Those of us who were ordained some years ago will sometimes express puzzlement at the terminology used to describe the work of the parish church today. We may have a special problem with the word ‘mission’ as it is sprinkled throughout many church documents. I expressed bafflement at the use of the word by the diocese of Winchester. The diocesan slogan, ‘Living the Mission of Jesus’ has no obvious meaning, even though we could hazard a guess at what the author had in mind. I wonder what the next Bishop of Winchester will do with this catchphrase and whether it will be quietly shelved along with other initiatives designed to make the diocese more mission aware. For clergy of my vintage, mission in a parish was what we were trying to do all the time. The work of prayer and worship, good pastoral care, learning and spiritual growth gave to each congregation a spiritual dynamic which, we hoped, would overflow into the wider community. People did not necessarily come to the church, but the faithful living out of the reality of God by those who did, could act like yeast working on the dough. There was mission and growth, though such growth was seldom spectacular. The Church, in short, was an institution which, in many places, dovetailed into the wider society. This was in spite of the fact that only a small minority supported it by their presence and their financial giving. As William Temple put it, the Church is the only organisation set up for the benefit of those who are not its members.
The mission imperative being loudly proposed for congregations everywhere has now become so ubiquitous in church documents that many are wondering if this involves a fundamental change in the old understanding of the role of the parish church in society. Mission seems to mean making new disciples as the number one priority. The implications of this understanding of the word are profound, practically and theologically. The old model saw the presence of God everywhere, even among those who did not attend church or want anything to do with the Church’s teaching. The new use of the word mission seems to regard society beyond the congregation being a mission-field, full of the unsaved. Everyone who does not come to church is deemed to be in need of saving or rescuing. The imperative is for us to go out to rescue these unsaved people and pull them out of the fire as though they were burning sticks which are potentially lost for ever. The older gentle agnosticism about the fate of non-churchgoers that the yeast dough model implied, seems to be out of fashion. The old vision of the parish church being a spiritual hub at the heart of every community also seems to be less in vogue. We believed that when the prayerful and dedicated work of Christian people in a community is being accomplished, there will always be trickle of new people coming in. They will arrive wanting to find what it is that inspires these acts of service and generosity on the part of Christians.
In each of the parishes where I have served, I have always had the privilege and responsibility for setting the priorities for the church’s efforts in service and outreach. I would not have found it easy to do this alongside people who do not share my ‘fuzzy edge’ approach to ministry. By this term I am describing a reluctance to say that one person is a Christian while another is not. When we get into making a decision about who is ‘saved’ and who is damned, we are in dangerous territory. Fuzzy edge theology allows one to reach out to respond to need without speculating over the state of the individual’s immortal soul. That is the task of God alone. Visiting right across the community and the care of the sick, the elderly and the dying were always at the top of my priorities. Any narrow focus on mission would have been difficult to sustain alongside my role and that of my parish as having the task of service and care. Working solo for most of my ministry did have some advantages. I did not have to justify every decision as to how my time was allocated. One practical outcome of my prioritising visiting was that in a population of two and half thousand, I seldom had to bury anyone that I did not know. In those days, the 90s, when we were burying most of those who died in the parish, I never found myself without some prior knowledge of the departed. Good neighbour schemes and my own pattern of visiting ensured that I was able to maintain links with the entire elderly population.
When the Archbishops of Canterbury and York both speak about the retention of the parish church as an important ingredient in future church life, I imagine that each has been influenced by their memories which are similar to my own. As former incumbents, they will each remember the importance and value of the autonomy given to them by the parish system. And yet at the moment, we are being presented from different directions with something quite different from that way of doing things. This surely must make both them and the many clergy trained before the turn of the millennium quite uncomfortable.
The Diocese of Leicester is holding a Synod this coming Saturday the 9th. Members attending are voting on a proposal that Synod will approve the diocesan framework of Minster Communities (MCs). The proposal is that the 340 churches and 220 parishes in the diocese be brought into clusters within 20 to 25 of these MCs. Serving the MCs will be 80 to 90 stipendiary staff. The main focus word for these MCs is the word mission. Each one will consist of a group of parishes combined with Fresh Expressions churches and schools, all brought together to conduct the task of mission. Overseeing each MC will be a diverse ministry team. This will consist of clergy, licensed lay ministers and Head Teachers.
