Redeeming Evangelism

Gotta say: this is one of the best articles on mission that I've read for a long time.

Redeeming Evangelism: Authentic Mission in the Church of England | Salisbury Cathedral: A lecture by The Very Reverend Professor Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, on Saturday 13 July 2019

I warmed to it because it says a number of things that I've been saying and thinking for a while and draws them all into a bundle and sprinkles in a few insights more. It pulls out a few salient points of mission history as they affect the recent experience of the CofE. Most of all it unrelentingly takes a Misso Dei perspective: the idea that God is at work in the 'secular' and our role is to learn to spot it and to work out how we make common cause with it. 

It also discusses the concept of obliquity (look it up on this blog's search window and you'll find it's been of interest to me) and uses it to note how we tend to mishandle the church's approach to mission and especially evangelism.

There's a Harry Smart poem called ‘A Fool’s Pardon’ quoted towards the end which is very much to the point. It's challenging in language and in concepts, here's the first verse:

Praise be to God who pities wankersand has mercy on miserable bastards.Praise be to God who pours his blessingon reactionary warheads and racists.

Ouch -but I recognise in it a loyal characterisation of the grace of God.

I'm thinking very seriously about where I can put this into the essential reading for 'my' students of mission and ministry ...

Beyond the aesthetic or cultural

I can well appreciate the concern that Edward Dowler articulates in his article on 18 December (subscription link though may become available after a few weeks). I think, however, that the ideas to reform canon law which he fears are not to individualise to a particular incumbent but rather to give churches the possibility of determining what might be suitable, including not to use traditional surplice, alb, stole or scarf. I suspect a reformed canon would have caveats about accountability to the wider church through the bishop. Let's have some realism -unimpeded licence is very unlikely to be granted. Concern for denim jackets is almost certainly to be dismissed as unworthy rhetoric. On the other hand, it seems to me that an appropriate sort of denim garment (jacket or otherwise) could be very appropriate for a presider at a biker Eucharist, perhaps.

It is worth looking at what actually goes on before forgetting that the straw men aren't real. We could look at practices in other than Anglican churches like the Methodists or Lutherans. We could also look at those CofE churches where traditional liturgical garb is not used for services where it is currently canonically specified. These, in actual fact, tend to have a dress code replacing late Roman gentleman's wear with late modernity's equivalent. I further note that quite often clergy who do this may wear a dog collar when in everyday mode they might not. Clearly, they are trying to be 'loving and faithful servants' of the rites in context. While the title of the piece suggested that we might get beyond the cultural, the reality is that we can't do so; we live in and through culture and retaining artefacts of previous cultures doesn't retain their original meanings.

The concern for maintaining traditional symbolic attire doesn't address the difficulty of the historical contingency of the adoption of these items of clothing and thus their symbolism. And it slides over the disconnectedness of the symbolism for 21st century Westerners. Cranmer wanted liturgy 'understanded of the people' and we got as far as changing words from Latin to Tudor and then to contemporary English. We didn't really get round to properly sorting out what ceremonial and vesturely language would be truly understanded of the people. Mr Dowler, if I read aright, would have us remain symbolically in the medieval period speaking a visual-ceremonial 'Latin' to symbolically late moderns.

The argument about standing in a line of continuity and history leaves out the many modifications and changes that have already gone on. It also gives too much importance to post-hoc rationalisations of accidents of history. Let's get past spats about tat and denim jackets and try to have a conversation about what contemporary gestural, ceremonial and visual cultures could offer to the renewal of our 'corporate body language' as we worship together.

Another but similar to rejig CofE doceses

 I was interested in this thought experiment. It appears to be a 'from new' rethink, but I'm intrigued as to how similar it is to a proposal from 12 and more years ago by Gareth Miller. I have previously blogged about it and this post will guide you to the various webpages that could help understand it.
 The author of the title-linked article describes what they are doing thus:

... an exercise in visualising what the provinces and dioceses of England might look like if:
– the Leeds model of several episcopal areas one of which overseen by the diocesan were "rolled out" across England
– more, much smaller provinces were created and some of ABC's workload (long acknowledged to be too great by far) was redistributed
– dioceses and episcopal areas are usually named for current centres of population rather than nostalgia (ecclesiastical or otherwise.)County Dioceses in England:

So, you'll see some similarities in terms of distribution of areas but different groupings of areas. It'd be good to have a discussion about this. I fear that reformers would end up dissipating energy into arguments about what ways of slicing the cake would be best and so the status quo would remain by default. However, the question about the huge disparity of cover by the provinces of Canterbury and York, does begin to raise the issue.

 You'll see from these two maps that there are a lot of similarities. The main differences I can see are the place of Salisbury (in SW or south central areas), Chichester and whether Yorkshire and the North East are one entity or two (I think two would be better).

I'm beginning to think also that perhaps proposing a new Anglican British Isles with the 9 or 10 proposed provinces for England and then also the structures for Scotland, Wales and Ireland also included, should at least be talked about. (I suspect the other nations wouldn't want it but still ...)

Beyond the geographies, the issue would be about costs both of transitions and also of maintaining the polity structures. We'd probably have to consider how best to have decision making done so as not to increase overall costs. But economies of scale of province over dioceses could help.

