Reenvisaging the CofE? [2]

The rant I've title-reference-linked is the proverbial bucket of cold water to wake you up before I get onto the next reforms. It's referenced because I think that it is the foil against which institutional reform needs to be played. You are of course quite entitled to read this first!

Anyway on to the reforms. The is the 'post' section. You may want to look at the first posting in this mini-series and the next post (much delayed).

Post denominational Let's face it: it's hard to come up with any very good arguments to support denominationalism. The real glue holding a denomination together is finance and governance, not theological emphasis or even any great commitment to ecclesiology. So let's go with that. Don't worry about formal mergers, just free up the situations so that ministers/priests/pastors can serve flexibly across denominational boundaries. There are some practicalties involved but are they really so onerous? So why shouldn't I, as an ordained Anglican serve in a Baptist or Methodist Church? It might be helpful, why not take up two part-time pastorates one Anglican the other URC? And so on ... Probably someone is going to object; something about catholicity of orders? Excuse me; read again what I've said and think about the meaning of the word 'catholicity'.

Post academic training. I think that we have to recognise that ministry is not an academic activity and training people as if they were likely to go into research is a big mistake. Don't get me wrong: I think that having church leaders and the like who are able to deal with the issues, questions and challenges in a well-thought-out way is a Good Thing. However, I think that we need some other analogue than academic research as a root metaphor for ministerial training. The leading contenders, in my view, should be performance arts and medical practitioners. In both of these fields professional and academically rigorous training takes place. However, in both fields it is also allied strongly to praxis. There is a heavy empahsis on reflective learning. I choose these two analogues because part of the ministerial role is like medics: it involves seeing people, helping them to articulate what's up and then evolving appropriate responses in ways that help them to make progress and finding healing [cf cure of souls]. Some of the role is like a performer: the need to lead a group of people, live, through a journey of discovery and contact with the ineffable; the need to do so in an embodied way and to use all the physical and mental resources at your disposal to do so.

So I would like to develop the current mixed-mode training even further. In this development an even higher emphasis would be placed on the individual supervision so that the trainee minster's academic curriculum was set more fully by the experience of working ministerially. This means the trainer/tutor acts in a more 'coach' mode and need sto be theological astute as a practical/community theologian rather than a discarnated academic. Now I know that there's a cartoon in that but the big-bold drawing will suffice to get over the thrust of what I'm saying.

The interesting link up here is that the role of trainer/tutor/coach would be somewhat analogous to that of coach/bishop as I suggested in the previous posting on this and, of course, this suggests that episcope is a shared ministry.

Post-Parochial For the time being anyway, geographical situation is not such a strong determiner of social network. Many churches operate in effect as post paochial. eE need to find good mechanisms for working network 'parishes' as well as geographical. And in fact it makes little sense for the kind of parish boundariedness that has been used in the past to continue in certain areas. Either we need to be able to redraw them more easily or in some areas simply to pool sovereignty, or something like that. 'Post'in this case does not mean 'without' but 'supplemented by something else'.

In this connection I think that we should note an important development; the rise of network communities. The Northumbria Community, The Community of Aidan and Hilda, The Iona Community, and perhaps even Spring Harvest, Soul Survivor and Greenbelt all form significant nexuses of spiritual resourcing. I think that it may be that for many people allegiance to these 'dispersed communities' is greater than to the local church which serves more as a point of contact for things spiritual between dispersed comunity events and activities. If the local church ties in with these 'parachurches' then that's helpful to the 'punter'. Perhaps the nearest precedent I can come up with to this is the pre-Reformation Churhc in Britain where local churches, as I understand it, we effectively run by the various monastic organisations with a few exceptions where the leading priest was called a Rector because he had control rather than being appointed by a monastery. I wonder whether we could be heading in that direction, cross-denominationally? If so why not actually go with it?

Post-hierarchical This is partly about things like equalising stipends across the board but it is also about clearing out the informal elitism. I keep noticing that some people seem to be approached to do stuff seemingly because of their background rather than, necessarily ability. I'm not syaing they don't have ability, merely that sometimtes the combination of some ability plus having gone to the 'right' universities/schools/ dioceses/parishes seems to score over ability on its own. This shouldn't be the way it is in church, natural and understandable as it is, we should be past this, folks.

I commend the current Archbishop of York for chosing to serve his last years before retirement in a parish ministry [and the loss of pension that implies too]. I hope that we can move to a church where this isn't so unusual an idea because there is a genuine valuing of ministry rather than status. A bishop is a 'job'/'ministry', so is a deacon, and so, for that matter is being a Reader or a secretary.... its an endemic problem, history tells us. so can't we be serious about finding systemic ways to encourage it?