00:00So I am Reverend Pippa and I am the curate for Fools, Tilstock and Whitcher churches.
00:06We are right at the top of Shropshire on the border with Chester and I do quite a lot of
00:11TikTok-ing in my spare time. If 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
00:21and then they don't just throw you into a parish, first of all, what happens is you're an apprentice
00:26for the vicar who's already there. So that's where I am now and Chris is my boss who's been
00:32training me up. But at the end of the three years now I'm fairly qualified, fairly ready
00:38for the next step. So I go off and I find my own parish somewhere. So I originally wasn't
00:43planning any of it. Obviously I was on TikTok kind of like anyone in their 20s and my sister
00:49was also, well still is also on TikTok and she said you should be a TikTok vicar and I
00:53thought, oh I don't know, I'm not really sure. And she kept persisting and she was like yeah
00:58yeah yeah be a TikTok vicar, be a TikTok vicar. And so I thought okay well like I'll do a few
01:02videos to see how it goes and the rest is history. The reception has been really really interesting
01:09and one of the big reasons I started the whole TikTok thing is because I found it quite hard
01:17going through training and discernment and even into curacy. I knew very few priests who looked
01:24like me who were women in their 20s and you know you know there are some out there but I really
01:29struggled with representation for quite a long time so that's why I did it. And it's kind of the same
01:36on TikTok as in real life. You have loads of people saying oh well A I didn't realise women did this job
01:41because I think a lot of people get quite confused and think only men can be vicar still.
01:45But also when you're quite young as well they get really surprised and they think oh
01:50didn't really realise these kind of vicar's were out there. We've just hit 30 years in the Church
01:55of England of having women priests. I think it's much more for people outside. So I recently did a
02:02TikTok which 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
02:16that feminism and Christianity actually really go hand in hand. So that has been a big thing
02:23that I want to kind of champion. It was really really weird to start with when my parishioners
02:30started 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 like day-to-day real life ministry here and then I also do
02:43my TikToks and they were quite removed. But no so one of my parishioners, his granddaughter
02:49shows him my TikToks on her phone because he doesn't have TikTok himself. But also at the
02:56school like the staff and the kids which is a bit worrying because they are too young to
03:01be on TikTok. But again it's I think people really really like it and they I think people find it
03:10quite a breath of fresh air and I wonder if that's why people sort of think it's so fun to watch.
03:15So I am now at a stepping stone point because I finished my training and I would love to find a parish
03:21and go be a vicar because TikTok is fun but sort of being with people around people that's what I
03:28really get the buzz off. So I would love to have my own church somewhere. So hopefully somewhere
03:34in Shropshire is hiring and like please.
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