It has become apparent from a news report in the  Church Times that the Diocese of St Albans are in the process of injecting fresh money and support into the Soul Survivor congregation in Watford, formerly under the leadership of Mike Pilavachi.  The congregation in Watford are being regarded as part of a ‘missional engine’ for work among young people in the Diocese.  What the diocese effectively appears to be saying is this.  Although Pilavachi has been identified as running an exploitative and abusive ministry over a period of 30+ years, it is still possible to sponsor future youth work operating within the same cultural and theological setting that he was using.  At the time of writing, there is some debate as to the extent of the support being offered, but we still seem to be facing an example of ‘bad apple’ thinking.  The diocese and the promoters of this backing appear to believe that, having removed one corrupt individual who has been identified as responsible for exploiting many of the individuals within the institution, what is left in the structure can be assumed to be sound and healthy. 

When the scandal of Pilavachi’s behaviour broke in April 2023, there was an ominous silence in terms of reaction from the church authorities.  There are two possible reasons for this.  The first was a shocked realisation that a large cohort of young Christians had passed through the Soul Survivor camps and thus the malign influence of Pilavachi on the Christian formation of these young people had been substantial.  The second devastating realisation was discovering that virtually nobody in the hierarchy responsible for Pilavachi’s oversight, whether CofE or Vineyard, had ever raised questions about his style and idiosyncratic practice.  His forceful charismatic personality seemed to have silenced or controlled everyone, both those above him in the hierarchical system of the CofE and the unprotected young people who looked up to him as a model of Christian living.  This silence that accompanied the revelation of what had really been happening for so long indicated a failure of understanding of what Soul Survivor stood for.  There was also an unhealthy attachment to the idea that if a ministry appears as successful in terms of numbers attending, it must be receiving the approval of God. 

When the Pilavachi story broke, I penned a piece for SC which was not popular with some of my readers, especially as I compared aspects of the the story with events at Sheffield in 1995 with the 9 o’clock Service.  I also suggested that the charismatic style of worship centred on a powerful celebrity leader was never without risk.  Even if God appeared to be present in the captivating music and the charismatic worship, it was still important that there were people with oversight, whether locally or nationally, prepared to ask hard questions about what was going on.  This was essential even when things seemed to be going well.  Going beyond the character and potential personality flaws of a single individual in charge, other issues needed to be faced.  These often involved an understanding of the wider culture as well as the history of what was taking place.

Throughout my ministry I have always been sympathetic to the ideas and practice of charismatic theology and styles of worship.  I am old enough to remember the generation of British pioneers like John Richards, Michael Harper and John Gunstone.  The charismatic scene is much changed since the 70s and 80s and, to my regret, there are few signs left of the generous, ecumenical and inclusive feel that was often a feature of that early time.  It is probably forgotten by the current heirs of this impulse that much energy for the movement internationally came from the writing and teaching of an Episcopalian priest in America, Dennis Bennett.  His style was, if anything, middle of the road Anglican, but his experiences and life recounted in the book, Nine O’clock in the Morning (1961), were very influential.  The later conservative ‘take-over’ of the charismatic impulse was a disappointment to me.  I had written my first book for SPCK, The Challenge of Christian Healing in 1986 and at first, I was invited to speak to conservative leaning groups about healing and how I had discovered healing within a charismatic setting.  The 90s seemed to reveal the more hard-edged defensiveness to these groups, and an individual, such as I, who would never sign up to theories of Biblical inerrancy or infallibility, became less acceptable.  I was regarded as unsound.

My personal religious journey has combined a liberalism affected by academic study with a sympathy towards the charismatic.  This combination has allowed me to believe that I have something of value to say to the Church on the matter of what is, and what is not acceptable in the area of charismatic practice.  Of the two approaches above that I reject, one is the distant but uncritical admiration of the phenomenon without any real in-depth understanding or experience of what is going on.  Charismatic worship, such as we see in churches following the HTB model, is admired as it successfully draws in the crowds.  If ‘bums’ are on seats, then we must welcome and encourage this style even if it is incomprehensible and offends our taste and maybe our theology.  The other approach involves the arrogant assumptions made by its enthusiastic devotees.  This is to think that there is no other theology or style of worship that is worth considering.  We find ourselves in a ‘might is right’ situation of uncritical admiration. Hybrids like me are excluded.

