Every time I hear terms like 'in ministry' or 'the ministry', I begin to fume. It's a conflation of ministry with ordained ministry, which may be traditional - from the days when everything revolved round the minister - but which can't be justified. As Paul points out, God calls people to different roles - or maybe he just calls them, and they work out the details for themselves. He doesn't seem to call quakers to ordained ministry, or Methodists to the papacy, and I suspect our choice of role, and the type of church community we create for ourselves, has some sort of influence somewhere.
So we have church cleaners, secretaries, treasurers, property stewards, church stewards, communion stewards, book stewards, circuit stewards, worship leaders, local preachers, and so on. Every denomination will have its own list, and we're always inventing new roles. So what are we doing allowing a small group of people - maybe half a percent or so of the total - to hive themselves off with the assumption that their specific form of ministry is somehow special or normative? They may or may not be thinking that, but it's what the language they use implies. We're all called to ministry, in the fullest possible sense of the word, and no role is superior, except, of course, that cleaners are a lot more useful and practical than preachers. All we do is stand up and woffle, yet we, along with the ordained, are the only ones supposed to have a 'call'.
God creates us all, God calls us all, God equips us all. We need to celebrate every ministry, not just one, with all the rest treated as afterthoughts.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Earthquakes
I thought I'd post a bit of geology for once, after what's happened in Japan. The earth has evolved a fairly simple structure over the last few thousand million years since it formed; as you might expect the heavier stuff has sunk until it ended up in the middle, and the lighter has floated to the top. The core is made up of heavy metals in a molten state, mainly iron and nickel, with some radioactives. Essentially, it acts as a vast nuclear reactor, producing heat, and, as it's molten and presumably circulating, the Earth's magnetic field. This is vital as it protects us from cosmic rays which would otherwise sterilise the Earth's surface.
Above it is a thick layer of rock, the mantle. It's solid - we know that from the way it transmits earthquake waves - but over geological time, it flows. Convection currents carry heat from the core up to the top. Above it are patches of floating scum, made up of lighter material. We call these continents. Between them is the oceanic crust, essentially a thin layer of frozen mantle, with a lot of water on top of it.
The crust is carried along by the currents flowing in the mantle below it; in one place, material is rising, creating new crust - this is happening along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, for instance, with the ocean getting slightly, but measurably, wider each year - and at other places material is sinking, carrying oceanic crust down with it. Huge areas - plates - of crust grind against each other, producing the jolts we call earthquakes. Japan is at the meeting point of three of these plates, hence the inevitability of earthquakes there. San Francisco is built right on top of the joint between two plates which are moving in opposite directions. There are, as we all realise, plenty of other cities built over major, active, faults.
Above it is a thick layer of rock, the mantle. It's solid - we know that from the way it transmits earthquake waves - but over geological time, it flows. Convection currents carry heat from the core up to the top. Above it are patches of floating scum, made up of lighter material. We call these continents. Between them is the oceanic crust, essentially a thin layer of frozen mantle, with a lot of water on top of it.
The crust is carried along by the currents flowing in the mantle below it; in one place, material is rising, creating new crust - this is happening along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, for instance, with the ocean getting slightly, but measurably, wider each year - and at other places material is sinking, carrying oceanic crust down with it. Huge areas - plates - of crust grind against each other, producing the jolts we call earthquakes. Japan is at the meeting point of three of these plates, hence the inevitability of earthquakes there. San Francisco is built right on top of the joint between two plates which are moving in opposite directions. There are, as we all realise, plenty of other cities built over major, active, faults.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Original Sin
I've already outlined the Western Church's concept of original sin, with its dreadful, and entirely logical, consequences. A newborn baby dying unbaptised goes to hell, and there's no salvation outside the church. So someone born into a Muslim community, however holy, is damned for being born in the wrong part of the world.
I don't come across people who really believe all this stuff, though many people still have an exclusive belief which is happy to damn anyone who believes differently from them, and it's not good enough to say that the church once believed it, or that the great Saint So-and-So wrote it, and therefore it's the proper orthodox belief. The church is the people, and if the people reject an idea, it isn't church doctrine. So what do we do with original sin?
Fortunately, there are different views available in the Fathers, who, of course, wrote at a time when ideas like this were taken Really Seriously. The Traducianists claimed that the guilt of original sin was inherited from Adam via our fathers, in the same way as eye colour or a hereditary disease. It wasn't, of course, inherited from our mothers, since they were believed to incubate the man's seed without adding anything of their own. So Jesus, allegedly born of a virgin, without a human father, was conveniently born without original sin. I don't see what we can do with this apart from consigning it to the theological dustbin.
Then there's creationism. No, not the fundamentalist pseudoscience, but its older namesake. This was the idea that each soul was created free of sin, but that it inevitably becomes polluted by sin. Some of the eastern Fathers; the Gregories, and Chrysostom, taught that newborn babies are without sin. We suffer the effects of Adam's sin, but without inheriting his guilt. Not only do we remain free from the guilt of Adam's sin, but in contrast to the Western Fathers, our will remains free. We can choose not to sin, and if we do so, the guilt is purely ours. It's not completely impossible for someone to remain without sin; Athanasius claimed that Jeremiah and John the Baptist did so. Compared with the Western Fathers, the Eastern are far more optimistic about the human condition. This, I think, is something that can be worked with. No longer are we struggling to reconcile some weird medieval idea with the modern world; rather, we have one that translates rather nicely.
Despite our debates about nature versus nurture, we assume these days that babies are born innocent, and this isn't incompatible with the Eastern Fathers. While we doubtless do have inborn sinful tendencies, nobody that I know of attributes all of them to nurture. There's plenty of evidence, for instance, that dysfunctional families produce dysfunctional children, and that sociopaths have often experienced deprivation or abuse as children. We're all affected to the core of our personalities by the experiences we go through, and we all experience the badness of human beings at a young age. I remember primary school, for instance, as being ruled by the law of the jungle.
It wasn't just the kids either. There was a scheme to put a dual carriageway through a few hundred yards away, and whole streets of houses along the proposed line of the road became empty and unsalable. When the plan was scrapped, they all went on the market togethe, and sole for next to nothing. Overnight, we had a flourishing multi-ethnic community around us. Overnight, the kids started referring to the newcomers as 'wogs'. Nobody ever said it was wrong to do so. Obviously, they got the term from their parents; the teachers didn't use it themselves, or not in public anyway. But their own racism was visible in the fact that they never had a word to say against it. That, not genetic inheritance, is how sin is passed from one generation to the next.
