It's a revelation!

My evolving plea and vision has moved on from an observation of the reality in changes in social relationship with their leadership that faith communities face when bunched together in larger groups. From the observation of the changes that occur in the dynamics of relationship I have moved on to reconsidering how local community based church communities can find within their historic faith tradition new ways of understanding themselves as a body of believers in their local context.

Gathered churches, where members come from a wide area because they share a love of the style or practice of a particular faith community will still share some of these facets, but will struggle in the area of relating to the wider community in proportion to the degree of their gathered nature. That is if everyone travels many miles to a central meeting point and nobody lives near that meeting point then connection with the local area will be difficult as everyone in the faith community is a stranger to the local community. It follows that a gathered faith community that has some deep roots locally will fare much better in making such local connection. The outworking of gathered church communities, their contribution to the spiritual ecosystem, while supporting a tradition and encouraging members will function differently to a locally embedded faith community, that tends to look to its local area as the place to expend its energy.

There have been many excellent projects and initiatives for assisting churches to grow. Some focus on technique, of doing a new thing, others work on the basis of analysis of the health of the local church. The great puzzle for many of us in leadership is why, when we and those who are along with us press "all the right buttons" will a scheme or project that works so well in one place not work in a seemingly similar place down the road. Most leaders experience this. Or similarly an approach or strategy that has worked well, being a source of blessing and encouragement one season stutters and stalls in the next.

One size does not fit all: context sensitive mission can hatch great rewards.

The human relations approach that I have been advocating goes some way to explaining this. Any plan or strategy, any new initiative will only take off and gain momentum if it has a reliable chain of transmission. This chain is made up of the links of human contact by which encouragement, hospitality and incorporation are transmitted from the heart of the community through people in who have the trust of those on the fringe to draw them into an experience of community life that will hopefully lead to a deeper relationship with the church. The "Alpha" course for example works at the introductory stage in this way. If your friend liked it and was enthused, then you yourself are more likely to want to give it a try.

This human element in the flourishing of a local faith community is a subtle chemistry. No matter how good the course or process or community project, if will stand on the strength of the degree of connection between community members. If one person changes role it can the a whole process into disfunction, if the rest of the team involved are not well enough connected to reknit the intimacy of connection within the chain of transmission.

This fragility, often overlooked is very evident in small faith communities. Quite simply there are fewer strands to knit together. This could be viewed as a weakness, but it is also a strength. Small communities, rather like small businesses have a need to work together for their survival and security of continuance. Small in this case is beautiful! Although small church communities can struggle to rise to the challenge of national or regional/diocesan initiatives in a uniform manner, they are able to come up with innovative local solutions unique to their context. This ability is to be highly prized.

So how can thinking about how the leadership relates to their varied and diverse church communities and about the internal relationships of those in those individual communities help us?

TWO ESSENTIAL THINGS

Two things come to mind:

1. Self understanding is always good; "the truth shall set you free" he said. By understanding that the local faith community is in effect a religious community, bound together by a the simple support of a common pattern of life and shared ethic, the local community gains in its sense of being representative of Christ's body in their unique setting. Great or small, it gives the local church a renewed dignity within the sweep of the Christian story at a time when an inherited understanding is dissolving before their very eyes.

Unexpressed questioning about being "a proper church" because the vicar/minister lives ten miles away (or fifty or more in Canada for example!) and is shared between half a dozen other communities can by this means be settled in people's minds and hearts. It is OK to live in this new age, the local can still be "owned" through identity with the communal rather than a figure-head element. There is no going back to how it was forty or fifty years ago. The world has changed and although human beings are still the same underneath, the way faith, its heart and its outworking, is transmitted has changed dramatically.

For me, as an example, baptised at seven months old, the faith journey took a great leap forward when the man in black (the village Rector/sole minister) arrived at our garden gate one day during the school holidays. I remember him going into the house with my Mum, presumably for the ritual cup of tea. I was about seven years old at the time. The next thing I knew, after he had peddled up the road to my friend's house for the same ritual is that the church Sunday School and Choir had a handful of new members, self included! That was the way things worked in the 1960's. Not so now and local churches will only flourish if they can play tom their strengths in a 21st Century context, very different from that of the mid-20thC.

2. Leadership, understanding the social dynamics of the situation can also be freed from the anxiety of fulfilling traditional roles in a social situation that is beyond their physical and psychological limits. Time, energy and mental "head space" thus released can be put into service of helping the local communities gain in self understanding and helping often fledgling self supporting community life to begin to gain in confidence and to thrive.

This change in role, for which preparation is patchy both for those in leadership and for those they will be working and praying alongside in the local communities has been recognised from the time of the Church of England's "Tiller Report" of the early 1980's. In the report, looking at how ministry could be resourced in the years ahead the role of the leader of many church/faith communities was seen as a key issue to be addressed. At a meeting of a local clergy "fraternal" to celebrate 25 years of the reports publication a few years ago John Tiller, now retired reiterated that this role is still not properly understood, defined and supported.

