maggi dawn

Make haste less slowly...

The hon. Member for Middlesbrough, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

Livings (Crown Patronage)

7. Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con): How many livings in the Church of England are under the patronage of the Crown; and how many of the incumbents of those livings are women. [204058]

The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Stuart Bell): There are approximately 650 parochial appointments in the gift of the Crown, of which patronage for around 450 is exercised on the Crown’s behalf by the Lord Chancellor. In some cases, the patronage right is shared in turn with other patrons of the benefice; 103 of those appointments are held by women.

Robert Key: There is clearly still some way to go. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that it really is time that the Church of England stopped discriminating against 50 per cent. of the human race when it comes to episcopal appointments? Can he imagine this House finding it expedient to agree to any Measure from Synod that sought to discriminate against women, in the hope that it was going to allow women bishops in the Church of England—but not at any price?

Sir Stuart Bell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He will remember that this House voted almost unanimously, but certainly overwhelmingly, for women priests way back in 1992. Given that he is a member of the General Synod, he will know that in July it will look at the options for progressing the ordination of women as bishops, informed by the recently published report of the legislative drafting group, chaired by the Bishop of Manchester. This House—in its majority, I think—supports women bishops and we urge the Church in this case to make haste less slowly.

from hansard  8 May 2008 : Column 834

Female bishops

The Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand, recently announced that Bishop Matthews will be their new Bishop.  The Anglican Church of Australia announced her first female bishop last month.

Meantime, the good old Church of England continues in seemingly endless chicken-licken style discussion. In my more bleak moments it makes me think of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Fresh Expressions? A Missional church? All around us there are people hungry and thirsty for the story we have to tell, yet all they can hear is our endless circumventions of an argument that is out of date. 

Will we ever see women in the Episcopate? Probably. A while from now. And then another round of hissy fits and arguments. Now, I have no personal career/ministry agenda in this: do not mistake me for someone who would want to be a Bishop. My gifts and inclinations clearly lie elsewhere. And in any case by the time the discussions are over I shall be on the verge of retirement. But I still feel deeply sorry that the Church I belong to continues to maintain levels of its organisation as a boys' club, wastes the talents of women who would be brilliant Bishops, and by inference misrepresents the gospel to the world around us. 

Bishop Alan is on fine form this morning on the subject. Go read.

Training for Fresh expressions and pioneer ministry

It's an amazing thing to me, and really exciting, to look back 18 years, and see how far pioneer and emerging groups have come in that time.  In early 1990 I was one of half a dozen people who started a group in South London - not knowing really what we were doing except that there were Christians we knew who didn't want to abandon their faith, but really didn't connect any more with traditional church activities or language. We tried to reinvent the form while staying true to the theological and liturgical threads of the tradition. As far as we knew, we were - with an appropriate mix of courage and caution - just making it up as we went along. We stayed connected in various ways to the traditional church (some of us never left the trad. Church as such, in fact) but also gave ourselves plenty of freedom to try new things. Some of them worked so well the trad. Church eventually wanted us to teach them how to do it. Some of them were not so good and we quietly abandoned them.

Anyway, eighteen years later and the Anglican and Methodist Churches have taken more steps forward in their embracing of all this alternative/emerging stuff, and Fresh Expressions is now offering training courses for people involved at all levels. I'll be teaching on the Cambridgeshire course, and looking forward not only to the course, but to thinking about how new ways of Church demand new ways of approaching teaching and training (what a travesty it would be if we started giving lectures and assessments on this now...! ). I am dreaming about how to give away wisdom, knowledge and experience in a way that opens up the way for people, rather than boxing them into an "approved" way of doing it.

Dozens of others are involved, and the courses are springing up all over the country. Go here for more.

After McDonaldization

I am REALLY looking forward to getting hold of John Drane's new book (coming out next week). After McDonaldization is the sequel to The McDonaldization of the Church. The new volume promises some thoughts on theology, ministry and mission in a postmodern culture. I am a long time fan of John's work. Put this one on your wish list right away.

Beyond in Hove

Beyond starts up in Hove later this month. Beyond is another "church" that breaks the traditional boundaries, it's being started up by some great people, so if you are down in the Brighton/Hove area, check it out.
27th April 7pm 
Old Market Theatre, Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS

TV Vicars and on-screen priests

Su notes in the post below that there are some good screen portrayals of priests, to relieve the awful TV-Vicar image. She suggests two films with robust priest depictions:

'The Godfather' trilogy      

Mystic River

To these I would add Gary Lewis's

wonderful portrayal of Palmer,

the Chaplain in the trenches in Joyeux Noel (2005)

Bad on-screen vicars? There is vicar who is a spoof of the TV Vicar caricature in Emma Thompson's romp of a kids' movie, Nanny McPhee. My son has his impression of this simpering Vicar down to a tee - but then he also asks me why they put strange vicars, not "normal" ones, in stories like that (this the child who has grown up amid an assortment of pretty normal people who are also priests).