The Minster model of ministry, as it is called, has a history going back over a thousand years to Saxon times. One central hub church oversees various smaller worship centres in a fixed area. In one modern manifestation of this principle, church planting by a central well-supported church, has successfully introduced new disciples into the congregation. The church planting schemes sponsored by charismatic churches as HTB in London and Hillsong in Sydney have achieved some success. I am not aware of this model being tried in a non-charismatic/HTB context. The way the scheme in this setting operates is a bit like a MacDonald’s franchise. A pre-packaged style of church outreach, complete with message, music and leadership is taken by a small group into an empty building or a redundant church. This small founding group tend to be young, enthusiastic and able to respond to the modern styles of music on offer. The seed congregation then reach out to other young people like themselves and the congregation quite often, in terms of numbers, takes off. Whatever we think about Holy Trinity Brompton and its impressive mission outreach, it is clear that it does not operate in traditional Anglican ways. At its heart is a single model of teaching and truth which most clergy would find oppressive or even claustrophobic. Most clergy value the inclusive range of styles offered by traditional Anglicanism, and they enjoy the opportunity to be flexible in their ministry. Many of the older parish priests among us will also wonder how far the HTB style of ministry serves the over 60s. Their expectation of the local parish is more towards to discovering those aspects of faith which offer reassurance during their final years. Making new disciples may be one of the priorities of a parish. However, if mission is ever made the sole or main focus of the parish, as seems to be the case in the Leicester proposal, then other things will get crowded out and ignored. These are precisely the things that are traditional parish priest, such as me, would miss dreadfully.
The Leicester paper is perhaps typical of new thinking within the Church of England about the future of parish life. On close inspection it fails to embrace the traditional Anglican respect for diversity. This can only be preserved in a large number of semi-autonomous units. Currently we tolerate an enormous diversity in the way clergy are trained. We cannot then immediately remove this respect and practice of a wide variety of cultures soon after the candidate has left theological college to become part of one of these monolithic MCs. They will, of course, not necessarily be following the HTB model in every case, but it is still hard to see how each MC will establish a working theological/cultural model of the Anglican style which all in leadership can agree to follow. A corporate shudder has gone through the entire Church of England recently when we discovered how many of our current generation of theological leaders have been nurtured through the quasi-cultic mentoring system practised at the Iwerne camps. The MC idea will never be able to accommodate the sheer variety of important (and valuable) theological differences in the Church. If some Anglican traditions have, for the sake of agreement, to be suppressed within a MC, then there will be a build-up of tension. It will give rise to the same kind of unhappiness that we have seen in the Winchester diocese. In Winchester the church authorities seemed to have believed that a slogan heavy version of conservative theology could unite the diocese. That was a dangerous damaging fantasy. I fear also that pretending that MCs can each embody the cultural and theological breadth of Anglicanism will also prove to be a fantasy. This will have far reaching consequences for the happiness of clergy and people in the Leicester diocese.
Both Archbishops have protested that the parish system is safe under their watch. The debate to take place in Leicester on Saturday would seem to weaken that promise. The only way that the Leicester diocese can be theologically and structurally united under a scheme of this kind, is if every clergyman were to be a fully paid-up member of something similar to the HTB methods of church planting and mission. That seems to be the only successful current example of the MC idea actually in operation. As the HTB way of doing things does not enjoy widespread support, are the authorities expecting to expel from the diocese anyone who does not wish to become part of this great untried experiment to bring about their desire for mission and discipling? How can such a scenario come to pass? The only way would be to simply sack those clergy who cannot work in such a structure. Are we to see a Winchester type culling of posts/clergy who do not fit into a conservative vision for the future of the whole diocese? That would appear to be a terrible cost, one the church cannot afford.