A NEW REVELATION

Getting these two things right we need a new understanding of what a healthy faith community looks like, without a full time resident minister and an understanding of the role of overseer. Both these factors in he church of the 21st Century need to be shaped and informed by the way in which human beings connect with each other in communities with intimacy and sufficient depth to foster belonging and incorporation. If an understanding and pattern of living can be formulated to allow leadership and communities to thrive in a new dynamic balanced and reciprocal relationship I believe their is scope for a renaissance in the spiritual health of the church, both local and national. Communities now in despair or resignation could find new hope and their voice again; a voice in praise of God for the wonderful works he has done.

Small is beautiful. This church serves a pop. of 230 and often has over 100% attendance on Christmas Eve!

More to follow... some exercises to help aid local groups think anew about what it means to be the faithful people of God in their locality and to feel good about it! A bit overdue for a recipe as well...

Plea for person shaped living

Can you see where we are going yet?

Looking back on this most recent series of posts I think I can see amidst the waffle and overlapping that have come from my stream-of-reflection brain something of a thread. (I certainly feel I know more about my reactions to aspects of my ministry that bring a sense of joy or frustration, a glow of pride in seeing others growing in confidence and an understanding of the vague guilt at not being all things to all people all the time!)

The thread, having observed and sometimes experienced over two decades of new initiatives, plans and expressions that would deliver church "growth" is that so often such initiatives do not fully engage with the essential nature of human beings as we are. We are back to those circles of intimacy again.

 In some aspects they might, for example, remember the Alpha Course; it worked on a human level, being led by a core of 3 or 4 people a  group of up to 12 would learn together through developing relationships and an openness to discuss the issues to hand in an intimate space. Hmm, heard that pattern of relationship before...

"Messy Church", as well as its informality. tends to bring together a dozen to a score of helpers under the inspiration of two or three leaders. The  attendees, usually numbered some four to eight times the team strength become known within the limits of the time together, which allows space for chat and eating and drinking together; again all aspects of a healthy community. All aspects that fit our knowledge of how we relate to each other.

My plea and suggestion is that through accident or design elements of these initiatives have been sustainable and replicated because their format fits the way humans are "built" to relate to each other. It follows that any strategy that does not take into account the specifics of our sociability and our psychological capacity to build forms of intimate community will fail.

In multi church settings this must cause us to re-evaluate the way individual settings and the leadership, both local and overarching understand themselves and their shared vocation. If we are trying to patch old wine-skins with new the result will be a haemorrhage of the "good wine" of fellowship due to stress in confusion of leadership roles and lack of intimate community connection.

To achieve such re-evaluation that can lead to a cycle of healthy fellowship growth a people of God in a particular place will need to have the curiosity, inspiration and willingness to look at themselves anew. To  rediscover themselves an embryonic religious community. Not embryonic in terms of existence, but in how they see themselves. This is not new some of the local faith communities in the UK have faced incredible change and have been going well over 1000 years without realising it! Over those centuries their common life has been found in diverse situations from interdependent communal feudalism, desolation of plague, war, the rule of patronage and absolute monarchy, through industrial revolution, to the freedoms of an age of universal suffrage, individualism and limitless communication in a global village.

We should not be surprised then if the patterns of 1000 or even 100 years ago no longer fit. While we as human beings are still essentially the same creatures that came to my home landscape in search of game and berries 20 000 years ago our social context has changed rapidly. Taking the best of our tradition from ages of transition in the past, be it post Roman Imperialism, the rise of the nation state, the fragmentation of Christian Europe in the 16thC or the ages of revolution, the practice of Christian community has been a source of stability and inspiration in times of transition.

We are in such times now in Western Europe. To reform our understanding of ourselves through a human centred approach to community and oversight, establishing space for growth, setting limits and patterns of replication based upon our human capacity is to my mind the key to survival, integrity and a seedbed for growth. "The truth", Jesus said, "shall set you free". By facing the truth about our own God given capacity, both in his generosity and in our limitations - we are not after all gods ourselves - gives rise to approaches that are honest in their demands and grounded in natural human relatedness.

Such a pattern of community, of communion, brings the gift of God, of the self and the "other" into a dynamic relationship. It is the outworking of Jesus summary of the Law of Moses, "to love the Lord your God with all your heart.. and your neighbour as yourself". Such dynamic relational commitment is expressed, at its root, in baptism and confirmation declarations. There is a voluntary discipline in committing to such a pattern of life, but one that breeds the rich rewards of joy and peace.

These most desirable of human experiences, joy in life and inner peace are in short supply in today's individualised Western world. They are the stuff on which a healthy sustainable society is built. With few other sources of such societal glue on the horizon faith communities focussed on worship and service have an open door to fill the vacuum. This vision of person shaped mission, local, outward looking and sustainable, drawing on deep faith traditions and based on natural human intimacy to me offers hope.

