What is the Spirit Saying to the Church? Radical challenges and new possibilities for ministry
AS VIEWED from England, there are seismic changes taking place in Irish society and life that both directly involve the Church and indirectly impact on it. I hope a ‘critical friend’ can name at least some of those and help you reflect on your responses to them. Even or especially when those changes are difficult and painful, with falling congregations, an absence of young people, and unviable churches in some rural areas, I hope we can ask what the Spirit might be saying to the Church.
I want to begin with your plans to introduce ordained local ministry (OLM) into the life of the Church, sometimes to address the challenges of multi-parish benefices in rural contexts, and sometimes to open up new opportunities for ministry and mission in urban contexts. By offering some reflections on the experience of OLM in England I hope I can serve your aim of wanting to learn from the experience of others. But OLM focuses some crucial questions about ministry, so by beginning here we can begin to address more fundamental questions about the Church, its mission and ministries.
OLM is not simply a means to make it easier to provide ordained ministry; it seeks to embed and strengthen some key theological principles that are fundamental to all ministry. These are:
- Ministry is collaborative and shared ‘all the way down’.
- Ordained ministry is both Catholic and local, bothgiven to and emerging from the local church.
- Ministry is missional.
OLM requires collaboration. Its fundamental premise is that the whole people of God are the ministers of the gospel in a local community, that leadership in this ministry must be expressed and embodied in a team of ministers, and that ordained ministers must also share oversight in ways that are both catholic and local. So, OLM schemes in England often sought to embed and strengthen collaboration by making it a condition that before an individual can be considered as a candidate for ordination there must be a local ministry team or visible expression of collaborative ministry already active in the local church. Many made it a central plank of their training strategy that the ordinands did their learning and were formed for their ministry with and alongside others in their ministry team. By learning together in this way, ordained ministers can begin to inhabit their distinctive ministry not because they know more than others, or are somehow better than others, but because they are more aware of their particular vocation to represent and make public the ministry of the church.
The conviction and theory were right, but in my experience the culture of the Church remains resistant to change. Many teams in the C of E flourish in their first generation but do not survive newcomers; there is troubling evidence that the introduction of a new stipendiary incumbent (rector) led to the breakdown of teams and the role of an OLM. Where initially the focusing of ministry for an OLM on their immediate parish context was positive, for some at least it became a frustrating limitation; when a new incumbent was less than supportive, the desire to widen horizons and to become deployable became irresistible.
Collaboration and authority
Why is collaboration so problematic? Why is this so especially between ordained ministers when we are taught that it is essential, and when most at selection and in initial training are keen to say that they are collegial and collaborative people? There are, undoubtedly, reasons that are to do with the personalities and character of ordained ministers. Simon Walker’s work on ‘The Undefended Leader’1 is well worth pondering as he unmasks the ways in which the ordained construct the defences that serve to protect, playing out the ways in which we have learned from childhood to meet our most fundamental needs for affirmation and love. Most of us need to be needed, but where such needs are not recognised the desire to please will either make it hard to say ‘no’, leading either to the ‘heroic long suffering martyr’ or the disenchanted ‘angry prophet’. The session in this colloquium on clergy care and well-being (see below pp 127–136 ) graphically shows the ways in which clergy struggle with their role, onto which so much is projected and where there are so few boundaries offered. So it is not surprising that isolation and the desire to control become dominant features of ministerial life. Such matters need urgent attention.
But I think that there are also theological factors at work that make collaboration between the ordained difficult. One such is the way of defining ordination in relation to ministry as one of authority and authorisation. If you think of ministry as a number of tasks to be done by a range of people, the specific role of the ordained is to ‘order’ these ministries. All share in the tasks of ‘ministry’ but the ‘ministry’ of the ordained is to coordinate, lead, and oversee others. This familiar theological trope helps to specify the distinctiveness of ordination as well as affirming the ministries of others; but it raises starkly the question of what collaboration means between ordainedministers. If both are to order and oversee the ministries of others isn’t it inevitable that their relationship will be expressed in terms of a hierarchy of authority? And the most likely approach will be to say that stipendiary ministers have greater authority than ‘voluntary’ or non-stipendiary ministers.2 Between the ordained it would seem that collaboration will mean devolution or delegation.
Apostolic or local?
