On being an Anglo-Catholic: “All in all, the Anglo-Catholic tradition is that which nourishes me, and has since I first converted… It is not the only valid tradition within the Episcopal Church, or within the Christian world, or even within the entire spiritual conglomeration of paths, but it is one valid tradition. And I am grateful for it.”
Category Archives: ministry
Time to go down the pub
Very fitting. (h/t Doug)
TBTM20100126
See also his follow-on post: “The reality is that the erstwhile ‘vicar’ is increasingly exercising an ‘episcopal’ role. But that being the case, the vicar needs episcopal authority. In short, we need to get back to something nearer what is generally acknowledged by scholars (and was recognized by the English Reformers), namely seeing the local presbyter as also the local bishop.
Indeed, if the need is for more ministers and ministry, why shouldn’t there be more bishops? I would guess that a typical rural dean today probably overseas a population as large as that of some medieval bishops. Why not go the whole way and make them into bishops who can ordain local ministers accordingly?”
I haven’t done a TBTM for quite some time. I think I’ll be getting back into the habit over the coming weeks.
Deprivation and clergy deployment
This is just to articulate something that is bugging me a little.
In our Deanery there is a transfer of funds to support clergy deployment in areas of social deprivation. This might seem innocuous – praiseworthy even – but the more I think about it, the less I think it makes sense as a general rule (I happen to support the present divvying-up in our Deanery but on other grounds).
Consider: the argument is that a poorer area is more in need of support from the church, therefore clergy provision to such an area is subsidised by other parishes.
If this was talking about social and economic matters then I would have no argument. Economic deprivation leads to economic support – yes, like for like, the strong helping the weak and so on.
Yet that is not what is being followed. Instead we have social and economic deprivation being met with the provision of increased spiritual resources. The assumption being (I guess) that areas of social and economic deprivation are also spiritually deprived and in need of more spiritual support.
This is what I don’t believe to be true.
First off, just from my own experience, working in the East End was very much more straightforward spiritually than in supposedly wealthier rural Essex. As I see it, people in harsher contexts have less grounds for illusion; being less under illusion they are more open to the truth of the gospel. It is the educated and relatively wealthy middle class who have the greatest barriers to spiritual growth as they are able to preserve an illusion of independence for longer.
Secondly, and more importantly, I think it goes against what Jesus taught. He said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.
It seems to me that the church should be addressing itself to areas of spiritual deprivation when considering the deployment of its spiritual resources. There is just the faintest whiff of this being yet another example where the church has become captured by a secular agenda.
Parish plane crashes
Image from here, which is highly relevant.
This was originally going to be a much longer post, but it was verging on the indiscreet, so I’ve pruned it back. The PCC might get the original version at an away day this year!
One chapter of Gladwell’s book Outliers discusses airplane crashes, specifically the way in which human communications in the cockpit directly contribute to a surprisingly high number of catastrophes. Specifically, he talks about something called the ‘Power Distance Index’ developed by Hofstede which is about the way in which less powerful members of a group accept the inequality of that power relationship. The way in which this led to plane crashes is frightening but very human: Gladwell documents cases where the assisting officers were not direct with the captain of the plane even in situations where catastrophe was imminent, eg the plane wasn’t where the captain thought it was, or where it was about to run out of fuel. Instead, the subordinate officers relied on mitigated speech, that is, they weren’t direct in telling the captain exactly what was going on, relying on hints, suggestions and euphemisms, which were catastrophically inadequate. Gladwell outlines six levels of mitigated speech, going from the most explicit to the most implicit:
1.Command – “Strategy X is going to be implemented”
2.Team Obligation Statement – “We need to try strategy X”
3.Team Suggestion – “Why don’t we try strategy X”
4.Query – “Do you think strategy X would help us in this situation?”
5.Preference – “Perhaps we should take a look at one of these Y alternatives”
6.Hint – “I wonder if we could run into any roadblocks on our current course”
What Gladwell makes clear is that communication can’t simply be analysed in terms of what is said or not said; rather it cannot be abstracted from the political context (ie hierarchy) within which communication takes place. The subordinate officers on the airplane did pass on sufficient information to the captain to make it possible for the captain to change course, if he had been actively listening. Tragically the captain – either from personality or tiredness – didn’t hear what was being said. In other words, I don’t think that the fault with the plane crashes was simply that the subordinate officers weren’t direct enough, there was an equal component where the captain was not receptive enough.
The reason why I was struck by this was because I felt it gave a lot of insight into the ‘plane crash’ that took place in the parish last year, following my decision to ask the Director of Music to retire. Without going into the messy details, I do think that the nature of communication between the various parties involved was a significant factor, not simply in terms of how explicitly various things were said or not said, but also in terms of what people were able to hear or not hear.
The Korean airline that was the principal subject for Gladwell’s analysis managed to change their culture in such a way that they were no longer vulnerable to these catastrophes. What I am pondering now is how to foster the right sort of culture within a parish whereby it is possible to genuinely ‘speak truth in love’. I think a large part of the answer has to be modelling the right sort of behaviour myself, which gives permission and space for the truth to be spoken. The two risks to avoid are ‘too much truth’ – which can become bullying – and ‘too much love’ – which means that the community simply sags into a morass of niceness.
The good news is that there is a lot of explicit Scriptural guidance on this topic, which I’m going to spend some time studying before the parish away day.
Bullying and the clergy
Just some links to discussions on a current topic:
Mad Priest
Doug Chaplin
Tim Chesterton who links to this.
