Analects of Ministry Wisdom

I liked a lot of these from Bishop Alan. Here are some which gained a particularly hearty 'amen' from me as I reflect on my ministry. Bishop Alan’s Blog: Ministry: Rudiments of Wisdom:

"4. Don't ask until you’ve worked out the question. Only ask people questions they are likely to answer in the way you want. Also, Don't ask when the baby is due until the new lady in Church has actually told you she is pregnant. Never ask a Lawyer “Can we do this?” The question is always “How can we do this?”
...
"6. You do not have their P45's in your back pocket, so always explain, always apologise.
...
9. Schedule your free time as zealously as you would a funeral. Your family are the closest members of the body of Christ. Strive not to be toxic to them, and remember they didn't ask to have you for a parent.
...
12. Rigid faith is often brittle. ...
13. You inherited far more than you realise. Before you go buy a new tool, check the old toolbox you seldom use and nine times out of ten you've already got one. Revolution by tradition!

And of the additcions offered by commenters:

God doesn't ask us to be succesful, but he does ask us to be faithful.
A satsuma is not a failed orange.

I think mine might be:
you can often tell a church that is doing the business by whether it attracts those who wider society finds hard to cope with and if the church doesn't do that, it's probably doing something wrong.
Have you got any pearls of ministry wisdom?

What the web is teaching our brains

It's nice to find an article on this topic that isn't doing the moral panic thing (hand wringing and exclaim 'modern life is going to the dogs ... or hell in a handbasket). This one actually mentions the positive enhancements that our continued interaction with the technology might be producing. What's quite interesting is that one of the downsides noted was actually said about the technology called the book (and repeated when the book became a mass-produced commodity with moveable-type printing) ie memory loss; it's a feature of delegating remembering to other media.
What the web is teaching our brains - Features, Health & Families - The Independent: "While the internet enhances our brain function in some ways – his study found it boosted decision-making and complex reasoning in older people – it can also lead to memory loss. Some research suggests there may be links between excessive computer use and conditions such as attention deficit disorder, depression and anxiety in younger people."

The article goes on to look at different skill-areas and break down their skill-sets. I'd agree about gaming and peripheral vision: I have great trouble taking in all of the info on a screen of gameplay: I just don't practice enough (and have no intentions of doing so at the moment).

Priesthood: ontological change?

One of our students/ordinands very recently was plunged into thinking about this, see here: Re-vis.e Re-form: Priesthood and ontological change
Her dilemma will probably sound familiar to many of us as it probably names something many of us who have evangelical streaks will likewise struggle with: "If, as I heard today at my ordinands' Christmas retreat, that ordination brought about an ontological change in the curate who stood at the front to tell us of his experiences, am I to understand that his essence is changed by this ceremony? Will I be ontologically changed? My essence - changed? If I deny that this can happen am I blocking the power of the Spirit - that I would never want to do? But if I think of myself as ontologically changed because I am a priest, isn't that almost like saying I am super-holy? I don't get it, aren't we all saints (Ephesians 1)? Aren't we all consecrated by God, set apart, if we are 'in Christ'? What does this kind of talk do to the idea of the 'ministry of all believers'? Didn't the reformation aim to break down some of the divides between laity and clergy and isn't a claim to clerical ontological change recreating the divide?"

Now, when she raised this on Facebook I responded by pointing to a blog post I wrote a handful of years back when my wife was ordained. It was kindly noted that perhaps this wasn't expressed in a way that helped address the issue in the way I thought it did. I looked again and thought perhaps it could be clarified (I'm thinking about the last few paragraphs which talk most directly about the issue of this post).

So what might I say further or (hopefully) better?
Well, In the Anglican church, the move to reappropriate more Catholic (vs arguably catholic) understandings of sacraments including regarding ordination as such came with the Oxford movements rallying cry to 'magnify your office'. In this sort of view, the dispensing of valid sacraments depends on a valid priestly ministry: in order to effect the kind of essential changes in blessed bread and wine and water to produce efficacious sacraments carrying the grace of God, an essential change is envisaged as needed in the human agent of such changes. Some Catholic theology speaks of an indelible 'stain' (in a positive sense) on the soul. Now I'm no expert in this, and it's a while since I was reading up on this stuff, so I can't say much more than that. However, I note that this kind of view presupposes ways of looking at anthropology and even ontology which made a lot more sense when the philospohical background to our society had more Plato and Aristotle in it: where things have substances and forms and somewhat dualistic conceptualisations were in vogue. Our problem with some of this, Reformation heritage aside for now, is that we tend to start with the Material and work on from there.

Anyway, because of that I said and still think that perhaps we shouldn't try to decide whether we want to think of ministerial priesthood either in terms of 'ontology' or of 'function' (which tends to be the opposite extreme of the debate). I tend to think of our identity as formed in a nexus between our social locations and the attendant meanings given there, our relating to God and our biological/physical history. I would have to say that I would locate our relationship to Church as overlapping the social and God dimensions.

So, who am I before God? Is 'priest/presbyter' part of that? And if so, in what sense?
Who am I within 'my' social networks? Is priest/presbyter part of that? How?
Who am I physically? Is 'priest/presbyter' part of that? How so/not?

I think that the first of those questions is most likely to yield an answer on the 'ontological' side of things, but I don't think it's straightforwardly so.

Easier to answer, as I did in the previous blog post, is the social one: "...acquiring the 'right' to wear a dog-collar, be addressed with 'Revd' and all those other social and cultural odds and ends that go with being a CofE clergybeing...". So, in as far as we 'are' our social beings (and I think we are) this is an ontological change, but probably not the kind Catholics usually mean. In some way it might gain the sympathy of functionalists -but only if they are willing to recognise that perhaps we don't have some kind of essence that is unrelated to our social roles. I'm arguing, I guess, for an emergent understanding of identity where role and 'being' mutually inform and generate giving rise to something that is more than the sum of the parts. In such an account you can't pull the two things apart, but neither are you thinking in a way that wholly satisfies the previous 'language games' the debate has run between.

