A vocation-shaped church?

I think because at he time I was a university chaplain and because I am a supporter of CPAS I got invited to this consultation which is taking place next week the matter is basically about encouraging people in their twenties to be ordained. University chaplaincy gets mentioned three times in the brieifng papers as an important ministry for encouring vocations to ordained minsitry among younger people.So guess what I want to say? Right! If it's an important part of church strategy to have chaplains, then make sure that dioceses can't pull the plug!

More importantly though ... well let me share with you some of my repsonse which I hope to post on the consultation's discussion site in dues course.Apologies that I don't have links to offer for some of the references. I would love to have a few responses to this either on of off the record as I can then take any insights to the consultation with me.

There are a handful of concerns which mostly interrelate. First we have things that are to do with social and cultural trends: work-life balance; leaving home issues; education; portfolio living and careers; suspicion of institutions. Then there is something around perceptions of clergy and clergy life: role-modelling etc. And there are also some strategic issues, such as recruitment fairs, role of university chaplains, assimilating change. And last but by no means least, spiritual issues -what might all of this mean in God's economy?

Ruth Jackson's idea of recruitment fairs is a good one in terms of putting the idea out there. It may turn out to be more of a seed sowing exercise for reasons that are mentioned in the papers and which I touch on below but I would add to it, however, that there is a biblical model of vocation being initial repentance into Christian life; the apostle Paul is essentially converted and commissioned at the same time [never mind that it took, what? Seventeen years to get it all together, there's a lesson there too]; his calling into discipleship of Christ is calling into apostolic service. Theologically, in fact, we might say that vocation is part of the package even if experientially it takes time to unpack and unwrap. So there may even be something in the possibility of evangelism through vocational awareness-raising. Could we envisage also putting on courses to help people to meet the genuine occupational requirement of Christian faith? A kind of vocational Alpha, anyone?

Current trends do militate against us in several ways; distrust of institutions makes joining one as a paid member unattractive particularly as the popular-cultural images are usually mocking. The Guardian reports on a survey that shows that “a fundamental shift has taken place in the attitudes of the new, younger, workforce towards the balance between work and family life from their parents' generation”. And an article in the Times on 25 June this year makes the point that younger workers seem to prefer to have more of a life-work balance than the older workers who put up with a work-life balance [my phrasing], if we add to this for our purposes the modelling that clergy offer wittingly or otherwise of overwork and workaholism then we can see that something unattractive [and even anti-gospel] is apparently being offered.

Add to that the tendency among clergy to try to out-do each other on the ”I'm so busy” front ... well, I'm sure you get the picture. Who would want to join a profession where they see increased workloads and the increased emotional fragility of clergy stretched by overwork or too much soul-destroying and life-denying work? Given the current prognoses it is not hard to guess that greater stretching and even greater spans of care are likely to be the lot of many clergy if something doesn't change. It isn't sufficient simply to say that it is down to them to sacrifice; ordination ordinarily carries a duty to ones own health and family in order to sustain the ministry. The bad habits of one generation should not be imposed on another: more fool the older generation for accepting unholy conditions and compromises, we cannot build a strategy on wrongdoing and attempt to shame others into reproducing those patterns by inferring that it is a godly sacrifice. I'm not saying there shouldn't be sacrifice, merely that it should be the right sacrifice.

We need also to remember, as Ian Aveyard alludes, that studies have shown that children are leaving home later, getting married later and are generally not rushing into careers as quickly, added to which we need to take in the tendency to avoid commitments which appear to foreclose options. Indebtedness is increasingly an issue as university study has grown and the funding for that tends to leave ex-students owing an average of £15,000 which drives a culture where the imperative is to get as high a paid job as possible to clear that debt so that you can get on with the rest of your life. All of this militate against ordination for stipendiary ministry. That's not to say it prevents but it certainly hinders younger people from offering for ordination.

The days of a job for life are largely gone, portfolio careers are more and more normal and this fits well with an options-open culture but maybe not so well with the current C of E modus operandi. Perhaps the rise of SSM and OLM figures is supportive of the idea that people are not necessarily looking for a whole-life career? Perhaps not even being called to it?

There are structural/institutional implications in all of this. We cannot look at the issues of encouraging younger ordinands without taking in the wider context. The wider context I am particular concerned and interested by is that of continuing institutional church decline. This brings with it the suspicion that we are recruiting to an institution that cannot sustain the pattern of ministry that we are recruiting for. If God is involved in the calling -as we believe must be the case- then perhaps we do have to take seriously the possibility that there are fewer vocations of this sort because the church of the future doesn't need them. This is surely an implication of the different patterns of ministry parts of he Mission Shaped Church report.

In fact, perhaps most importantly, we should also be asking whether the actual vocations of younger people are really fitting the institution as we now conceive it to be. Stephen Spriggs's piece raises the issue of whether God has a reason for calling less young people into ordained ministry noting also that there is a huge increase in, for example, church-based youth workers.

I want to push this further: because the outlook and situation of the church in this country is changing God is not calling people to the roles that we traditionally have seen ordained ministry as consisting in, rather God is calling people to the roles and ministries that are and will increasingly be needed over the next 30 years or more. If we insist that these things are not what we want or need for our vision of the Church of England, then so much the worse for us. If, on the other hand, we recognise that perhaps God is calling for future development and work then we have a resource to help us to plot a course for the future. By listening to the sense of vocation of existing and potential future leaders in the church, we can gain an insight into the shaping of the church for the next generation. We need to allow a situation where the vocations of the members of the church determine the shape of the church rather than trying to force vocations on people to fit the felt-needs of an institution decisively shaped by a dying culture. In other words, before we can be a mission-shaped church we have to be a vocation-shaped church.

A further implication is how we then act to match up the callings with the historic three-fold ministry. I would suggest we need to think seriously about a whole raft of things here but let me take one idea from the briefing papers and provoke with it. If God is calling lots of people and many of them are interpreting that call as being fulfilled in church-based youth work, and if it is the case that at least some of those people continue to serve the church in a full-time capacity -are they then,at that point, deacons by calling? Some then do offer for presbyteral ministry ...

Out work is twofold then: to shape our church to be able to fill its sails with the wind by reshaping 'the ministry' and to enable our younger presbyterally inclined members to see that their vocation may indeed be fulfilled by just such an ordained ministry. I do not believe however that we can go on trying to recruit as if the institution has no changing to do.