Looking back over 70+ years of reasonably active church membership, I have been reflecting on one feature which has only come into my conscious focus recently. The feature that I want to mention is that of being accompanied or mentored by others as I have tried to move along in my Christian pilgrimage. The idea of mentorship that I have in mind at the moment is probably something broader than that which is generally meant by the term. I am referring to all the people, (most of them now dead) who have in any way accompanied me and allowed the spiritual self to feel nurtured and encouraged in the attempts to practise Christian discipleship.
The individuals who, in a wide sense, mentored us in our faith will almost certainly include a number of people whom we never personally got to know at all. Even those with whom we had some kind of relationship may never have had any idea that we looked up to them in this way. Thus, the mentoring relationships we feel we have had with them may have been totally one sided. For example, we may have felt a strong identification with an author whose work or writing has made us feel alive in a special way. The vast majority of the authors that have inspired me are now firmly dead but something of their truth remains alive inside me. We thus often remain deeply attached to books that contain writing which led to new spiritual insight for us, even if they were penned centuries ago.
The notion of the Christian journey involving a strong sense of being supported by a ‘cloud of witnesses’ is probably familiar to most of us. Perhaps, like me, we have not given it much attention. Mentoring in this broad sense is something that is found in many of the privileged conversations that have been afforded to those of us who are clergy. We have been mentored during our attendance at the bedside of the dying or in the flash of comprehension in the eyes of a confirmation candidate. The examples I could give go on but I have probably said enough to evoke the wider meaning I am giving here to this word mentoring. Whatever word we might choose to convey this idea of outside encouragement in the journey of Christian discipleship, it is clearly important to all of us.
The task of recognising the fact of being mentored in the way I describe, brings us to another, possibly disturbing, thought and question. Have I at any time in my life been depended on or looked up to as an exemplar of Christian discipleship and encouragement? If so, have those who looked up to me been served well, or have they felt let down when they learnt more about me as a person? Those of us who are clergy or who occupy positions of responsibility cannot help having people looking up to us as some sort of of model for what a Christian should look like. This is why any scandals by clergy or senior leaders in the Church are so incredibly harmful. Just as the family life of a clergyman comes under scrutiny by his or her parishioners, so every bishop and others at the higher levels in the church carry an enormous responsibility for modelling what a good Christian life should look like. As a mentor in the broad way I have suggested, a bishop will be obliged to carry on his or her shoulders the projection of maybe thousands of fellow Christians. In summary they, the Christians in the pews, want to see examples in their leaders of a good Christian life. They want to model themselves on their leaders and see a living example of what faith actually involves in practice.
The mentoring relationships which allow Christians to support and encourage one another, do not, as we have suggested, necessarily involve an active relationship between people. A public profile or even a reputation for godliness may be all that is required for the ‘virtual’ mentoring and sharing of Christian encouragement to begin to take place. The main quality that I believe one Christian wants to see in another is an utterly reliable integrity. Christians are looking for someone else on whom to model themselves, and will be hoping to find, not holy words coming from the mouth, but a consistency of character that allows them to feel they can completely trust the other person. The exemplar, the person attracting the projection of others, needs to be, in the modern idiom, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) type. WYSIWYG people are not perfect; they are flawed like everyone else. But we look to them for consistency and reliability. We don’t want to discover that there are areas of toxic behaviour just below the surface. All the relationships we have, in and outside the Church, are based on trust. It is deeply upsetting and disturbing when an old friend is found to have been stealing money from his company for years to feed a gambling addiction. The effect on families when one of its members has been involved in creating pornography will always be devastating. Anyone exposed to revelations of this kind, which involve a betrayal of trust, may likely start to feel paranoid and suspicious of everyone around them. Trust in other people’s integrity, whether in the Church or outside, is a glue that holds families, congregations and institutions together. When this glue starts to dissolve or fails to work, the future is bleak for these institutions to hold together or even survive.
In recent times, we have lived though some shocking revelations in public life which have undermined our trust in many institutions in this country. Stability in our political life, our police forces, the educational institutions and our churches has always been part of the background security we have enjoyed. Relying on these institutions to play their part in providing this overall stability has been crucial to our sense of well-being and safety. The current undermining of this sense of security because of failings in these same institutions is a serious matter. In our political life the absence or decay of trust may lead to solutions that are deemed extreme, like fascism or other totalist ideologies. When such extreme systems appear in any country, it can take decades for the balanced approach to political life to be re-established.
The current danger that I see potentially damaging, even destroying, the fabric of the Church of England is an emergence of cynicism or lack of trust at every level of church life. If our bishops for any reason are no longer looked up to as exemplars of honest and godly behaviour, this cynicism may quickly spread to every other level of church life. If the protection of the privileges, power and resources of the institution becomes the highest value for those who control and manage the Church of England, then I can only see a future of decay and weakness ahead. Those of us who care for the values of integrity, justice and holiness, the WYSIWYG values of total honesty and love, will continue to stand by them. On our own we can do little to save our political or religious institutions. But together, with those others who believe in these values contained in absolute integrity, we may be able to do something to help rebuild true communities. Finding once again our ability to be strengthened and supported by the absolute Christian integrity of others, we may be playing a part to serve our Church and helping it not only to survive but flourish in the future.
