I can hardly say how much I wanted the current discussions at Synod on the Church of England to inspire me. The title of Archbishop Cottrell’s Report, “A Vision for the Church of England in the 2020s ‘Christ centred and Jesus shaped. Simpler, humbler, bolder’,” struck a good note, although the subtitle ‘A commentary to accompany the picture’ gave cause for concern. I recognise such diagrams. I have worked with enough ‘consultants’ to recognise the genre.
By sheer serendipity, I was reading my copy of the Church Times over morning coffee, and a review of a book whose title interested me God’s Church in the World: The gift of Catholic mission, which finished with a sentence that resonated in the light of the document:
Just at the moment, when we might be tempted to streamline and rebrand the way in which we market the Anglican operation, the contributors to this book invite us to pause and take stock. The mission of God is entrusted to us as a gift, not a commodity. This is a book that might inspire us to talk, walk, and eat more slowly, in order to be attuned to a redemptive encounter with the Word who speaks our language but in the cadences of eternity.
How I wish that the Bishop of Chichester, had had more say in the report. Our mission is a ‘gift’ and not a ‘commodity’. We have not been ‘given’ the power of ministry, we have been lent it and, as stewards, we have to account for it. How often do we appear to be like that steward who buried the talent and was intent on escaping punishment by hoarding it so he could hand back what he had been given?
I am all in favour of our being ‘bolder’, and there can be times, especially out here in the country, when we seem like a club, but I am unsure, to put it mildly what is ‘bold’ about this report. It seems more like a meditation on how to manage decline.
It may, of course, be that it is laywomen like me out in the community who are out of touch with what our leaders see as essential, but I’d love to know more about the sources of this vision. It reminds me of my time in teaching, where ever and anon some ‘expert’ would pop up with a vision for the future which looked to those of us in the class-room so remote from our lived reality that it was little wonder that nothing much came of whatever it was. Focus groups have their place, but I cannot help think that the Bishop of Chichester is right. Pausing and taking stock is necessary, but if this is the result?
There is much in it with which no one would want to disagree, but my question is what does it add up to? Of course I want a
a younger and
more diverse church, a church that serves
children and young people and involves
them in its leadership and ministry; a
church where black lives matter
but if we are going to do lists to signal our virtue, why aren’t women and LGBTI+ people on it? If anyone really thinks our Church fully reflects women’s voices, they aren’t listening, and as for the gay, lesbian and transgender voices …?
Yes, it is obvious we are ‘not as big’ as we used to be. But what does that mean other than the obvious? Smaller and more faithful and missionary can be better than numerically large and lukewarm. There seems little sense here of how we got from there to here and the lessons to be learned. Where were the historians in this?
I am not sure what a ‘Jesus-shaped’ Church looks like, but I do know what a ‘Management consultant shaped’ Church looks like, and I think I know which this looks more like.
As the discussion proceeds, perhaps there will be things to cheer me up – I was ever an optimist.
NE7 said:
It’s 2020. The State decides what is and is not essential now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
As we have always been a state church, there’s nothing new in that
LikeLiked by 1 person
NE7 said:
Unless you have a rogue Prime Minister.
LikeLike
audremyers said:
“… I am not sure what a ‘Jesus-shaped’ Church looks like, but I do know what a ‘Management consultant shaped’ Church looks like, …” Laughing out loud! Brilliant line, lol.
LikeLiked by 4 people
JessicaHoff said:
Thank you 😊 x
LikeLiked by 1 person
pvcann said:
“What leaders see as essential …” would sum up the “management, consultant shaped church.” I’m going yes all the way through.
LikeLiked by 2 people
JessicaHoff said:
Yes, I am afraid this looks,like the usual stuff.
LikeLiked by 2 people
pvcann said:
No different over here, sadly.
LikeLike
Nicholas said:
Don’t hold your breath, Jess. This is just another indication that the instituionalism hasset in, which is a slow and creeping death.