There is a possible third way of approaching this issue.  This approach would suggest that the recent decision of the Diocese of St Albans to fund and support a revived Soul Survivor structure in Watford carries with it a number of risks and could turn out badly.  This is the middle way approach.  It allows an appreciation of charismatic phenomena while recognising the need for caution.  This evaluation mixes a sympathy for charismatic worship with generous helpings of realism, honesty and truth.  Realism might suggest to such a third way yet dispassionate observer that there are questions still to be asked about Pilavachi’s hold over tens of thousands of young people.  This phenomenon needs to be thoroughly understood and studied, certainly before handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds to promote it.  What do we know, for example, about the thoughts of a young person who was led to faith by a mentor whose behaviour turns out to be exploitative and abusive?  I have not seen any studies of this kind.  What are Christian counsellors who have spoken to the cohort of young Christians feeling betrayed by Pilavachi telling us?  What is the Church doing proactively to prevent another charismatic leader being appointed and creating the same damage among impressionable young minds.  If I were a young Christian whose faith had been formed or created by the style and antics of Mike Pilavachi, I might want to feel that those who had put him in this place of responsibility for my wellbeing, were working hard to explain to me what had gone wrong.  The Soul Survivor movement was a movement heavily indebted to one man, but it emerges out of a religious culture which could be, and was, highjacked to serve the narcissistic needs and purposes of its founder.  Another way of putting this claim is to say that the conservative charismatic culture of Soul Survivor is very easily corrupted to become the tool of a needy individual leader to gratify psychological needs.  The gratification processes that have been identified in Pilavachi’s abusive ministry are not an inevitable part of this culture, but they happen with sufficient regularity for outside overseers to need to be on constant alert for these signs of narcissistic abuse.  Surviving Church has written about the potentially unholy alliance of narcissism and charisma many times over the years.  It was clearly identified in my discussion of Michael Reid, the former head of the Pentecostal Peniel Church in Brentwood.  I have also discussed the academic work of Len Oakes, the Australian writer.   He was, to my knowledge, the first author to link the charismatic cultures of evangelical Christianity with narcissistic disturbance and disorder.  The main finding of Oakes was to point out how the dynamic of large crowd gatherings is a perfect setting for someone who is emotionally needy and who (like Donald Trump) craves the attention and adulation of the crowd.  The enthusiasms exhibited in a large charismatic event may often be the setting for less than healthy emotional dynamics combined with acute psychological neediness.  This is not the same as saying that true charismatic worship and healthy transformation cannot exist.  It is saying that leaders must be acutely sensitised to discerning when the worship event and the music of worship songs is the setting for something phony and lacking in any spiritual depth. 

Those who are providing new support for Soul Survivor in the Anglican diocese of St Albans are, no doubt, anxious not to have a repeat of the Pilavachi affair.  To help these authorities who want to help both the reputation of the Church and the spiritual needs of young people in the area,at the same time avoiding a repeat of the events of the past, I would want them to ask the following questions.  These questions go beyond the therapeutic needs of those actually identified as victims of abuse at the hands of Pilavachi.

1. What evidence is there that the damage caused to many hundreds of young people who looked to Mike Pilvachi as someone to emulate and look up to as a model for the Christian life has been properly understood?  Have the thoughts and feelings of those who have left the orbit of Soul Survivor been examined?
2. This blog piece has criticised the ‘bad apple’ approach to the Pilavachi issue and has suggested that there are and were serious dangers in the assumption that we might call loosely the HTB model of Christian formation is always healthy for young people.  Will the diocese be prepared to consult with sociologists, psychologists and others who possess an approach to the issue of Christian formation of young people outside this HTB/Church plant model?
3.   I have reread the Scolding report which inevitably is mainly concerned with structural issues like failures of accountability and responsibility.  The deeper challenge for the Church of England and the St Albans diocese in particular is also proper assessment of the theological issues involved in the saga. Serious issues of authority and power are to be found in the scandal and are yet to be addressed. Although we live in a Church that has a variety of approaches to formation and discipleship with young and old, it might be claimed that the Soul Survivor/HTB model is too much geared towards an entertainment approach to the faith.  Such an approach may have little to commend itself over a period.  If the church invests considerable sums of money in an approach to youth work yet to prove itself, then we are risk of tie ourselves to a single model of youth ministry which may prove problematic over the decades. 

