I felt that I could do with writing down all the bits of reform and 'if-only's that I tend to have about the Church of England. Maybe I'll miss a few but then, I could always add later. So what would I like to see?
Equalisation of stipends across the board. If a stipend is a kind of allowance to make it unnecessary for a clerk in holy orders to seek other employment in order to free them up to do the work they are called to, then I can't really see why Bishops and Archdeacons are paid more.It smacks of hankering after an ungospel-like privilege, to me. It is an acknowledgement that the going rate for the market value of the skills exercised is not being paid so there's no real justification for differentials. Either that or come clean and change the legislation or whatever and have a proper salary system [which might be more flexible for fractional posts and for employment of lay people in some roles]
Ditch counting posts in terms of one stipend. We need ways so that clergy can be deployed perhaps part-time and so pursue other things, especially in parishes or posts where full-time is not appropriate; it may not always be best to try to combine things just to make up a full time equivalent on the off-chance that whatever is available at that time might actually suit. For example combining a half parish post with a part-time diocesan post -it may be right but perhaps not. Maybe best to make them available separately. In the appointment columns I do see signs that this is being done, so well and good.
Flexibility of deployment. Guarantee appropriate safeguards to clergy and local churches on the one hand and on the other make it possible for diocesan or area mission and pastoral deployment decisions to be made without having to wait for someone to move, die or be 'persuaded' out. The key issue to address here is that many clergy and parishes do not trust the diocesan layer of governance to act with due regard for humane, local and ministerial issues. Of course the flip-side of that is that a certain amount of heavy-handedness is brought about by the fact that the power that dioceses/bishops councils have is so circumscribed that they tend to try to achieve too much on too little a basis. This points to an overhaul of the whole system not a piecemeal reform.
Let Bishops be bishops, not civic functionaries. I would love it if bishops could be people who encourage, enthuse, plan with, and 'coach' the clergy they are responsible for. And if there is something that prevents that focus then, rather than hiving the pastoral/coaching role off to someone else, hive off the something else to non-bishops.
Let there be parish clerks. In a similar vein; lots of clergy complain that they get too bogged down in admin. So, how about we create an order of administrators who work with a group of clergy to make sure that basic admin gets handled efficiently, smoothly and free up the clergy to do what most of them are called to -most seem to think that the amount of admin is disabling. I think most would be happy to do some admin as necessary and right. However an auxiliary ministry of clerks not-necessarily-in-holy-orders might be a help. Is this something that a diocese should do?
Reform the diocesan and provincial structures Check out my post a few months previous to this. It seems to me that some kind of reform along these lines would help enormously in achieving the kinds of things I mention in this posting especially the role of bishops and the possibility of a better use of financial resources for mission rather than needlessly duplicated diocesan structures.
Allow different forms of local church governance. For example, cell-church models find it hard to have a form of church government under the present PCC rules whereby the cell-system is easily integrated with the legal structures of church government, which is a pity as it is a recipe for inefficiency and otherwise unnecessary conflict. Let's have the possibility of different forms; perhaps template-based or subject to approval by a diocesan or provincial group to safeguard the proper balance of powers, finance, mission and access by various stakeholders.
begin bottom-up diocesan governance. I take it that a good thing about the CofE is that the system of diocesan 'taxation' [usually called the 'quota' or the 'share'] plus contributions from the national church using historic resources and investments, means that churches in more mission situations which cannot support an ordained or similar ministry on their own, do get, in effect, a subsidy. And because this is administered at a diocesan level, it is means that some of the unfortunate consequences that could flow from theological differences or even apparent differences of 'fortune' are mitigated. However, it does seem that the system as it has evolved to this point is on the point of breaking down. Wealthier Churches are coming to the limits of their ability to subsidise the system without incurring too many losses of their own opportunities to finance their own parish mission. It is becoming more frequent that larger 'cash-cow' churches are capping their contributions [which are voluntary anyway]. The pattern of the diocese setting a budget and then asking on an ability-to-pay basis for contributions is no longer sustainable, I would say. Dioceses need to slim down even further to a bare minimum [and share with neighbouring dioceses -so a new provincial structure would make sense] and use the pledges of their parishes as the basis for budget. There may then need to be some hypothecation relating to projects that are done on a more diocesan or deanery scale. In this plan, the national church funding would relate directly to funding important areas of ministry that are intrinsically not self-supporting or have a low potential for self support or that is a kind of seed-funding for important missional projects. In the former I would include such things as HE chaplaincy where some funding may be possible in some places from other sources but where the national strategic importance is recognised and so it is supported from a national source by some mechanism or other [the exact nature of the local-national control would need to be explored]. In the latter case [seed-funding] we would be looking at church planting or other experiments with missional and emerging opportunities.
Vocation-shaped church. We need to be aware that one of the key indicators for planning and direction-setting lies in the sens of vocation of members. Surely God will be calling people to ministries for which there is longer-term purpose. We need to be discerning the collective sense of vocation and finding ways to use this to shape our direction collectively. I have written some about this elsewhere. I think the most important thing I wrote there was:
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.
Humane MO. All too often the church fails to be humane. We need to learn to make sure that the sabbath or any other institution is made for human beings not the other way round [to paraphrase Christ and extend the principle somewhat. So this means not having guilt-driven ministries, or structures that suck the energy from creative and already overworked people. It means leadership ministry that has the time and ability to be people-centred within a God-centred framework and that therefore enables rather than disables the gifts and calling of the body of Christ. This involves far more flexibility of structuring and legal framework.
Sabbathing. By which I mean that we don't regard rest as an optional extra but as part of the essence of ministry. We run a system that seems to imply that our collective fear is that people will be lazy; when in actual fact the real issue we face is workaholism and burn-out. I want to see a church where those in paid ministry don't end up as cynical and tired place-holders in their fifties but remain creative and energised ministers who are able to synthesise their experience into wisdom and even if less energetic than in their thirties, are able to work smarter if not harder. I want to see clergy who are fun to be with and humane themselves not brittle and testy as a result of feeling guilty for all they cannot do. Some of the things I mention above would help in this also.
I think that I need to stop here and write some more in a few days or weeks, probably about training, creativity, coaching, the diocese as support-agency, and more on emerging church issues ...
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