Obviously, modern Christianity is much more in tune with the Eastern than the Western Fathers on this point. We probably have John Wesley to thank for this. We tend to think of him as an evangelist and church builder, but he was much more than this. He taught Greek at Oxford at one time; it was his Lincoln fellowship which entitled him to preach in any parish in England. He was immensely widely read, and was influenced by the Eastern Fathers. Our belief that we have free will, and can thus choose to sin or not, goes back to Wesley's Arminian doctrine.
So we can throw out a good deal of bathwater, and retain the baby. Original sin isn't necessarily nonsense, and babies dying unbaptised (and how many of us accept that magical view of baptism anyway?) aren't necessarily damned. I suppose I'll have to tackle the Atonement next, and that's even more complicated, so it'll probably turn out to be a series of posts.
I don't come across people who really believe all this stuff, though many people still have an exclusive belief which is happy to damn anyone who believes differently from them, and it's not good enough to say that the church once believed it, or that the great Saint So-and-So wrote it, and therefore it's the proper orthodox belief. The church is the people, and if the people reject an idea, it isn't church doctrine. So what do we do with original sin?
Fortunately, there are different views available in the Fathers, who, of course, wrote at a time when ideas like this were taken Really Seriously. The Traducianists claimed that the guilt of original sin was inherited from Adam via our fathers, in the same way as eye colour or a hereditary disease. It wasn't, of course, inherited from our mothers, since they were believed to incubate the man's seed without adding anything of their own. So Jesus, allegedly born of a virgin, without a human father, was conveniently born without original sin. I don't see what we can do with this apart from consigning it to the theological dustbin.
Then there's creationism. No, not the fundamentalist pseudoscience, but its older namesake. This was the idea that each soul was created free of sin, but that it inevitably becomes polluted by sin. Some of the eastern Fathers; the Gregories, and Chrysostom, taught that newborn babies are without sin. We suffer the effects of Adam's sin, but without inheriting his guilt. Not only do we remain free from the guilt of Adam's sin, but in contrast to the Western Fathers, our will remains free. We can choose not to sin, and if we do so, the guilt is purely ours. It's not completely impossible for someone to remain without sin; Athanasius claimed that Jeremiah and John the Baptist did so. Compared with the Western Fathers, the Eastern are far more optimistic about the human condition. This, I think, is something that can be worked with. No longer are we struggling to reconcile some weird medieval idea with the modern world; rather, we have one that translates rather nicely.
Despite our debates about nature versus nurture, we assume these days that babies are born innocent, and this isn't incompatible with the Eastern Fathers. While we doubtless do have inborn sinful tendencies, nobody that I know of attributes all of them to nurture. There's plenty of evidence, for instance, that dysfunctional families produce dysfunctional children, and that sociopaths have often experienced deprivation or abuse as children. We're all affected to the core of our personalities by the experiences we go through, and we all experience the badness of human beings at a young age. I remember primary school, for instance, as being ruled by the law of the jungle.
It wasn't just the kids either. There was a scheme to put a dual carriageway through a few hundred yards away, and whole streets of houses along the proposed line of the road became empty and unsalable. When the plan was scrapped, they all went on the market togethe, and sole for next to nothing. Overnight, we had a flourishing multi-ethnic community around us. Overnight, the kids started referring to the newcomers as 'wogs'. Nobody ever said it was wrong to do so. Obviously, they got the term from their parents; the teachers didn't use it themselves, or not in public anyway. But their own racism was visible in the fact that they never had a word to say against it. That, not genetic inheritance, is how sin is passed from one generation to the next.
Obviously, modern Christianity is much more in tune with the Eastern than the Western Fathers on this point. We probably have John Wesley to thank for this. We tend to think of him as an evangelist and church builder, but he was much more than this. He taught Greek at Oxford at one time; it was his Lincoln fellowship which entitled him to preach in any parish in England. He was immensely widely read, and was influenced by the Eastern Fathers. Our belief that we have free will, and can thus choose to sin or not, goes back to Wesley's Arminian doctrine.
So we can throw out a good deal of bathwater, and retain the baby. Original sin isn't necessarily nonsense, and babies dying unbaptised (and how many of us accept that magical view of baptism anyway?) aren't necessarily damned. I suppose I'll have to tackle the Atonement next, and that's even more complicated, so it'll probably turn out to be a series of posts.
Monday, 7 March 2011
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus?
Sorry about the Latin, but I couldn't resist it. Outside the church there is no salvation? It's traditional, and most traditional Christians, when pressed, would probably quote Johannine texts like John 14:6:
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The Fourth Gospel, of course, along with 1 John, is a somewhat sectarian text, and I don't doubt that the author intended this in an exclusive sense. It has been read as saying that anyone coming to God, through whatever faith, comes through Jesus whether they realise it or not. That's acontextual, but then so is most of our Bible usage. Perhaps more seriously, it patronises other faiths. However, I don't believe in approaching the Bible in a wooden, rigid way. Just because the author of the Fourth Gospel thought something, it doesn't make it true. We can't take that approach without suppressing the very real tensions and conflicts between different parts of the Biblical text, and that would be dishonest. There's also the problem that 'the church' has often become 'my church'. This is a doctrine with a history of feeding divisiveness, and that alone should start the alarm bells ringing.
The historical doctrine is intimately bound up with the concept of original sin. Doctrines didn't arise 'because the Bible says'; they formed a perfectly logical mosaic, which often owed little to the Bible. The Western church tradition held that Adam lived in a state of supernatural blessedness, from which he fell owing to pride, which led him to grasp at equality with God. He treated Satan as though he was God, fell into his power, and sin took posession of his flesh. I hardly need to point out that this idea is not to be found in Genesis! It's cobbled together from isolated texts through the Bible, many of them in Paul, and a good deal of imagination.
To get from this to original sin, we add the concept of radical human solidarity with Adam. It's worth quoting Ambrose: 'In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died'. Ambrosiaster, using an inaccurate translation of Romans 5:12, went further. 'It is therefore plain that all men sinned in Adam as in a lump. For Adam himself was corrupted by sin, and all whom he begat were born under sin. Thus we are all sinners from him, since we all derive from him.' Corruption is passed on through human generation, from father to son. It was believed that the woman incubated the man's seed, and contributed nothing of her own. She was thus irrelevant to the transmission of the taint. Thus the virgin birth achieves its historical importance; Jesus had no human father, and hence no original sin.
