[2] Wheatley served his curacy at All Saints Church, Fulham, becoming vicar of Holy Cross in St Pancras, London in 1978.

While remaining a parish priest, Wheatley became the Director of Post-Ordination Training in 1988 for the Edmonton area.

[5] Additionally, since 2014, he has served as episcopal patron of the chapter and companions of the Shrine of Our Lady of Willesden.

In 2008 he was one of several hundred clergy who signed an open letter from Forward in Faith calling upon the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, as co-chairmen of the Church of England's General Synod, to ensure that legal protections established in 1992 for those clergy who were conscientiously unable to accept the ordination of women be preserved.

This was in response to a proposal in General Synod that the statutory legal protections concerned should be replaced with a merely advisory "Code of Practice".