But how do you begin to explore these ideas, how can you create the space in people's  heads and connect with the hunger in their souls that will incline the heart towards a new mode of being for local  faith communities?

Good question! I will share a few thoughts with you in a few days, but Haybox theologian is on the move again tomorrow. Farewell to Dorset and the hospitality of the Society of St Francis at Hilfield Friary, you have provided a fertile seedbed for the imagination. With new thoughts rattling in the brain, off home again for a bit, before more Sabbatical adventures call!

Time to head out through the gate: 

The Lord will bless our going out and our coming in now and for evermore (Psalm 121) 

Under the bonnet for a bit of a "tune up" - of hood if across the Atlantic!

SUSTAINABLE FAITH COMMUNITIES

Having described a simple base or foundation for faith community life the next step is to consider what is sustainable for the faith community and how can the leadership best serve a neighbourhood of faith communities spread over many miles of countryside or an area of urban landscape where centres of community are hard to discern. I am, going to use the diagram of the circles of intimacy to help in this process.

To be sustainable we have discerned that the levels of intimate contact community members have with each other have to overlap with a sufficiency that generates a shared identity and interrelationship necessary for a sense of belonging and fellowship. At the most basic level a core of three or four members are needed who can be the keepers of the community's life. this could be a mix of church warden/deacons, lay readers/ preachers/ local priests alongside the added oversight of the overall shared leader. This is the simplest form of church community, a temporary "community of mission" we might call it. Such a nucleus, be it a new "plant" or the remnant of a previously stronger community must be considered a temporary stage, the beginning or the base from which to grow a new community based church

PARTNERSHIP IN LEADERSHIP

Around that core leadership, with its gospel call to energise the care, creativity and organisation of the faith community is what we might call the heart of prayer and service, the committed, who while not in hands on leadership of all things have a share in the active ministry and mission of the church. Some church communities are just this, a reflection of Jesus gathering in the upper room of the twelve and the women, the twelve to a score of individuals who are the base for a sustainable faith community. As well as Sunday congregation this might well include staff at a local school that is close in relationship to the local church, who minister to local children even though they mostly do not live locally. Other partners in mission may also be included.

For the leader of multi-church settings to know this group of people well and at personal depth across all the centres in their care is a good base for oversight. Such a grouping, as we have said in earlier posts will be for the leader the equivalent to Jesus sending out the 72 in pairs or the Pentecost 120 who gathered in the upper room. To be priest/minister to this group will be a full time job in itself.

At this point we come to faith communities which are sufficient in size to have regular (for which read at least monthly) participation within the local church. As well as Sunday morning worship this might include mid -week events. For the individual community this is the 72 to 120. Although it will be impossible for the overall leader to know this incorporated diaspora in its fullness, to the same degree as they know the leadership, it is vital that the congregations are themselves known with a depth of intimacy that allows service, prayer and pastoral care to be a natural and normal experience. While the overall leader will struggle to know such a spread of people in depth it is not impossible for them to all be known. This is where the vital role of those present in the locality is to the fore. We could go as far to say that it is the essential vocation of  the local team, the core "3 or 4" to hold this knowledge and connection.

Hospitality, care and a bit of organisation will help here if the local team is to allow this wider group to feel fully part of the local church community and drawn to the fullness of its mission and communal life, to be drawn to a closer walk with God "seven whole days, not one in seven" to quote 17thC George Herbert's hymn.

The local team is essential then for the sustainability of local church communities. It also holds that the strength of a local church community's life will stand on a core of people who are the pastoral glue holding the relationships of the community in connection. This pastoral connection, not one that has not been emphasised in my own tradition as strongly in the past as it might have been - that sort of thing was the "vicar's job" needs to come to the fore in our age. The role of Wardens, Self Supporting Ministers, Readers and other ministers called out by the local congregation, all in partnership with the overall leader is vital to the health of the local church in its unique location.

Such a dynamic is more familiar to those with a Methodist background, where the local team has always been the continuing bedrock of the life of the congregation, with circuit ministers, who traditionally move on every 5 years to a new pastorate. (As my Grandfather, tongue in cheek, used to say of the clergy in his deep Herefordshire accent - he lived to be 88 and saw out any number of clergy over that time - "they cums and they guz, we tacks no notice O they").

Cathedral congregations are also used to such a dynamic, with a core of three or four Canons at the heart of the chapter that has oversight of the often dispersed and gathered faith community. A number of three or four lead faces in the worshipping community, that core, the Peter, James and John or Petra, Jane and Jean works for local communities. It gives a balance between stability and variety that is comfortable for a community, that engenders confidence through knowing and being known well by those "at the helm".

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

For me I see that the future of the church scattered across the landscape of cityscape or landscape, while much discussed in terms of organising things, managing resources or reordering for mission and growth will only thrive if\and only if the human element is taken into account.