OLM sought to manage this by another means: some forms of ordained ministry are apostolic (that which is sent to the local church and which connects it with the Church universal); others are local. Both are vital to the life of the Church. Because apostolic ministry is peripatetic there is a distinction of function and a space in which both types of ministry can function. However, apostolic ministry is often quite sedentary! Most stipendiary clergy are not itinerant in the sense of being on the move and visitors; they are also resident for a significant period of time. In practice the parish ends up with two ‘local’ forms of ministry, but the stipendiary adds ‘apostolic’ to their authority and therefore is ‘above’ the OLM. It is striking how often the question is raised about the ‘problem’ of a local minister who cannot be moved, whose deep knowledge and experience of the community will continue when the stipendiary has gone; such ‘problems’ are experienced as threats to the incumbent and their authority. My experience is that a common, perhaps the most common, reason for an OLM to seek stipendiary or another form of deployable ministry is that they have found in practice that collaboration between the ordained is not possible.
So, OLM is left caught between a rock and a hard place: either you have to accept that this is an assistant role, and that collaboration means delegation; or you think it is an equal role and will have to find other ways of negotiating the conflicts of authority and power that will result.
Money matters
Most work on ministry ignores money, but money is a theological issue because it is another form of power. Money differentiates and either privileges or subordinates. Those who are paid and those who are voluntary are not equal. The acid test is if we cannot envisage OLMs being paid and those with apostolic oversight being voluntary then we know that we are committed to unequal patterns of ministry that will frustrate what everyone says they want by collaboration. So, is it too radical to ask if one of the deepest captivities of the Church is to a pattern of paid ministry that distorts at root what we say ministry is?
The birth of OLM included the desire for the renewal of lay ministry – hence the insistence on its place within a local ministry team. But placing far more weight on the ministry of the whole people of God and seeing the flourishing of lay ministry as the most important goal for renewal, can lead to outcomes that see ordained ministry as less necessary than effective lay leadership. Positively this has been fed by the emphasis on fresh expressions of church which are largely lay led and on pioneer ministries which are often lay; negatively this has been fed by a distrust of clericalism, on the lack of funding, on the ability of dioceses to manage lay staff more easily, and on the capacity of wealthier congregations to employ their own staff. Perversely, the greatest negative impact could be to generate resentment among clergy if they feel undervalued and being ‘replaced’ by lay staff, especially if they are perceived to get a better deal (e.g. being free to live in their own house). Or clergy anxiety can be heightened if they feel their role and authority is threatened. For example, I know of a diocese in the Church of England that is considering the appointment of lay incumbents, making some wonder ‘what the point’ of being ordained is.3
Local or contextual?
How helpful or theologically apt is the term ‘local’? Normally this is interpreted geographically, which is hardly surprising given the organisation of the western church in territorial terms. Does such local ministry, then, uncritically perpetuate a Christendom shape of the Church, and its fundamental concerns with spheres of power and control? I suggest that ‘local’ is better understood as ‘contextual’. Different contexts require different forms and expressions of ministry, indigenous and authentic to that context. This can be put in terms of class – e.g. working class communities need to express their ministry and mission in ways that are not recognised by the church’s majority middle class assumptions, which find it hard to recognise and affirm a culturally different kind of ministry, and often find educational reasons to ‘improve’ it. Or again, where Christian communities are majority non-white or non-European in heritage a contextual ministry can recognise ministry and leadership that is rooted in those different cultures. If the Church is not more closely attuned to its context it will be seen and experienced as an imposition, and it is precisely this which lies at the heart of the way religion and the church is rejected by many.
How do we know when churches need to die, and how do we help them do so in faith and hope? If we cannot ask this question, if we cannot conceive that this might be part of ‘God’s preferred and promised future’,6 are we in denial and responding out of anxiety and fear? Although our instinct might be to rescue the Church, a better question might be how you will help local churches ask the difficult spiritual questions of what ‘God’s preferred and promised future’ means for them. It may look more like death but may actually be life.
Ministry is missional. There is some evidence in England that OLMS are most likely to be people whose personality type is of a ‘Conserving, Serving Pastor’.4 My experience of OLM candidates confirms this: they often describe their vocation as responding to a local need - (I want to do more to help my church). There is nothing wrong with this but it is not sufficient and if this is the driver then it becomes problematic in terms of practising ministry as gift, and approaching ministry as something other than responding to need.