What are your favourite good and bad on-screen portrayals of priests, ministers etc?

offending people nicely

Another great cartoon from Jon Birch today. Along with Dave Walker, Jon is one of my regular reads in blogland. Jon was really writing about satire, but the context of his site, and the Vicar-like tee-shirt he gave his cartoon character, took me off at another tanget as well... 

There is something inherently "offensive" about the gospel - however much you get to grips with the love and forgiveness and comfort of God, if you are engaging with what it means to live out the gospel, there is still the regular jab in the ribs. The gospel is many good things - exciting, challenging, comforting, fulfilling, forgiving, gracious, merciful... and much more - but one thing it will never be is comfortable, in the sense of being mentally settled down on a sofa never to move again.

As I commented to Jon, there is something about being a minister of the gospel (and this is true in the sense that every Christian is a minister, not just the "professional" thing) that means you should anticipate that you will end up offending people. The TV Vicar is nearly always "nice", to the point of being bland; even the Vicar of Dibley, while not bland, was still "nice" on the whole. A true engagement with faith should certainly make us kind, compassionate and forgiving, and I don't suggest we justify giving unnecessary offence through our own clutziness. But we should never feel obliged to be bland-nice. There's a pressure (perhaps especially on the professional minister?) to be "nice" to everyone, but it can lead you into woeful passive-aggressive behaviour, it's fake, and in any case it doesn't do justice to the fiery, vibrant, exciting character of the Kingdom of God. Goodness and Niceness are not the same thing at all.

emerging wider

One of the things I've been musing on of late is what the whole vibe of "emerging" means if you take a step back and allow for the fact that what is happening in some of the exciting and buzzy little urban-monastic churches in pubs or living rooms is also happening in the larger context of Church. I don't agree with some of the more radical proponents of emerging that "church is dead" - it shows a profound lack of grip on Church history, say nothing of a touch of arrogance, to suggest that anything we Emergers are doing is really so "new" that is ordained to be the replacement for Church as we knew it. Sure, it has an element of "new" about it, in the sense that our culture and our generation is new. But in truth there is nothing new under the sun, as someone said more than 2,000 years back. And the Church has a history, like it or not.

The really interesting questions that surround the Emerging conversation have less to do with the how and why of a deliberate strategy to re-create the shape of Church, and more to do with how the concerns of Emerging are, in fact, emerging in different settings all over the place - messily, imperfectly and in unexpected places - which, in fact, is more faithful to the concept of emergence.  For many Emergers, the least expected place of all to find an emerging congregation would be slap in the middle of a suburban Parish church. But that's what is going on in quite a lot of places. Like this one, for instance.

Edit: "E~mergent kiwi" Steve Taylor, whose work I have long been interested in, blogs from another such congregation, this time in New Zealand, and picks up the conversation here. 

St Lukes Hollingway in London is one; Big Bulky Anglican has plenty to say on the subject; there are lots and lots of examples of this "emerging" phenomenon occurring in traditional-shaped settings (including my own Chapel). I guess they get less attention because they are not so noticeable. But make no mistake, the Church as we know it is far from dead - unless, as Bob C notes in the comments below, you allow for those recurring degrees of death that are part of the process towards resurrection.

Woman Bishop for New Zealand

Bishop Matthews, 54 and unmarried, is only the second woman to become a diocesan bishop in New Zealand. The first was the Rt Rev’d Dr Penny Jamieson, Bishop of Dunedin from 1989-2004.

Bishop Matthews chairs the Canadian Primate’s Theological Commission, and has just been appointed to the Windsor Continuation Group, which will look at crucial questions about the shape of Anglican common life around the world.

Her installation as the eighth Bishop of Christchurch will take place in ChristChurch Cathedral on August 30.

from the official Diocesan Announcement

Speaking of New Zealand, if I was there I would be joining in with this latest creative venture from E~mergent Kiwi Steve Taylor.

edible undies

The Vatican's exploration of the seven deadly sins has produced some risible headlines this week. If there was a serious point in there I think it has already got as lost as the idea behind the bizarre proposal of oath-swearing to the nation... meantime the funniest summary is this one:

Latin Anthems and Football hymns, and the art of Preaching

Delighted to see that if you buy my most recent publication from Amazon, they recommend that its perfect partner is Chris Erdman's book on preaching.

Rev'd Lamblove has been blogging a good bit about preaching lately. In his latest post he sets out a challenge concerning choosing the text - following a lectionary instead of choosing your own text, he says, gives you a freedom and a constraint. The constraint is that you don't get to pick your pet theme. The freedom is that, instead of you choosing the text, the text chooses you. Something I wrote about in the aforementioned book.