Jesus parable about the laughable actions of the man who sets to build a tower without the resources or to go into battle without counting the human resources he has come to mind. The half built tower, exhausting the available resources becomes an abandoned folly. The one who goes into battle without resource to succeed will see defeat and loss through facing pressures too great to overcome.

Far better to build a guest hall maybe, or sue for peace while there is still time.

Personally I think it is time for a social reformation of my church's approach to its ministry and mission. The old parish system based on the governance of Medieval economic units, supported by tithes, patronage and feudalism is crumbling. Collaborative thinking in terms of ministry is positive and many places have seen a great growth in vocations to serve in many varied capacities of volunteer ministry. The danger at present is that such patterns of ministry need strong support through mentoring and local communities good preparation in understanding and working out such new patterns. Such resourcing can be difficult to maintain in times of shortage, both in people and money.

Better it seems to me to reorganise our structure not as a stretching of old models with an equal of rebalancing with the long tradition of Christian Community life. My reasoning for this is that while originally dispersing oversight on a parish or community basis i.e. "priest, parish, people", made great sense, both socially and economically for many centuries this is no longer the case in our age.

Examples of remodelling are not new; for example the church of the Solomon Islands is sustained through the work of the Melanesian Brotherhood, started under the inspiration of Victorian giants as Bishop's Selwyn and Patterson. Other world mission partners, be it base communities in South America or pioneering churches in Asia demonstrate that there are other ways of understanding ourselves. Closer to home in the UK religious communities, new and old, exist in parallel with the parish system, as they did in Medieval time.

New growth from old wood: a sign!

ECOLOGY OF VOCATION

this is a great phrase, a throw away almost from James Fowler's book "Becoming Adult: Becoming Christian. (page 94 by the way!)

While many local faith communities will continue to exist as they have done in the past, many already are not. I hope by now you can see where my reflections are leading me. In our time I can see that we might be on the verge of a re-flowering of a diverse ecology in church community life. Where the local faith community, prepared and understanding its situation can see itself as volunteer community of the faithful in its location. For my Anglican tradition this will mean a community that is grounded in worship, open in spirit, hospitable, supportive and outward looking in the community.

As a guide to self understanding the church might consider something similar to the Methodist Covenant Service. An annual event, based on a meal together, where the community reminds itself of its mission and commits itself to the next steps ahead (a Mission Action Plan perhaps stating the goals to be achieved and the resources that are to be committed to them in simple achievable steps agreed by the local community).

Locally the leadership of Wardens, Self Supporting ministers and others will be central in holding this pattern of community life together. A degree of rotation of office might be helpful so not everyone bears the responsibility of leading everything all the time. (In an Anglican context I have wondered if Church Council members, rather like their civic counterparts, Parish Councillors ought to take it in turns at being warden/chairman..... but that is another story!)

The role of the overseer in this case is to help the communities shape their common life in worship and service and provide the living link with the greater church. They are to have a role, alongside daily pastoral work of being the primary mentor and critical friend to the communities in their charge. To be the nurturing "midwife"  of good leadership, a Barnabas figure in spirit, able to encourage and guide.The overseer embodies the place of the local church within the communion of the overall faith tradition - Church of England in my case.

This role is different from that of a parish priest/minister in a traditional singular setting. It needs preparing for both in terms of technique, but also sensitivity towards a persons gifts for the role and their preparation in terms of the social and psychological understanding of themselves and their communities they will \need to flourish in this task.

Enough for today!

We shall know fully, even as we have been fully known (pp 1 Cor 13:12)

No recipe today, but further down, if you have the endurance to read on, a nice picture of some of our tomatoes from last year that will hopefully be repeated again later this Summer. Incidentally, the tomato as we know it is  a modern invention, the result of breeding central American plant stock over centuries to produce the varieties we love today. Genetic scanning techniques (not "engineering") recently introduced have helped speed up the development of new varieties which go so well with some chopped Feta cheese and a bit of simple olive oil and vinegar dressing.... Yumm.

Many people have spent as lot of time and energy in the last 30 years or more trying to define what "the local church" is. There are some good summaries and Robin Greenwood's "Practising \Community" 1996 is a good start, although he is writing pre-internet age and so the context we live in has changed incredibly fast since published. Email, Facebook, Twitter, Skipe and Facetime have all transformed the way we connect to each other and the world.

Particularly for rural areas, where the internet has reduced cultural isolation and eased local economic dependency. We have to remember that the "parish" system, which has carpeted all of Europe for over 1000 years is based on local economic, relational inter-dependence. Such dependence no longer exists for much of the continent or in other parts of the world. For example, if a piece of farm machinery breaks down the replacement part probably comes from the other side of the world rather than the local blacksmith's forge, What remains for many is a sense of attachment to a location and if that location has been chosen from amongst many an association of values and identification with the location that, for the time being makes it home and they a citizen of it. It might be that the church, a place marking specific events in life or the architecture of the building or the community of the faithful is part of this association and identity.