The character of grief
So, I want to conclude with some brief provocations to further thought and possibilities, not to diminish or bypass OLM but to ask what trajectory the spurs for OLM might produce.
I want to ask, first, not about what we think about developments in ministry and the Church but how we feel about this. I feel we are often not able to ask what the Spirit is saying to the Church in this time of change, because we are anxious, sometimes angry, often fearful and perhaps largely in denial. Pat Keifert helpfully names all these feelings as responses to loss and signs of grief5. Whatever we think about the changes in our societies and the way the Church is located within them, how far are our responses shaped by grief and how good are we at seeing that this is so? Grief makes us reach for and cling to certainties, it tempts us to seek to blame; those who are grieving are inclined to make poor decisions because they are bargains for the future we want, not the one that we have.
The shape of the Church to come?
I said at the start that from across the water the changes in Irish society seem seismic. If we are seeing an exponential hastening of the process of the rejection of the Church, what does this mean for the shape of the Church to come? If we are seeing the outworking of a deeply rooted anti-clericalism and distrust of religious authority, what does this mean for a clerically ordered Church such as the Church of Ireland? If past ways in which identity was assigned and constructed - a potent mix of religion and tribe - are breaking down, are former assumptions about what it means to belong as well as to believe being overturned? As I try to read the signs of the times I think it is likely:
- That some types of organised Church, mainly of a conservative, even fundamentalist disposition, will thrive, as the desire for certainty and a clarity of what one chooses to belong to will be, at least for some, of vital importance.
- That for some, belonging is more likely to mean a form of intentional community that looks more like a household church, with familial patterns of life and behaviour. The growth of small alternative ‘monastic’ communities, which is largely hidden in England, may be really significant.
- That some will seek what are sometimes called ‘peg’ communities: special gatherings and events which one attends rather than to which one belongs. They may be an ancient cathedral, or a festival, or simply coming to a one-off event in a local church. Attending, not belonging; choosing, not subscribing, define this kind of engagement.
The call of the ordained
Finally, what does this mean for God’s continued call on women and men to serve as those who are ordained? Despite our best efforts to be theological, my experience is that we fall back into the functional and the pragmatic – focusing on what we want the ordained to do, how we want them to lead, what skills and competencies we want in them – rather than asking who we want them to be.
I take inspiration from a different approach by Stephen Pickard which also helps me to return to a fundamental challenge to the ordained about collaboration. Toward the end of his superb reflections on collaborative ministry7 Pickard writes about a different approach to ordination which focuses on what he calls ‘the vowed life8. He notes the importance of vows in the act of ordination and he reflects on the way recent revisions have weakened or displaced these to become at best promises and at worst declarations of ‘resolve’. He asks whether the weight of the promises and their significance, promises that only the ordained make before the Church, community and God, have been forgotten. For Pickard it is at the heart of Christian life to live in and through the promise of God, to live in trustful faith even when experience belies it. What, or who, enables the Church to be shaped and formed in this life of trust? Pickard argues that the ordained are a ‘promising self, constituted by the God of promise’9.
For me to promise is to say I can be counted upon, and that in turn is to make me accountable for this. But who am I to say I can be counted upon? I am inconstant, any promise will be marked by breach as much as by constancy; so how am I to promise and what kind of promise is it? Pickard answers that the promise can only be made with the rider ‘by God’s grace’, which does not qualify the promise but constitutes the one who promises as one who can be counted ononly because God is faithful and constant. ‘The ordination promises bear an intensity that is paradigmatic of the way true life works... a candidate for ordination is undertaking many things in order to do one thing: to make some promises in such a way that the promises can be kept.’10 Pickard believes that unless we have a new way of identifying the relationship between ordination and ministry we will never see genuine collaboration or mutuality in ministry. As long as we see the ministry of the ordained as a set of tasks or functions or even gifts, we fail to shape and order the Church by promise, which alone opens up new possibilities.
* Full article available in printed copies.
David Hewlett
Principal of the Queens Foundation, an ecumenical theological college in Birmingham, and was lecturer in systematic theology in the C of I Theological College in Dublin in the mid to late 1980s.