Now at last we have a real problem! For this is a question which is the concern of thousands of people in this country. The trouble with vicars is that they are ordinary human beings with a great many faults and failings just like the rest of us. In fact they are sinners and the difficulty of putting clergy on a pedestal (as we too often do) is that they quickly fall off.
For many generations there has been a false and unbiblical tradition in this country that the clergy are in some way superior beings who never fall into sin and certainly never (for example) lose their tempers. And this is why the Press so often seize with enthusiasm any story about one of the clergy who does something silly or wrong. We do not expect it from such as you, they say, and therefore they put it all over the front pages of the red-top papers.
But in fact those who are called to the ministry were once lay people and therefore are just like you! Furthermore the standards to which they ought to live are precisely the standards which God expects of you! There is no double standard between clergy and laity (although the House of Bishops seems to think that there is and that clergy cannot get away with things which are OK for the laity). But there is none of this to be found in the New Testament. All of us are judged by the same criteria.
But my correspondent does not tell me why he or she dislikes the vicar. It may be that his leading of worship is not acceptable; and certainly in the C of E there are wide varieties of worship from parish to parish. In the towns this does not matter as we can always go to the church next door but it may be a major issue in the country. We may not like choruses or incense or sophisticated music and, since worship is one of the most precious things in our lives, it may be difficult to cope with such practices. In all of this the 39 Articles prove to be useful for there we are reminded that the unworthiness of the minister ... hinders not the effect of the sacrament. For many years as a teenager I had no alternative but to attend a church where there was no useful preaching and the services were awful but I gained so much from the services of the Prayer Book, from the public reading of scripture (always read with care by a layman) and from the hymns.
Take heart and find, beyond the inadequacies of the Vicar, the objective words and actions of the liturgy.
John Pearce, Bury St Edmunds