For some time now I've said I need to process a lot of thoughts from the summer holidays, and as part of the process, the Chaplaincy conference. A few days ago I managed to produce a form of them as the Parish Letter, also reproduced in my public blog. However, like Christmas Letters, there is that information which is widely spread, and that which is kept a little closer to the chest. So here is the public letter, and marked out by italics a rather fuller version. It's not perfect, or complete, but it covers most of the ground, I think.
Dear friends,
No matter what the calendar tells us, about when the number of the year changes, I suspect for most of us with young children or in active employment, the New Year has already started. Come the beginning of September we swing into a pattern that was formed in our infancy. I’d guess it’s a hard one to break. Holidays have passed, obligations have returned. It’s all up-, or down-, hill to Christmas, depending upon your point of view.
(That is I find it an uphill struggle, but in many respects a spiritual downhill journey. Not in the sense of rolling downhill, rather in the sense of it often being of declining personal spiritual value in the fulfilment of obligations and expectations, rather than personal, worshipful engagement.)
So what, if anything, did you do over the summer? What have you learned? Here’s the Vicar’s answer to that old back to school chestnut – what I did in my holidays.
First there was the opportunity to escape and to be looked after by others. Unless you’ve ever worked from home, and with the constant mental presence of work; with the expectation that every phone call and every ring of the doorbell is likely to result in another job, it may seem a little hard to understand the need to escape completely.
So many people tell me that my vocation is a 24/7 one, and despite replying that I am rarely troubled “out of hours” (that is, from roughly 11pm to 8am) the pressures and expectations, whether external or self-imposed, remain. Why else would I disconnect my phone line about 9pm on the evening before my day off and not reconnect it until 36hrs later? And, of course, it's not just me, it's the whole family.
Sadly the presence of mobile phones and all-pervasive internet access is spreading this phenomenon all the more widely to all the more people; which is probably bad news.
It is bad news. It should not be expected except in clearly defined circumstances. The vast majority of things just are not that important!
Love it or loathe it, whatever the source, overwork over a long period is bad news.
I love the Uni work. It has challenges I understand at a far deeper lever and a structure, and yet a freedom, that I enjoy. I dislike, sometimes loathe, the parish work.
Getting away allows a clearing of the mind and the space to pray. It’s an opportunity both to re-order your own thoughts and for God to re-order them for you, through the places you go and the people you meet. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the Gospel authors remind us that Jesus also made the habit of getting away from it all.
I do not make and take the time I should, whether on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis. Preacher, teach thyself! And I didn't actually consciously pray very much while we were away. What I did was rediscovered my family: how to spend time with LM without an argument, how much LMP loves me, how to spend time together contentedly with my GLW, how to simply be. We did worship, at a Baptist church, which brought back many memories of my Pentecostal days. And good though it was, it gave much food for thought; a family-orientated service, concerned to welcome the stranger and visitor, but very much still wrapped in church-speak and attracting only the churched. The outward focus of the church was evident, but how many were being attracted inward?
Then there was Greenbelt, the annual Christian festival which many years ago was at Castle Ashby. Did you know that it’s been going 37 years? (I’ve been for 20, non-consecutive, years). If the family holiday was the chance to relax, Greenbelt was the chance to encounter. We camped once more with the Anglican Franciscans and joined into the communal rhythms of prayer, praise and eating, as well as having the chance to engage with speakers and be entertained and challenged. Greenbelt helps me reset the clock, to realise both the good and the bad, the changes and the things that I’ve failed to change. It’s not about guilt but honesty, and honestly giving it all back up to God and about seeking to get it right “next time”.
The astute reader will note a complete lack of comment over what I learnt, feel I've got wrong or was challenged by! Camping with the Franciscans was a liberating experience in respect of being part of a catered for community and in both GLW and myself getting in free, on contributors' wristbands. It was especially helpful when GLW went down with food-poisoning on the last night, which meant that at least the following day there were enough hands to help dismantle the tent once everything had been removed and mostly packed. However, going as a family radically reduced the flexibility, meaning that most activities were dominated by the needs of the children, especially when LM decided she wouldn't go to the children's part of the festival! We only heard one speaker, although I did manage to get some space and attend a panel discussion on the possibilities of virtual community.
One, almost accidental challenge, was the realisation that it's time, at least at a personal level, to find a different worshipping community to hang out with. When I started visiting, and later, assisting with the Franciscans, their rhythms and manners of worship were a radical and valuable departure from my charismatic pentecostal practices. Over time, however, the different has become the normal. The assistance in liturgy and worship has instead become another manifestation of work. The change is no longer as good as a rest, because it isn't a change. Maybe the time for being a member of the Franciscans' “Fifth Column” (as Brother Hugh and I joked), a hanger on, or 'pendulant', has passed. Whether this is true or not any further family outings to GB will probably remain based with them simply due to the benefits of community camping.