LikeLiked by 2 people
JessicaHoff said:
It could be, but I have faith in the Holy Spirit, who has managed without a consultant all these ages past 🙂 xx
LikeLiked by 4 people
Nicholas said:
I’m not so sure, from my perspective there’s nothing left of visible England, only the shadow remains.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
I’m sad you feel that, Nicholas. I think that England is always there, but understand how easy it is to lose hope. xx
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nicholas said:
It feels like what remains is in the priesthood and not the episcopate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
Don’t you think that has always been the case? I fear bishops on the whole have not been an impressive group. Xx
LikeLiked by 1 person
Colorful Sisters said:
Reading this was just lovely 🙂
LikeLike
Alys Williams said:
The Church Of England is dying and will soon be completely dead thanks to weak leadership, female ordination, watering down of scripture and the word of God, identity politics and failure to recognise that the more it attempts to be relevant the less appealing it becomes to what should be its core membership. Allowing marriage of same sex couples in churches will alienate many more worshippers than it attracts. The cathedral and its clergy in Wells where I have lived for twenty years are in the vanguard of such heresies. I love the magnificence of the building and what it represents but detest the messages that are being put out by the current bishop, dean and other incumbants. I find it increasingly difficult even to cross the threshold of one of the most incredible architectural wonders of these islands. More than sad, tragic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Scoop said:
It’s become an increasing problem in the RCC as well.
LikeLike
JessicaHoff said:
Golly, whatever happened to that promise from Jesus to Peter? Surely the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church? If, as you say, the RCC is the Church, it will be fine.
LikeLike
Scoop said:
It will. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t have to fight to make it so nor does it mean that it will be easy. We’ve had hard times before and we are in one at the moment. It is not time to sit back and say: “the Holy Spirit will take care of it.” We have some responsibility in this as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
Yes, yes we do. We also have a responsibility for discerning the working of the Spirit and not identifying it with the spirit of this age, or indeed, a past age. Growth happens in living organisms, and only dead things don’t grow.
That, for me, is the hard thing. If, in a church with a Pope, you, who I know to be both an intelligent man and a faithful Catholic, cannot be sure he discerns the workings of the Spirit, then it does make me wonder whether that ecclesiological model is really better than the others. It has always seemed, maybe wrongly, to me, that one of the attractions of your church was the office of the Pope, but when someone whom I respect as I do you (and you have more than deserved my respect, even if at times I get a little hot under the collar!) has doubts about the identity of the Pope, it rather makes me think.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Scoop said:
Indeed we do have to discern what is growth or development and what is novel and diametrically opposed to what was revealed via the Spirit to the Church in the past. That part for me is the easier of the two.
The hard part is understanding the workings of the legality of a papal election and the legality of a resignation. I have been reading Dr. Mazza and Ann Barnhardt’s explanation as the most plausible that I have read. Nothing else, for me at least is a satisfactory explanation for a man who seems to be not developing Catholic doctrine but changing it.
So I continue as many Catholics do for wisdom during this era of fog and confusion. Though I had my doubts almost from the beginning it took me almost 3 years to accept that it most probable that Bergoglio is not a validly elected Pope and that Benedict’s resignation is flawed in many respects. Each man and woman who is Roman Catholic will have to judge for themselves. All we have are explanations from both sides: sort of like what we have to do when we are evaluating political positions. Only one side is right and one side, therefore, must be wrong. We are in a hell of a spot when we realize that picking the wrong answer to this will squarely put us either as foot soldiers for Christ or enablers of Satan. God help each of us make the proper discernment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
I pray for that discernment for you 🙏🏼
LikeLiked by 1 person
JessicaHoff said:
A not uncommon view, alas. I was reading something similar the other day, it was from a later seventeenth century source saying that the latitudinarianism and lack of leadership of the Church was killing it. Such things were also said in the early nineteenth century, and no doubt one day, as is the way of things, it may well be the end.
I am interested in the idea that it ought to be ‘appealing’ to a ‘core membership’ and wondered who you had in mind?
My reading of the Gospels has always suggested to me that the ‘core’ envisaged by Jesus was not the same ‘core’ as the Pharisees’ version of “core’. They rather disapproved of Our Lord consorting with wine-bibbers, tax collectors, and even the disciples weren’t fearfully keen on that Samaritan woman, and as for the woman taken in adultery, well!
So I’m not sure who you see as ‘core’.
LikeLike
pvcann said:
So, faith in the structure then, not in God?
LikeLike
Rob said:
One of my wife’s MBA assignments was to write a mission statement for Canterbury Cathedral. maybe we should send it to the archbishop. 🙂
LikeLike
JessicaHoff said:
Sounds a jolly good idea x
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pingback: Core membership | All Along the Watchtower