The TikTok Priest: How a Shropshire Priest is Spreading the Word!
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00:00So I am Reverend Pippa and I'm the curate for Falls, Tilstock and Whitchurch churches.
00:06We are right at the top of Shropshire on the border with Chester and I do quite a lot of
00:11TikToking in my spare time.
00:13If you're not churchy I should probably explain what a curate is.
00:17You spend two or three years at a college doing academic training in the Church of England
00:22and then they don't just throw you into a parish first of all, what happens is you're
00:26an apprentice for the vicar who's already there.
00:29So that's where I am now and Chris is my boss who's been training me up.
00:33But at the end of the three years now I'm fairly qualified, fairly ready for the next
00:38step so I go off and I find my own parish somewhere.
00:41So I originally wasn't planning any of it, obviously I was on TikTok kind of like anyone
00:47in their 20s and my sister was also, well still is also on TikTok and she said,
00:52you should be a TikTok vicar and I thought, oh I don't know, like not really sure.
00:56And she kept persisting and she was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, be a TikTok vicar, be a TikTok vicar.
01:01And so I thought, okay, well like I'll do a few videos to see how it goes and the rest is history.
01:06The reception has been really, really interesting and one of the big reasons I started the whole
01:14TikTok thing is because I found it quite hard going through training and discernment and
01:19even into curacy, I knew very few priests who looked like me, who were women in their 20s
01:26and you know, you know there are some out there but I really struggled with representation for
01:31quite a long time so that's why I did it. And it's kind of the same on TikTok as in real life,
01:37you have loads of people saying, well A, I didn't realise women did this job because I think a lot
01:42of people get quite confused and think only men can be vicars still, but also when you're quite
01:47young as well they get really surprised and they think, oh I didn't really realise these kind of
01:52vicars were out there. We've just hit 30 years in the Church of England of having women priests.
01:57I think it's much more for people outside, so I recently did a TikTok,
02:04which is kind of sending up men, but the response was from so many women, they didn't realise
02:11you could be a feminist and a Christian and so many people outside the church don't realise
02:17that feminism and Christianity actually really go hand in hand, so that has been a big thing
02:24that I want to kind of champion. It was really, really weird to start with when my parishioners
02:31started seeing my TikToks because in the early stages, in my head it was two very separate realms,
02:38I thought, okay well I've got my day-to-day real life ministry here and then I also do my TikToks
02:43and they were quite removed, but now one of my parishioners, his granddaughter
02:50shows him my TikToks on her phone because he doesn't have TikTok himself, but also at the
02:56school, the staff, the kids, which is a bit worrying because they are too young to be on TikTok,
03:03but again I think people really, really like it and I think people find it quite a breath
03:11of fresh air and I wonder if that's why people sort of think it's so fun to watch. So I am now
03:16at a stepping stone point because I finished my training and I would love to find a parish and go
03:21be a vicar because TikTok is fun but sort of being with people, around people, that's what I really
03:29get the buzz off, so I would love to have my own church somewhere, so hopefully somewhere in
03:34Shropshire is hiring and like, please!