Augustine follows this tradition, and sees the baptismal liturgy, with its exorcisms and solemn renunciation of the devil as evidence of the sinfulness of infants. Baptism, to Augustine, is the sacrament which removes the guilt of original sin, without affecting its actuality; its power over our members. Thus, we continue to sin, but guilt is washed away, and the path to salvation opened to us. However, in our natural state, we have lost our liberty to do good, and without God's grace we can neither avoid evil nor do good.
It's only by baptism that the taint of original sin can be washed away, and baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the church, sometimes compared with the City of God, or the Ark adrift in the Flood. It's only by that initiation that we can hope for God's grace in salvation, hence outside the church there can be no salvation. It's logical enough, but how many modern Christians could actually agree with the above? I suggest very few!
In practice, these days we don't really believe that babies are born burdened with the guilt of Adam's sin, and we really wouldn't agree with Augustine's conclusion that a newborn baby dying unbaptised is infallibly damned. In his book, we're all heretics.
Likewise, whosoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of that sacrament (Baptism) shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration, and condemns the universal church, in which it is the practice to loose no time and run in haste to administer baptism to infant children, because it is believed, as an indubitable truth, that otherwise they cannot be made alive, must necessarily remain under the condemnation, of which the apostle says, " by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation."
Letter 166.7.21, to St. Jerome.
But if we don't inherit Adam's guilt - which isn't to say that I think we can't make any sense out of original sin - then the other assumptions linked with it fall flat. We're no longer in desperate need of baptism to rescue us from damnation, and very few of us would understand it in that sort of magical sense anyway. So there seems to be no reason why God's grace should be confined to those who have been initiated into the church.
My wife is a devout Muslim; it's not a problem to us, though it sometimes is to other people. Usually, they seem to be the dogmatic type, to whom religious rules are more important than human beings. After fifteen year of daily exposure to Islam, it's only too clear that we're in agreement on vast areas of faith, and even follow similar practices at times. We pray in similar ways, with both formal and informal prayers. We worship the same God, and both understand him as a benevolent deity who makes very much the same moral demands on our behaviour. We ive in ways that aren't so very different. Obviously, there are specific areas where we differ.
Muslims believe that Jesus was a very great prophet, the bearer of the Gospel, which, along with the Law and the Psalms, is true scripture. They recognise the same prophets as we do. They tell very similar stories about the Patriarchs, with specific differences. They believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment. Their understanding of Jesus is obviously different, they don't believe in the Trinity (I wonder how many Christians have ever made a serious attempt to understand it, though!), and they believe that Jesus escaped death on the cross.
I find it impossible to believe in a good God who, when all's said and done, accepts or rejects us according to what doctrines we believe and what rituals we've undergone. I don't see that deity in the Bible either. I can see no reason to suppose that God won't accept a Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever. If we're going to believe in a loving, compassionate God, let's be consistent about it!
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
The Fourth Gospel, of course, along with 1 John, is a somewhat sectarian text, and I don't doubt that the author intended this in an exclusive sense. It has been read as saying that anyone coming to God, through whatever faith, comes through Jesus whether they realise it or not. That's acontextual, but then so is most of our Bible usage. Perhaps more seriously, it patronises other faiths. However, I don't believe in approaching the Bible in a wooden, rigid way. Just because the author of the Fourth Gospel thought something, it doesn't make it true. We can't take that approach without suppressing the very real tensions and conflicts between different parts of the Biblical text, and that would be dishonest. There's also the problem that 'the church' has often become 'my church'. This is a doctrine with a history of feeding divisiveness, and that alone should start the alarm bells ringing.
The historical doctrine is intimately bound up with the concept of original sin. Doctrines didn't arise 'because the Bible says'; they formed a perfectly logical mosaic, which often owed little to the Bible. The Western church tradition held that Adam lived in a state of supernatural blessedness, from which he fell owing to pride, which led him to grasp at equality with God. He treated Satan as though he was God, fell into his power, and sin took posession of his flesh. I hardly need to point out that this idea is not to be found in Genesis! It's cobbled together from isolated texts through the Bible, many of them in Paul, and a good deal of imagination.
To get from this to original sin, we add the concept of radical human solidarity with Adam. It's worth quoting Ambrose: 'In Adam I fell, in Adam I was cast out of Paradise, in Adam I died'. Ambrosiaster, using an inaccurate translation of Romans 5:12, went further. 'It is therefore plain that all men sinned in Adam as in a lump. For Adam himself was corrupted by sin, and all whom he begat were born under sin. Thus we are all sinners from him, since we all derive from him.' Corruption is passed on through human generation, from father to son. It was believed that the woman incubated the man's seed, and contributed nothing of her own. She was thus irrelevant to the transmission of the taint. Thus the virgin birth achieves its historical importance; Jesus had no human father, and hence no original sin.
Augustine follows this tradition, and sees the baptismal liturgy, with its exorcisms and solemn renunciation of the devil as evidence of the sinfulness of infants. Baptism, to Augustine, is the sacrament which removes the guilt of original sin, without affecting its actuality; its power over our members. Thus, we continue to sin, but guilt is washed away, and the path to salvation opened to us. However, in our natural state, we have lost our liberty to do good, and without God's grace we can neither avoid evil nor do good.
It's only by baptism that the taint of original sin can be washed away, and baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the church, sometimes compared with the City of God, or the Ark adrift in the Flood. It's only by that initiation that we can hope for God's grace in salvation, hence outside the church there can be no salvation. It's logical enough, but how many modern Christians could actually agree with the above? I suggest very few!
In practice, these days we don't really believe that babies are born burdened with the guilt of Adam's sin, and we really wouldn't agree with Augustine's conclusion that a newborn baby dying unbaptised is infallibly damned. In his book, we're all heretics.
Likewise, whosoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of that sacrament (Baptism) shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration, and condemns the universal church, in which it is the practice to loose no time and run in haste to administer baptism to infant children, because it is believed, as an indubitable truth, that otherwise they cannot be made alive, must necessarily remain under the condemnation, of which the apostle says, " by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation."
Letter 166.7.21, to St. Jerome.
But if we don't inherit Adam's guilt - which isn't to say that I think we can't make any sense out of original sin - then the other assumptions linked with it fall flat. We're no longer in desperate need of baptism to rescue us from damnation, and very few of us would understand it in that sort of magical sense anyway. So there seems to be no reason why God's grace should be confined to those who have been initiated into the church.