I broadly agree with the use-the-lectionary principle, and most of the time that's what we do here. Although we do have an additional tradition here at Robinson, where we are an interdenominational foundation, a feature that produces its own set of freedoms and constraints. Most Lent terms (January - March) our Sunday Evening services have a theme, and all our speakers are asked to address that theme from one angle or another. One particularly successful theme was "Laughter in Heaven" - eight people looking at what laughter might mean from the point of view of everything from making movies to holocaust memories was a rich and wonderful series. Another theme was "Faith and Justice".  It's clear - here at least - that people who are not normally Chapel-goers are drawn to services with talks on specific subjects. And it's also good to consider that although scripture has a unique role in liturgy, there are many other aspects of liturgy that are routinely left in the shadows if we don't delibeerately put the spotlight on them. I want to do a series on the art and architecture of worship at some point.   

This term our theme has been "Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual songs" - and every preacher has been asked to address one piece of music that we sing in Chapel, either a hymn, a psalm, a canticle, anthem or other song.  Again, the series has built up a rich and challenging picture, exploring the connections between music and scripture and liturgy.  Last Sunday I rounded off the series with a sermon entitles "Latin Anthems and Football Hymns" - asking why we sing different mkinds of music in Chapel, and along the way musing on why people sing hymns at Rugby and Football matches.

Gossip

Bishop Alan records an amusing memory about avoiding gossip:

"A few years ago I got right up one lady’s nose. She said “Rector, I shouldn't be telling you this,” so I said “well don’t, then” and she complained to the Bishop! Happy days."

Church Times Blog

Dave Walker is the new Church Times blogger - and has made a promising start here - don't miss it!

His inimitable style (known to many from his Cartoon Blog) is a great addition to the Church Times online.

lies, damned lies and statistics

The latest statistics on Anglican Church attendance are published see figures here - and CofE website commentary here.  Statistics are always a mystery to me... how much use are they, really? Some of the summaries sound like government spin, trying to tell us that a decrease is really an increase; some of it tells us stuff that is blatantly obvious to anyone who actually goes to church (people are returning to Church at Christmas and Easter, but go less on Sundays). 

Perhaps the oddest thing of all is that the statistics are titled Statistics for Mission, yet they omit any figures for Fresh Expressions (yes, blog-readers, that's the Anglican-Methodist project that has been set up in response to the Mission Shaped Church report and other moves to shape Church round a vision for mission).

Hey, I'm not a statistician. Maybe I'm missing something?

Indaba

I'm quoting Bishop Alan again today.   

He tells us that yesterday
was scientifically proven to
be the most depressing
day of the year

But he offers us a ray of hope at the launch of the Lambeth Conference with a description of Indaba - the meeting of the Elders:

" Indaba is Zulu/ Xhosa thing — the IzinDuna come together to do mutual business in a way which enables each to be heard, and wisdom to emerge from the group. It’s rather like a monastic chapter. It’s radically different from either Institutionalism, where people pretend to agree to save public face, Imperialism, where Billy the Bully rules OK, or Fascism, where you leave your brain at the door and the Führer tells you what to do because he’s always right.  Indaba is a noble ideal. It’s how the early Churches worked, often amidst bitter controversy, as every Patristics student is amazed to discover. Then, slowly, between the fourth and eleventh centuries, like formaldehyde, institutionalism and Roman imperialism seeped in. The reformation was a reaction to all that. Indaba is a gloriously messy concept. It annoys Anal Retentives, Bullies and Fascists, as well as lazy journos who can only understand punchups.

It’s counterintuitive, but indaba, if you stick with it, raises spirits and offers hope to the world."

The "right kind of evangelical"...

Craig Uffman kicks off a debate here:“Open Evangelicalism”, the Wycliffe Hall Labor Dispute, and Our Theological Divide | Covenant., sparked by the Wycliffe Hall row, about current divisions in evangelicalism The debate that follows in the comments is worth reading through

taking out the pews?

+Alan Wilson is on fine form this morning, talking about how teams work, and what to do when they don't work. All with a good ecclesiological twist.

Sometimes I feel slightly despairing when cultural and sociological models are recommended wholesale in Church just because they seem a good idea, or they "work". It's not that I think we shouldn't be concerned with whether things are working or not  - quite the reverse; I think it matters a great deal. But if we import ideas from various arenas we should do the theological work to ensure that we are not simply going with a fad, or trying to fix a problem but using the wrong solution. If the drains are broken, putting in a shiny new bathroom suite won't help.

+Alan Wilson intriguingly suggests that there may be a metaphorical sense in which "the pews need to be taken out". When faced with problems of decline in Church, rather than rush to find a dramatic tangible solution, perhaps we should work harder with the idea as metaphor first of all. Why do we want to rip the pews out? What difference would it make, not just to our comfort, or our appeal, but to our understanding of God, and our expression of who we are as Church? Some hard work on theology and ecclesiology may well lead to quite a different set of solutions to the fabric of our buildings. Removing the pews, or putting in carpet, or moving out of Church to the pub down the road - any of these might be a good way forward for a local Church community. But they should be thought through theologically, not just latched onto as a lifejacket of a good idea.

