Vicars like me are struggling in lockdown

A year of living through a pandemic has taken its toll on the best of us. Vicars like me are no exception. 

As a healthy and normally upbeat 52-year-old, this feeling of gloom is frighteningly new. Anecdotal stories from clergy friends tell a similar story to my own: the urge is to curl up and mask the misery with binge marathons of Netflix box sets. But this brings only short-term relief. A cursory look at social media posts show that a good number of vicars are struggling to keep it together. 

The pressures on vicars come from every quarter. Some vicars have been landed with the impossible task of maintaining empty churches as elderly volunteers withdraw to shield or isolate. I know one vicar who seems to have doubled up as a cleaner, flower captain, gardener, painter and a handyman, up ladders fixing broken windows. The likelihood is that community projects in some churches, food banks for example, are being carried by the incumbent alone.