My wife is a devout Muslim; it's not a problem to us, though it sometimes is to other people. Usually, they seem to be the dogmatic type, to whom religious rules are more important than human beings. After fifteen year of daily exposure to Islam, it's only too clear that we're in agreement on vast areas of faith, and even follow similar practices at times. We pray in similar ways, with both formal and informal prayers. We worship the same God, and both understand him as a benevolent deity who makes very much the same moral demands on our behaviour. We ive in ways that aren't so very different. Obviously, there are specific areas where we differ.
Muslims believe that Jesus was a very great prophet, the bearer of the Gospel, which, along with the Law and the Psalms, is true scripture. They recognise the same prophets as we do. They tell very similar stories about the Patriarchs, with specific differences. They believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment. Their understanding of Jesus is obviously different, they don't believe in the Trinity (I wonder how many Christians have ever made a serious attempt to understand it, though!), and they believe that Jesus escaped death on the cross.
I find it impossible to believe in a good God who, when all's said and done, accepts or rejects us according to what doctrines we believe and what rituals we've undergone. I don't see that deity in the Bible either. I can see no reason to suppose that God won't accept a Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever. If we're going to believe in a loving, compassionate God, let's be consistent about it!
Wednesday, 2 March 2011
Singing the Faith
I've just been at the Local Preachers' Meeting, where we were discussing the new Methodist hymn book which is coming out next year. A small sampler has been distributed, with a full index and a small selection of hymns.
When I first became a Methodist, in 1982, they were still using the Methodist Hymn Book, published in 1933, just after Methodist Union. I always felt it was dreadful; lots of saccharine Victorian sentimentality, and unremitting individualism. Hymns and Psalms, published in 1983, is better. It's got a scattering of more modern hymns, some of which are pleasantly aware that we're part of a wider community, but it's still rather traditional. At my church we supplement it with Mission Praise. This is all right as a collection of hymns, but it's all me and my Jesus, and wouldn't do on its own. Every edition seems to have different numbering as well, which makes things difficult. It's not as bad as the old Pentecostal one, Redemption Hymnal, which is so narrow in its scope that it doesn't have enough hymns for a Christmas service. I gather they have to be extra careful devising an official Methodist hymnbook, since our foundational documents state that the doctrines of Methodism are to be found therein. I'm not exactly sure what those doctrines are, but it's obviously no good having a book which leaves a bunch of them out!
I'm no good with hymns, and I'm finding it hard to assess the new one. I'm told it's more eclectic, with hymns from round the world, both old and new. Given the multicultural nature of my church - with members from three continents - that can't be bad. I'd be very surprised if we don't have a set at my church by the end of next year, so I'll be able to say more then.
When I first became a Methodist, in 1982, they were still using the Methodist Hymn Book, published in 1933, just after Methodist Union. I always felt it was dreadful; lots of saccharine Victorian sentimentality, and unremitting individualism. Hymns and Psalms, published in 1983, is better. It's got a scattering of more modern hymns, some of which are pleasantly aware that we're part of a wider community, but it's still rather traditional. At my church we supplement it with Mission Praise. This is all right as a collection of hymns, but it's all me and my Jesus, and wouldn't do on its own. Every edition seems to have different numbering as well, which makes things difficult. It's not as bad as the old Pentecostal one, Redemption Hymnal, which is so narrow in its scope that it doesn't have enough hymns for a Christmas service. I gather they have to be extra careful devising an official Methodist hymnbook, since our foundational documents state that the doctrines of Methodism are to be found therein. I'm not exactly sure what those doctrines are, but it's obviously no good having a book which leaves a bunch of them out!
I'm no good with hymns, and I'm finding it hard to assess the new one. I'm told it's more eclectic, with hymns from round the world, both old and new. Given the multicultural nature of my church - with members from three continents - that can't be bad. I'd be very surprised if we don't have a set at my church by the end of next year, so I'll be able to say more then.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Democracy
We've got an issue at church about some of the men using a drop-in on Mondays leaving a mess in the toilet. Their response was to put up a notice telling men to use the other toilets on the far side of the building. All very well, but it's the only disabled toilet in the building, and it would be grossly embarassing for any man to use a toilet with a notice asking men to go elsewhere!
I feel there are other solutions, and I think it'll get sorted out before long. But meanwhile, we had a meeting about it after church, and I got shouted at for saying they can't do anything which would effectively ban men from that toilet. That's democracy for you, it's messy and noisy, but everyone does get listened to, and we do get there in the end.
I feel there are other solutions, and I think it'll get sorted out before long. But meanwhile, we had a meeting about it after church, and I got shouted at for saying they can't do anything which would effectively ban men from that toilet. That's democracy for you, it's messy and noisy, but everyone does get listened to, and we do get there in the end.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
I haven't posted for a while, as I've been quite unwell, and it makes it hard to sit down and write anything. The only news is that I've been elected a Circuit Steward, much to the disgust of a few people at the meeting. That gets me involved with running a group of fifteen Methodist churches, none of which, apart from mine, is in anything like a healthy state. Two of them are on the point of collapse, due at least in part to insecure, domineering leadership which refuses to accept new members. What on earth are we doing, tolerating situations where churches wilfully abandon their mission and commit suicide, purely because someone's afraid that new people might upset their little empire? It's horribly common; a couple of churches went that way in my last circuit in Cornwall.
I've got involved in a debate with someone on Facebook who thinks we shouldn't be arguing about religion publicly in front of atheists. My view on this is that any debate is worthwhile; we've always got something we can learn from someone else's point of view. I've no time for the way fundamentalists use the Bible, but I wish liberals would develop the same ability to put their ideas across!
I've got involved in a debate with someone on Facebook who thinks we shouldn't be arguing about religion publicly in front of atheists. My view on this is that any debate is worthwhile; we've always got something we can learn from someone else's point of view. I've no time for the way fundamentalists use the Bible, but I wish liberals would develop the same ability to put their ideas across!
Thursday, 16 September 2010
Why do people expect churches to be run to suit themselves?
We had Church Council the other night. One very persistent member, yet again, came up with her bright idea of having an earlier service; she'd like it to be at ten rather than eleven. She likes getting up in the morning. The only person supporting it is her friend; two elderly white ladies in a mostly black church, with a long record of deafness towards everyone but themselves. Unfortunately, church people don't like saying 'no'; it's not considered acceptable to be awkward or get into conflicts, and most people are extremely passive. They accept whatever the leadership says, vote the way they're told, and leave if they don't like it. In some churches, it's considered morally wrong to oppose the leadership. So the ball's landed in my court; we agreed to have a discussion on Sunday. The only other assertive member we have is in Jamaica, where she's preparing to retire.