I'd love to know what other people think and whether we should campaign about these ideas.
It might also raise questions about the CofE's democratic deficit ie. the fact that ordinary CofEers don't get to elect general synod member directly and that GS is worked in such a way as to routinely make difficult participation by lay people who are employed in regular sorts of jobs -but maybe that's another post /topic...

The Green report: grammar schools for CofE clergy

 I have just in the last couple of days identified why it is that what  I think I know about the Green Report is bugging me. I should say, at the outset, that temperamentally I'm a reformer: I tend to think that things we have inherited are likely to have come to serve vested interests and to have succombed to Lord Acton's dictum about the corrupting potential of power else they become outflanked by human corruption. Therefore most human institutions are likely to need reform on a regular basis. The churches are not exceptions. The training and selection of church leaders is not exempted. That said, not all reform is good reform: sometimes reform further exacerbates problems or is itself illustrative of Lord Acton's Dictum.

So, I do not doubt that the Church of England's selection and training of so-called senior leaders needs to be looked at. Heck, I've even written about things that imply just that suggestion.

What I find myself concerned about is that what is proposed is a kind of grammar school system. The grammar school system selected a small number of children at age 11 to be sent for a more academic (potentially university facing) education, while the rest were assumed to be fit only for trades and educated accordingly. Now the problems with this system were many. One was that the number of places at a grammar school did not necessarily reflect the number of kids who might genuinely be university-capable leading to a situation where the talent pool might be bigger than the places offered -or potentially (but I suspect rarely) vice versa. So capable people were left behind. Sometimes these were people who, in the fulness of time, actually could have greater 'promise' than those selected at the relatively arbitrary age of 11.

Which brings on a second problem: differential development. That is to say that a number of children /young people don't develop intellectually in step with chronological age. A third and related issue is that many do not do well with the way that the test attempts to measure potential or may not be all rounders or may not be temperamentally suited to the kind of environment that the schools are. However, they may be people who are very well suited to all kinds of demanding roles requiring insight and intelligence.

And it looks to me like the Green report is inventing, in a sense, grammar schools for clergy with just these sorts of difficulties translated into an ecclesiastical key. The assumption of the kind of role wanted creates a narrower than necessary 'test' for entry. The restriction doesn't allow for the development of the whole population (of church leaders) in fair ways that recognise differences in development or even contextual wisdom.

To put it more practically: the system could end up selecting people who turn out not to be suitable but whose selection would then deprive others of the opportunities. It could end up missing people who should be serving by that kind of wider leadership but who don't appear to fit the criteria but in fact are the right sort of people for what God is trying to do with the church next. It might ignore people who mature into potential for the role later (but who won't be spotted because when they were 'taking their 11plus' they didn't look promising).

Worst of all, the selection process seems to be likely to produce a self-replicating 'elite'. It puts the cart before the horse: the process should be driven by a process of discerning the vocations of the whole people of God in order to get a sense of God's call to us as a whole church. We are then in a position to recognise and support the development of appropriate leadership (and evolution of structures, btw) which may well not be just like what has gone before or even what we think using a overly secular mindset (1). I think that the CofE already has a bias problem in discernment (towards certain kinds of educational and class backgrounds (and I don't actually expect women bishops to change this dimension of bias), this seems set to further institutionalise the bias to the prominent, the well-connected and the fortunately-circumstanced. I fear that all too often the apparent impression of a safe pair of hands in upper class social occasions is the main determiner of prima facie suitability.

We need the equivalent of a comprehensive school: where there is a much more fluid approach to setting, context, development and, yes, vocation. As we start to look to develop training more contextually, so that should apply to so-called senior appointments: we should expect that they would have a ministry development process which equips them as they go. Perhaps the most important quality would be a humility to learn and to work in teams. Everything else should be open to all church leaders according to inclination and need. And who knows, some God-borne surprises my result.

An open letter to advocates of the Green Report | Theore0
I think that some of the comments in the Church Times letters page support my concerns, though none of them use the image of grammar schools to tie together the concerns.

(1) I actually think that God sometimes speaks through the secular, but that there are some things where secular approaches can mislead us. I fear this may be one.

Baptism Liturgy -changes for CofE

Certain usual suspects in the British press have made uninformed and inaccurate comments about a trial of a baptism liturgy. They did so in conformity with their mission to leave their readers more angry, more scared or both. In this case by painting the changes as trendy disposal of hallowed tradition. They also made out that it was at the personal initiative of the current Archbishop of Canterbury when in fact it was a response to a motion at General Synod before the current ABofC was appointed.

Statement on proposal to Synod on baptism service wording: A Church of England spokesman said:
"The report in the Mail on Sunday (Jan 5) is misleading in a number of respects. The story claims that "the baptism ceremony had not been altered for more than 400 years until it was changed in 1980". This is the third revision in 30 years.

 If you follow one of the links  (to a pdf) you'll be able to read the liturgy in parallel with the current 30 year-old provision (which, frankly, does need looking at).

Here's the current introductory paragraph:
Here's some salient bits.
Faith is the gift of God to his people.
In baptism the Lord is adding to our number who have come to be baptized.
those whom he is calling.
People of God, will you welcome these
children/candidates
and uphold them in their new life in Christ?
All With the help of God, we will.