It is certainly part  of the labour of the local church community to make it so. Personally I challenge congregations to ask themselves something along the lines of the following: "If you asked a neighbour for three or four things that make our community a great place to live would the church be on the list?" My hope and challenge in this age of dispersed circles of intimacy is that the local church makes it it's mission to so serve the local community at large that is experienced  as one of the main, if not the hub of community life.

In the new economy of church oversight that we are moving into there are as many different sorts of church as their are building in which they meet in. Every one is unique, shaped by those who have gone before and the members of the faith community in our own day. Some will be small and very simple in dynamic and their pattern of activity, others much more complex, perhaps many generals and not many foot soldiers. Yet all have some things in common as part of the church of God, in all its different expressions.

Firstly that it is God's church not ours locally or our denomination's. It follows that God calls people to faith, a faith marked by the initiation of baptism. By virtue of our baptism all called into the service of Christ. my own tradition, the Church of England still expresses this mainly, though not exclusively, through  the open provision of worship and pastoral service to every parish community.

Not a bad start. Such a pattern can be seen as a burden, too many churches, too few people all scattered around "spinning plates" ever faster to keep things going as they used to be. In this way of looking at things the church becomes a hindrance to its members. If we turn the such difficulties on their head and look at what God has provided the picture can look different.I have been led to reflect on this through looking at the Anglican guidelines on the formation and governance of religious communities "The Handbook of the Religious Life"(2004, Canterbury Press).

In the formation of a new community members are guides to start out with a simple pattern or rule of life and practice it. After a period of some time if it proves stable and the purpose of the community has become clear they can then clarify and formalise it with the help of a bishop's Visitor or facilitator, binding themselves by vows to their new community. The entire process can take three to five years. The "magic number" again crops up that four core members are needed if the community is to be established and seven upwards if it to appoint its own leader. This is a common pattern throughout Western monasticism and I believe contains a wisdom based on centuries of natural faith community development that can help us again today.

If we are able to marry these threads together we can see that the body/fellowship of Christ in a village/district/town is the God given resource for providing Christian hospitality in worship and service. By their baptism all are part of this, bringing their gift to this common good of all God's children in that place, who ever they may be.

The resource might be keen or "solid", it might be large or small, like a small religious community of a few souls, but it is called to "be" as the Holy Spirit has enabled it in particular locations. I think here we need an honesty check. As the saying goes "clementines are not small oranges". In our new century we need to encourage faith communities to let go of past patterns of church activity and not measure themselves by what was done in former ages and to be cautious of the temptation to take their temperature and judge their health against the latest programmes of activity that the franchised para-church bodies market as the panacea for success.

Wouldn't life be boring if all tomatoes looked and tasted the same. "You who have ears to hear, hear"!

While the mission of local churches will always be fostered within the hospitality of worship and service, local expression will vary depending on local circumstance. As local communities are bunched into ever greater administrative units (the local minister where I am writing in Dorset, while on retreat, has 16 church communities in his care) some will be blessed with a gift of providing specific ministry, e.g. a "Messy Church", a pastoral visiting team, Mother's Union Branch or "house group", not all will have all these giftings and the sharing of good gifts across sub clusters or communities, a form of"local charism sharing" is to be encouraged. Cultivating a generosity of spirit between neighbouring church communities and disarming jealousies between God's children to allow this to happen in a spirit of joy when any is blessed in a particular gift is a tough part of the mission given to those in oversight.

To recap on this posting, trust, hospitality and a generosity of spirit are needed if the churches are to thrive in their unique context. Provision of worship and service to the community at that heart of the call of Christ, into which he has called all baptised/dedicated in his name.

Next time more of a look at ministry "teams" and the role of overseer and how the circles of intimacy idea and the balance of capabilities diagrams can help us map a way through the current times.....

Laying foundations of understanding the local church prior to rebuilding

So to recap, I have reflected in some detail on my experience of ministering over several distinct parishes and their communities. We have considered the main factors that come into play when in a position of oversight of several centres rather than one or two.

Firstly, that we must consider the psychological and interpersonal capacity of ourselves as human beings to relate to others intimately as this will shape the relationship between the leader and the communities in their care. Failure to understand the limits of our humanity in this context and to recongnise that training and instinct might be pressurising leaders to retain the models of engagement  that served them well in the singular setting may well result in strain and misunderstanding.

Secondly that ministering as the leader of many faith communities will incline by virtue of the needs of the day, to cause leaders to have to move outside their "box" in terms of how their time and energy is expended. This can lead to a squeeze on the areas of ministry in which they are gifted and find great satisfaction into a mode of being whereby they are giving much, but receiving back little from their ministry. This is a sacrifice by those called to leadership in its current form and yet we question the wisdom of this as a long term solution to the need for oversight of faith communities and as a means of ensuring "the cure of souls" over wide and diverse areas.