Looking round, the overwhelming majority of churches in the West Midlands have an 11 o'clock service. They do so because it's been found to be the most acceptable compromise. There are three churches in our circuit which have an earlier service; all three have been haemorrhaging members for the twenty-odd years I've been in Birmingham. One is on the point of collapse, one is in serious trouble, and the other is just about managing on the back of the fact that it started out with a large membership. We're the great exception; we've got twice the membership we had twenty years ago. We have to be getting something right, yet we're being asked to jeopardise it, when we already have people who struggle to get there for eleven.
Everything I've seen, in Cornwall as well as Birmingham, tells me that this is a common pattern. Persistent individuals find it easy to get into office, since churches, like all voluntary groups, are always short of people to do jobs. Then they use that to get their own way. People may not like what they're doing, but they don't like to be awkward. They start to drift away; other people who might have become members go somewhere else. The church is on the slippery slope, and it's the devil's own job to get off it again.
Yet the church isn't here for the benefit of its leaders; it isn't even here for that of its members. It's a community which is called into being to carry out a mission; to spread the Good News, however we're going to interpret that. As Archbishop Temple said, it's the only organisation which exists for the benefit of those who are not yet its members. I'd put it differently; we're here for the benefit of those who will never be our members, but may yet come to find God in other ways, if they haven't done so already. One of the community groups which uses the premises on a regular basis includes a large proportion of Muslims, but we don't have an issue with that.
So why is it that, so often, the church loses sight of its mission, allows a minority to arrange things for their own benefit, and fades away rather than face up to the fact that it's become dysfunctional?
We had a comparable situation some years ago; a minister with nothing in common with us, and a bad case of glue ear, tried to get us to sell some land we lease to the National Childrens’ Homes. It’s on a 99-year lease, with a stupid clause written into the contract to say the rent can only be re-assessed every 33 years. Unfortunately, that’s where the Methodist Church was in the 1960’s; I’ve heard even worse stories. They’d had it on a peppercorn rent for many years, and the rent was due to be reassessed in 2001. We were on the receiving end of an attempt to pressurise us into selling the lease for a ‘generous’ fourteen thousand, while being denied professional advice. The leadership we had then had a long-standing policy of never saying no to a minister; this is the traditional way of getting power in Methodism. You get in the minister’s clique, and they nominate you to office. Our beloved minister brought this up in every Church council for two years, bringing everything else to a grinding halt, while everyone sat there in embarrassed silence. In the end, nobody could take any more. We got proper advice ourselves, and were told not to touch it with a bargepole. Our minister then tried to get Circuit Meeting to send it back to us again. I stopped it by jumping up and protesting, and gave everyone such a shock (nobody had done such a thing before) that we never heard another word. We’re now getting seven thousand a year for the lease, and until inflation starts up again, we’re one of the very few financially secure Methodist churches around.
We’ve discussed this idea of changing the time of the service twice in Church Council, and both times, everyone except me has sat there in silence. It’s got the same feel to it; it’s obvious nobody wants it, but those to whom the Spirit is speaking have no ears. We’ll have another discussion after the service on Sunday, and hopefully that’ll be the end of it. I suspect they won’t give up; they never do. But we can’t make the mistake of so many churches, start doing things to suit one or two people, and end up fading away like a Cheshire cat.
Looking round, the overwhelming majority of churches in the West Midlands have an 11 o'clock service. They do so because it's been found to be the most acceptable compromise. There are three churches in our circuit which have an earlier service; all three have been haemorrhaging members for the twenty-odd years I've been in Birmingham. One is on the point of collapse, one is in serious trouble, and the other is just about managing on the back of the fact that it started out with a large membership. We're the great exception; we've got twice the membership we had twenty years ago. We have to be getting something right, yet we're being asked to jeopardise it, when we already have people who struggle to get there for eleven.
Everything I've seen, in Cornwall as well as Birmingham, tells me that this is a common pattern. Persistent individuals find it easy to get into office, since churches, like all voluntary groups, are always short of people to do jobs. Then they use that to get their own way. People may not like what they're doing, but they don't like to be awkward. They start to drift away; other people who might have become members go somewhere else. The church is on the slippery slope, and it's the devil's own job to get off it again.
Yet the church isn't here for the benefit of its leaders; it isn't even here for that of its members. It's a community which is called into being to carry out a mission; to spread the Good News, however we're going to interpret that. As Archbishop Temple said, it's the only organisation which exists for the benefit of those who are not yet its members. I'd put it differently; we're here for the benefit of those who will never be our members, but may yet come to find God in other ways, if they haven't done so already. One of the community groups which uses the premises on a regular basis includes a large proportion of Muslims, but we don't have an issue with that.
So why is it that, so often, the church loses sight of its mission, allows a minority to arrange things for their own benefit, and fades away rather than face up to the fact that it's become dysfunctional?
We had a comparable situation some years ago; a minister with nothing in common with us, and a bad case of glue ear, tried to get us to sell some land we lease to the National Childrens’ Homes. It’s on a 99-year lease, with a stupid clause written into the contract to say the rent can only be re-assessed every 33 years. Unfortunately, that’s where the Methodist Church was in the 1960’s; I’ve heard even worse stories. They’d had it on a peppercorn rent for many years, and the rent was due to be reassessed in 2001. We were on the receiving end of an attempt to pressurise us into selling the lease for a ‘generous’ fourteen thousand, while being denied professional advice. The leadership we had then had a long-standing policy of never saying no to a minister; this is the traditional way of getting power in Methodism. You get in the minister’s clique, and they nominate you to office. Our beloved minister brought this up in every Church council for two years, bringing everything else to a grinding halt, while everyone sat there in embarrassed silence. In the end, nobody could take any more. We got proper advice ourselves, and were told not to touch it with a bargepole. Our minister then tried to get Circuit Meeting to send it back to us again. I stopped it by jumping up and protesting, and gave everyone such a shock (nobody had done such a thing before) that we never heard another word. We’re now getting seven thousand a year for the lease, and until inflation starts up again, we’re one of the very few financially secure Methodist churches around.