And its proposed replacement:
Today we thank God for these children/candidates
Christ welcomes them into his Church.
Will you promise to support them
as they begin their journey of faith?
   All We will.

The charge to the parents is currently thus:
Parents and godparents, the Church receives these
children with joy.
Today we are trusting God for their growth in faith.
Will you pray for them,
draw them by your example into the community of
faith
and walk with them in the way of Christ?
With the help of God, we will.

In baptism these children begin their journey in faith.
You speak for them today.
Will you care for them,
and help them to take their place
within the life and worship of Christ‟s Church?
With the help of God, we will.


The proposed alternative:
Parents and godparents,
you have brought these children to baptism
and speak for them today.
As we trust God for their growth in faith,
will you promise to care for them,
pray for them,
and help them to follow Christ?
We will.

I think I prefer the brevity and directness of the newer 'charge'.

Now to the decision bit:

In baptism, God calls us out of darkness into his marvellous light. To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new
life with him. Therefore I ask:
Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?
I reject them.
Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil?
I renounce them.
Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God
and neighbour?
I repent of them.
In baptism God calls us to new life. We die with Christ to all that destroys, and rise to live with him for ever. Therefore I ask: Do you reject evil? I reject evil. And all its many forms? And all its many forms. And all its empty promises? And all its empty promises.

Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?
I turn to Christ.
Do you submit to Christ as Lord?
I submit to Christ.
Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?
I come to Christ.

And the newer version:

The candidates, together with their parents,  godparents and sponsors, may now turn to face the font, a cross, or the large candle.
Do you turn to Christ?
I turn to Christ.
And put your trust in him?
And put my trust in him.
And promise to follow him for ever?
And promise to follow him for ever

(I think I'd recommend that the response have the word 'I' in them -perhaps instead of all those 'and's)

And the signing with the sign of the cross:

Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.
All Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ
against sin, the world and the devil, 
and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life.

Do not be ashamed of Christ. You are his for ever.
All Stand bravely with him.
Oppose the power of evil,
and remain his faithful disciple to the
end of your life.

Then the prayer of the water  and there are a handful of shorter alternatives in the proposed revision -which I welcome since the older version was deadly. For the profession of faith, the proposal is to use the shorter responses from Common worship Initiation Services p.178, which is great as these are more succinct than the broken up Apostles' Creed currently used and something of a return to the ASB approach.

Altogether the revision-proposals tend to shorten the service which I feel is good since the current service is overly wordy and ponderous. I also feel that the content is good. It still makes clear what it is to be a baptised disciple of Christ, it still makes clear that parents are to help children become Christ-followers. I like the simplicity of the language and I like the way the responses echo the questions which makes them easier to process. I'd found the medievalism of the current questions a bit embarrassing -not because I don't 'believe' but because I know the service gets used with people who tend not to be so au fait with the more theologically 'commited' language and in terms of helping them to understand and appropriate the responses the revised set seem to hold more pastoral potential, in my view.

So, overall, I'd have to say I like the look of the new stuff and I hope it broadly becomes commended and comes into use. For a pretty good comment explaining the background and offsetting the Mail's rabble-rousing, go here. A quote from which says nicely what I've alluded to above when I mention medievalism:

On paper, saying ‘I reject evil… in all its many forms.. and all its empty promises’ did indeed look as if it was going to be colourlessly vague and managerial. But said out loud by the parents and godparents, it had surprising weight and gravity, a surprising Augustinian sobriety about it, pointing to evil as a familiar and participatory thing that humans do, rather than to a remote abstraction; to someone else’s problem. It seemed, in fact, to name the darkness more successfully than talking about the devil or about sin would have done, given that both those names now carry an obscuring freight of associations from pop culture, almost all of which point away from what the church wants us to notice about ourselves.

Can the Church compete Wonga out of business

Leaving aside the interesting use of 'compete' as a transitive verb (an evolution I'm perfectly happy with, but I know people whom I imagine will be frothing at the gills). I have two or three reactions to this. The first is that it is great that the church is being led from the front into something that aims to tackle a manifest evil. Another reaction of alarm because my other reaction is to doubt that it is possible (I'm not sure that I'm supposed to admit to doubt -but there it is ;) ). Here's what's going on:

 The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned the online lender Wonga that the Church of England plans to force it out of business - by competing against it.The Most Rev Justin Welby told Wonga boss Errol Damelin the Church planned to do this by expanding credit unions as an alternative to payday lenders.The plan is to create "credit unions that are... engaged in their communities", he said. BBC News - Church plans to 'compete' Wonga out of business:

So, can it be done? and why would I doubt it?
I'll start with the cause of my alarm. You see, I have experience of credit unions. I support them and would encourage the initiatives to make them a fuller part of the fabric of our collective life. They are a good thing. But (you knew there was a 'but' coming, right?) there is a sense in which it isn't competition. The credit unions I know about -and I think it's standard practice- need for their members to have deposited money with them and to have waited for a few months before they can apply for a loan. By my reading of the matter, this won't help a lot of people for whom saving will be an issue and it won't help in the matter of crisis loans which I suspect are the big issue precipitating a slide into chronic debilitating indebtedness.

