A number of years ago a very dear parishioner who had recently become a Christian proposed making a board game based on Christian faith. The basic idea looked vey like the one referenced by the link for this entry. He asked some of us to look the game over. We duly did, and we were horrified: the basic idea was much like many a board game involving questions and answers and an element of competition to win. The difficulty was in the implicit theology which [like 'Glory!'] rewards right answers etc in order to avoid hell and go to Glory. In other words right answers gets you saved. Is this not salvation by works and not as a gift of God?
We put this to our friend and he saw the point [regretfully]. We tried to tweak the idea but without reaching a satisfactory solution. The best we could do was to suggest a game where it became after a while apparent that it was impossible to win by ones own effort -but we couldn't think of a good way to bestow unmerrited wins. Of course no-one would play the game more than once except as an instructional exercise.
10 February 2004
Aspirate those consonants [or not].
As a linguist I find this utterly fascinating: the idea that which language you speak [or rather; habitually use in face-to-face conversation] could perhaps alter your liklihood of catching a cold, 'flu or other airborne virus. It's all in the aspiration of plosives, affricates and the like. Chinese and English tend to be quite heavy on "puffs of air following" and so increase the amount and range of airborne viruses expelled by speakers. Who said"'...names will never hurt me."?
Of course it's theoretical but it could just be a factor.
Next question, could awareness of disease-spreading capabilities become an engine for linguistic change? Well maybe it's unlikely but ... you never know.
Of course it's theoretical but it could just be a factor.
Next question, could awareness of disease-spreading capabilities become an engine for linguistic change? Well maybe it's unlikely but ... you never know.
08 February 2004
Managing the CofE
I'm just reading "The Living Company" by Arie de Geus [a former executive with Shell]. I'm doing so as part of growing my understanding of corporate human bahaviours and whether there is a meaningful way to talk about corporate personalities. Anyway I just read this: "It takes a long time to build a river company [as opposed to a 'puddle company' that's in it for short term aims of money and mere profit]. But if you have a river company, you can demolish it in less than twelve months. Simply follow these easy steps.
1. Declare that the company isn't profitable enough. Henceforth your goal will be a specific amount of return on capital employed.
2. Develop an action plan in which all assets will be trimmed back across the board to meet these goals.
3. Follow the plan."
I'm sad to say that this is how it has looked to and felt for me in the last year or so but it seems to me that it's been around in the CofE for a decade or so though perhaps only impacting on sensitive and anxiety-prone souls. Of course our problem is that CofE largely does not have people running it who are trained as managers, particularly managers where decline is to be managed. Those who are trained as managers have largely not been trained to deal with the kind of 'subcontracted independence' of clergy or with volunteers. This seems a recipe for mistakes and errors. How should we do differently? I can only see it in structural changes that free people up to do what is necessary rather than trying to maintain apple orchards in a climate changing to grape-growing or threatening to return to tundra.
1. Declare that the company isn't profitable enough. Henceforth your goal will be a specific amount of return on capital employed.
2. Develop an action plan in which all assets will be trimmed back across the board to meet these goals.
3. Follow the plan."
I'm sad to say that this is how it has looked to and felt for me in the last year or so but it seems to me that it's been around in the CofE for a decade or so though perhaps only impacting on sensitive and anxiety-prone souls. Of course our problem is that CofE largely does not have people running it who are trained as managers, particularly managers where decline is to be managed. Those who are trained as managers have largely not been trained to deal with the kind of 'subcontracted independence' of clergy or with volunteers. This seems a recipe for mistakes and errors. How should we do differently? I can only see it in structural changes that free people up to do what is necessary rather than trying to maintain apple orchards in a climate changing to grape-growing or threatening to return to tundra.
Laicising Simon Parke.
In the last couple of weeks a column hs apeared in the Church Times wherein Simon Parke begins to describe the experience of becoming a lay person after being an ordained parson. In it we begin to pick up reasons why he felt he should leave the ordained ministry. The CT policy is that these articles don't become available for a couple of weeks so I expect that the first will appear next week but I didn't want to wait to comment as Simon's action is one which I have a great deal of sympathy with. He says:
"I had to go. I was struggling with the middle-management climate now prevailing in our slimmed-down Church of England, with its passion for audits, accountability, challenges, five-year plans, ministerial goals, and budget projections. But much more telling and worrying than these predictable moans, I was bored of the good and the gracious."
I can understand this, I think. Though the problem, I think, is not so much management as the way it is done. All of the things Simon mentions I can see have a legitimate use; I have found audits can be helpful in knowing what is going on; I would argue that there are areas where not only do I not want to lose accountability but I would want to extend it and so on. No, my difficulty is that these things seem all too often about institutional survival than mission. And my question is whether the real challenge is to evolve ways of being the Church of England that preserve the telling of our story and re-craft it to a vastly changed situation and one in which our institutions did not evolve.