We’ve discussed this idea of changing the time of the service twice in Church Council, and both times, everyone except me has sat there in silence. It’s got the same feel to it; it’s obvious nobody wants it, but those to whom the Spirit is speaking have no ears. We’ll have another discussion after the service on Sunday, and hopefully that’ll be the end of it. I suspect they won’t give up; they never do. But we can’t make the mistake of so many churches, start doing things to suit one or two people, and end up fading away like a Cheshire cat.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
There seems to be no end to the problems some people out there want to make for my church. Not only do we have one person who's been coming taking services and refusing to speak to the duty steward, who's responsible for the smooth running of the service, but her husband, a prominent official in the Circuit, does his best to stop paperwork going to the stewards as well, even when it's addressed to us. It always goes to their friend in the congregation. At the Circuit Meeting, material intended for my church is segregated, and rushed to this person as soon as she makes an appearance, in order to stop me getting hold of it.
Last week I had yet another letter addressed to 'the Senior Steward' (we don't appoint one, as it leads to one steward being singled out, and it's not an official office, but it's effectively me) passed on to me by someone else, with a note telling me what to do with it. This time I've made a complaint, and I'm meeting with our minister tomorrow to discuss how to handle the situation. I've been at my church since 1987, and in all that time, none of our stewards have been accorded proper recognition unless they were in a very small, exclusive clique. Our current minister is the first who's really accepted the people we choose to elect.
This goes on everywhere in the Methodist Church, perhaps not quite as blatantly as this, but it's there all the same. Back in the 1980's, there were complaints about black stewards not being recognised, but that was only one aspect of the problem. It's no wonder Methodist membership is declining! You try to run a church democratically and inclusively, and all these people can do is make endless obsessive attempts to undermine you and put themselves in control. The fact that they have no support outside their own little circle has nothing to do with it as far as they're concerned.
Last week I had yet another letter addressed to 'the Senior Steward' (we don't appoint one, as it leads to one steward being singled out, and it's not an official office, but it's effectively me) passed on to me by someone else, with a note telling me what to do with it. This time I've made a complaint, and I'm meeting with our minister tomorrow to discuss how to handle the situation. I've been at my church since 1987, and in all that time, none of our stewards have been accorded proper recognition unless they were in a very small, exclusive clique. Our current minister is the first who's really accepted the people we choose to elect.
This goes on everywhere in the Methodist Church, perhaps not quite as blatantly as this, but it's there all the same. Back in the 1980's, there were complaints about black stewards not being recognised, but that was only one aspect of the problem. It's no wonder Methodist membership is declining! You try to run a church democratically and inclusively, and all these people can do is make endless obsessive attempts to undermine you and put themselves in control. The fact that they have no support outside their own little circle has nothing to do with it as far as they're concerned.
Thursday, 5 August 2010
How not to be the Church
I’m suffering from daily headaches at the moment, and it’s making it really hard to write anything. But never mind, this is an issue that’s been worrying me for many years.
I’ve been a member of the Methodist Church for twenty-eight years now, since 1982. I’ve been in two very different churches; one in a village in Cornwall, in a rural circuit where every church was slowly collapsing due to a combination of declining membership and inappropriate buildings, and one in central Birmingham. The first was all white, the second eighty percent black, with members from three continents. My current circuit is urban, multicultural, and some churches, at least, have modern buildings which are more or less appropriate to their needs. Others are being brought to their knees by the cost of maintaining dilapidated Victorian barns. I should know; I’ve been responsible for the property in both the churches where I’ve been a member. You’d have thought the problems in the two circuits would have been very different, but no. They’re almost identical.
Firstly, buildings. I’ll never forget one church I used to preach at in Cornwall. When it was built, at the end of Victoria’s reign, there was, apparently, a village there. The church would seat about 100 comfortably. When I started preaching, in the mid-1980’s, the village had disappeared without trace, the walls were streaked with green mould, and part of the ceiling had collapsed. The congregation was about half a dozen, which came out from St. Austell, a few miles away. Another, in a slightly better state, served a village that had long disappeared under a mountain of china clay waste. One in the town itself had been built for 750 people, and I used to get a congregation of three or four, including the organist.
In my present circuit we have one church which has a huge, cathedral-like building, with an extensive range of rooms which include a large hall in which they now meet. The congregation is about fifteen to twenty. I always feel there’s some life there, but it’s slowly being stifled by a derelict building they don’t seem, finally, to be able to get rid of. Other churches are also struggling with buildings they don’t need. In many cases they could sell, buy a large house nearby, convert the ground floor into a church, and upstairs into flats. The rents would go a long way towards maintaining the church.
Another, associated, problem is poor to suicidal leadership. As long as I’ve been in the Methodist Church, I’ve seen a slow trickle of people leaving because they’re marginalized, ignored, their ideas aren’t wanted. In the worst cases, they go due to outright bullying and rudeness. In some cases the behavior I’ve come across has been truly abominable. Only last year, I had to deal with a case of libelous letters being sent, falsely accusing a builder’s workmen of theft. The firm had been contracted by the Church Council to do work which the writers hadn’t wanted, and this was their way of hitting back. Clearly, the people responsible are no longer running that church. But they make it blindingly obvious that they think they ought to be.
On many occasions, I’ve seen good people elected to office, then not recognized. In the 1980’s, there were complaints about black church stewards being used as tokens, without being allowed to do the job. It goes deeper than that; it happens to white people as well. It happened to me. When I was in Cornwall, the Senior Steward at my church retired, then carried straight on doing the job exactly as before, ignoring their successor. Officially, there’s no such office as Senior Steward, but it’s always been more convenient for ministers to have to talk to one person rather than all the stewards, and for anyone wanting power, this is always the one to go for. Then they can exclude all the other stewards. In my present church, I was a steward for years before anyone asked my opinion of anything. Eventually, once again, the Senior Steward retired.
I was already in a situation where I had taken on responsibility for the property, but someone else, who has never been a Property Steward, and shows no understanding of what’s involved, thought she should be in charge. So I was being undermined and pressurised in the expectation that I’d eventually give in as my predecessor had. Then the woman we’d appointed as the new Senior Steward gave up and left, after a similar experience. She was a perfectly good steward, of many years’ standing, who could be trusted to listen to the rest of us. The trouble was, she wasn’t the strongest character, and she listened to the wrong people.
Fortunately, we had a couple of strong characters in the church who were already stewards, and with support from the minister, we’ve – hopefully – been able to get to a situation where people appointed to do jobs actually get to do them. We still get undermined though, and still have situations like the woman who comes occasionally taking services, and refuses to speak to the duty steward. She’ll only work with her friend the former steward, and we haven’t really tackled that one yet.