So my alarm is that I'm not sure that CUs can help many of the people that need the help. That said, it may be that they can begin to do two things: one would be to mop up people who aren't in the direst of straights but are aware of their precarity and can begin to invest; the other would be to be helping to create a culture which supports more prudence and greater solidarity.

So can it be done? I'm not (yet) convinced. But what gives me pause is that Justin is a finance guy; he probably knows something I don't. I hope to see more detail in time. I've not yet seen anything about the clergy Credit Union which I think he's counting on to help kick-start things.

Marriage, sexuality and the CofE

Mark Vernon has written a very helpful piece responding to the new CofE report on marriage (engendered by the recent debates around marriage equality). The piece is here: Where's the good news? - Philosophy and Life:
In it Dr Vernon outlines the main thesis and critques it ...

...that marriage is a 'creation ordinance', defined as between a man and a woman, as apparently implied in Genesis. This is either making the norm the rule or reducing the rich myths of Genesis to a formula. If it's the former, it's simply a category error. If it's the latter, it's an appallingly reductive reading of scripture that strips it of life.  ...  The idea that Genesis sanctions the nuclear family is, actually, a modern idea: I believe it can be traced to John Locke's 1690 Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government. Then, a legal definition of marriage was required because before, committed relationships had gained their social sanction by being made before God. Also, before then, families rarely looked like Adam and Eve under the fig tree because people died too often: hodgepodge families seem far more likely to have been the norm.

The first point in the quote above is what I too recently came to understand: that the 'traditional' Evangelical scriptural argument is a category error -making the norm a rule (as I try to say here and note that Steve Chalke realised).

It's important to be reminded that this argument is essentially a modern one, though I think that we should note that marriage liturgies for a long time have referenced Adam and Eve. It is important however to note the variation that has constituted marriages historically. Such accepted variation makes it hard to sustain an argument that traditional marriage is being defended: whose 'tradition' and why is it defended? We should also note that the Bible is replete with counter-examples to the Genesis ideal as latterly interpreted. If we avoid making the norm the rule, then scripture seems to 'sanction' a wide variety of patterns.

Posh and Becks style weddings? Or something even better?

This article made me aware of just how conservative many of my colleagues must be when it comes to weddings because what the report appears to be trying to do is get them to loosen up a bit:

 Under Church rules, vicars have wide-ranging powers to decide how weddings should be conducted. While some have been prepared to experiment, many have until now taken a traditional approach and been reluctant to allow couples to innovate.

I suspect that some of them have been reluctant because they are wanting to preserve the dignity of the event -but of course that means that they run the real risk of being taste Nazis (reminds me of the saying that the Church of England would die of good taste). Now I suspect that there could be some weddings that I'd be uncomfortable to do -but I'm pretty certain that my own tolerance for 'different' is wider than most; I find myself constantly surprised at the inability of people often especially clergy to allow others to be different and even to discover in their difference some interesting and even delightful things. It's often the case that in showing an interest and being helpful we offer an affirmation which brings smiles.

But my real beef is with what this report doesn't (and probably can't) do: break the building connection. As a parish priest I've had the duty and joy of serving with congregations whose buildings are not ... well ... photogenic.  I've also been inspired by the film Robin Hood (you know, the Kevin Costner one) where the wedding of Hood and Marion takes place in a woodland clearing. That's what I want to be able to do. But to do it the law has to change: we have to stop only allowing CofE weddings in church buildings and license the clergybeing so that they could carry out the ceremony anywhere (if necessary checks could be built in to such legislation if there were concerns about trivialising or inappropriate places).
I  don't necessarily think that huge numbers would want to be wed in a forest glade or a circle of stones, but I do think that we should allow for the possibility, and I'd be keen to give it a go.
Church to allow Posh and Becks style weddings - Telegraph

Reenvisaging the CofE? [3] Making decisions differently.

From my earlier posts (Reenvisaging the CofE? [2]) about what it seems to me needs re-thinking about the CofE is a notable absence I realised: governance.

To be sure I mentioned it the previous post that the parish system needed tweaking at the least (and since then there have been some tweaks that have headed in the right direction: bishops' mission orders for example and the establishment of CMS as a religious community, for example. However, these don't touch the bigger picture of national governance.

What we have at the moment is sometimes described as a [quasi-] parliamentary model. General synod is elected from diocesan synods and conducts its business in a way closely modelled on the British parliament at Westminster. There is good reason for this, in a way, since General Synod is, in effect, an devolved assembly from the British Parliament who are still technically the supreme body (operating in the name of the monarch who is, as things stand, supreme governor of the temporal Church of England). General Synod does, thus, have the force of law for its measures. This is the effect of being the Established Church: technically the State does the governance -but it has devolved that for most purposes, though parliament still has to assent.

Of course, one of the things I would like to do is simply to cut that state tie. But I'm not going to argue that point here, rather I will assume that we could refashion the model and still relate to the state pretty much as before. Those better acquainted with the niceties of Establishment may have other things to say, of course, but I'm going to give what I would love for us to have a go at.