Go read: Bishop Alan’s Blog: Aircrew or Snakes on a plane?.

De-gelification

I was discussing Coleridge (that master of inventing new words) with some post-grad students this week, and in the process I think I made up a new word. This morning I read one of Christy's recent posts entitled "De-gelification" - another new word, the meaning of which is both funny and poignant, and the story she tells one of serious hope for anyone who has left the Church, or sits on its margins, feeling that they can't buy into it any more. Go read.

priestessy thoughts

Rachelle writes movingly about the dilemma that many people of faith find ourselves in. If faith matters to us, but the Church has been a mixed blessing, we end up wishing that we could hand on to our children the wonder of faith without all the negative rubbish that so often comes with the Church package. You can't hand on faith authentically without some engagement with a Christian community. Yet you want to protect your kids from the negative messages you know they will pick up somewhere along the line. I suppose in a way it's no worse than sending them to school. But I still wish it was different. I sympathise with R's list of "7 most-damaging messages" the Church can give you, a couple of which I still have little mantras that I use to overcome. In Rachelle's words, the 7 most damaging messages are:

Any impulse you have towards physical intimacy is naughty. (Result: A lifetime of distrusting one’s body and seeing one’s physical self as the great betrayer.)
You should only date someone to get married. (The worst possible message you can give a fifteen year old)
You are not good enough, but God puts up with you anyway. (Result: A life-long feeling of inadequacy and a lack of self-love.)
Everything you love must be given as a “sacrifice” to God. (Thereby making you feel guilty for anything you feel passionately about that cannot be turned into “church work.”)
There is no wisdom/love/spiritual truth/devotion/generosity outside of Christianity. (Result: A really unattractive and utterly false sense of spiritual/moral/political superiority.)
The devil lurks around every corner waiting to attack. (Instilling a constant sense of anxiety and fear.)
God is only male, therefore women are bad because they are not like God and because they brought sin into the world. (Results: such a plethora of damaging c**p I cannot even BEGIN to list it all here.)

SLOW priesthood

MadPriest and RevSam have been having a conversation about work, priorities, working hours and so on. This is MadPriest on being a priest:

I stick to 3 jobs as defined by the Ordinal. Preside, teach, visit. I got rid of all jobs outside of the parish, including at deanery level and never attend meetings or courses unless my people will definitely benefit from my attendance. I got rid of my need to be in charge, even if I thought I could do a better job. There is no reason why the local church leadership should not come from members of the laity. This even includes PCCs. Certainly people can be found to do most of the admin jobs and do it far better than someone trained mainly in the niceties of Biblical hermeneutics and church history. I stopped worrying about the Protestant work ethic. I don't care if I'm not busy. Nobody acknowledges the fact when you work all hours anyway.

All this leaves me with plenty of time to do do my pastoral work properly. Visiting, arranging funerals as if each one is a major society wedding, walking round the parish, talking to people in the street. And you know what Sam, everything still gets done and people believe I am the only priest in the neighbourhood who does his job, even though I am the laziest sod in the priesthood.

I aspire to be lazy but haven't achieved it yet. But like MadPriest I too have re-aligned a lot of what I do over the last year or so. Even in a Chaplaincy (where the popular myth is that we only work in term time) it's entirely possible to take on more and more and more things, not only beyond the call of duty but beyond the limit of human capacity. I chopped out a large number of things that weren't necessary, stopped doing other people's jobs for them, and found that not only did I have enough time left over at work to do the important things, but was less tired when I got home, and managed to write a book in my spare time.

Wait - Books? Writing? - where does that come in the Ordinal? (unless you include it in teaching, I suppose...) But because of that, I also like Rev Sam's response to MadPriest, which includes this:

"...in the end I did come to a resolution and a sense of peace: that a) I was called to parish ministry, but b) I had to work out for myself what it meant for ME to be a parish priest - not what being a parish priest was in general, but what sort of ministry is God specifically calling ME to - and that the model of ministry that I had been trained and formed for was not appropriate; that in fact, if I allowed that model to dominate who I was, that I would simply be repeatedly broken."

I like MadPriest's comment because it takes you back to the starting blocks - why am I in this job? What am I supposed to be doing? And what did I just accidentally get talked into along the way? But I like RevSam's development because it recognises there is more than one way to skin a cat.  MadPriest's conversation with RevSam is serious food for thought for anyone in ministry whose work load has got out of control.

poems for Christmas: the journey of the magi

When writing Beginnings and Endings (a book for Advent and Christmas, available from Amazon, or from the publisher ) I drew inspiration from many poets, including T S Eliot. 

This poem was written in 1927, and is believed to reflect Eliot's own journey from agnosticism to faith.

The journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like
Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

more reflections on Advent and 
Christmas here

ain't I a woman?