This is why the Six Year Rule, which says that stewards, who are officially responsible for ‘providing leadership’, have to step down after six years, doesn’t work. By the time it gets to that point, the person in control has probably been bullying everyone else for years, and anyone who might stand up to them has left. On the rare occasions when a minister insists on applying it, they carry straight on pulling strings, then force their way back in as soon as that minister leaves. Problem people in a church can only be dealt with effectively by laypeople who are there for the long haul, and are prepared to stand up for themselves over many years if necessary.
The root of many of our problems has probably been the ordained ministry. Ministers come and go. The norm at present is that they come for an initial five years, which can be extended. If things don’t work out, they can be moved on, but this is rare and difficult; normally you just have to endure them. Some are brilliant, some appalling, but very few look beyond their few years in that church. The result is that we suffer from short-termism, and systemic problems are rarely even considered. I’ve been in my current circuit since 1987; over that time, we’ve lost a large number of members. In all that time, there has never been any discussion about the problems. In many cases, the same people who were running things when I arrived are still there now. At last, we’ve scheduled an extra Circuit Meeting, where it will be on the agenda, but this came from laypeople not ministers.
Where ministers attempt to provide leadership, and there are still plenty out there trying to operate on a minister-led model, they routinely fail. We had one who wanted to turn us all into charismatics, another who bullied and upset everyone. They arrive, not knowing the people, with little real information about the church, and try to take charge when they’re actually less qualified to do so that anyone else. This can only lead to problems, and sometimes it creates mayhem. One church in the circuit was disastrously split by a minister who openly tried to elbow aside everyone but fundamentalist charismatics, and almost twenty years after he retired, that church still has serious problems. His successor had a similar attitude, surrounded himself with yes-people, and pushed them into office long before they were ready. On one notorious occasion, he nominated someone for a note to preach, the beginning of the training system for lay preachers, a fortnight after he had become a Christian. The better ministers listen, and try to encourage the good things they find going on in a church. But then they move on, and we never know what we’re going to be landed with next. When there are major problems, they can offer little help.
Lacking information, sometimes with their heads full of stereotypes of what they think the church ought to be, they’re vulnerable to manipulation. Power in the Methodist Church has traditionally come via a sort of devil’s bargain between ministers and their yes-people. Anyone eager for position and power would gather round the minister, agreeing to anything they said, in the hope of being ‘nominated’ for office. In return, the minister supported the office-holders, and ensured that they should rule the roost – which is probably the main thing they wanted – unchallenged.
I think the practice of ‘nominating’ people to office is one of the worst aspects of Methodist tradition. Decisions of all sorts are taken by little in-groups, and then rubber-stamped by the meeting. This happens at every level; it has been many years since Conference last voted against the platform, for instance. Appointments are made by putting a ‘name’ to the meeting, which is then traditionally accepted without question or discussion. The result is a network of little power cliques, controlling everything, along with their ministerial allies, and having a veto over the appointment of anyone except themselves and their friends, and managing to ignore everyone else. That’s what leads to the situation I mentioned, where someone comes to my church imagining themselves too good to have to speak to the person responsible for the smooth running of the service. It’s an appallingly corrupt system, and if we want to rebuild the church, it has to go.
Fortunately, some aspects of it are dying by inches. When I was in Cornwall, I was regularly accused of being ‘disrespectful’ to a minister who I addressed, and referred to, as ‘Tom’ not ‘Reverend So-and-so’. I arrived in Birmingham to find that practice was long gone, but the slightest criticism of any minister was instantly met by patronising speeches about how ‘special’ they were. That stopped by the end of the 90’s.
When I came here, there were three Circuits, and six ministers in mine alone; I think there were a total of five in the other two. The three are now amalgamated into a single Circuit, with three ministers. The result is, of course, that a lot more is done by laypeople. I believe we are the first Circuit in the country to have appointed lay ministers, who are not ordained, but who do everything ministers do apart from weddings. There’s no block to their doing that, but they’d have to be officially appointed for a particular church, and it hasn’t happened yet.
It hasn’t really made much difference to my church, as we’ve always done everything ourselves. Originally this was down to weak ministers and a domineering leadership clique, these days it’s because we really do believe in inclusiveness and democracy, and our current minister supports us in this. The only thing we really rely on her for is a bit of support now and then, and decisions are regularly taken over coffee after the service, with everyone participating. We’ve recently given jobs to two ladies on the fringes of the church; a new member has taken responsibility for cleaning the church, while our latest trainee worship leader hasn’t got as far as membership yet. Time will tell whether I’m right in thinking this is a way of bringing new people in. Things can be done differently; it only takes the will!
I’ve been a member of the Methodist Church for twenty-eight years now, since 1982. I’ve been in two very different churches; one in a village in Cornwall, in a rural circuit where every church was slowly collapsing due to a combination of declining membership and inappropriate buildings, and one in central Birmingham. The first was all white, the second eighty percent black, with members from three continents. My current circuit is urban, multicultural, and some churches, at least, have modern buildings which are more or less appropriate to their needs. Others are being brought to their knees by the cost of maintaining dilapidated Victorian barns. I should know; I’ve been responsible for the property in both the churches where I’ve been a member. You’d have thought the problems in the two circuits would have been very different, but no. They’re almost identical.
Firstly, buildings. I’ll never forget one church I used to preach at in Cornwall. When it was built, at the end of Victoria’s reign, there was, apparently, a village there. The church would seat about 100 comfortably. When I started preaching, in the mid-1980’s, the village had disappeared without trace, the walls were streaked with green mould, and part of the ceiling had collapsed. The congregation was about half a dozen, which came out from St. Austell, a few miles away. Another, in a slightly better state, served a village that had long disappeared under a mountain of china clay waste. One in the town itself had been built for 750 people, and I used to get a congregation of three or four, including the organist.
In my present circuit we have one church which has a huge, cathedral-like building, with an extensive range of rooms which include a large hall in which they now meet. The congregation is about fifteen to twenty. I always feel there’s some life there, but it’s slowly being stifled by a derelict building they don’t seem, finally, to be able to get rid of. Other churches are also struggling with buildings they don’t need. In many cases they could sell, buy a large house nearby, convert the ground floor into a church, and upstairs into flats. The rents would go a long way towards maintaining the church.