Democracy, as Winston Churchill is supposed to have said, is the worst form of government -except for all of the others. I say that by way of saying that while I am a passionate democrat for the purposes  of secular government, I'm less sure that vox populi really is vox Dei all of the time. Unlike a secular and pluralist state, the church is not in the business of representativeness (nor is the British parliament under the current electoral system!) so much as seeking the mind and will of God and caring for one another. Note that I keep those two things together and see them as devolving from the two great commandments: love God and love neighbour. I think that the latter is important in recalling us to pay attention to making sure that the process of decision making is humane, just and respectful. I tend to think that this puts a question mark against adversarial patterns of decision-making as these 'prime' mindsets and behaviour patterns that tend towards unrighteous anger and posturing, I believe.

In seeking the will of God, I think that the theological underpinnings should include a recognition of what the Reformers tended to call 'the priesthood of all believers' which the CofE recognises in its baptismal theology and thinking about ministerial priesthood. This relates to a democratic principle in that it recognises that discerning the mind of God is not the prerogative of a few but is potentially the privilege of all of the Body of Christ. This means, I believe that we need decision-making structures that maximise the ability to listen to one another and to listen in ways that encourage reflection and mutual recognition as fellow-members of the household of God and as potential carriers of vital and even crucial insights into the Mind of God. Allied with this is the sense that we are looking for discernment together rather than argument. Discernment may involve some argument, but the frame sets a very different tone and primes a different way of responding and acting within the arena of decision-making. Debate and discernment have very different emotional connotations and these impact on the issue of care for ones fellow decision-builders.

That's not to say that these attitudes are not present in synod members. It is to suggest, however, that the current parliamentary model does not express well this dynamic.

I would suggest too that the principle of priesthood of all believers should push us towards not a vote-based system so much as an assent-based system. I won't say 'consensus' because that could lead to a different dynamic again: I'm trying to suggest that working towards decisions that all can assent to in the sense of reckoning that it is a right way forward, even if they have reservations. It may be that votes would be indicators of the emerging mind of the decision-builders.

This is not to say, either, that the current system doesn't have an element of consensus-building and desire not to dis-fellowship others. But I am suggesting that a vote-and-majority system is not conducive to the listening and careful articulation and understanding that discernment would require.

I am wondering whether the indaba system that the Anglican communion has been trying to work with, might actually be an appropriate model.

The other matter of governance that I reckon we should look again at is elections to General Synod: currently the diocesan synod forms a kind of electoral college for it. I wonder whether a direct electoral system might be considered? It would help ordinary electoral roll members of churches to have a sense of a stake in General Synod and may even help the quality of debate.

Future church

I've blogged myself about what may need to happen with the dear old CofE as the next few decades unfold. Probably best to look at this one or this one, if you're interested in checking it out. So I had a sense of fellow feeling with Doug's post here; especially when I read this:

 There are now so few stipendiary clergy that it might be time to ask

• whether we should plan for non-stipendiary ministry being the normal exercise of a priestly vocation and see stipendiary ministry as more strategic, focused on big churches (e.g. minsters, church-planting and mission centres and cathedrals) as area deans, as some specialist ministries and so on

• whether that means seeing stipendiary and non-stipendiary ministries alike as something people can move in and out of (often from one to the other), and change the stipend to a salary which allows either the purchase of housing, or (as appropriate) the paying of rent for church owned property.

I'm also minded that some of this is not so dissimilar to the thrust of the Tiller report back in the early 1980's ... We know what we should do, we just haven't got the courage to do it until we're forced to. At best it's a triumph of hope (wishful thinking, more like) over sense.
Five conversations for a declining church � iconotype:

Rioting as ecstatic experience

A dimension that is often missing from discussions and accounts of violence and other forms of crime, is the way that involvement in such activities, especially where crowds or large groups are concerned, is actually a desirable experience in some way. From a Guardian report on a recent CofE report on the 2011 riots:

Austin Smith, a Passionist Catholic priest from Liverpool who died in 2011, who said such rioting could be "literally an ecstatic experience" after the Toxteth trouble in the 1980s.
"Something is released in the participants which takes them out of themselves as a kind of spiritual escape," Price said. "The tragedy of our times is that, once again, we have a large population of young people who are desperate to escape from the constrained lives to which they seem to be condemned.
"Where hope has been killed off, is it surprising that their energies erupt in antisocial and violent actions?"

Especially where such actions have this "ecstatic" quality where there is a joy in shared enterprise and in breaking boundaries and in the physical activity -not to mention in getting some 'goodies'. And then there may be the sense of 'sticking it' to a society that has been excluding and 'screwing' you. A potent and heady mixture indeed. And if we don't recognise this joy (I think Nietzsche did), we may be less able to deal with it.
Church report on riots warns about effects of cuts | UK news | The Guardian:

I told you so (Diocese of West Yorkshire

Well the report's out and it seems that my reading of the runes coincides broadly with that of the commission:
"The Report therefore recommends a single diocese for the whole of West Yorkshire"
I wasn't sure how they might handle the rural hinterland and they reckon on the North Yorkshire bits staying with the diocese which has a fair logic to it with area bishops (cf London). In many ways this would be like the Province idea but devolved down a tier (and so avoid complications at this point, not least that the multiplication of provinces would need to be England-wide, really).