This short critique of the decision by the Church of England to invest considerable sums of money in a system of youth ministry, yet to face detailed professional and spiritual scrutiny, seems ill-advised.  To repeat, this is not a blanket criticism of the theology and worship inspired by the charismatic impulse operating in some the ‘successful ‘churches’ in Britain.  Rather it is plea that we should all have a far better understanding of the wider context of this ministry and why it has sometimes gone seriously wrong, damaging unknown numbers of our young people within the Church of England.

by Anon

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

This is the tenth time I’ve written to you at the start of a new year as your bishop. As you know, I don’t usually send Christmas cards (I’m far too busy at that time of year), as most clergy are. And I don’t read the cards I get sent either, so this is just a gentle reminder to you all not to bother sending me a note enclosing a schedule of all your various Christmas services and other activities. I don’t read them. I already know you are all quite preoccupied at this time of year. That is why I leave you completely alone during Advent and Christmas.

But now that we have entered 2026, I cannot help but reflect on the fact that, every year I’ve written to you, one thing remains constant: change! Yes, change. The sheer pace of it takes us by surprise all the time, and with it come challenges, the highs and lows of ministry, and just trying to keep up. Change is here to stay, as they say. How true that is.

Take AI. A year ago, I had little idea of how it would revolutionise our Diocese. But it has. The executive planners at Diocesan HQ set a target last year of writing at least four email messages a day to all of you – the clergy, lay workers, special ministers without portfolio, church wardens and others. These were timed for breakfast, lunch, teatime, and after dinner, and all with helpful advice, reminders, prompts, prods, resource updates, Instagram news, Tweets, forms to fill in, questionnaires, surveys and other forms of social media engagement.

Some of you were unresponsive to our messages. And after four months, we did a little bit of research, and it seemed that some of you had issues with your spam or junk folders. But I am glad that the Archdeacons put you right on that. It is important that we keep in touch with you all the time (except when we choose not to), keep tabs on you (the devil makes work for idle hands!), and maintain constant digital communication with you.

Our goal this year is to reach you every hour of each and every day with a new message or communication from the diocese, sharing our vision, goals, needs, updates, demands and successes.  What is really remarkable about all this is that AI is helping us generate these communications. We have seen a positive response to the AI Chatbots assisting the Bishops’ Chaplains and Archdeacons, and this is an excellent example of how technology and ordinary ministry come together as one. 

Yes, we have had some teething troubles. Not all of your pastoral problems were well-handled by the recently commissioned and licensed AI Pastoral Chatbots, but please be patient, as this technology has to learn on the job and must evolve.

It is therefore very important that you don’t abuse, tease or bait the Pastoral AI Chatbots we’ve installed. You might inadvertently train the Chatbots to give completely insensitive and incorrect advice in response to innocent and genuine pastoral queries.

For example, we’ve already had instances of incorrect automated advice being given on same-sex weddings that were non-compliant with the advice the House of Bishops may or may not have communicated last week/month. (Although I know we are all finding it hard to keep up with what the latest line to tow actually is). As a result of mistreating the AI Pastoral Chatbots, two unfortunate episodes involving the unexplained deaths and unplanned funerals for members of the Senior Leadership Team left many of you confused, as nobody had actually died. The Liturgy AI Chatbot had to be reprogrammed after a Wicca Ceremony involving a Dame Mary Berry recipe for seasonal muffins went viral.

The AI-generated clip of me ignoring the clergy and going on holiday all the time (these are pilgrimages, incidentally) was False News, as was the deep-fake clip of me angrily banging my crozier on my desk and demanding a 30% rise in giving from parishes to re-equip Diocesan HQ with handsome new office furniture and a bespoke barista café. (NB: I wouldn’t complain if this were true, and if you ever had time to visit our Diocesan HQ, neither would you!).