The remaining areas to address in the light of this change in the structure of church deployment are the effect this has on the communities themselves, including the role of local volunteer ministers and developing new understandings of the role of the "full time" ministers that move away from "parish priest" or minister and allow all Christ's brothers and sisters in ministry to fulfil their vocation in a way that is sustainable for the church at large and the good health of all.

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So what is the effect on communities that have historically had a minister/priest of their own but now have to share, to quote Betjeman's poem, "with the one next door they've always hated"! The change has been rapid. For an example, the Church of England, which which I am most familiar, within a lifetime the number of full time "live in" clergy has reduced by over a half, with a further reduction of a third on current levels in the next decade. Since the early 1970's for example, my own benefice comprises of parishes formally served by four resident priests. Therefore the settled pattern of pastoral care over much of England has been fragmented. as it has in Wales where the church faces similar challenges.

For the congregation the loss of a resident priest can lead to the stalling and paralysis of a church congregation, as it has been put " a ship without a rudder". The loss of a prime mover, a visible presence who has the authority to initiate and carry things through to completion is felt by the Lord's humble foot soldiers, many who are willing to do things and "help", but are not confident to lead and initiate church initiatives. Life slows down, activities gradually cease and the life of the church and it's presence in the community is reduced.

The internal dynamics of the congregation's internal personal relationships with each other can also suffer without a priest to whom they may confess their frustrations and difficulties over "that man/woman!". The role of the resident on the spot leader who acts as reconciler, spiritual guide and teacher is also lost, resulting in a greater degree of unresolved conflicts, a cooling of spirituality and  for the faith community a loss of space to deepen their relationship with God.

In a multi centre ministry the leader is more distant from the congregations. Possibly only seen once a month or less as they move around from church to church. The points at which relationships can be built are therefore limited. Also, with many more people, scattered in different locations, with the attendant "overhead" of mental engagement that scattering brings through having to keep a mental map of clusters of relationships compared to the map of a large gathered community those points, contact between leader and a community when they occur are not as strongly embedded in the intermittent shared faith narrative the leader and the community have over time.

This is simply as it is, our humanity allows us no more than to relate to\each other in any greater depth than that which God has given us. By looking again at the "circles of intimacy" diagram we have to accept that this is a natural mode of relationship that we have to work with if we are to remodel the church in our day.



The difficulty we have is that we have strongly inherited models based on this natural pattern and our current arrangements in resourcing the life of the local church no longer fit the actuality of our psychological make up. The church is broad and ancient though and as a body which like the wise teacher is one "who brings forth treasures both old and new" I am confident we have within our faith tradition the bits and pieces, models and prior examples of practice to meet the challenges of our age.

Key to how we continue to develop healthy Christian communities within the wider community is how we maintain a sense of fellowship and a degree of intimacy within particular faith communities. A level of personal overlap that means that a passer-by or visitor can sense the Holy Spirit at work in a group of people, who recognise themselves as  bound together in a faithful witness to Christ, however humble and simple that witness is.

Key to creating the seedbed in which the Spirit can sow such seeds of hope is a bond of trust between the local community and the wider church, embodied in the neighbouring parish/congregation or overarching Diocese/district/circuit. Without trust and a feeling of fellowship, of being in "it" all together, generosity and openness are replaced by suspicion and the closed hand. Building of such trust is hard labour, like the breaking up of long unused ground to prepare it for sowing. It can not be skimped or else any number of plans, initiatives or drives imposed from above, however well intentioned will be passively resisted and bear little good fruit.

So what are the models that could help us reform local ecclesiology for the mission context of our peculiar age. More to follow.....

Hilfield Friary; a few pictures... next installment of words to follow

The way to go

Approaching down the steep hill

A sustainable community - solar roof on the chapel

A pleasant view to look out on

The gateway to prayer and the gardens - just depends which way you look at it

St Francis and courtyard

looking towards the chapel and shop

All brothers and sisters welcome

A romantic post today, inspired by a visit to Cerne Abbas


Mid Summer Afternoon at Cerne Abbas, June 2014

The leaf dappled air
Thick, smooth as melting butter
Alive and at rest
With the insect dance

Air heady, drowsy
With mid summer's scent
Of elderflower,
wild garlic
And biscuit dry hay

Above the siesta slow village
And Abbey field
The giant sleeps
Sun kissed on his orchid bed

Sleeps and dreams
Of days of his birth
An age past, of which
All would know
But only he can tell.

Spirographs and red lentil spaghetti

A great and colourful dish to go with white or brown spaghetti.

Ingredients (to serve four)

75 g of spaghetti per person, or 100g for a lumberjack, long distance cyclist etc.