So other substantial administrative things...
"There would be a Bishop of Ripon, whose episcopal area would comprise those parts of
North Yorkshire that are within the new diocese. This area could form a single archdeaconry.
The See of Knaresborough would be renamed the See of Ripon and the Archdeaconry of
Richmond would become the Archdeaconry of Richmond and Craven. The present
Archdeaconry of Craven would be dissolved. ...
There would be a Bishop of Leeds, giving dedicated attention to an episcopal area comprising
all the parishes in the City of Leeds that are in the new diocese... s the importance of there being a Bishop of Bradford, who should focus
on the City of Bradford, which would form the Archdeaconry of Bradford. "

Now one of the things that differs from my personal thoughts on this is this:
"Calderdale should not be in the Bradford episcopal area. Instead,
the Archdeaconry of Halifax should be expanded to include the whole of Kirklees and form
an episcopal area"
Ill need to look into their reasoning for that, though I'd admit that Kirklees and Calderdale do share a lot of commonality.
And the following recommendation looks like a leaf out of Gareth Millar's book but with this 'archdiocese' taking the place of a province, even down to the idea of a small episcopal area for the bishop primus (my phrase): "the new diocesan see should therefore be Wakefield. The City of Wakefield is small enough to form an episcopal area for the diocesan bishop of a large diocese. It would form the Archdeaconry of Pontefract."
Oh, and one of the other things I have long said should come to pass is also recommended: that Barnsley deanery should go to Sheffield diocese.
Seems to me an eminently sensible set of recommendations, all in all.

Marriage and registration

I think that it is time to reform the way that we do marriages in Britain. Take this letter in the Church Times where the correspondent tells of his daughter's wedding, in a stately home with state registrars, where a poem deemed to have religious content was banned from the main ceremony and not allowed until the registrars had left the building.

She says: "I understand that a ceremony conducted by the registrar is not a “religious” ceremony — although some of the choices of vows were “I do solemnly declare” and “I take thee . . .”, taken directly from the Book of Common Prayer. We were under the impression, however, that, as the letter included with the pack from Somerset Registration Services states, “the choice is yours” to “personalise your marriage ceremony”. This is incorrect. It should read: “the choice is only yours as long as you don’t mention God.”"

Of course, it's a hard thing: if the state registrars start 'doing' religion; where might things end? Would they end up encroaching on the rites of religious bodies? And would we have to let traffic go the other way; 'religious' registrars would have to be able to do 'non-religious' ceremonies? And would that situation be a problem any way?

I'm inclined to think that we should do one of three things. One: registrars are licensed to conduct marriages wherever (the situation in many USAmerican States, and in Australia, for example) and it is up to the families and the registrar concerned just where and by what rites the ceremony is conducted (subject to a set of standards to allow it to be a marriage or a civil partnership). Two: the state should only register civil partnerships and then religious, or other bodies would conduct blessings of the same according to their own polity and policies (which would be similar to the French, Belgian and Dutch systems). Or Three: a comination of these two: the state registers partnerships as in scenario two, but it does so either via registrars who would attend a ceremony and register it regardless of its religious content, or via making the 'celebrants' into registrars.

Personally, whatever scenario we went for, I would just like to be able to conduct a marriage ceremony anywhere acceptable. For now, I'd love it if the CofE would allow us to conduct services elsewhere than a licensed church building. I would love to conduct a marriage service in a forest or on a hilltop or even amidst standing stones ... But that would be a further battle not with state legislation but with church canon law. At the moment the two coincide, under any of the alternative scenarios, the CofE would have to decide its own terms of engagement and that would be another story.
Church Times - ‘Are you here for your banns?’ Marriage matters:

No gains without culture change

"When van Commenee was interviewed himself he made it clear that ‘culture change’ could not be condensed into a new program or a new training manual for athletics. Rather he singled out three things; team spirit, dedicated back up staff and individually tailored training programs for each athlete."
Is this not analogous to what is needed for the CofE in relation to pioneering? It seems to me that the best of our pioneers are very much aware that no matter how much insight, inspiration and get-up-and go they have individually, in the end a team is needed and we rely on the effort and input of others (connect this with a recent speech by +Rowan Williams on a couple of petitions of the Lord's prayer). I'm certainly aware of the back up staff thing (and sometimes frustrated by some of the way that the CofE organises itself in this respect) and I've long advocated the individualised learning approach -coaching- sometimes I've blogged things relating to that as 'vocation-shaped church'.

No gains without culture change August 2010 � Metavista:

House-for-Duty Priests - do the figures add up?

This is the normal package I've noticed being advertised: "It is expected that for a House-for-Duty appointment the priest will carry out Sunday duties plus at least 2 other days each week. The house is for themselves and their family." What I'm wondering is where that apparently standard package comes from? I'm curious because I'm not sure that it is a well-founded figure. In fact, I think that it is probably over-pricing the house and/or underpricing the value of the ministry offered.

The latest I heard was that the cost to the CofE of a stipendiary post is £42k. This is made up of about £22k stipend, about £10k housing and £10k pension and other on-costs. Now, let's say a week consists of 21 sessions of potential work and let's take away 5 of those; 3 for a day off and 2 others to get a life (it really ought to be more but I'm aware of the realities in many cases). That gives us 16 sessions. On this schema, the house-for-duty package seems to be 5-7 sessions (2 or 3 per day and one for Sunday).