Maggi twice
David Keen
Bishop Alan
For what it’s worth, my Bishop has proven himself something of a star on such matters, but I have it on very good authority that not all Bishops are the same. All the same, I’m pondering joining Unite.
Temptation
Every so often I look at the Church Times job adverts, and I see a dream job come up…
NB I have no plans to apply for this or any other job for a great many years yet, if ever. I still think I’m in the place that God wants me to be 🙂
Is it possible….
…to be in a position of institutional authority in the church and also to be holy?
Just something I’m thinking about at the moment. Reading this (pdf file; h/t Maggi) helped to clarify the question for me.
I’ll probably write something more substantial on the question in the next few days, DV.
Hauerwas on Leadership
Found here; two key quotes:
“It was a bad innovation when the revivalistic structure overtook the church’s primary liturgical form in a way that charismatic preachers replaced the centrality of Eucharist…”
“People called to administrative positions have to undergo a deep ascetical discipline. You’re dealing with people who have possibilities and limits, the limits sometimes will drive you crazy, and you cannot take it personally.
…You do this to provide space for the different gifts of the community. I’m very Pauline in this. Communities have diversities of gifts. Part of your responsibility as an administrator and leader is to help members of the community own them as contributing to the overall good of the community. To be in a position of power means that you recognize how fragile the power is. You wouldn’t have it otherwise. And you have enough confidence that you don’t have to win all the time. That’s a real ascetic discipline, a discipline of the ego, which is absolutely crucial for being an administrator and to allow the institution to go on once you’re no longer there…
… For any person that wants to be in leadership, if they try to lead in a way that means they don’t have to deal with people, they automatically defeat community. It is everyday interactions that make it possible for there to be people who tell the truth to us one at a time in the hopes that in that process we will be a truthful community…”
On deciding about socio-political engagement
Paul asked a challenging and intriguing question in this comment thread, which I felt deserved a longer response: How do I, as a priest, assess whether and how far to engage politically, including socio-politically?
I have two principal concerns. First, before I was nobbled by God, I was set upon a political career, and the good Lord made it quite clear to me that this was not the path I was called to follow. My path is in the church, and so any time I start to feel an inclination towards active political engagement lots of bright red alarms start flashing and bells start ringing. Second, the Tesco experience, ie when I spoke out against the setting up of a new Tesco Express on Mersea. I still boycott the store, as part of a personal and essentially private witness, but taken as a whole the experience was (and is) dispiriting. It felt like throwing pebbles at a bulldozer, where the bulldozer wasn’t just the Tesco machine, it was the way in which the community tacitly supported the process, not caring (or not caring to know) why it was wrong. Lots of people who I respect simply thought that I was barking mad to be objecting to it (many even proudly declared their shareholdings in Tesco). It has made me more wary of speaking out; not to the extent of not being prepared to do so again, primarily in realising that I have a limited amount of “outspokenness capital” to use, and it would do no good whatsoever to expend it all tilting at windmills.
These two together became sharp for me when considering the question of Transition Towns. I was involved in the setting up of Transition Island Mersea but took a conscious decision to step back from a direct involvement in running things when it seemed that there were plenty of people able and willing to take things forward. The principal fruit achieved so far was the setting up of the Food, Drink and Leisure festival, which showcased local products. I also believe that the local council has started to take things on board. However, it also seems clear that a great deal is still possible, and the issues are very salient on Mersea because we are so close to Bradwell power station, which is on the list for siting a new nuclear power station. I keep mulling over whether to write some articles about the overall energy situation and possibly, eg, argue for some form of local CHP in the town.
A further factor is the way my thinking has been sharpening up about what exactly the Christian community is called to do in our present context. To that end, it might help to explain, or recap, the context for my recent chewing over of material related to global warming, but which is really rooted in two earlier posts: on being Christian not green and Why bother saving the planet? I feel that the current state of the science with respect to global warming functions as a Rorschach test – people will see in the plethora of data support for conclusions that they already hold. I think that what has happened in me over the last eighteen months or so is a gradual disengagement from some nominally ‘green’ positions in pursuit of a more substantial Christian perspective. In other words, I’ve just been digging deeper to try and get at the roots of the present crisis – with the hopeful consequence of knowing the way forward that much more clearly. I think the time for prevention has passed us by, but there are still many things we can do to ease the pain of the long descent. That way forward still has a great deal in common with the green perspective, but they are not the same.
My thinking at the moment is that the Christian church needs to be strengthened in its understanding of discipleship; to understand that being a Christian is a doing not just a saying; and that this is what the priest/pastor/teacher is called to do. I am not at all arguing that there should be no Christians in political careers – I believe the opposite rather strongly – it is more that the shape of the priestly vocation (perhaps: MY priestly vocation) is becoming clearer to me. I am not called to be engaged in the political sphere in any active sense (though I suspect I probably am supposed to be engaged in a ‘shouting from the sidelines’ sense, what Justin calls the watchman role). I think that the most important thing that a priest can do at this time is enable and strengthen the Body of Christ for their work and engagement in the community. That means right worship, right teaching, right fellowship and everything else involved in calling Christians to a serious commitment to their faith and the cost of discipleship. In my case I think it means teaching about the ecological context in which we find ourselves, and what it means for our lives as Christians. I have an obligation to ‘pattern my life and that of my household’ according to what I believe to be right, but I am coming to the conclusion that a further, active political engagement is not right for me. I could be wrong. I shall continue to chew it over.