The AI-generated bar graphs and charts, claiming to be from the Diocesan Finance Office, and that y/our clergy numbers were also going to be cut by 20%, weren’t very helpful either. These were drafts. We have not finalised those numbers yet, and this is an example of AI forming an alliance with a damaging and demoralising culture of leaks, run by Gloomsters and Doomsters plotting against the leadership in the shadows. That might be normal for political parties, but it has no place here in our Diocese.  So, AI can sometimes be unhelpful to our mission when abused.

But as you know, we are using AI to help parishes understand that the church is growing, not shrinking. That is not Fake News. That explains we can look at shaving even more of our clergy numbers this year, because there will be more people in church who could or really should be busy with ministering.

Some of you have written in quite personally to ask if your role in ministry is safe in these challenging times. Nothing pains me more than having to write to you all at 4am in the morning to alert you to the hard road and difficult decisions that lie ahead, and how much it costs me, personally, to be the one making those calls. I know it is hard for you to wake up to that kind of news. But just imagine how demanding it is to be writing to you all in the small hours, knowing that nobody will be able to respond with an immediate note of acknowledgement and support.

As you know, one of the costs of ministry is risk, and it pains me more than anyone else when we had to let (valuable?) frontline clergy go last year so we could shore up the hard-pressed administrators and executives at our Diocesan HQ. I am pleased to say that their visionary plans for expansion and growth continue apace, and thanks are really due to you all for the sacrifices you make at the parish level so that the Diocesan infrastructure can continue to expand.

People these days say there are no good news stories about growth. But that is so untrue. Our Diocesan HQ is living proof that if you talk enough about growth and invest in it, the growth will happen. We have doubled the number of executives and Associate Archdeacons over the last three years, and (praise the Lord!), with your support, those numbers are set to rise again this year.

I know that some of you see this next year as another descent into our Diocesan ‘polycrisis’. But I like to call this ‘polyopportunity’, or ‘polyops’ for short. As we explore new ways of funding traditional ministry by cutting away at the tired, existing forms of support that were holding everyone back, we can now see that less does indeed mean more. That is one of the rich ironies of ministry today.

As we reduce Diocesan support – but not our communications or control – clergy face new challenges in raising awareness over the pressing need to fund their local ministries. This has got to be good news for the church.  A strong Diocesan HQ, coupled to clergy learning to “live off the land” and not relying on handouts and support from the Diocese. That can only make the clergy stronger – and leaner (not bad for a New Years’ resolution, eh?).

Our clergy conference happens later this year. It will be fun to be together again. Please remember that you are expected to invest your own time in this (i.e., holiday allowance); you must be self-funded (i.e., show your commitment); and attendance is mandatory.  But do remember this is fun!

The inter-deanery cage fighting competition was a big hit last time, and some of you were able to channel your frustrations, exasperation and passion for ministry in ways that released a lot of pent-up energy. I know that some of you witnessing this event felt you were put in a position of discomfort, and three of you had to go to A&E and now wear neck braces. But there is no substitute for harnessing the raw power and even aggressive energy we need for everyday ministry.

As in previous years, it will simply be impossible to meet with many of you in person for almost any reason. Fewer confirmations and spending a lot of time with all my senior staff working on strategy and comms means there is not much opportunity to get on the road these days and spend time in the parishes with the frontline clergy. There are only so many hours in the day to work with, and I have to prioritise my diary.

Added to which, Diocesan HQ is very time-consuming, and one of the reasons we send you so many emails and other digital media communications is to remind you that we do think about the clergy, even though we rarely get to meet you. Should we happen to meet, please make sure you are wearing your diocesan lanyard with your name and parish clearly displayed.

In the meantime, if you have any issues you think need attention, or pastoral emergencies, please follow the guidelines link on the diocesan website, and remember to speak clearly in response to the Chatbot questions and dialogue buttons so your query can be appropriately directed (and hopefully resolved). I am pleased to report that, following a grant from the Church Commissioners, we are also hiring a new team of social media influencers to smooth the implementation of these welcome changes.