1 Medium onion (red if yoy can get it)
1 clove of garlic
1 large red pepper
1 400g tin of plum or chopped tomatoes
1/2 a tin of water
100g of red lentils (rinse before use)
A good squeeze of tomato puree
1 tsp of paprika 
A few twists of black pepper

You need a small to medium sized pan with a lid to do cook this.

Warn up oil in the pan and while that is warming chop the onion finely and the garlic too. Soften these in the pan in the usual way. While they are sizzling rinse the lentils and add to the pan. Once the onion is soft add the paprika, black pepper and puree and blend with the onion and lentils. Straight away add the tin of tomatoes and using the same tin half a tin of water. (Hint: if this is from a warm kettle it will speed things up a tad.) 

Bring the mix to a simmer and then turn down to a gentle simmer. Put the lid on. This will take about 45 minutes to cook on the hob, so go and do something else for a bit. Do remember to give it a stir every few minutes though to stop the lentils sticking to the bottom of the pan. (If it looks like it is getting a bit dry you can add a bit more water. It just depends on how absorbent your lentils are.) 

Bring your water to the boil for the spahetti and time it to go on 10 minutes before you plan to serve.  At the end of the time you should have a nice thickened sauce and the lentils should be soft and almost dissolving.

Serve with the spaghetti and a good grating or handful of shaving of hard Italian cheese.

p.s I am staying at Hilfield Friary with the Franciscan community in Dorset at the moment and last night for supper we had a great open topped pie, or flan, which had the above red lentil mix as the pie/flan filling. Topped with the grated cheese and grilled lightly it makes a great dish to serve with a green salad.


Now spirographs. Remember these? A generation of us had great fun and were occupied for many hours making beautiful picture-grams I suppose you would call them, all through the simplicity of gearing and epicyclic geometry.

What have these got to do with church and community life in relation to team members and especially team leaders I hear the "blogosphere" cry out. Well....

Take a look at the diagram below. Lots of overlapping circles and paths of orbit around moving centres, all symmetrical in this case form a regular pattern with rings of density and areas of relative space.

To my mind it reminds me of the group dynamics of a church community within its broader geographic community.

Life, unlike the Spirograph diagram is usually more like a bowl of spaghetti than a geometric pattern. But I hope you can get the idea; a community holds together when its members have overlapping intimate connections of sufficient depth to create a shared spirit, a shared sense of purpose and identity. This is especially true if the members overlap in their sense of and actual experience of connection with the community's leadership.

In a church setting this manifests itself in the knowledge that the leadership "know me and my situation" also that there is a bond of trust and openness grown through shared community experiences, again manifested in a sense of "we understand eachother, we have a shared story".

In singular settings; "one church, one priest/minister, one parish/community" this pattern is easily understood and lived, day by day and week by week. Once "the minister" becomes a team leader and their time is shared out over several centres this mode of being breaks down. 

As I have posted in "help my brain is full", the circle of people with whom the leader has intimate overlap changes. It is no longer focused on the local gathered congregation within a community, but upon the leadership teams of those congregations. The leader's spirograph diagram would look like wheel of whorls, united by an overlapping whorl in the centre or hub. This hub is the circle of intimate pastoral contact made up of that leadership of the local congregations.

This should not surprise us. For at least two or three decades the churches have been addressing the changes in deployment by encouraging and empowering collaborative and shared practice in ministry. Diverse patterns of local leadership, shaped by the work of the Holy Spirit and the encouragement of the church in calling people out for such roles has produced a rich harvest of gifted lay ministry for local churches. This is good. What has not been recongnised is how this impacts on the remaining full time leaders, who are now trying to stand in the shoes of three, four or maybe five or more ministerial leaders who would have been posted to to the same communities only a generation ago.

So what is the impact? (We'll take the bad news first, before looking for positives!)

I would head it under the following areas:

• Loss of clear role in the community
• Sense of dislocation and a lingering guilt at not "doing it right"
• Withdraw from traditional local community; i.e. the minister becomes a seldom seen stranger
• Rebalancing of ministry with a bias away from the creative towards the more administrative and human relationship aspects.

LOSS OF CLEAR ROLE

I have covered this in some depth already, but to recall; simply by not being deeply rooted in one community, but present, in theory at least, for one or two days a week here and there spread over many communities means that as minister/priest you does not get to know the community or be as well known as would be the case in a singular setting. This creates a distance between minister and community, a distance of understanding and shared community narrative. The role as a community leader is lost in that the leader is not in a position to speak for or speak to the community with the authority of their accumulated knowledge of the community and its people. The leader does not have the same depth and virtue of intimate connection with the community through a shared life and comes more as an outsider, rather than as one who can to speak out as one who is of them, if not from them.

