Foundation, Empire -and the mission of the church

 I've been watching the TV series 'Foundation'. I read the books about 50 years ago (I know!) but scarcely now remember anything but an outline and some character names. A lot has happened in my life since I read the series and now watch it adapted to television. For one thing, I committed my ways to Christ and have a role which involves official ministry in the church's mission.

In the intervening years, a constant companion for me has been concern for ecology, for creation. Latterly this has become a more urgent concern and I have realised that we have collectively run out of time. We are living on borrowed time. In fact, some of us, globally speaking, are not even living on borrowed time. All through my adult life I have unconsciously (I now realise) assumed that we would have time, that there was time to persuade and to change and to head off the worst. That assumption, that naive hope, has now been stripped from me.

The situation of living on borrowed time  needs to be spelled out in greater detail. And this is where the connection in my mind with Hari Seldon and Foundation starts to kick in. In Foundation, the scenario is that the Empire is about to decline and collapse, giving way to a dark age, an age of vast human suffering and misery. For me that scenario has clicked with the likely paths our own current civilisation seems to be on. Whatever happens now, some global warming is 'baked in' and we have already seen the kinds of effects it is having. The prospect is that such effects will continue and worsen. How much worse is unknown. 

It seems likely that parts of the earth will become uninhabitable for humans. It seems that there will be greater extremes of weather, including drought and storms. It is inevitable that coastal and low-lying cities like London will have to find ways to cope with encroachment of tides or be abandoned in part or wholly. The clear implications of that basket of effects will be population movements, migration. We should also reckon on food supplies becoming erratic as land becomes unsuitable for cultivation. This "erratic" food supply will, as usual, be dire for the most vulnerable and stressful for those who are usually less vulnerable. More migration. These kinds of stresses in the past have exacerbated intercommunal and international tensions. We might be unsurprised to see wars or at least armed 'incidents' and also insurgencies, civil disorder and revolutions.

So, in many ways, it wouldn't be unfair to call what we are embarked upon, a "dark age". An age when more and more people die, suffer loss, are undernourished, unhoused and displaced, fall into servitude, are brutalised, exploited and traumatised.

None of this is to imply that things up to the moment have been idyllic (far from it), just to say that it could -probably will- get worse by a number of measures. This too reminds me of the Foundation story. The dark age is relative, the Empire is cruel and brutal in keeping order but one catches glimpses of many people living lives which are at least okay: materially speaking they are well fed, have homes and good things in their lives -provided they don't threaten Empire's power. However, the dark age multiplies the detriments. In both Foundation and in our real world trajectory now, the further dangers are that human collective knowledge and now-how are eroded making reconstruction harder. This can be further triangulated with the medieval period in western Europe -the so-called dark ages*- where the monasteries played a role in preserving information which could later be retrieved and added to. They also, let's note in passing, played a role in healthcare, agricultural know-how and sometimes, at their best, in protecting the interests of ordinary people or at least mitigating some of the worst effects of bad, venial, governance.

It has been interesting to note the portrayal of responses to the prognosis of Seldon and psychohistory in the Foundation story. Again, there are parallels. There is denial on the part of those in charge and a 'shoot the messenger' reaction. Tick: we are seeing that. There is a prioritising of dynastic concerns which minimises the responses. Tick. -Our billionaire overlords seem to be doing something rather like that, abetted (gaslit, cajoled, wealth-groomed) by those who hold the formal reins of governance.

As I've already nodded towards, there is a parallel too in the 'solution'. In the books and the TV series, the Foundation is set up to provide a repository of knowledge for reconstruction, and a means to help shorten the dark age. Interestingly, and making the parallel more visible, the Foundation spawns an order of monks, in effect, whose mission is to try to help shorten the period of darkness and to keep alive the 'light' of knowledge and humanity (in the sense of 'humane'). I can't help thinking that Asimov was giving a hat tip to the role of monastic communities in the European dark ages*.

This is what I think we need to take on board with regard to the mission of the churches in the coming century (or centuries). We need to be asking "what is God doing and calling us to collaborate with?" In answering that question, we may do well to consider the role of the churches (including monastic expressions) at their best during the 'dark ages' in western Europe. We would do well to consider also how they failed or fell short. In writing that, I'm also mindful that I have written 'western Europe' several times. I'm somewhat aware that we might also look at churches in other parts of the world during times of civilisational stress to learn from their experiences. And given that there are commonalities of desire for human flourishing and spiritual disciplines, it may be also that the experiences of people of other faiths can help us to consider our vocation as churches. And that's not to pass up that the encouragement to people of other faith traditions to similarly dig deep to retrieve their own resources to help human flourishing in such challenging circumstances. It wouldn't be the first time Christians have learned from other faiths. It is strongly arguable that the Renaissance was greatly indebted to the re-discovery of classical learning and manuscripts held and preserved by the Islamic nations which became available as a result of the Reconquista in the AD1400s.

We would do well also to consider the understandings we have amassed about sociology, economics, psychology as well as the physical sciences and their related technologies. It may be that capacity for advanced research in the latter is diminished but the ways of understanding and thinking can enable better adaptation for communities to changing conditions and harsher natural conditions. It is important also to consider that we have been coming to understand that some indigenous perspectives and accumulated understandings of biomes and skillful human living in them are worthy in seeking human flourishing. The collective wisdom and learning can inform people settling and/or adapting in new conditions. The attitude, at their best, of respect for natural process and reflexively understanding interconnection, an ecological instinct almost, is valuable. The attitude of considering how we might be good ancestors and trying to take the long view is one that we need to take on board. Not doing so is part of the reason why our civilisation is failing now.