I get asked pretty often to comment on the place of women in the church.  It's not an issue that I pursue from an academic point of view, although I've read loads of the relevant literature and wrote a few papers on it back in the early 90's.  An older, wiser woman once said to me that there were two choices with this stuff - you could either talk about the place of women, and make that your project, or you could choose another project and just bash down the resistance and take your place in the world, but you can't do both. To be good enough, she said, (in the Church especially) to make any impact you have to be at least as good as the best of the men. And the likelihood is you'll be raising kids and running a home at the same time. SO that doesn't leave any spare time for being a part-time expert on feminism. Instead of commenting on feminism, therefore, I'm going to let one of the great heroes of the women's movement say it, in her famous words from a century-and-a half ago. I've posted this once before - back in 2003 I think - but these are words that bear another visit.

Sojourner Truth gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. (The women's rights movement grew in large part out of the anti-slavery movement.) No formal record of the speech exists, but Frances Gage, an abolitionist and president of the Convention, recounted Truth's words. There is debate about the accuracy of this account because Gage did not record the account until 1863 and her record differs somewhat from newspaper accounts of 1851. However it is Gage's report that endures and it is clear that, whatever the exact words, "Ain't I a Woman?" made a great impact at the Convention and has become a classic expression of women's rights.

The Classic Report
Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman's Rights Convention, and were not shy in voicing their opinion of man's superiority over women. One claimed "superior intellect", one spoke of the "manhood of Christ," and still another referred to the "sin of our first mother." Suddenly, Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church.

"For God's sake, Mrs.Gage, don't let her speak!" half a dozen women whispered loudly, fearing that their cause would be mixed up with Abolition. Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered over the audience. She began to speak in her deep, resonant voice: "Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North - all talking about rights - the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about?"

Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner raised herself to her full height. "Look at me! Look at my arm." She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. "I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman?"

"I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?"

The women in the audience began to cheer wildly.

She pointed to another minister. "He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?"

"Intellect," whispered a woman nearby.

"That's it, honey. What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

"That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn't a woman. She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. "Where did your Christ come from?"

"Where did your Christ come from?", she thundered again. "From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!"

The entire church now roared with deafening applause.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them."

theology of priesthood

Tom has been doing some thinking on the way orders of priests have developed in the Church of England - rightly pointing out that OLM, NSM and Stipendiary have to a large extent becme hierarchies of priests (in fact long before I was ordained I remember having a discussion with someone about the new "OLM" idea, and thinking that theologically, either you are a priest or you aren't...

Anyway, his thinking is creative and good (IMHO) establishing the difference between priesthood and specific roles within the Church. It probably won't interest readers who are not Anglicans/don't believe in priests anyway, but for those to whom these issues are alive, Tom is worth a read. (And, Tom, I'd like to read more as you develop the idea) Link: Bigbulkyanglican: Priests today.

Edit: Definitions: an OLM is an Ordained Local Minister - for a definition, the Guildford Diocesan vocations booklet is clear and concise.

Stipendiary means that a priest is given enough material benefits that they can manage without having a paid job and concentrate their energies entirely on the Church and her mission. A stipend is not a salary, and it's not much to live on, but that's partly the point! Receiving a stipend also usually means promising not to receive any additional income from other sources.

NSM means non-stipendiary minister. In practical terms re. ministry within the Church setting that can either mean someone who devotes all their time and energy to the ministry but for whatever reason does not need a stipend, or it may mean someone who has a paid job, either full or part time, and devotes whatever time they can above and beyond that to the Church. However this definition fails to account for the fact that many people become NSM's because they feel that their priestly ministry is specifically lived out in the mission context of their "secular" setting. There is a debate there that needs to be had more thoroughly - it would be valuable a) to challenge the idea that the work of a priest is confined to the CHurch, but also b) that there is any distinction between the vocation of an NSM who is a priest-at-work, and the fact that all Christians in work have a vocation, both to their work and to the context in which they do it. But for this blog, at least, that's a debate for another day!

The development of all these categories, like everything else in the physically manifest church, has been affected both by theological reasoning and by practical necessity. Any revisions to them should also take both of those things into account, since we do actually live on earth and not in heaven.

liturgy and language ii

Mark raises some good points in his comment on the post below:

...parts of the Eucharistic Prayer were extemporised in the early church. So this is part of our tradition, and we might be wise to think about how we appropriate it for present times...   There is also a great difference between top down liturgy where the words are handed down by elite committees, and bottom up - where in an organic community new and vibrant liturgical voices are heard in the places where liturgies are authorised... in the words of the 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book liturgy might be a deliberate attempt 'to allow a multitude of voices to speak'.