Last week a man came to my house to give me a quote for a new kitchen. We got to talking and when he found I was clergy his face lit up. ‘I’ve recently found God,’ he said, ‘and when I go to prayers I can feel it.’ He gestured expressively. He is feeling God’s presence when he prays, and seeing God at work in his life in ways he described to me. He plans to make his haj, his pilgrimage to Mecca, next year. He was as aglow and enthusiastic as any fired-up evangelical, and we compared notes about our faith and experience of God.
A few decades ago I might have assumed that a Muslim couldn’t be ‘saved’; fortunately I came to see the limitations of that view quite a while ago. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ali has had a genuine encounter with God and it has changed his life.
What a fabulous story. And good for Ali that he didn’t reject you!
Every religion has its enthusiasts. Not all zeal for God is according to knowledge. Why, there are few better examples than Mr. Smyth!
The idea of mission communities is not novel: it has been the norm in Carlisle (as you will know) and Exeter for some time. I have attended services across most of Leicester diocese, and whilst attendance has held up quite creditably in much of the east of the county and in the environs of Leicester itself, the Church is now very attenuated along much of the Welland valley, in the south-east of the county and, most especially, in the Framland.
The shift to MCs in Leicester is not altogether unconnected with the sudden discovery of a £2m hole in the diocesan books earlier this year. Leicester, of course, has not been alone in undertaking a sudden panicked review of its resources. Distressed DBF have had to turn to the Commissioners for assistance from the latter’s new sustainability fund, but that assistance [presumably] comes with strings attached, with the command that DBFs cut their cloth. That the Commissioners have the money to dispense to DBFs is a direct consequence of the Commissioners having been relieved of more than 80% of their former financial obligations, enabling them to accumulate capital, at the expense of DBFs and, thus, of parishes. This enables them to act as Lady Bountiful from time to time.
Contrary to archiepiscopal rhetoric, the parish system is not safe under their watch. This is not so much due to MCs per se, as to the financial settlement effected between the various tiers of the Church in the 1990s, which provides that capital is sucked up from the grassroots by means of parish share (starving parishes of their ability to invest, whether in mission or building maintenance), and hoarded by the Commissioners. That George Carey has endorsed the aims of Save the Parish when it was he who signed off, and promoted, this baleful and highly regressive settlement is deeply ironic. GS 2222 makes no attempt to reconfigure that settlement; it merely tinkers with it.
“in much of the east of the county”
Sorry, that should read the west of the county! Specifically parts of Guthlaxton and Sparkenhoe, and the Charnwood/West Goscote divisions.
‘As William Temple put it, the Church is the only organisation set up for the benefit of those who are not its members.’
It’s time we abandoned this self-serving, comfort-blanket nonsense. Our local food bank does this, as do hundreds of charitable enterprises. The fact of estbalishment may require us theologically and practically to ‘wedge the door open’, but if we think we’re the only organisation capable of thinking like this then our delusions of adequacy are far worse than previously thought …
This may not be a verbatim quote. But either way, it was a novel idea at the time. But I think it was “club”, which means something different. Temple was trying to make the church look outwards, not a bad aim.
… but I take the point.
One of the issues about the word ‘mission’ is that it can sound like (and is probably measured as if) this is simply about expanding ‘the club’; growing congregations or establishing them in new places as though this is the purpose of the church, whose actual function and purpose are rather more comprehensive than that.
There are ways in which six Christians and a dog meeting and being a blessing to a small local area are more effective than a megachurch with layers and layers of activity aimed at numerical growth.
👨🏽🌾👨🍳👩🎨👮♂️💂🏻♂️🕵️♀️ 🐕 = 🌟
Hare! Lovely to see you! Thanks for the laugh. Hope you and yours are all well.
Yes, thank you Athena!
And Barbara – in two words you have captured what I have felt since early years whenever I have heard the word Mission. ‘Got at,’ that’s exactly it. Thank you. I could never quite put my finger on it.
Well, even then there were organisations like Barnado’s …
The comment above about parish money is apposite. I’m also minded of the change in liturgy that meant people who wanted to be within the world of prayer but not Communion could do so and had an opportunity to leave the service without being humiliated as self-declared Outsiders. The C of E is a closed shop. Either you buy in to various forms of rah-rah or get stuck into the “specials” classes, but being part of the main Sunday service is impossible now for thoughtful agnostics and interested Christians who for their own private reasons don’t feel overtly Communion-oriented.