We are living through unprecedented times that require unprecedented levels of time, energy, commitment and sacrifice from you. Being a Bishop is something I remain fully committed to. And I can honestly say that I am as pleased and proud to be your Bishop as you are to be my clergy. This comes with my prayers and good wishes to you all for this new year, as we step into the future, where we’ll all encounter lots of new ‘polyops’. Just remember, change is here to stay!

Your Bishop, ChatGPT

AI Side Bar: Good stress on change. Would you like me to create a slide deck from the middle paragraphs for PCC presentations, and some bar graphs and diagrams for the upcoming Diocesan Synod? What about a dashboard?

Spellcheck – completed.

Grammarly: Do you want me to improve this? Here are some ideas for your letter. Add impact? Make it persuasive? Make it more assertive? Make it more ‘on brand’? Shorten it? Simplify it? Report any offensive feedback? What do you want me to do?

by Robert Thompson

Remain here with me. Watch and pray. Matthew 26:38

Safeguarding failures in the Church of England are often discussed in procedural terms: governance, independence, lines of accountability, and the adequacy of review processes. These questions matter, and they deserve serious attention. But they do not, on their own, explain why safeguarding crises continue to recur, even after repeated assurances that “lessons have been learned.”

What is increasingly clear is that the problem is not only structural. It is theological.

The theologian Marika Rose has argued that Christian theology is marked by a persistent desire for innocence: a wish to present the Church as fundamentally good, morally coherent, and well-intentioned, even when confronted with evidence of harm. In her work A Theology of Failure: Žižek Against Christian Innocence, Rose suggests that theology repeatedly seeks to protect itself from failure, rather than allowing failure to speak truthfully.

This insight has particular resonance for Anglican safeguarding culture.

The Church of England often responds to safeguarding breakdowns by emphasising process: the independence of reviews, the robustness of structures, the good faith of those involved. These claims are not necessarily false. But they function theologically. They reassure the institution that, whatever has gone wrong, its moral core remains intact.

For survivors, this reassurance often lands very differently.

The insistence on institutional good intentions can feel like a refusal to remain with the depth of harm that has occurred. Anger and grief are treated as threats to stability. Calls for accountability are experienced as challenges to ecclesial unity. The result is a culture in which safeguarding is endlessly reformed but rarely re-imagined.

Rose’s theology helps name what is happening here. Failure is treated as an interruption to the Church’s life, something to be resolved so that normal service can resume. But a theology of failure insists that breakdown is not merely accidental. It reveals something true about how power, authority, and self-understanding operate within Christian institutions.

This matters because Anglican ecclesiology is often tempted to resolve safeguarding tension by appeal to balance: pastoral care on the one hand, institutional continuity on the other; accountability tempered by grace; truth held alongside unity. These instincts are deeply Anglican, and often admirable. But they can also function as mechanisms of avoidance, softening the force of failure before it has been properly faced.

The cross challenges this instinct. At the heart of Christian faith is not balance, but exposure. Authority collapses. Innocence is stripped away. Religious power is revealed as capable of grave harm. Any safeguarding theology that rushes too quickly to reconciliation or restoration risks bypassing the truth that the cross discloses.

This is where Anglican debates about safeguarding independence often falter. Independence is treated as a technical solution, rather than as a moral and theological demand. Reviews are expected to restore trust, rather than to tell the truth, whatever the cost. When independence becomes a means of institutional reassurance rather than institutional vulnerability, it reproduces the very dynamics it claims to address.

A theology of failure suggests a different posture. It does not deny the importance of structure, policy, or leadership. But it insists that the Church must relinquish the desire to appear innocent. It must accept that some failures permanently wound the institution, and that trust cannot be managed back into existence.

For bishops and senior leaders, this is an uncomfortable position. They are tasked with holding the Church together, maintaining public witness, and preventing collapse. But when stability is prioritised over truth, the Church risks repeating the conditions under which harm occurred.

Safeguarding reform that is not accompanied by theological honesty will remain fragile. Procedures may improve. Language may change. But survivors will continue to sense when the institution is more concerned with its own coherence than with their reality.