I agree that we should hold planned and authorised liturgies in tension with local colour and some degree of spontaneity (see my post Planning v. Spontaneity for more on this). But I suppose another element in this is that we need a corporate voice. It's very difficult, in a society that recognises the importance of individual voices, within a world that is culturally varied yet closely in touch across cultural divides, to find a way to speak as one body. That is precisely the current dilemma for the Anglican communion. It seems that many CHristian communities take it as unquestionable that we should adopt a policy of freedom of expression in liturgical settings. But going back to what AKMA said in his post, we shouldn't underestimate the value of having some core at the centre that we can all "say" - that we can speak as one body, not as a collection of individuals all of whom want to define the terms. In addition, there are issues of beauty-as-truth involved here - liturgy that emerges from multitudes of voices can be beautiful, but all too often it turns into a homogeneous mush. That's a strong reason for placing a high value on our artists, our poets, our theologians and our liturgists. There are weaknesses as well as strengths in a democracy of expression.

Shortcuts and Dirt

Nice post from Kester. Go read.

Kigali signatures

A sobering but important report from Thinking Anglicans: Kigali signatures.

Don't go anywhere without a woman

I just read over again some of Rachelle's post from earlier this year, where she tried to envision how women might realistically be made equals in the church. Not just ideologically, but in practice. Nine ideas that could transform the leadership structures of the Emerging/Emergent Church (yes, I know the Emergent rhetoric about not believing in leadership structures). Rachelle's post is stirring stuff. I like this one in particular:

7) Don’t go anywhere without a woman. Make sure they get invited to the pub, the hooka outing, the cigar fest — whatever. Invite them with you to talk to your publisher. Everytime you write an article, recommend a female pracitioner/writer to the magazine editor. Make sure every conference gig you get has women speakers — hell, make it part of your speaking contract. Make sure the sole woman on your planning team isn’t the secretary/administrator. And if you see women getting run over by predominately male voices in anything you are at, stop the conversation and kick open the door.

Link: Be Careful What you Wish for… -:- urban abbess.

church as third place

I love Steve Collins and his thinking on church. I spend a lot of time thinking about Church and space. GO read his latest offering here: catapult magazine.

catapult magazine: unite.learn.serve

mothers day USA

Mothers Day in the USA has different historical roots from our "mothering Sunday", although both have regrettably been turned into yet another greetings card and chocolate extravaganza, with no substance to them at all, just a means of inflicting guilty over-spending on a consumerist society.

IN the USA I am (reliably I think) informed that Julia Ward Howe, the woman who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, got it started when she proposed a "mothers' day for peace" in 1870. Here's a clip of her speech, known as the Mother's Day proclamation. She might just as easily have written in in 1970, or 2001, or 2006...
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."From the bosom of the devasted earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice! Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, And each bearing after her own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

"Sydney" Anglicans...

...are called to repentance.

Blah

(Edit - I have had to pull out of this day. Very sorry to miss it, but I hope all of you who go will have a great time.)

gareth has sent me this stuff about the next BLAH...
blah... learning days 2006
For 2006 blah... Is partnering with moot http://www.moot.uk.net and putting on a series of learning days, aiming to take the conversation from blah... evenings a little deeper and with more interaction. You can also find out about the other stuff blah... is up to by visiting http://www.blahonline.net

Each day costs £10 (or £8 if booked online) which includes lunch and drinks. Students pay just £5 (or £4 online), just select the student ticket type when you book.

The first learning day planned for 2006 is...

April 29th  |  Emerging Leadership
with Kester Brewin, Maggi Dawn & Ana Draper
From 10am – 4.30pm at St Matthews, London, SW1P 2BU

Does the emerging church need leaders? Isn't it all about co-producing stuff where we are all 'leaders'
Or is it about renewing leadership, making it less of a one man band and more inclusive and powersharing?
How are we to develop emerging churches/fresh expressions that allow all people to participate and use all their gifts rather than just the few ‘leaders who do everything?
How do we avoid power abuse by over zealous leaders?

Kester Brewin, author of ‘The Complex Christ’ http://www.thecomplexchrist.com, and kickstarter of ‘vaux’ http://www.vaux.net, will guide us in some evolutionary thoughts about leadership.
Rev Maggi Dawn http://maggidawn.typepad.com will reflect on trying to reimagine leadership in the ancient structures of the Anglican Church.
Ana Draper of L8R, who has recently completed her MSc in Psychoanalysis, will guide us in some thoughts about leadership from a psychoanalytical/theological perspective.

Come and join us for a day of discussion and questioning on this hot topic.

To find out more and to book a place visit http://blahleadership.mollyguard.com

The Way (iii)

The Way happens again tonight. We meet to talk about issues of faith. We start each evening with a ten-minute opener from one person who has some experience or expertise on a chosen subject; thereafter the discussion is open. We don't require people to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything.

So far the discussions have rolled on throughout the week following, over coffee and lunch, by e-mail, or at Sunday breakfast.

Tonight George is going to start  a discussion about
Salvation: What from? and Who For?

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinson College members welcome (although we may have to build an extension if the group grows much more....)