A bigger issue though, is the one that GB perpetually stirs; the question of a relevant faith and a relevant church. Frankly little of that shown by much of the established or long-standing churches, seems relevant or attractive to those beyond our doors. Not just my own area of responsibility, but the evangelical and outward-looking Baptist church from holiday. It reveals my serious frustrations with a church, as revealed in a PCC meeting upon our return, far more concerned with the necessity of keeping an ancient monument in good order and ensuring the delivery of a Christmas Bazaar according to a traditional pattern over the delivery and living of a liberating and transformative faith!
The final piece of the learning wasn’t a holiday, but still part of the process. The first week of September was a reminder of my other “hat”, the Anglican-Methodist Higher Education Chaplains’ Conference. Four days of looking at the dreams and realities of Chaplaincy work. Space to worship, to think, to explore, and as much as anything else, to pass on stories and experiences from our Chaplaincies, finding out what does and doesn’t work, and so gaining ideas for the future.
The conference reinforced many of the issues raised at GB. My frustrations, even loathing, of so much of the expectations and realities of parish life, for example. I have commented publicly before about things I feel I was not ordained to do, or do not need to be ordained to do, and how they dominate my working life. There are other parts of the calling as expressed in the ordination service that I do not and cannot achieve, yet feel very strongly called to be doing, as well as being far more affirming and fulfilling. It may well be very likely that to succeed in our Christian mission to the wider world that we may need to learn to function far more as Chaplains, than as Parish Clergy. It involves a recognition that church and faith are marginal, rather than central, to the life of the wider community and making that our starting point, being “out there” rather than staying within our walls and trying to get others to come to us. The church is dying, and has been bleeding to death for maybe as long as centuries, always stemming the flow enough to cling on, but bereft of lasting vitality and growth in so many areas. The Bishop of Lincoln mentioned how he has a parish priest exercising a mainly episcopal ministry over 26 parishes, supported by readers, commissioned lay workers and general laity. Like it or not, that is the way things are going.
Also I formed the impression, and I can only use those words, that my position is most unusual, at least in terms of those attending the conference. While a significant number of colleagues were performing their ministry half-time I appeared to be the only one in sole charge of a parish in the other 0.5 as opposed to being a member of a team. I'd be interested in knowing whether that is borne out in fact...
It wasn't all doom and gloom, far from it. There was plenty of hope, creativity and faith, but much of it allowed to flourish exactly because it was freed from the straitjacket of parochial institutionalism.
Whether we have idea or not, one thing we can be sure of is that the future holds change, whether in the parish or the university.
I'm preparing to jump ship! I told Bishop Frank that I would hold on for another two years unless an opportunity I couldn't refuse came up. And one is shortly due to steam over the horizon, and I intend to make it my own, unless some serious problem becomes apparent.
Society and our lives amidst it are not static. God is to be found in the present, and if he’s to be revealed to others in the present, than we need to be in touch with the present too. I’ve been challenged over the past weeks about how much we as the church, here and nationally, are really in touch with the present. Do we recognise the needs of the now?
No, I don't think we do!
Do we see the way ahead?
Likewise I suspect not, or if we do, I strongly suspect that we are in denial. If we had taken these things on board we would be doing things differently. I do not have all the answers. We have to find them together. We need each other.
And what are we going to do? Change shouldn’t be a matter for despair; growth can be as much a product of change as decline; potential and problem are merely the opposite sides of the same coin.
If we do not change, the church will wither. Sadly, despite some signs of growth, and despite a generally-stated agreement of the need for change and a stated willingness to see it, there remains a deep-seated and largely-unconscious corporate mindset that ensures the ship of the church is continuing to sail full speed ahead towards the reef, and that the minor course corrections effected are woefully inadequate. For all the work that we as a family have put in, as much as my own personal labours, and coupled with the awareness of my own frailties, such as an unwillingness to maybe be as blunt as I should, it's feeling rather as if our exertions, if not totally in vain, are running close to exhaustion. I don't think there's really any church will to live in anything other than a state of limping decline. I'm sure there is faith, somewhere, but don't see that coupled to any real actions that will make a difference. Those who have been running the show want and deserve to step back and let others do it, except of course there are precious few others, and they are expected to run the show in the same way as it has been for God knows how many decades.
As we approach our Feast Sunday, the 803rd (arbitrary) birthday of our church, we can be re-assured that God does not change.
It's a scandal that we don't!
He still desires that all may come to know him in Jesus Christ, and that we play our part in his mission. How we do it has to involve change, but his truth does not change. If our works are rooted in faith and following him then they will prosper, and if they are not, they will fall, and something else will take their place.
I find myself almost praying that it will fall. Only from death can new life spring. We believe in a resurrection faith; first there has to be a corpse. Well, we certainly aren't prospering...
So that’s something about what I learned and thought over my holidays. What about you?
With every blessing, as ever,
Stuart
And strange as it may seem, yes, I actually am happy. As Fraser in Dad's Army said “Aye, we're all doomed” but he didn't reckon on the resurrection power of the living God!
