2]
But Stacey didn't neglect the traditional model of parochial ministry. An intensive parish visiting programme was begun, with the large clergy team visiting attempting to visit every household in the parish systematically. An adaptation of the Prayer Book baptism service was devised in an attempt to be more welcoming. Stacey fostered links with the civic bodies of the area, and encouraged links with the Royal Arsenal.
Despite all this effort, after four years Stacey judged the project to have been a failure. Regular worshippers had increased from fifty to one hundred, but most of these did not live in the parish. Stacey's reaction was characteristic. He wrote two articles for The Observer in December 1964 and May 1965. In the articles which he described his "mission's failure" and recommendations for the survival of the Church of England. The articles caused a storm of publicity, and were not at all well received. Bryan Wilson, the eminent sociologist of religion, described the latter article as not “how the Church could survive” by rather “how the Church might surrender”[3]. Eric Mascall called Stacey a "gimmick manqué".
Undeterred, Stacey restructured his ministry team. Most of the clergy sought secular employment, working in the parish in their spare time and at weekends. Stacey himself earned most of his income through journalism. However, after another three years he realised that he was ready for a change from Woolwich parish, and, realising that the Church was unlikely to offer him another post, he began to seek secular employment.
[edit] Non-Stipendiary Ministry
In 1968 he resigned his living and was appointed Deputy Director of Oxfam. He subsequently worked as Director of Social Services for the London Borough of Ealing (1971–1974) and Kent County Council, (1974–1985). In 2005 he was awarded the Cross of St Augustine, given personally by the Archbishop of Canterbury "for outstanding service within the Church of England whether centrally or in the dioceses, or the Anglican Communion as a whole, and to those who have contributed to advancing relations between the various Christian communions and churches."[1]
[edit] Stacey's Legacy
His autobiography, Who Cares, written shortly after he left the stipendiary ministry, is a trenchant and honest description of his experiences in the Church of England. Although out of print, it is occasionally available through second-hand book dealers, and is essential reading for historians of the Church of England in the twentieth century.
The Woolwich Project was probably the best last chance for a traditional, intensive model of parochial ministry. Much of what Stacey pioneered has become commonplace in the Church of England (for example, his fostering of ecumenical teams and shared premises), and some of his more radical proposals (such as nine out of ten clergy working in non-stipendiary ministry) may yet be required by the Church.
[edit] Sources
- Nicolas Stacey, Who Cares (London: Anthony Blond, 1971) ISBN 0340184779
- Mark Chapman, ‘Theology in the Public Arena: The case of South Bank Religion’ in Jane Garnett, et al., (eds.), Redefining Christian Britain: Post 1945 Perspectives, (London: SCM Press, 2007) ISBN 0334040922
- Michael Hinton, The Anglican Parochial Clergy: A Celebration, (London: SCM Press, 1994) ISBN 0334026725