Are the scandals in Church leadership we are seeing with increasing incidence and at growing scale, are they a product of this generation? Or were they always going on, perhaps more behind the scenes?
Certainly there is a more vivid transparency with warp speed internet and widespread social media use. It’s much harder not to know what’s been going on.
It can feel at times impossible to evaluate who is to be trusted. Individuals of good character, with no particular interest in the limelight seem a rare commodity. A few I once knew have died or moved far away. I’m left with a good memory of what they were like, how they lived and how they would have responded to things, and to some extent have internalised those approaches for myself.
In earlier years I erred on the side of over-trusting. Perhaps those former decades of less available data, made over reliance much easier. Nevertheless there were times of a sharp correction of esteem. One example was a senior partner I looked up to who, frustrated with my uncertainty in how to approach a client, suggested simply that I lie. From that moment on I never knew whether I could trust him or not, because how could I ever know whether he was lying to me? Unfortunately I concluded that he probably was.
We have expectations of senior people that may often be unrealistic. They may contain transferred aspects of our yearning for a good parent, for example. Our discernment of others’ suitability for our guiding tends to narrow with familiarity rather than broaden. We confirm our own bias. Early decisions made are rarely overridden except in circumstances like I described above with the suggestion of lying.
With passing years it becomes increasingly unrealistic to impute others with the omniscience we might once have assumed. Equally, as seniors we must resist strongly the flattery and overestimating we might occasionally be on the receiving end of.
Personality flaws and errors of judgement or ability are greatly magnified by high office. Most of us can muck along being quite average or mediocre and hardly anyone notices or cares. But promote us to the top table and we are very quickly in trouble.
Christ’s leadership runs counter to most current ideas of senior management. He washed people’s feet and had no fancy place to live. He did the opposite of currying favour. He followed his calling which involved abandonment, beating, betrayal and a savage death. Yet I still find myself hanging on his every word. He’s not seemingly hugely available in the sense people sometimes claim. And yet his incredible legacy endures more consistently than any other human I’ve come across. The very best of them reflect what he’s like, and the daily challenge is to emulate him myself.
I think these scandals have always gone on. Trollope, Sterne, and even Austen wrote about venal, corrupt, dishonest, and manipulative clergy – though admittedly they didn’t tackle the subject of sexual abuse.
Unfortunately I’ve had more than ample opportunity to observe the damage done when Christian leaders fall from grace. The Bible gives us warts-and-all portraits of great leaders, but we persist in setting people on a pedestal. It makes me think of the Tina Turner song, ‘We don’t need another hero.’
I really don’t know what, if anything, we can do to ensure that our leaders are true and faithful Christians.
Certainly we have a propensity to idol-worship. Rather than fabricating a golden calf and bowing down, we have raised our hands to Mike and his technicolour dream shirts.
The commandment not to have idols is a neglected one. I was brought up to believe that idols could be Catholic statues or icons, so our church was pretty plain. We were also taught it was wrong to treasure material things. That too could be idolatry. However we were never warned about the false elevation of people, of ministers, for example.
In modern life the subtlety of sin is the disguise of old fashioned wrongdoings such as theft, in the garments of unlawful sharing of Netflix access, or accepting unexpired non transferable car park tickets from strangers. Trivial transgressions lead to more serious misdemeanours.
Similarly, with Pilavachi, the disguise is the eccentric bloakish self-effacing almost completely uncool coolness. We worshipped what he delivered. The Soul Survivor brand was a celebrated one. In charisgelical circles, an education at Watford was a hefty notch on the Christian CV, equivalent in academic terms to an oxbridge degree.
The Commandments were simple but deep directives. You don’t necessarily need psychotherapy to obey them, although it can reveal some of the lies we tell ourselves or were told, that lead us to ignore those important directives. Although in theory idolatry was one of those God centred commandments, in reality its neglect damages us. Look at the mess we’re in now. Many are in pieces, with further revelations leaking out, suspensions and no clear end to the saga. Those streams of interns have had their CVs trashed.
The way we promote church, with well-known celebrity speakers and worship leaders, has got to change. At the very least, when we see this sort of messaging, we are forewarned. My annual pilgrimage to a Christian festival just sent me a promotional tweet containing a supposedly brilliant guitar player (who I’d not heard of)and the people he knows: Tim Hughes and Matt Redman who are Christian household names. Why are we still doing this??
At the centre of the difficulty we have of discerning good leaders from less-so, is our lack of understanding of gifting. Gifting does not equal being spiritually good. Mike is gifted. I’ve heard him many times.
Gifting creates spectacle. Gifting is powerful. We are drawn to and become almost, if not actually addicted to experiences. The show may be incredible. There may even be much good, but there is no guarantee of God, and we need to remain aware of this.