Cathedrals? Just a thought, because they keep the office. Morning and Evening Prayer. But I think services of the word are crucial. And yes, they’re the poor relation.
Minster, or mission, communities are a good idea. But in practice, it’s just about saving money and concentrating more power in the hands of fewer powerful clergy. In theory, laity with management experience could run a community. That is floated for a while, then dropped. Increased lay involvement turns into a way of getting untrained people to lead services and preach. Usually someone the vicar likes better than the existing Reader! Plus, it’s easier to ignore someone who hasn’t had your training. It increases the degrees of separation between the powerful, and those they have power over. Sorry. I’m very cynical about how this actually works in practice. It doesn’t match the fine words.
“One practical outcome of my prioritising visiting was that in a population of two and half thousand, I seldom had to bury anyone that I did not know.”
I think every parish I have worshipped in has had a population of around 10k. If saving the parish requires quintupling the number of clergy (or indeed parishes) I wonder how that could be done? I notice this post does not include a proposal, and I think it’s fair to say that most of us cannot quintuple our tithe to help.
How active does “the cure of souls” have to be? As vicars, do we just wait for people within our parish geographical boundary to come to us, via the traditional “hatch, match, dispatch” route or do we actively knock on doors?
In reality it’s impossible to know our 2,500 parishioners let alone 10,000 in anything other than a superficial way. Maybe that’s ok.
I was reflecting on our weekend walk into town in the pursuit of good coffee. We pass our parish church, which I’ve been into twice. It smells of mildew and is an unsightly modern construction. The joint vicars arrive into our home by periodic local magazine comments. He likes jogging and she writes rather well. We had a postcard one time inviting us for “free prayer”.
A stone’s throw away is the sister church, a beautiful ancient monument with dead people celebrated all around it in the churchyard. I’ve been in once for a wedding. It was ideal for weddings.
We pass a couple of closed churches, one a housing estate now, the other a wine emporium.
The Catholic Church near our coffee venue, at one time seemed rather evangelical, offering an Alpha course. It’s gone quiet recently. Perhaps a new Priest with traditional values?
At the Civic Hall, Hillsongs Church is meeting. Cynically, I check to see if I brought my credit card.
In the high street there’s an old church “for everyone” where homeless people sit outside sometimes and concerts are held. I guess from the slogans it’s liberal.
The big town centre C of E where we used to go was at one time thriving but has a notionally very small parish. I suppose its technical parishioners would include people who work in town but don’t actually live there? Do we reach out to them?
And what about students? We have a huge university next door with 24,000 people from all over the world attending. Say 1% go to church. Thats 240 students right there before we do any mission at all. But we only had a dozen or so. Perhaps they all went to the big Baptist church or HTB church seed (off the books of the Anglican set up). Or perhaps they go to the small parish church in which their university technically might sit? But seriously, what about the other 99%?
We find our coffee in an excellent café actually run by one of the local Christian youth charities which shares trustees with the HTB place. The church finally meets us at our point of need. Ironically the café is of course closed on a Sunday.
Personally I’d love to be part of the old system where the local vicar “knew” your family and visited when your gran was sick. Maybe we could still do this.
Much as the shenanigans in Leicester may cloy a little, we have to accept that the world has changed and the church must adapt if it isn’t to shrink further. Self preservation is hardly an exemplary motivation, but surely it must concentrate the collective mind?
Out of interest, which is your town, Steve?
Re the search for good coffee, it’s often struck me as noteworthy that in most churches you have to wait till after the service for the coffee/tea (whether or not ‘good’), whereas if someone visits my home I would offer them coffee/tea on arrival. Lesson: hospitality is part of mission.
I agree with what you say on hospitality David. I’m no expert on coffee, but I can tell a good cup when I taste one and with coffee craft being a thing, we are getting picky with what local cafés are serving. If a church does coffee or tea or anything else, it has to be really good, in my opinion. Our local town is Guildford, but we’ve had to do a fair amount of travelling recently. However my breadth of experience is massively eclipsed by Froghole’s encyclopaedic knowledge. Either he has an exceptional memory, or he takes very good notes, or both.