The Church of England does not need to become flawless in order to safeguard well. It needs to become truthful. That truthfulness will not always look like success. It may look like loss of confidence, loss of authority, and loss of control.

A theology of failure does not offer a programme for renewal. It offers a discipline of staying with what has gone wrong, without rushing to redeem the institution’s image. In the long run, that discipline may be the only ground on which genuine safeguarding culture can grow.

The gospel already gives us a language for this moment. In Gethsemane, Jesus does not ask his disciples to act, resolve, or redeem. He asks them to remain: “Stay here with me. Watch and pray.” Their failure is not cruelty but flight — an inability to remain present to fear, grief, and impending loss.

Safeguarding cultures fail in much the same way. The rush to process, closure, and reassurance often masks a deeper refusal to stay awake to what has been revealed. A theology of failure is, at heart, a Gethsemane theology: a discipline of presence that resists sleep, refuses innocence, and remains with truth long enough for something other than self-protection to emerge.

Until the Church learns to remain with failure without rushing to redeem itself, safeguarding reform will remain fragile and the gospel’s judgement will remain quietly in place: then he came and found them sleeping (Matthew 26:40).

by Stephen Parsons

Looking back over my time as an incumbent within the Church of England, I realise that one of the most difficult tasks I faced was promoting a style of music and worship that people coming from a variety of church backgrounds would find acceptable.  There appeared to be, in my second parish where I served 16 years, no overarching local parish tradition stretching back decades.  Everyone seemed to have arrived at our church from somewhere else. Their worship and music preferences were based on the way things had been done in their old church.  These preferences might reflect a memory of a much-loved Father X.  He was the main influence who did things properly when they were young adults.  Others had memories of lively London churches where the sermons had lasted thirty minutes or more and everyone was expected to follow the preacher as he flipped from one biblical passage to another with great speed.  We, like most churches at the time, followed a middle of the road approach, with the hope that every member of the congregation would somehow fit in with what was on offer without too much struggle.

In this difficult process of finding a middle way in worship, I was helped in 1995 by the publication by Kevin Mayhew of Hymns Old and New, Anglican Edition.  This hymn book made a genuine and, for a short time, successful attempt to weld together in one book all the different strands of hymnody used then by Anglicans.  Thus, we had all the old favourites which older members had been singing for a lifetime, combined with newer gospel songs and Taize chants.  For Anglo-Catholics there were some loved hymns like Sweet Sacrament Divine.  It was indeed a comprehensive attempt to allow everyone literally to ‘sing from the same hymn-sheet’.  The illusion of a successful uniting of everyone in singing from one book did not, sad to say, last very long.  New gospel songs were being written and were in demand by evangelical members of the congregation. Because they were too new to be in the hymn book, any use of this kind of music involved printing the words on sheets of paper or having them projected on to screens.  We were having, of course, to fill in forms from the copyright organisation, CCLI.   This method of keeping bang up to date with some of the music that was appearing all the time was made possible by a small but enthusiastic music group.

My final parish in Scotland did not have any relationship with this contemporary strand of gospel music and so I personally have little understanding of this style of Christian worship.  In the 23 years since leaving the earlier parish which had explored this music, at least some of the time, I have been aware of a variety of current styles that have appeared and sometimes disappeared during this period.  John Wimber made quite an impression on me in 1992 when I attended a conference using his so-called Vineyard style of music.  There have been in later years other genres, among them Hillsong and Bethel, injecting their distinct contributions of musical style into many congregations.  My reader might wonder why I have introduced this topic of gospel music, while admitting almost total ignorance of what it is.  I do, in fact, from the little I do know, recognise that these types of music may, for some, inject something valuable into a contemporary search for God.  Nevertheless, my wider experience of worship and study of the Christian tradition over several decades suggests certain important caveats.