Now, if we take the whole £42k, then the stipend is worth about 8 (or 9) of those sessions, the on-costs about 4 and the housing about 4.

I hope it is now clear that, on this basis, a house for duty post, if offered pro-rata, should be asking for a work commitment of no more than Sunday duties and a further 3 sessions (1 or 1.5 days, depending).

Of course we should note that the £42k figure shouldn't really be treated as entirely remuneration; some of the on-costs are the kinds of things that are costs to the employer but not normally counted as remuneration. In addition we should note that there is a difficulty about insisting that housing goes with the job (in the case of stipindiaries) and then 'charging' a high rate for it when given the choice families might choose a cheaper house and more disposable income. There should be a notional discount in the figures for the value to the CofE of keeping someone 'on site'. These consideration would have the effect of reducing the sessional-value of a house for duty.

Now, why worry about this? Surely most house-for-duty priests are early retirees? Well, yes, at the moment. However, look at the financial situation. It does seem to me likely that in the future we could be seeing a greater number of self-supporting ministers who may be earning from another job or portfolio of work (eg consultancies). In the latter case, the abmount of their available time is crucial. Whether a house-for-duty post asks 1.5 or 2.5 days of them makes a difference to their earning capability and therefore to the viability of the self-supporting part of their portfolio. In other words, the housing needs to be costed properly so as to make for a fair possibility of the housing offer for SSMs.

Now if we said that the real figure for remuneration is £36k, then a session would be worth about £2.25k pa. On that basis the stipend would amount to about 9 or 10 sessions per week and the housing to 4 or 5 ie Sunday plus no more than 4 sessions which might reasonably equate to 2 days max. Obviously this figure is closer to the actual H4D advertised package. This would appear to be, then, the kind of figure actually being used somewhere to determine the value. Which means that we should stop being presented with the whole £42k figure as if it were remuneration ...
House-for-Duty Priests � Bishop David’s Blog:

Deacons, priests and bishops, oh My!

Sat in Durham cathedral this morning and we'd just started the bit of the liturgy leading into renewal of ordination vows. I look ahead, over the page, to see that the directions invite the deacons to stand to hear and respond, then ask the deacons to sit and the priests to stand for their bit. I was a bit dischuffed: as far as I understand it I am both deacon and priest. The bishop didn't apply a spiritual vacuum cleaner to remove the grace of diaconal orders when he applied hands to ordain me into presbyteral orders. And yet the staging of the liturgy seems to imply that state of affairs. Now, if were were British Methodists the liturgy we performed at that point would have been accurate: British Methodism has diaconal and presbyteral orders but in parallel; one is either one or the other. However, catholic order, which Anglicans preserve, 'stacks' the orders one on the other.

Probably the reason for my dischuffment lies in part with my own valuing of my diaconal calling and ordination. For me it is important both theologically and symbolically that presbyteral orders are conferred within, so to speak, the context or frame of diaconal ordination. It echoes my own struggle to make sense of both my reading of the NT and my sense of calling to ordination: fundamentally the call to serve the people of God is the prior and controlling call. We can only lead /elder if we first serve; our eldership is modelled after the servant King.

So I was unhappy to be implicitly asked to rank my presbyteral ordination higher than my diaconal. So, in common with half a dozen that I could see (my wife among them), I stood to affirm my diaconal commitment and did not then sit down but remained standing to affirm my presbyteral undertaking.

I do think that it is important that we who are in priestly orders should not be allowed to forget that we remain deacons and so liturgies like this should not be constructed to let that happen.

Now I recognise that the positive side of what was attempted was probably to affirm the ministry of deacons who are not ordained priest. And that is good and right; particularly if we are to encourage a permanent diaconate which we say we are committed to. However, we need to do that differently. Of course, there is the question about the way that the service arguably reinforces a hierarchical valuing of the ministries; the diaconal vows are treated as if belonging to a distinct ministry, yet in reality it seemed that all those reaffirming those words were either presbyters or hoping soon to be. Do we want that? If we are to create a permanent diaconate, is that really the way to do it? But perhaps I'm being a bit oversensitive about that.

Anyway, how should we restructure the liturgy to encourage all those in deacons' orders, including Bishops and priests, to stand in solidarity of ministry and yet allow those who are deacons alone to have a dignity of their own?

Well the former could be met by having all the ordained stood at the beginning and each order sitting down as their particular commitments were concluded (ie the deacons sit before the priestly undertaking was read, and the priests sit before the episcopal commitment is re-affirmed). However, that wouldn't seem to give a particular dignity to the deacons-alone, though it would be a better solution than what I saw today.

Perhaps it might work to add to the above suggestion that a lay person ask the first question of all the ordained, the non-presbyteral-deacons would then ask the presbyters the priestly question, and the presbyters ask the bishops their question.
Could that work?

PS; a note to my students from Leading Worship: the above is something of a (partial) reflection on an act of worship bringing some theological concerns to bear on a moment of liturgy and considering both the sign-value of the act as it happened and using the theological considerations to try to re-envisage that liturgical moment to address the theological and practical issues raised.