Many clergy don’t think you should even chat before the service!
The parish we used to live in had a population of 21,000. No chance of getting round that lot, even with the two and a half clergy it used to have. But people wouldn’t like it. The days when it was normal for the vicar to visit are long gone. It would now be seen as an unwanted intrusion. Like wearing your dog collar all the time, or worse, cassock. People just think you’re showing off. You have to find new ways of making contact.
Like the coffee shop, for example? A low key approach. The Baptists have one in reception but that’s too far “in” for some.
I know what you mean about callers. I’m immediately suspicious of unsolicited visitors. Sad really. Up north in the olden days I recall fondly the vicar visiting and sharing a pot of tea with us.
Yeah, possibly. Or one evening a week, with dog collar, in the pub. Or just usually buying your sandwich in the local shop. Hard in country areas, mind you.
I haven’t had a rural parish but in my two town parishes I made a point of using local shops. Walking the dog around the parish helps too. I agree that people nowadays don’t want random visits, but I always visited people’s homes for wedding, baptism, and funeral interviews. You get to know people much better that way than by asking them to visit the vicarage, which some clergy insist on. I did sometimes drop in on members of the congregation, especially elderly ones who are used to the traditional clergy visits.
I agree about the cassock, which looks ridiculous when walking around the town/parish. But I think for clergy to wear their dog collar (save on days off) is valuable (like a lay person wearing a cross): it’s then not an intrusion but identifies the person as (hopefully) a Christian prepared to be open about their faith. And it can be worn with a jumper and jeans, not just a formal dark suit.
I really think if you go shopping in it, it just looks weird. Sorry.
That depends where you go shopping. If in the parish, and you haven’t been there long enough for all ten or twenty thousand residents to know you by sight, it gives people a chance to size you up unobtrusively, and perhaps to approach you about christenings, weddings, or the mums and tots group. It also shows the shopkeepers and customers that the vicar cares about local businesses and supports them. All very useful
Tesco in town? I don’t think so.
If the town is London, probably not. But if a small town, very much so. I’ve had a lot of useful conversations while wearing my collar in local shops, or on my way to them.
Ok, Janet, I yield! Obviously, I haven’t had the opportunity to test this! But I wasn’t brought up in the church of England, and I have always thought being stitched in to your dog collar was outmoded.
I wasn’t brought up in the Church of England either, and didn’t wear my collar always and everywhere. I’ve also tried to be creative about the clothes I wore with it. But like any uniform, the collar has its uses. It’s a visible sign of the vicar’s presence where people are, and not just in church. For some, it’s a visible sign of God’s presence. And I’ve found that there are some who resent it when clergy are in mufti – they feel a sort of deception is being practiced on them.
I don’t wear it now I’ve retired, of course.
My local vicar used to stride swiftly down the busy main road between vicarage and church every day for morning Offices, clad in rather tight-fitting clerical garb.
My view of him was framed by his kindness in listening to me when I dropped in on him during a difficult time in my life. He was generous with his time and donated some Greek study material including a Greek NT when I expressed an interest. Moreover I’d interrupted his completion of “The Times” crossword.
Only 2 of us regularly attended his weekday services. I wondered what a man of his obvious abilities was doing in what seemed a backwater to me.
He’s a bishop now and I believe heading up a theological college. I still recall him wearing the garb and walking the talk. Top man. Sorry I didn’t get very far with the Greek.
Why do people come to church? Why should people come to church? Actually better to ask ‘why does each person come to church?’, and ‘why should a(ny) person come to church?’ Answers vary of course.
Mission is a strange word, one which is both an abstract noun as well as a particular noun as when I go on a mission to discover something. We know, at its heart, it means something about being sent, but sent to whom, sent with what, sent for what, even sent from where and going to where. How does it differ from ‘witness’ or overlap with ‘witness’, which is a New Testament word much more than mission?
