Vessel of gold, church vault secures (8)
I believe the answer is:
saucepan
'vessel' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'gold church vault secures' is the wordplay.
'gold' becomes 'Au' (Au is the chemical symbol for gold).
'church' becomes 'CE' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'vault' becomes 'span' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'secures' is an insertion indicator.
'au'+'ce'='auce'
'auce' put into 'span' is 'SAUCEPAN'.
'of' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for saucepan that I've seen before include "kitchenware" , "pot-boiler?" , "kitchen item" , "Cooking pot" , "Kitchen vessel" .)