Chaplaincy funding

Church Times - Diocese of Winchester Synod votes to withdraw chaplaincy funding: "The Diocese of Winchester Synod met today and voted through the budget (See Diocese of Winchester proposes cutting university chaplains for background) that will, among other things, mean that funding for the Southampton University chaplaincy is withdrawn."

what’s really distressing is that the same thing happened to me about 5 years ago. Uni chaplain, diocesan funding; cutbacks -post pulled: redundancy.

What I’m intrigued by is the fact that when it happens in Winchester rather than in Bradford, it hits the news. Is this Southern bias?

So all these arguments have been made before, and some others by myself and others when it first happened. I’m disappointed that we’ve not learned and done something more about it.

I think that an overlooked aspect of this for the CofE is the issue of diocesan reciprocity. By cutting chaplaincy at a university, a diocese is breaking a tacit pact and freeloads off others. The tacit pact is that parents and students can have a sense of security that wherever a student ends up studying, there will be chaplaincy provision, therefore we all do our bit to make sure that such provision is comprehensive -like the parish system. By withdrawing chaplaincy provision for HE a diocese lets others down in the CofE while its own people can enjoy it elsewhere.

My preffered solution to address this would be to have a national HE chaplaincy service (perhaps taking a cue from the Services) with a pooled budget from diocesan and inherited resources; it is becoming clearer that dioceses can’t be trusted, necessarily, with a key, missional, opportunity.

That said, I actually thing the missional issue is the more important: HE chaplaincy is working with an age group which is becoming detached from church, it is often doing so innovatively and credibly.

Christina Patterson: Thank God for the Church of England - Christina Patterson, Commentators - The Independent

I rather liked this meditation by Christina Patterson on the Church of England in the light of 1 Corinthians 13. Christina Patterson: Thank God for the Church of England - Christina Patterson, Commentators - The Independent: "I love it because it is patient. It does not expect the world to change in an instant, or to be bludgeoned into belief, because it knows that certain things take centuries. I love it because it is kind. It is kind enough to welcome strangers, whatever their beliefs, and shake their hands, and offer them drinks. It is kind enough to suggest that the biblical teaching on sex before marriage is a mere technicality that can be disregarded, and to offer couples with clear evidence of this disregard (in the form of children) its blessing in the form of weddings when they want them and baptisms when they want them, and even both at the same time, if they want them.

I like the fact that it is neither envious (of more flamboyant, more attention-seeking and more successful-at-proselytising religions) nor boastful. I like the fact that it is not arrogant or rude. I like the fact that it does not insist on its own way, but is genuinely tolerant of other religious beliefs and none. I like the fact that it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but quietly presents an ethical framework of kindness. I like the fact that it believes in the values of the New Testament, and of St Paul's description of love, which I've just paraphrased, but also believes that it is more important to embody them than to quote them.

I like the fact that it doesn't speak like a child, think like a child, or reason like a child. I like the fact that it is mature enough to recognise doubt. I like the fact that it is calm. I like the fact that it recognises that the religious impulse is here to stay, and that the more you try to crush it, the stronger it will be, and that all human beings, irrespective of their beliefs, have yearnings for the transcendent."

Non story of the month: Marriage-with-baptism

I am frankly a little surprised about the legs that this story grew. Mainly for all the reasons that the various reports have outlined. The CT report is here: Church Times - Marriage-with-baptism defended. And of course, the most salient facts summarised thusly: "WEDDINGS at which the couple’s children are also baptised have been legal for years, a Church House spokesman said this week. An initiative promoting such services had been criticised for giving tacit approval to sex outside marriage." So it should have been a case of 'move along folks, nothing to see here', but somehow it wasn't. Of course, the sticking point is that it seems to licence extra-marital sex; but hang on let's get over the tut-tut reaction and engage our brains a moment: do we really want to be heard to say, in effect: "We'd rather you just didn't bother us if you have made life-choices we don't like". It does seem to me that we want to be heard saying: "It's never too late to try to get things back on track". Now that's the PR angle.

The other angle is a little more tricky.
The sacramental thing.
Marriage is one thing: it's 'a gift of God in creation' and as such is something the church solemnises as part of celebrating Gods common grace. Baptism is a gift of God in the order of redemption. Unfortunately the CofE has inherited a situation it partly created, unwittingly, where baptism is used in popular culture as a creation-rite (ie to celebrate the birth of a child etc) on a par with marriage, in that sense. So the real rub is not the marriage but the confusion about baptism and that is only a problem in situations where both are contemplated togethr where the couple concerned are not really in a position psychologically or spiritually to attempt to make good on the very explicit promises required of them in the baptism service. It's a different matter if the couple concerned have come to a point where they are starting to respond actively to the gospel: in that case it is very appropriate for wedding and baptism to be held together. However, if that is not the situation it really would be better for churches to have a policy of using a very first rate non-baptismal 'christening' (a suitably well-done Thanksgiving is actually more appropriate to the needs, see my research and various church policies being operated up and down the land without any serious problem).
But then I would say that; I'm on the exec of Baptismal Integrity ...

Ouch!

Chrisendom: The New Church of England Logo