In most cases it is understood as being about going out from a gathered group and place to encourage others to come back to that place or to rally at a new specific place. It is difficult to avoid some geography when we talk about mission.
How separate and how immersed is the church from or in the world, and what do we think God makes of the wider world that does not attend worship? Answers vary of course!
Our context, in England, is a complex one of Christendom and an established church, with an Act of Uniformity gradually undone by Acts of Toleration, allowing other denominations and other religions to flourish.
Our current world is one that is post-Christian in many ways, post-modern (in some ways – especially regarding “truth” and authority), secular (no reference to God’s law etc), and post-colonial (dealing with our imperial and colonial heritage with discomfort, and the churches’ world-mission was inter-connected for good and / or ill).
I don’t see that a Minster Community or a Mission Community needs to be monochrome – it will depend on the quality of the leader. I do notice that churches which have music groups and good coffee and less liturgy seem to be attracting new people more than the standard parish church (generalisation but ..)
I do not have the vision to see ahead and know what this sort of spiritual food will do for our spiritual health in another 20 years – John Drane wrote of the Mcdonaldisation of the church – but I fear for a biblical, liturgical and historical amnesia. Equally I fear for the church if it is trapped into replicating a particular historical version of church as if that is the God-given way.
The scribe who is trained for the Kingdom of heaven is like a steward of the household who brings out of the treasure store what is new and what is old.
Cathedral worship is growing, too.
it ought to, with all the resources poured nto it …
The commissioners pay for two clergy and a Dean. The rest, such as keeping a grade 1 listed building in good nick and paying £2,000 a month on heating is down to the congregation. And it will be open from seven in the morning to at least after Evensong. And at least three services a day with four on a Sunday.
I am 82, the older I become the fuzzier my theology becomes to the point of calling myself a Christian agnostic. The word mission makes me want to run away. I feel “got at” these days. I am a theologically aware lay person, been there, done that, deanery synod and Diocesan synod in 3 different dioceses. Bishop’s certificate and theology diploma &c but have never felt more despondent and fed up with Cof E! I need liturgy, ceremonial with dignity and good music with an organ and thoughtful preaching to keep me hanging on by my fingertips, it’s in short supply these days.
You’re not alone, Barbara. Thank you for articulating it so well. I, a retired cleric, am increasingly a Christian agnostic (have you read Leslie Weatherhead’s book of that title? – unfashionable, so I like it) and as a Cumbrian native I have sympathy with Wordsworth’s “faith”, as did my Methodist minister uncle before me who made a similar journey. It was beauty that drew me to the church – liturgy, art, theology, human sacrificial ministry – and thence to appreciate the psychological authenticity of the gospel. We’ve regressed over the last 30 years and now It is difficult to avoid doggerel songs, play school prayers and infantile sermons. Cathedrals sometimes offer what I’d like, but it comes at a price of middle-class mores, snobbery, back-slapping in-jokes of the singers and their groupies, and cathedrals increasingly being part of the heritage industry.
….And that’s just the clergy! 😀. Stanley, I do know what you mean. But the two Cathedrals I have worshipped in both have wonderful communities. As, to be fair, have the other churches.
At nearly 68, I get increasingly fuzzy in my theology too. That’s partly because I have a growing appreciation of the range and scope of God’s love – though heaven knows I have a long way to go.
I still warm to the word ‘mission’. To me it signifies life, purpose, energy, and being outward-looking and inclusive. It involves the love of God being lived out in imaginative and practical ways, such as listening carefully to people, working for justice, and running food banks and other charitable efforts. ‘Mission’ as in a meeting or series of meetings with a famous speaker, on the other hand, leaves me uninterested.
Liturgy doesn’t interest me nowadays either. I’ve never thought much of our authorised liturgies, products as they are of General Synod committees and horse-trading between various parties in the Church. Fortunately there are liturgies and resources much more creative than ours: Scottish Episcopal Church; Church of New Zealand/Aoteroa; Iona Community; and any number of creative people like Janet Morley and Stephen Shakespeare. I’ve written quite a lot of liturgy myself. But however good or fresh the liturgy is, it palls on me with repetition.