My worry is that all the target-five-year-auditted-SMART-ing is really about simply re-cloning the current churches. This is no good: the global warming of post-modernity is changing our social and cultural climate and we need to grow different church-crops. Better we manage that change than simply carry on and then have a crisis [as if we don't already have one].
I personally have suffered mild depression in the past over trying to match up to inappropriate managerial goals [partly self-imposed but driven by acute awareness of the precariousness of being an unfreeholded priest in a climate of dwindlement and a situation where, realisitically it wasn't going to be otherwise]; we need to start where Mike Ridell challenged us to in "Threshold of the future" -with the frank acknowledgment of the death of the Christendom-church in the Euro west and so get out of our institutional [and personal] denial. Denial takes up a lot of resources and energy which could be better used for the work we are actually called to discover and do.
One of the reasons I went into chaplaincy work and wanted to stay in it was that it delivered me from some of this 'more of the same' bureaucracy. The one thing we are not doing [or haven't been] is trying out new stuff and investing in the margins that could be growing edges. Hence, for example, the post I now occupy is being cut in July -when the stated aim of our bishop is to increase investment in ministry that involves youth, when the number of international students is about to go through the roof and in an area where engagment with Islam is probably most important and easier thn in most other areas. This is because actually the apparently radical plans of the diocese [to devolve power and money] actually seem to mask a policy of keeping the money to do the same old same old with dwindling congregations. Of course some of the difficulty is freehold which allows clergy to stay and resist innovation. On the other hand at least that is a protection from summary dismissal because one makes the wrong kind of waves. Perhaps the extension of employment rights to clergy will help to deal with this?
This is why the possiblility of new diocesan and provincial structures [which I mention in an earlier blog [Sat 17 Jan] which could actually save money and free up possibilities. While smacking of the managerialism that Simon Parke finds distressing, this could actually help when combined with an emphasis on emerging church. I feel a hugely miffed that my post -which I've been saying is about exploring emerging church- has been removed just as some of this engagment with the real issues of emerging church is coming to possible fruition.
I'm finding a lot of clergy struggling with the disappointment of working in a structure that asks of them so much that isn't closely-related to their core vocation. Should we not be building our church with and not against the vocations of the members [including the ordained]?
"I had to go. I was struggling with the middle-management climate now prevailing in our slimmed-down Church of England, with its passion for audits, accountability, challenges, five-year plans, ministerial goals, and budget projections. But much more telling and worrying than these predictable moans, I was bored of the good and the gracious."
I can understand this, I think. Though the problem, I think, is not so much management as the way it is done. All of the things Simon mentions I can see have a legitimate use; I have found audits can be helpful in knowing what is going on; I would argue that there are areas where not only do I not want to lose accountability but I would want to extend it and so on. No, my difficulty is that these things seem all too often about institutional survival than mission. And my question is whether the real challenge is to evolve ways of being the Church of England that preserve the telling of our story and re-craft it to a vastly changed situation and one in which our institutions did not evolve.
My worry is that all the target-five-year-auditted-SMART-ing is really about simply re-cloning the current churches. This is no good: the global warming of post-modernity is changing our social and cultural climate and we need to grow different church-crops. Better we manage that change than simply carry on and then have a crisis [as if we don't already have one].
I personally have suffered mild depression in the past over trying to match up to inappropriate managerial goals [partly self-imposed but driven by acute awareness of the precariousness of being an unfreeholded priest in a climate of dwindlement and a situation where, realisitically it wasn't going to be otherwise]; we need to start where Mike Ridell challenged us to in "Threshold of the future" -with the frank acknowledgment of the death of the Christendom-church in the Euro west and so get out of our institutional [and personal] denial. Denial takes up a lot of resources and energy which could be better used for the work we are actually called to discover and do.
One of the reasons I went into chaplaincy work and wanted to stay in it was that it delivered me from some of this 'more of the same' bureaucracy. The one thing we are not doing [or haven't been] is trying out new stuff and investing in the margins that could be growing edges. Hence, for example, the post I now occupy is being cut in July -when the stated aim of our bishop is to increase investment in ministry that involves youth, when the number of international students is about to go through the roof and in an area where engagment with Islam is probably most important and easier thn in most other areas. This is because actually the apparently radical plans of the diocese [to devolve power and money] actually seem to mask a policy of keeping the money to do the same old same old with dwindling congregations. Of course some of the difficulty is freehold which allows clergy to stay and resist innovation. On the other hand at least that is a protection from summary dismissal because one makes the wrong kind of waves. Perhaps the extension of employment rights to clergy will help to deal with this?