 In years gone by there was always an understanding that the ultra-Anglo-Catholic styles of worship involved an audience in some kind of ‘show’, one which is not all that far from the experience provided by a theatrical entertainment   A catholic mass, whether or not held in an Anglican setting, has typically sought to engage a range of senses, including sight and smell.  Such an engagement with the senses is, of course, quite different from the experience of listening to the melodies of a worship-band, but both involve an aesthetic (enjoyable) engagement of some kind.  Art in the broadest sense, whether visual or auditory, has this capacity of pointing an individual to God while transcending the intellect.  This non-rational dimension (as opposed to irrational) needs to be valued in our understanding of how we approach the divine.  The problem arises when we value one and downgrade another. Many Christians become so accustomed to one form of aesthetic experience that they are dismissive of any other attempt to articulate any other cultural expression of the divine.  In short, they want their hymnbook to leave out all the hymns and songs that do not pass their test of being sufficiently on trend or in accordance with contemporary taste, however this is judged.

A second issue I have with gospel music is the way that it is inherently fickle.  Today’s trending band which produces an acclaimed Christian song, which is sung in evangelical churches all over the world may be forgotten tomorrow.  Fashion seems to be a phenomenon of the Christian music industry, and this might explain why the vast majority of Gospel music songs have only a short shelf life.  I understand that much of the substantial output from Hillsong music has already disappeared after the discovery of financial and sexual scandal in the sprawling empire created by its Australian founder, Brian Houston.  Having never listened to this genre of music, I cannot comment whether these extinctions are justified from an artistic/theological perspective.  But purely from this inability to survive and become part of the classical repertoire of mainstream Christian worship needs, allows one to suspect that much of the so-called modern Christian music scene will never become part of the classical Christian repertoire in the way that much hymnody has, in some cases, survived for centuries.

Contemporary gospel music and bands seem to be an essential part of the activity known as Church planting.  Typically, a large successful congregation which models itself on the style and theology of Holy Trinity Brompton, will hive off fifty or so of its members to go off to another geographical area and start a new worshipping congregation.  Such church plants are not always successful, but the reasons for their success or failure are not the focus of our concern at this point.  What is of interest is that in every example of a church plant I am aware of, a band able to play gospel music is an essential ingredient for the plant.  The calculation is that new members, particularly the young, will only be attracted to the new congregation if they can identify with the style of worship music on offer.   It is no coincidence that if a church plant is successful, and some are, the culture and atmosphere of the congregation will be markedly different from traditional Anglican worship.  The output of gospel songs that is inevitably a feature of these new congregations may indeed attract a new clientele but there is little to hold older members of the Church who have known from childhood a totally different style and culture of Christian worship.

If, as we suggest, the Church of the future is going to be marked by strong cultural and theological divergence, this future is also a place where we may find ourselves in mourning for the days of the single ‘hymn book’.  The culture chasm of the present, that is clearly visible in the radically diverse variety of music and song, will eventually become an unbridgeable gulf between two non- comprehending and mutually alien styles of worship.  I recently heard of a parish priest not far from here who had never engaged with the 1662 BCP or attended or led a traditional Evensong.  This was not just a regrettable absence from the worship pattern of a single modestly sized parish in a rural location, but a lacuna to be found within certain parts of an entire theological training tradition.  Liturgy as a distinct discipline within the study of theology for those preparing for ordination seems, in this case, to have been entirely dropped for this group of recently ordained clergy.  Another casualty seems to be the study of Church history, particularly the period from AD 100 -1500.  When the planting of new congregations is left to individuals who have little or no understanding of the past where the rich springs of Christian worship are to be found, we quickly find we have a denomination that is unable to communicate with itself. 

To sum up my reflection on Christian music and the current style of worship songs that are strongly promoted in the congregations representing the ‘church plant generation’, we have a problem.  The problem is not whether the music and lyrics of these songs are good or bad; that is an aesthetic and theological question.  The problem arises from having two mutually uncomprehending styles of worship in the same Church.  I personally value the hymn book tradition and the choral foundations that are maintained in our Anglican cathedrals.  I do not expect everyone to share my appreciation of these traditions, but I ask that both sides of our current cultural chasm, especially the leaders, make some real attempt to understand what else is going on in the Church through the medium of music and well-ordered liturgy.  That might enrich our understanding of God as we engage with the rich traditions that have sustained Christian worship for two thousand years.