Another, associated, problem is poor to suicidal leadership. As long as I’ve been in the Methodist Church, I’ve seen a slow trickle of people leaving because they’re marginalized, ignored, their ideas aren’t wanted. In the worst cases, they go due to outright bullying and rudeness. In some cases the behavior I’ve come across has been truly abominable. Only last year, I had to deal with a case of libelous letters being sent, falsely accusing a builder’s workmen of theft. The firm had been contracted by the Church Council to do work which the writers hadn’t wanted, and this was their way of hitting back. Clearly, the people responsible are no longer running that church. But they make it blindingly obvious that they think they ought to be.
On many occasions, I’ve seen good people elected to office, then not recognized. In the 1980’s, there were complaints about black church stewards being used as tokens, without being allowed to do the job. It goes deeper than that; it happens to white people as well. It happened to me. When I was in Cornwall, the Senior Steward at my church retired, then carried straight on doing the job exactly as before, ignoring their successor. Officially, there’s no such office as Senior Steward, but it’s always been more convenient for ministers to have to talk to one person rather than all the stewards, and for anyone wanting power, this is always the one to go for. Then they can exclude all the other stewards. In my present church, I was a steward for years before anyone asked my opinion of anything. Eventually, once again, the Senior Steward retired.
I was already in a situation where I had taken on responsibility for the property, but someone else, who has never been a Property Steward, and shows no understanding of what’s involved, thought she should be in charge. So I was being undermined and pressurised in the expectation that I’d eventually give in as my predecessor had. Then the woman we’d appointed as the new Senior Steward gave up and left, after a similar experience. She was a perfectly good steward, of many years’ standing, who could be trusted to listen to the rest of us. The trouble was, she wasn’t the strongest character, and she listened to the wrong people.
Fortunately, we had a couple of strong characters in the church who were already stewards, and with support from the minister, we’ve – hopefully – been able to get to a situation where people appointed to do jobs actually get to do them. We still get undermined though, and still have situations like the woman who comes occasionally taking services, and refuses to speak to the duty steward. She’ll only work with her friend the former steward, and we haven’t really tackled that one yet.
This is why the Six Year Rule, which says that stewards, who are officially responsible for ‘providing leadership’, have to step down after six years, doesn’t work. By the time it gets to that point, the person in control has probably been bullying everyone else for years, and anyone who might stand up to them has left. On the rare occasions when a minister insists on applying it, they carry straight on pulling strings, then force their way back in as soon as that minister leaves. Problem people in a church can only be dealt with effectively by laypeople who are there for the long haul, and are prepared to stand up for themselves over many years if necessary.
The root of many of our problems has probably been the ordained ministry. Ministers come and go. The norm at present is that they come for an initial five years, which can be extended. If things don’t work out, they can be moved on, but this is rare and difficult; normally you just have to endure them. Some are brilliant, some appalling, but very few look beyond their few years in that church. The result is that we suffer from short-termism, and systemic problems are rarely even considered. I’ve been in my current circuit since 1987; over that time, we’ve lost a large number of members. In all that time, there has never been any discussion about the problems. In many cases, the same people who were running things when I arrived are still there now. At last, we’ve scheduled an extra Circuit Meeting, where it will be on the agenda, but this came from laypeople not ministers.
Where ministers attempt to provide leadership, and there are still plenty out there trying to operate on a minister-led model, they routinely fail. We had one who wanted to turn us all into charismatics, another who bullied and upset everyone. They arrive, not knowing the people, with little real information about the church, and try to take charge when they’re actually less qualified to do so that anyone else. This can only lead to problems, and sometimes it creates mayhem. One church in the circuit was disastrously split by a minister who openly tried to elbow aside everyone but fundamentalist charismatics, and almost twenty years after he retired, that church still has serious problems. His successor had a similar attitude, surrounded himself with yes-people, and pushed them into office long before they were ready. On one notorious occasion, he nominated someone for a note to preach, the beginning of the training system for lay preachers, a fortnight after he had become a Christian. The better ministers listen, and try to encourage the good things they find going on in a church. But then they move on, and we never know what we’re going to be landed with next. When there are major problems, they can offer little help.
Lacking information, sometimes with their heads full of stereotypes of what they think the church ought to be, they’re vulnerable to manipulation. Power in the Methodist Church has traditionally come via a sort of devil’s bargain between ministers and their yes-people. Anyone eager for position and power would gather round the minister, agreeing to anything they said, in the hope of being ‘nominated’ for office. In return, the minister supported the office-holders, and ensured that they should rule the roost – which is probably the main thing they wanted – unchallenged.
I think the practice of ‘nominating’ people to office is one of the worst aspects of Methodist tradition. Decisions of all sorts are taken by little in-groups, and then rubber-stamped by the meeting. This happens at every level; it has been many years since Conference last voted against the platform, for instance. Appointments are made by putting a ‘name’ to the meeting, which is then traditionally accepted without question or discussion. The result is a network of little power cliques, controlling everything, along with their ministerial allies, and having a veto over the appointment of anyone except themselves and their friends, and managing to ignore everyone else. That’s what leads to the situation I mentioned, where someone comes to my church imagining themselves too good to have to speak to the person responsible for the smooth running of the service. It’s an appallingly corrupt system, and if we want to rebuild the church, it has to go.
Fortunately, some aspects of it are dying by inches. When I was in Cornwall, I was regularly accused of being ‘disrespectful’ to a minister who I addressed, and referred to, as ‘Tom’ not ‘Reverend So-and-so’. I arrived in Birmingham to find that practice was long gone, but the slightest criticism of any minister was instantly met by patronising speeches about how ‘special’ they were. That stopped by the end of the 90’s.
When I came here, there were three Circuits, and six ministers in mine alone; I think there were a total of five in the other two. The three are now amalgamated into a single Circuit, with three ministers. The result is, of course, that a lot more is done by laypeople. I believe we are the first Circuit in the country to have appointed lay ministers, who are not ordained, but who do everything ministers do apart from weddings. There’s no block to their doing that, but they’d have to be officially appointed for a particular church, and it hasn’t happened yet.
It hasn’t really made much difference to my church, as we’ve always done everything ourselves. Originally this was down to weak ministers and a domineering leadership clique, these days it’s because we really do believe in inclusiveness and democracy, and our current minister supports us in this. The only thing we really rely on her for is a bit of support now and then, and decisions are regularly taken over coffee after the service, with everyone participating. We’ve recently given jobs to two ladies on the fringes of the church; a new member has taken responsibility for cleaning the church, while our latest trainee worship leader hasn’t got as far as membership yet. Time will tell whether I’m right in thinking this is a way of bringing new people in. Things can be done differently; it only takes the will!
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