This is why the possiblility of new diocesan and provincial structures [which I mention in an earlier blog [Sat 17 Jan] which could actually save money and free up possibilities. While smacking of the managerialism that Simon Parke finds distressing, this could actually help when combined with an emphasis on emerging church. I feel a hugely miffed that my post -which I've been saying is about exploring emerging church- has been removed just as some of this engagment with the real issues of emerging church is coming to possible fruition.
I'm finding a lot of clergy struggling with the disappointment of working in a structure that asks of them so much that isn't closely-related to their core vocation. Should we not be building our church with and not against the vocations of the members [including the ordained]?
05 February 2004
Furred label
Just one of those 'cameo' observations that has come back to me after a few days. Sitting waiting for the train at Union Station Washington DC, I noticed a young lady wearing what appeared to be a fur coat. She had her back to me and so I could see that in the middle of the part of the coat that covered her shoulders there was a label on the outside. I couldn't see what it was but it made me think. Once upon a time the mere fact of wearing afur coat was a statement. Now even fur has to have a label? Of course there are number of other possible factors involved here. Was ther fur real [looked it]? Did even that doubt mean that a label is necessary? Is it that labels [worn outside for the status-giving function of conspicuous consumption] are the new fur? It just seems interesting that a fur coat needs [apparently -on my preferred interpretation] the legitimaising of an outside designer [?] label.
Other factors that may impinge on the semiotics of this display: the woman was young [early twenties?], she was black [in Washington DC] and she was travelling by public transport. Perhaps there are other factors I haven't picked up, but these add up to an interesting picture and the word "bling" comes to mind as a cognate.....
Other factors that may impinge on the semiotics of this display: the woman was young [early twenties?], she was black [in Washington DC] and she was travelling by public transport. Perhaps there are other factors I haven't picked up, but these add up to an interesting picture and the word "bling" comes to mind as a cognate.....
Greening SwVa
This is good; a resolution on green issues. Though it could simply be 'motherhood and apple pie' [ie something we would all agree with] or the verdict on sin -"he was against it". However it is also worth noting that another resolution was passed on clean air which at least recognises the outworking of the green motion. I wonder whether the resolution will encourage churches to change their building habits and their practicesa dn perhaps roll on to an ecological audit of diocesan proceedures? [Our diocese should move to this but I've been proccupied with other diocesan matters lately though I had intended to table a motion to this effect as soon as may be].
The practical follow-through is the important thisng on thses kinds of motions. In England, of course, though the financial constraints are going to be a disincentive. On the other hand many green habits, methods and solutions can actually save money in the longer term. Meantime examination of such things as the carbon impact of diocesan synods, location of synods and other meetings [perhaps we should be looking to net meetings and email discussion 'meetings'?] location of diocesan and other offices in relation to travel and public transport etc etc etc. I'd love Ecocongregations to think of running an eco-diocese award.
The practical follow-through is the important thisng on thses kinds of motions. In England, of course, though the financial constraints are going to be a disincentive. On the other hand many green habits, methods and solutions can actually save money in the longer term. Meantime examination of such things as the carbon impact of diocesan synods, location of synods and other meetings [perhaps we should be looking to net meetings and email discussion 'meetings'?] location of diocesan and other offices in relation to travel and public transport etc etc etc. I'd love Ecocongregations to think of running an eco-diocese award.
SwVa resolution on sexuality
I'm trying to catch up with the various things for the trip to USA given that I've not had access since Sunday until today. The SwVa diocesan website has posted up the results of the council decisions and the link tells us what they resolved on this issue. The main thrust of the thing seems to be to try to hold together and find a way forward. Certialy this was the tenor of the sermon on Sunday morning given by one of the diocese's Rectors [Chris Payden-Davies]. The image was used of a large family of sisters and brothers who disagree very strongly over a particular decision by a couple of their members but neverthelss decide that their family history and unity is more important that dividing over what they disagree about. Quite a nice story.
On the other hand I can see that it would leave the majority of the family feeling used and abused. The story could be seen to legitimise the actions of the minority in the 'parable'. It leaves the issue of the longer term unresolved: who will 'win' the argument in parctice: will the majority simply give way or the minority? The which will turn out to be the status quo that 'going along with' tacitly supports? It's not a teneble long-term solution but it is a good idea while resolution and mediation is attempted. And of course there may be shifts in the way people feel after some time has elapsed and some of the results are examined.
On the other hand I can see that it would leave the majority of the family feeling used and abused. The story could be seen to legitimise the actions of the minority in the 'parable'. It leaves the issue of the longer term unresolved: who will 'win' the argument in parctice: will the majority simply give way or the minority? The which will turn out to be the status quo that 'going along with' tacitly supports? It's not a teneble long-term solution but it is a good idea while resolution and mediation is attempted. And of course there may be shifts in the way people feel after some time has elapsed and some of the results are examined.
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A review of Common Threads
Most of my Christian life, I've been what is usually labelled "an inclusivist". Lately I've been re-examining what that ...