As churches, then, we might consider our own part in Foundation. Not for a galactic empire, but for human flourishing in the long term on the only planet we have. The only planet we have been entrusted with. As churches, 'Foundation' means discovering together God's mission in the present keeping an eye on the likely future. It means adapting and renewing our discipling, our engagements with our communities, our structures (for surely we cannot continue as we are). We will need to listen to the Spirit and one another's discernments to "hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches". We will need to learn disciplines of simplicity of life, corporate discernment, and humble, patient learning. We will need to learn the discipline of sitting light to our preferences and to let of some, perhaps many, of the things we have grown attached to in the way that we 'do church together'. We will need to become peacemakers in earnest and set our hands to the plough of learning how to do that work (and find ourselves blessed in it!). We will need to face and process our own grief and bereavement of the kind of life we have come to expect and hope for, and our collective guilt in making the world worse for our afterbears (opposite of forebears). We will need to learn how to minister among the shocked and traumatised, the cynical and the dispirited (having faced those things ourselves).

I feel like this could be the introduction to a series of fuller considerations of those different dimensions to what I suspect we are called to. And probably some more too. Maybe I'll be able to do that. I'm sensing that the five marks of mission may be a helpful frame to hang some of that consideration on.

Well, a blog post is meant to be provisional, and that seems to be what this is! Let's see if I can pick up some of these strands in the coming weeks and months.

Footnote

*The term "dark ages" is contested by historians because there were at times some very good, hopeful and even progressive things occurred during the period often named such. However, as a label for a time when civilisational collapse, whether partial or more wholly, takes place, it serves. Especially as it is explicitly part of the Foundation storyline.

Let's not speak about calling in the singular

When people ask me about my calling, it seems almost always assumed to be "a priest". But I'll let you into a secret: that's not how it looks and feels to me. I think that I (and everyone else) have several callings. Some of mine add up to being a priest, some of them add up to being in the Church of England, some of them add up to being a chaplain and some of them add up to being involved in higher education . Oh, and some of them add up to being a spouse and a parent. And they all intersect in changing constellations. Some of them feel more fundamental than others and some of them seem to be capable of being expressed in different ways according to circumstances. I'm a chaplain in higher education because more than sensing myself to be drawn to preach, teach, minister sacraments and help people discern God in their sometimes messy lives, I can't shake the conviction that the church needs people like chaplains to counterweight its own tendency to become a world in itself -rather than becoming itself in the world. Chaplains work as public representatives of the churches on that worldly interface beyond where church normally publicly reaches.I had felt drawn to HE chaplaincy for ages but thought lack of opportunity meant I was a mistaken until a hefty push from circumstances and especially others' discernment shoved me out of parish ministry into the local university. And I thrived! My intellectual curiosity, inner-drive towards secular workplace issues, and disposition to improvise missionally, make higher education chaplaincy a good place to be, for me. But beyond feeling drawn, I had to experience it to see the fit.The combination of inner conviction, self-awareness and the insights of those around me coalesce and re-coalesce in me to convey the voice of God in the context of living with the Scriptures and the prayer of the church (I think that the Holy Spirit hovers over all those waters).It should be said, though, that I could imagine my sense of vocations (note the plural) being worked out in different contexts. (Perhaps this other blog post might help explain a bit further: http://nouslife.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/priesthood-ontological-change.html). Other situations and circumstances would change which vocations came to the fore and which were most usually expressed, but they'd all be there acting as stars to steer by or prompts to pay attention. So, discernment did not end with ordination: weaving together the various strands of calling as a human being, as a Christian, as a member of several families, as someone with various God-given gifts and interests is still one the main tasks I find surfacing as a talk with my spiritual accompanist and my nearest and dearest.

Vocation to ordination plus ...

I was very clear in my very late teens when 'what are you going to do after university?' was becoming a pressing question that the ministry of the whole people of God in the world is the primary church-related vocation: redemptively related to the human vocation to tend and till and to 'surprise' God with how we name the creatures making culture along the way. That's how I express it now, btw, not then!So while I first looked to live out a Christian commitment in secular life, I became aware of an inner nudging towards helping God's people to be equipped to live God's mission in the world. So I thought "being a Reader?" ... but the nudging seemed to have presiding at communion in it. So, "non-stipendiary ordained ministry then?" You see, I couldn't really shake that sense of ministry pressed close into the 'secular' world. I decided it was easiest to go for a conventional route to ordination (as I didn't have a career at that point) with a view to revisiting that 'in the world' issue further down the line. You may, rightly see in that brief description (and, oh, so many questions it begs!) how being a chaplain might be a good way to be a priest pressed up against the secular.Of course, I could have been kidding myself about that 'inner nudge' and I knew that. So I didn't act on it without much thought and chatting things over informally with friends and more formally with people like chaplains and other clergy. Because they seemed to discern in me things that confirmed that inner nudge, I kept on with the process of enquiry as the CofE then had it. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense of the person I felt I was becoming. I sensed then and now more-or-less know that God speaks to me most in these growing inner convictions which are sensed by those around me. Clearly, that's not a quick process.

x

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.