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

The Way happens again tonight. We meet to talk about issues of faith. We start each evening with a ten-minute opener from one person who has some experience or expertise on a chosen subject; thereafter the discussion is open. We don't require people to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything.

So far the discussions have rolled on throughout the week following, over coffee and lunch, by e-mail, or at Sunday breakfast.

Tonight George is going to start  a discussion about
Salvation: What from? and Who For?

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinson College members welcome (although we may have to build an extension if the group grows much more....)

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

The Way happens again tonight. We meet to talk about issues of faith. We start each evening with a ten-minute opener from one person who has some experience or expertise on a chosen subject; thereafter the discussion is open. We don't require people to arrive at a conclusion, or to sign up to anything.

So far the discussions have rolled on throughout the week following, over coffee and lunch, by e-mail, or at Sunday breakfast.

Tonight George is going to start  a discussion about
Salvation: What from? and Who For?

8pm in the Chaplain's rooms - all Robinson College members welcome (although we may have to build an extension if the group grows much more....)

Photo: Martyn Clayton    

McLaren on gays and the church

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People keep sending me this link. to Brian McLaren's comments on "the homosexual question". It's a good read, from the point of view that it puts very succinctly the fact that people's questions raise  issues from different directions. Some want to deal with the issue in the abstract - is it, doctrinally, simply "right or wrong". Others are thinking ecclesiologically - what is this doing to the Church? What would the various possible ways forward do to the Church?  But often, people are not really speaking primarily from a theoretical point of view but from experience as people who are devout Christians and yet find themselves not able to conform to the "norm" that Church prescribes.  And as often as not, when people begin with a theoretical question, there is a complex web of questions behind the question. Brian gets this beautifully.

His critics accuse him of doublespeak. But I think not - I think he is genuinely trying to open people up to the fact that human beings and their encounter with God are much more complex than some mechanical doctrinal box-ticking can accommodate. Brian always writes with compassion and wisdom; that in itself commends his comments as being in the Spirit of Christ. But he also elucidates the stalemate that the Church finds itself in. I'm not sure that his idea of waiting 5-10 years is a good one - I'm an Anglican  and we've done that a number of times on this issue and others. But I don't have any "better" ideas, in the sense that I don't have a solution to the problem that will not cause pain and anger to someone, somewhere. Whatever we decide we will get it wrong for someone. 

What's the future of Emerging Church?

... "Never go anywhere without a woman..." 

Rachelle in her usual gutsy style here.

Blog conversation (ii)

I wrote a few days ago about blogs, what form they take, and hinted at a few ideas about the form-content relationship. Paul Fromont says some very intelligent things on the same subject  here.  Brodie has also written about whether blogging is dying - read here to see if the rumours are true.

One further thought from me. I'm fairly sure that Blogs create no greater potential for misunderstanding than do books, preaching, conversation, e-mail or any other form of communication. What they DO, though, is offer an almost-but-not-quite instant opportunity for response. If someone disagrees with your sermon, their lunch guests will hear about it, but you probably won't. If someone disagrees with your book, you'll be most unlikely ever to hear about it. The difference on a blog is that when you are misunderstood you find out about it, fairly soon after you've written it, and probably while the ideas are still fresh and malleable in your own mind. Blogs don't create misunderstanding, they just make you aware of the limits of your own communication skills, and the reality of other people's capacity to take a thought from you and turn it into something else. Thus, they make you aware that you are, in fact, often misunderstood, but also that you are the source of an idea that sparks off other, unrelated ideas which you yourself do not "own".

Rachelle on women in Emerging Church, Emergent Church

Rachelle is a woman in the USA who leads a kind of independent church in a not very churchy style. I'd love to visit if she wasn't so far from here. She wrote a couple of posts lately about the place of women in ministry in the Emerging/Emergent church, and her points are worth a read if you're interested in all things Emerging. The post is here, and followed by a post of links here.

Christmas morning without notes

I had a manic week before Christmas. All the usual stuff, but then an added funeral within the community. Determined but v. tired I put everything ready for the Christmas Morning Communion Service the day before, so that we could have a decent amount of mother-and-son time before taking off for Chapel. The vacation services are always lovely, but I don't have sacristans to help, so I do it all myself.

Arriving with plenty of time for candle lighting and setting up the kids' colouring corner, I put out White altar cloths, and put out hymn books, service sheets and so on. Last of all, I put out my President's copy of the service, prayers, etc. ANd that was when I found that I had left my sermon behind.  ALl that tiredness had come home to roost. It's more usual for me to end up with two copies, not none at all...   
What to do?

All year long, I have been preaching "on the hoof" on Sunday mornings. I decided a while back that I must learn to preach without notes, and chose my least threatening and most forgiving congregation as my "guinea pigs". But a big service in the main chapel with a congregation of 50? Eeek.  Still, no time to rush back and fetch my sermon. I went over in my mind the points I had planned to make.  And after the Gospel, I stood up empty handed and went for it.

I have to say, from the reaction I got, I think I need to do this more. It's not no-preparation, of course. The sermon had been thought out, written down, and its main phrases had been so "written" that I remembered them verbatim. But there seems to be something about delivering a notes-free sermon that just works in a whole different way from a read script.  

york

No time to blog today.
I'm here.

for a very big moment.
Deo Gracias

Gays and the future of Anglicanism

Gays and the Future of Anglicanism: Responses to the Windsor Report includes a chapter by Philip Kennedy - God's Good News for Gays, which, among other useful points, highlights just how vile the results of homophobia are. Whatever we do or don't agree on, the following account must be something worth living against:
From the Christian emperor Justinian in the 6th century until the 18th century, Christian communities around Europe regularly put homosexuals to death by burning, beheading, flaying, drowning or hanging them. The ancient Christian thinkers Tertullian, Eusebius and John Chrysostom all argued that same sex relations deserve the penalty of death...

In medieval Europe, secular laws often invoked the authority of the bible to execute homosexuals. Bologna adopted the death penalty for sodomy in 1259. Padua followed suit in 1329; Venice in 1342; Rome in 1363; Cremona in 1387; Milan in 1476; and Genoa in 1556. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain actively sought out sodomites to be burned. In the hundred and twenty five years after Calvin taught in Geneva, there were thirty burnings, beheadings, drownings, and hangings of homosexuals in that city. Scores of men and boys were hanged for homosexual activity in Georgian England. Before the advent of modernity, women in Europe were also vulnerable to execution if convicted of lesbianism. The history of churches' treatment of gay people has for over a thousand years been a history of hatred, persecution and death. To this day, standard Christian textbooks devoted to moral theology and commenting on homosexuality are usually trite treatises because of their complete silence on the long-standing brutality meted out to homosexuals by churches, whether Roman Catholic, Anglican or Protestant. For homosexuals, the history of the Christian church has been a kaleidoscope of harrowing horrors. Their fortunes have now changed. Physical violence has mutated into rhetorical violence, although there are still nine countries today where homosexual behavior is punishable by death.

ten years on...

I'm amazed to learn from Steve Collins that it is a mere ten years since NOS nosedived so spectacularly. It seems like way longer ago than that...

church culture-clash

Paul has been joining in with a Willow Creek conference, and is asking intelligent questions... like what can we learn from this phenomenon, even if it's not our cup of tea?

hear hear, Kester

Some serious wisdom about Emerging/Emergent church debates from Kester here

Aboriginal theology

We are what We are - Spirit People
We believe that the Creator has always been with our people since the beginning of time. Our connection to this land Australia and the stories from long ago emphasize this and reveals to us our ongoing relationship to the Creator. We know that the Spirit is always close to us and within us. The spirits of our ancestors are always around us looking out for us and showing us the path we should travel. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses…

Since the coming of the Western Culture, there has been a breakdown in our relationship with the Creator. Our ways have been under threat and this has led us to move away from our roots and into a foreign way of thinking. This has caused hardships within our communities as we struggle to find our way. Sometimes we have failed to recognise the Spirit present with us. We looked to the new culture to show us the way forward and it has led to more confusion and loss of direction. This culture has failed our people. It has shown it cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings.

This culture wanted us to look for the Creator through their eyes. They have failed to see that the Creator exists within our culture. While Abraham was wandering in the desert our peoples had been for many generations living in close relationship with our Creator. We have an Old Testament, which we can now accept as part of our salvation history.

How short sighted Western Culture was to think they had the monopoly on the Creator and how blinded were we to believe this was true. It is up to us to reclaim our beliefs. Our Creator yearns for us to come back. Our relationship has been tested and made stronger because of the many mistakes along the journey because we have learnt so much from the experience. We now know about Christ. This story from the Western Culture has touched and had an impact on our lives.

We did not have Jesus amongst us as the Apostles did but he left us the Spirit of the Creator with us. We know this Spirit to be the same Spirit who is with us now because of what it has done and continues to do. This Spirit of relationships reminds us about our responsibilities to one another and creation and that we all come from the same source of life. This Spirit is also the Spirit of the Rainbow Serpent, the Brolga, the Emu, the Stars, the Fish, the Plants, the mountains and much more. We must hold on to and strengthen our Spiritual heritage.

As a Minority we stand as the strength of this Land. We affirm our belief in the Creator Spirit who created us. It is in our connection to this deep sense of belonging that our Identity lives. Our Culture can never be broken. We embrace our past. We are alive in the present and have hope in the future. The Creator Spirit calls us into a search for a deeper relationship with himself and each other. The Creator Spirit calls us to renewal.

From the discussions of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission in workshops held at their Commission meetings in late 2002 and early 2003. Thanks to Christina at where are we going?