I have a catholic taste in worship music – anything from classical, plainchant, to ‘BE Still for the Presence’, via the Fisherfolk and Mustard Seed. I agree that a lot of very modern worship music seems banal, if what’s on Songs of Praise is anything to go by, but the UK/Anywhere Blessing was moving, and I’ve listened to it several times.
Everyone has a place in the God’s Church on earth, and it’s right that all tastes are catered for.
‘Liturgy doesn’t interest me nowadays either.’
I think that when anything is well done it can be satisfying, but I have some sympathy with your view, for all that I find the historical development of liturgy of interest.
I am reminded of the famous ‘gloomy dean’, W. R. Inge of St Paul’s, who used to read Neoplatonic philosophy (in which he was expert) or do crossword puzzles in his stall during evensong. When asked by a high church parson whether he liked liturgy, Inge responded “No. Do you like stamp collecting?”
Yes, Janet and Froghole, I share much of that, maybe all. By “liturgy” I don’t mean Common Worship or BCP (there are parts of both that inspire and parts that repel) or the Catholic mass or the hymn sandwich, but rather structured ritual that follows a predictable pattern allowing scope for spontaneity. We are animals. Animals live by ritual. My wife was laughing at my rituals getting ready for the gym! Life is liturgy and liturgy life.
Stephen, unfortunately, with your usual generalisations you discredit your core arguments. HTB extended into St Augustine’s on Queen’s Gate, several years ago, and it is a thriving traditional congregation – with vestments and a formal choir – with the majority of people in their 60s.
Then, if you look more broadly at HTB across its many services, there are a huge number of people in their 60s. You suggest HTB’s problem is that it may not appeal to an older age group, when in fact it appeals to ALL age groups. And surely that is the essence of a successful church? There are far more people in any service at HTB in their 60s than multiple parishes elsewhere.
If your measure of success for a church is having a majority of people in their 60s, may God help us! Please move beyond your usual hackneyed trope – it is getting a bit repetitive for us.
Who’s “us”? You’re welcome to your opinion, Nigel. Putting another view is always good. But I for one don’t agree with you.
Nigel, you are free to express your opinion because Stephen, our host, has graciously allowed you to do so. But you in turn discredit your argument when you insult him. I’m interested in the facts you present in your comment, and glad to know them. But in future please attack the argument and not the man.
This blog is a safe space for survivors and personal attacks, on anyone, are not on.
Nigel I had a quick look at the HTB network of church plants in London and they all seem to belong to the same theological and worship culture as HTB. The exception you mention, St Paul’s Onslow Square is unique but even here it is served by clergy who were trained in the conservative traditions that typify the network. Yes, those of us who live outside the theological bubble of HTB have every reason to be afraid of a HTB/Alpha takeover of the Church of England. If HTB wants to make us feel welcome, then it has to appoint clergy and leaders to its network who represent this wider, more generous inclusive Anglicanism to which most of us belong. Otherwise it will feel like a hostile take-over.
The exception is St Augustine’s Queen’s Gate isn’t it, rather than St Paul’s Onslow Square which has been more of a little sibling of HTB? However, the C of E is not taken over by HTB so much as that has emerged as the most popular/representative brand within the C of E, than which none more typifies what the present C of E actually is. It is not my demographic (which is more radical) but ‘takeovers’ represent no more than what people want at any one time (e.g. Anglocatholicism in the Victorian times and 1920s).
I have attended services at a number of HTB plants, but because my worship tour aims to be comprehensive, I have also attended services at churches adjacent (or near to) HTB plants.
I agree with Nigel about Queen’s Gate. Although changes have been made to the interior, it is evidence of the liturgical open-mindedness of HTB, and its receptivity of, and generosity to, other Anglican traditions. This approach is very different from that of Bishopsgate and its plants.
St Paul’s Onslow Square has, amongst other things, emphasised outreach to the homeless and distressed community, in one of the most affluent districts in Kensington.