Physically/biologically ... hmmmm at first the instinct was to say 'no'. But wait: the 'performing' of oneself as a priest rewires our brains over time and even leaves physical marks on our bodies. And perhaps we need to see that the act of ordination is (among other things) a ritual which has the effect of cementing and activating 'gestalts' (some of which are socially derived some of which are being built in training) which have neurological configurations and so change, as we learn to perform them appropriately, our social being. This has physical correlates in body language and more mundane things related to the decisions we make about where we 'park our bodies' in everyday life.

So back to the 'coram Deo' dimension (before God): part of the deal is that we are acting on a sense of vocation to something that is best, we think, lived out as a public representative of the Church and by being authorised to carry out certain kinds of duties on behalf of the Church. Is that ontological? It sounds a bit functional. But, again, I think it is both and neither. It is ontological in that it concerns who we are before God. It is ontological in respect of the way that God wills leadership, service, public representation etc and so that some people do that stuff because they are fitted naturally and grace-fully for it.

We all have callings, for some people these are best expressed by ordained ministry because this is the way to demonstrate the Church's confidence in and authorising of publicly representative ministries. And this is where it starts to feel functional too: I do think we need to recognise a certain degree of contingency in all of this. Especially given the wide expression of ministry in the catholic (not Catholic) Church or churches. If it was clear that the threefold ministry was unequivocally The Way of doing things, then we could be more confident of a certain 'ontological' givenness about ordination. But if in fact we don't think ordination is a sacrament in the way that Baptism or the Lord's Supper is, then we have to recognise a degree of contingency. And by that I mean that it could be otherwise: if I happened to be a Quaker and had the sense of calling that I do, I might be expressing it by offering to be a Clerk of Meeting or an Elder, perhaps. In the Methodist system, I wouldn't have been ordained deacon (which from my current standpoint I would see as a significant symbolic loss). I think it is hard to be firm about a Catholic 'ordination ontology' without denigrating ecumenical partners' expressions of leadership or pastoral ministry.

So where have I got to? That there is an ontological change but that it is more contingent on particular church polities and our social being than on some God-ordained absolute leadership-ordering and so has quite considerable similarities to a functional account.

However, something else needs to be said, I think. And that is to do with the other issue raised of the priesthood of all believers (a non-biblical phrase to express a biblical concept, captured by the RC recovery of a high appreciation of Baptism in thinking about church order). Part of the reason why the issue of ontology relating to ordination is so big an issue is the issue of comparative valuing of ministries. The practical ecclesiocentrism of the churches manifests itself in an over-concentration on ordained ministries rather than the ministries in the world. This also manifests as 'maintenance' rather than mission (yes I know that's a cartoon, but I trust you'll take the sense rather than quibble just now) and the failure of ministerial priesthood to properly equip and encourage those in missional priesthood -that is living out their baptisms in service and witness in the 'secular' world. Instead we have churches where the actual agenda is to serve the institution and so support the ordained and ordained-a-like rather than where the ordained help to fashion the institution to support the world-facing ministry of God's whole people.

If we could get that more right, it'd kick the feet out from under a lot of the issues about the ontological status of the ordained.

Perhaps that's no clearer than before, but I'm too tired now to improve it further. I'll publish and let comment and discussion, if any, help clarify: the posse is the priest, people! And crowd-sourcing is the name of the game.

Five eco-crimes we commit every day

Quite challenging this. Five eco-crimes we commit every day - environment - 01 December 2009 - New Scientist: "You might think you are doing your bit for the environment, but even if you shun bottled water, buy local produce and reuse your plastic bags, chances are that you have some habits that are far more environmentally damaging than you realise. What's more, if everyone else is doing these things too, their detrimental effects really add up."
I'm considering my response to the ones that apply.

First osmosis power plant

I recall hearing of this a couple of years ago. So it's interesting to read that the prototype is now producing power. It looks like quite an exciting development from a process that I am surprised produces the kind of power it can apparently do.
"In the prototype plant, the two solutions used are salt and fresh water, siphoned from near the point where they meet at the mouth of the fjord. The two liquids are pumped to either side of a membrane, where osmosis creates a pressure equivalent to a column of water 120 metres high. This is used to drive a turbine and generate electricity. Many of the world's major cities are on river estuaries that could be ideal for osmotic power generation. Unlike wind and solar power, it can provide a continuous source of energy, although seasonal river-level changes do cause some fluctuations."
First osmosis power plant goes on stream in Norway - environment - 26 November 2009 - New Scientist:

Less meat -better planet - better heart

Eating less meat helps the planet – and your heart - environment - 25 November 2009 - New Scientist: "explored the livestock industry's potential to help the UK halve its carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 1990 levels, and the knock-on effect on the nation's health.

They found that the industry could slash its emissions, but only if the livestock the UK produces, and the meat the nation consumes, drops by 30 per cent. Farms must also optimise their energy efficiency by, for example, capturing carbon in manure.

The health pay-off would be considerable: 18,000 fewer people would die prematurely in the UK each year from heart attacks – a reduction of 17 per cent – as they would eat less of the saturated fats found in meat."

Thought for the day from Galileo

'I shall concede to you indeed that the way in which God knows the infinite propositions of which we know so few is exceedingly more excellent than ours.'
Face to faith: Galileo's lunar work drew on another Christian iconoclast who had lived 1,000 years earlier, says Mark Vernon | Comment is free | The Guardian: