Author Archives: Elizaphanian

About Elizaphanian

Rector of West Mersea

When you go home, tell them

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We have gathered together today to remember before God those who have gone before us, who gave their lives in war in order that those whom they loved would be saved, and be enabled to flourish in their lives and homes in peace. This year we especially mark the passage of 90 years since the foundation of the Royal British Legion. How can we best honour those who gave their lives for us?

Well, in a simple sense, we can honour them by what we do today – simply by remembering them, and naming them. Anything beyond that runs the risk of being superfluous – but I would run that risk today. Clearly it is in living out our lives freely, making the most of the gift that we have received as a result of their sacrifice, that we do honour them. A straightforward example will demonstrate this point: in Afghanistan today there are girls being educated who would not be were it not for the courage and sacrifice of those men and women serving there. For those schoolgirls to honour those soldiers simply requires them to take advantage of their education, to have and to enjoy better lives. That is enough of a purpose and an honour. Sadly, what seems straightforward thousands of miles away seems much less clear closer to home. For what does it mean in this country to enjoy such better lives? What might it mean for us to enjoy the freedom that has been so expensively bought? How can we here, today, best honour those who have given their lives for us?

Earlier this week, as part of his homework assignment from Mersea school, my eldest son has been tasked with learning something about the First World War, most specifically about the trenches. Now the trenches were a barrier, there was the enemy in front, and there was the home to be protected behind. I expect to be going through his homework with him this afternoon, and what I am wanting to teach my son is that the place for battle, the place for military excellence, for courage and skill, is on that front line. But the most important thing is that those virtues are placed in service of something larger – something larger than any one soldier’s own interests or personal advantage. This is what makes the difference between the heroes and the villains in all the stories that he has become familiar with. For example, my son greatly enjoys the Harry Potter stories – Harry Potter fights on behalf of a community and, in the end, he accepts his own death in order that they might flourish. His enemy, Voldemort, is simply pursuing his own immortality, and he is quite willing to dispose of his closest allies if it allows him to get closer to his wish. What I want to do is tie together what he has been learning through reading such fictional stories, with what actually has happened, and does happen, in our world.

It is this sense of serving something larger than our own desires that makes the difference between the hero and the villain, and it is this sense of something larger that I think our society has been forgetting for several decades now. It has become unfashionable to say that there are objective values, that some things are definitely right, and some things are definitely wrong – irrespective of what anyone might actually think about them. It is because our society has been so corroded by this moral relativism that we have the spectacle of young men hanging from the Cenotaph in London during the student protests last December, whose defence was that they didn’t realise the significance of what they were doing. They hadn’t been told the stories, their community hadn’t insisted on the importance of telling them the stories, of saying – this matters.

I asked earlier what it might mean for us to enjoy the freedom that has been so expensively bought – and that is Christian language. As Christians we claim that in Jesus is our fullest and truest freedom – and that it is in so far as those who laid down their lives for us did so in resemblance to Jesus laying down his life for us that we honour them, and we remember them. What that means is that their stories find their meaning and purpose through being a part of the larger true story, the story of the creation of the world in love, the breaking of that world through our own sinful mistakes, and then the ongoing healing of that world through a loving sacrifice. As Christians we insist that there are values that are independent of our own judgement or preference, values that are woven into the fabric of this world by the one through whom it was all created, and it is by tuning in to those values and aligning ourselves with them that we start to touch the real and genuine freedom which is God’s intention for us. Freedom is not license, the ability to do whatever pleases us. True freedom comes from recognising the nature of the world and aligning ourselves with it: the truth shall set us free. This is the overall story that binds us together and within which all our own individual stories find their meaning. This is the story that gives us the fabric of our common life – and it is that fabric that has been unstitched over several decades by those with no awareness of the havoc that they have caused – Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

I asked at the beginning of these words what is it that we can do to best honour those who have given their lives for us. I believe that I can now offer you an answer: the answer is simple, but very hard to live up to. We honour them best by telling their stories, and we give those stories meaning by embedding it within the larger story which gives it sense and purpose. We honour our heroes – those who fought for something larger, something bigger than themselves – by also telling the story that is bigger than them themselves. It is this bigger story which allows us as a community to live together and to enjoy the fruits of a hard-earned peace. This is our common story, within which the stories of the veterans and fallen take their place and within which they find their meaning – and we honour them by continuing to tell all of those stories, from the stories of Jesus in the gospels through all the different stories of those who at different times in different places have given their lives and health that we might enjoy our lives and health. As the Kohima declaration has it: when you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow, we gave our today. That is the essential thing, to best honour those who have given their lives for us: keep the story which structures our lives alive. So today, when you go home, tell them.

Some initial thoughts on ‘Transforming Presence’

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On the whole I’m very impressed with ‘Transforming Presence’ and am very excited about the possibilities that are going to open up. I want to say a few things about item 4 in the paper, about ministry – that being a topic which is particularly close to my heart! But first, here is a fuller extract for consideration rather than just the KGH part:

“Here are some basic principles which, with our agreement, could form the basis of a more radical forward thinking look at the ministry of God’s church in our diocese –
> Ministry belongs to the whole people of God. Every person, because of their baptism, has a ministry. We must nurture an expectation that every Christian gives expression to this ministry in their daily life and in their participation in the life of the Church.
> Ordained stipendiary ministers will be thinner on the ground in the future. We need to agree what figure we are working to, communicate that figure effectively to the deaneries, and then give each of them a target to work to. If at the same time we allocate a number of stipendiary posts (say five to ten in each Episcopal Area) as Mission posts, this can give strategic flexibility at a bigger level, allow new initiatives to flourish and ease situations of painful transition.
> These stipendiary priests will need to be more episcopal in the way they understand and express their ministry. This is not new. As the Institution Service reminds us, the Church of England has always believed that the Incumbent in the parish has a share with the bishop in the ministry “which is yours and mine”. Now they will become much more obviously those who have oversight of the ministry of the church in a cluster of rural communities, or in a town or suburb. Their role will be to lead and facilitate ministry in that area, not provide all that ministry themselves. They will, of course, be involved; but their main task will be to animate the ministry of the whole church.
> For this to work, there also needs to be a huge flourishing of authorised lay ministry (especially youth and children’s workers, authorised preachers, catechists, pastors and evangelists) and ordained self-supporting ministry. And of course we already have many Readers. Alongside some priests being more episcopal we need many others who will be more diaconal, taking on a pastoral, catechetical and evangelistic ministry at the local level. Each local church needs to have some sort of ministry team and, preferably, some minister to whom they identify as the worship leader and pastor of that community. Sometimes this will be a lay person, such as a Reader, and we should encourage lay led worship and ministry in many of our churches. In many cases I hope it will be an ordained self-supporting minister, so that the sacramental life of our church continues to flourish. But where there are lay led services of the Word it will still be possible within the cluster of communities under the oversight of the (probably) stipendiary priest, for there to be regular Sunday by Sunday Eucharistic provision. Some SSM priests will themselves be the leaders (‘episcopal’ priests) in these benefices.”
“We need an end to that debilitating and depressing approach to ministry where it feels like an endless game of knock out whist: every time the cards are dealt there is one less. We must transcend this situation, by looking slightly further ahead and developing a bold ministry plan that is based on sustainability and growth. We must stop spreading diminishing resources more thinly. This has been a disaster for clergy morale and a massive disincentive to giving.”

Initial overlapping questions and thoughts:
1. There is a lot of practical thinking about models of ministry to be done putting flesh on the bones of this vision.
2. This must be shared with the laity as it is principally their expectations which will not be met.
3. Knowing where we will likely be in fifteen years time (in terms of clergy numbers) would be a great help, and would allow us to actively work towards a particular outcome.
4. Nothing has been said here about what incumbents will be expected to do vis-a-vis fabric questions, including church yard management and so on. I would want to see this brought out into the open with a view to passing these on to church wardens.
5. Are incumbents meant to be managers, pastors or missioners? Or all three?
6. If the role of the incumbent is to ‘animate the ministry of the whole church’ then the focus for allocating those resources must surely be the size of the congregations (ignoring specified mission priests who are supplementary) not the size of the population within which a particular church is placed. (This is a particular grouse of mine)
7. I don’t think that we can push effectively in this direction unless we also tackle the question of parish share and accept a different model.
8. We need to have a good hard look at the occasional offices and clarify what is expected and who is going to do that ministry.
9. How we train the ordained is going to have to change to fit with the answers discerned to all of the above.

I’m sure there will be other thoughts as time goes on, but at the moment my strongest sense is one of relief. I feel that I have been banging my head against a door that has been firmly closed against me for many years, and suddenly it has swung open. Thanks be to God.

A short story about small parish growth

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Peldon is a small village of some 600 people situated to the south of Colchester. The regular congregation of the parish church has seen growth of around 50% over the last three or four years – from around 10-12 and declining, to around 18 and increasing (often in the mid-20s now). This has had a greatly positive effect in all sorts of ways, from simply increasing morale and generating momentum to finally paying our full parish share, from a position of only paying around 50% five years ago. I thought that it might be helpful to put some thoughts down about what has enabled this growth to take place. There is no one ‘magic bullet’ that can be applied without care in other parishes, but hopefully there might be some encouragement to be drawn from our story. Having said that, the one essential component in my view has been the dynamic lay leadership within the parish, in the form of a very active church warden, who has given much of the energy and impetus for the work carried out. I am certain that without this the outlook for the church in Peldon would have been very bleak.

I would pick out the following, in no particular order, as contributing to the growth of the church:
  • consistency of Sunday worship pattern, with all Sunday services rationalised to 11am and a service at that time every week. Normally there are enough ministers available (through access to benefice resources) to ensure that there is a licensed minister leading the worship, but sometimes the services have been lay led;
  • an overhaul of the fabric of the church, most especially including the removal of the pews. The pews were of no historical or architectural merit and had become a decrepit hazard to worshippers (one collapsed just before a funeral). Their removal has energised the space within the church and enabled a much more flexible approach to worship;
  • the launch of a Friends organisation, which has had two major positive consequences – financial assistance with the cost of fabric repairs, and a generally positive engagement with the members of the community who do not attend worship but who have good will towards the church;
  • hosting special events on a regular basis, such as quiz nights, suppers, history lectures and so on. This has helped to raise the profile of the church within the village and made it easier for those unfamiliar with the church to cross the threshold;
  • running a simple ‘mission’ to the parish, which involved gathering a small team together to knock on every door in the parish, asking a few simple questions and advertising the Alpha course, which ran subsequently;
  • a particular funeral, of a young man who had grown up in the village, and to which the great majority of the village came. I believe that this put the church back on the ‘mental map’ of the community.
I view growth as the outcome of a healthy church, and believe that if our priorities are right then the inherent attraction of the gospel will draw people in. We haven’t done anything particularly novel, we have simply tried to follow the best practice seen elsewhere (I’ve been particularly helped by BobJackson’s research). The conclusion that I draw is simply this: it works.

Killing George Herbert is now the official policy of Chelmsford Diocese

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Diocesan Synod last Saturday affirmed the paper ‘Transforming Presence’ which includes the following:

“…stipendiary priests will need to be more episcopal in the way they understand and express their ministry… they will become much more obviously those who have oversight of the ministry of the church in a cluster of rural communities, or in a town or suburb. Their role will be to lead and facilitate ministry in that area, not provide all that ministry themselves. They will, of course, be involved; but their main task will be to animate the ministry of the whole church.”

It’s been a while, but I’m glad we’ve got there in the end. Full paper here.