In some places they have revived moribund churches: for example, St Peter’s Brighton was at risk of demolition; the ancient shrine church of St Paul’s Hammersmith was at risk of languishing in neglect under the lee of the flyover; St Paul’s Shadwell might have become housing for yuppies; for all the musical concerns, St Sepulchre without Newgate was in somewhat parlous state; and St Nicholas Bristol has been turned from a museum back into a living church (a positive counterpoint to the recent divestment of St Michael on the Mount following its fire); at St Mary at Quay Ipswich the new River Church is a very welcome revival, thanks to its rehabilitation by the CCT (along with the neighbouring St Peter’s, which now is a cultural and heritage centre with occasional services) and in an area which has seen much recent development.
However, church buildings are not always rescued by an HTB plant: for instance, at St Swithin’s Lincoln, the church (which is an ancient foundation) remains shuttered, whilst the congregation worships in a hall a few metres away – this, despite HTB having effected the plant 7 years’ ago.
However, views have been mixed elsewhere. The plant at Holy Trinity Hastings was intended to address the massive decline in all forms of attendance within the borough, but actually that particular church was doing quite well before it was subjected to the plant, and when I spoke to members of the congregation (this was shortly before the plant) they were apprehensive about it. Ditto St John’s Hoxton, where the plant seemed to sap what little life there was left at nearby St Leonard’s Shoreditch until that church was taken under the wing of HTB last year. Or at Mulbarton (Norfolk), where the plant at St Thomas Norwich had the effect of subverting the extensive investment made by Mulbarton in youth work and its worship band.
In some places HTB planting or association does not appear to have been disruptive of established arrangements: for example, at the Weybourne group in north Norfolk, which was taken under the wing of HTB after the last vacancy.
Also, unlike Bishopsgate, HTB have invested in a diverse range of socio-economic locations.
So, whilst I think there are definitely ‘issues’, and not everything is rosy, I think that the HTB planting is, in the aggregate, a Good Thing.
Thank you for your balanced and rational response to the criticisms of HTB and its plants. Church planting/church grafting is never easy. It is encouraging to see churches prepared to plant/graft in both affluent and deprived areas of a city.
Peter Reiss asks useful questions about why people go to church. One thing we need to look at is the way people jostle for positions of power within a community.
On the one hand we need to utilise others in ministry, to increase the scope of what can be done. On the other hand people often stray away from the main purpose of the church (whatever we consider that to be) and are sidetracked by the lure of recognition and position. I haven’t found a Christian community that’s immune from this.
Whose book gets the most readers and media exposure? Are we more for critique and less for consensus?
In the commercial world few operations succeed without people cooperating, but I see little comprehension of human capital in the church.
The Leicester initiative has, on one level, a whiff of some people trying to work on a coordinated basis with goals in mind. On the face of it, I would value such an approach. However I’ve also been involved in hostile takeovers and the fallout can negate any apparent gains. Superimposing an unwanted ideology on others almost never works unless your targets are young and impressionable.
Nevertheless we won’t get very far collectively unless we learn to work together. And we need to retain humility if we are to maintain a culture that is actually Christian.
“The only way that the Leicester diocese can be theologically and structurally united under a scheme of this kind, is if every clergyman were to be a fully paid-up member of something similar to the HTB methods of church planting and mission.”
And what about the female clergy?
Being in Leicester, I’m not sure that this is true, although there are questions about how oversight ministry would work in an MC containing one or more churches who do not receive the ministry of women as priests/leaders.
Also the Shaped by God Together process predates the budget deficit
I find these comments very enlightenng, more so as I have just completed doctorl research on Anglo-Catholic church planting. When (if?) my thesis survives the viva, I will willingly share my findings. I think the HTB model is an ‘easy fix’ for dioceses but has its shortcomings, especially for those of us who hate music groups and worship songs of the genre that Martyn Percy once described as ‘Jesus is my boy friend.’
I go back to Frederick Faber’s verse:
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s (sic) mind
And the love of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
It is in this wideness, this catholicity that the Spirit works.My own experience from Gospel Hall to liberal Catholic, via CICCU at Cambridge, I think exemplifies this.
Good luck with the viva John. I’d be fascinated to read your research when it becomes available.
Good luck, John. The research will be of interest, whatever the outcome.