SENSE OF DISLOCATION

For the leader of multi-church/community settings the work load is no lighter than for one community. However the pastoral instinct welling up within practitioners, learned and shaped during initial ministerial training or by memories of experience of life as it was when they were younger leaves a strong imprint. Clergy "know" what it means to be a proper, traditional parish/congregational based minister and have feeling of the connection they believe they should have with those in their care. When they find themselves providing pastoral care for a collection of leadership teams in several churches that equates to the weight of care they used to have for a singular context and feel they should still be giving to each of the congregations members a sense of inadequacy, guilt and failure can stalk around their mind and heart. This sense is further felt in relation to the wider local communities, who have an expectation that the now part time minister is still belong to them in terms of being first call for community roles.

When it is not possible to fulfil communities expectations and the minister has to decline being in charge of organising five village fetes or chairing three alms-house committees or being an active leading school governor at four church schools within their benefice great hurt, puzzlement and a sense of rejection is felt by the local community. The minister/priest themselves may well feel bewildered at squaring their inability to fulfil all the roles and expectations of the communities upon them that were fulfilled by their predecessors over generations.

They might be able to reflect on the situation and come to terms with the limits placed upon them due to their time and energy. However even if they are able to come to terms themselves with having to say "No" many more times than in a singular setting, there will still be a greater distance of intimacy between them and the community organsisations/partners who's invitations to serve have had to be declined.

WITHDRAWAL FROM WIDER COMMUNITY

An ivevitable result of being the leader/minister in multi-community settings where in the past there were many such leader/ministers is, as illustrated above, is withdraw by the team leader of the church from involvement in the local community. As I have written earlier "One wo/man can only do one wo/man's work in a day". The time and energy that is available in a singular setting for community engagement is reallocated to sustaining in the first instance, the life of the congregations in a multi-church setting. Any availability of the leader for wider community engagement beyond that of occasional pastoral offices (hatch, match and "despatch" as we call them in the trade!) will have to be chosen with care and targeted if it is to be fair to all the communities under their care. It can boil down to choosing which fete or Remembrance parade, which school sports day or Nativity play, Village parish assembly or senior citizens lunch to attend. It can take great mental juggling to prioritise the personal pleas and at times psychological manipulation to decide on the complexity of targeting which to attend for best pastoral contact and visible community presence or which major community projects to partner.

I think you can see, it is not easy to full the shoes of the ghosts of community life past when the priest/minister was present, if not the leading hand in organising community events and projects. The loss of this connection deserves serious thought. For the nominal or non committed members of the community such events are the connection, however tenuous with the church as a beating heart and hub of community life; a well supplying the glue and social capital that makes a community, function as a community. 

The withdrawal from such traditional roles leaves the churches out of the loop of community life. The community will continue, but if this absence can not be addressed, it will be a different place without the incarnate recognisable visible living presence of the church of God. Sure the building in which God's people meet will still be present in the community and be valued highly as a focus of community identity. However, where once the recognised spiritual leadership of the community's voice was strong and steering, present and pastoring, it is in danger,with the exception of those in the intimate circles of the leader's care, of becoming being an almost forgotten echo of a former golden age that has passed away in a manner similar to that of the veterans of conflicts and ages past.

REBALANCING OF MINISTRY

Time for diagram!

Here is the Haybox theologian's map of ministerial capacity. It is based on the fact that no matter how well trained or organised someone is their ministry will always contain certain elements or dimensions that are common to the human elements of the role to which they are called and sent. They will also have a personal limit to how much of their capacity they can give to their role over the long term, which is represented by the outer circle.

I have distilled the areas, represented by the touching circles within the capacity of the individual, from my own experience into three areas of gifting and capability. I would hope these would be found within the capacity of anybody called and recognised as having a public community office in the churches. Being three there are Trinitarian echoes of the ordering, creativity and pastoral nature of God, as understood in the Christian tradition.

These three hallmarks recognise that ministry is expressed through being or demonstrating;

• A creative spark in being a catalyst for and/or provider of experiences that create space for God in the lives of others.
• Being an agent of health and healing in human relationships.
• Having a sufficiency of the gift of "administration" in organising themselves and "stuff" so that people, location and processes aid and support the creative and human-relationships threads.

I am not suggesting that everyone called to ministry in the church will have these gifts in equal measure; as St Paul expressed, some are called to be evangelists, some preachers, others.... However if any Ministry is to be Christlike in its concern for others and connection to a Christian community with a degree of intimacy that reflects the life of the early church congregation all three will need to be recognised in that person's nature.

An evangelist for example might well be strong in the areas of creativity and in human relationships, a pastor within the areas of administration and human relationships, a liturgist strong in creativity and administration. Get the picture? All in ministry will have a varied mix of these giftings according to God's grace. Where the church struggles is that it tends to label and commission all as "ministers" or "priests" or "vicars". This is OK and fine in a singular setting where particular gifts and strengths can allow "round pegs to be placed in round holes", i.e. the needs of a church matched to the gifts of an individual minister.

In multi church/parish settings each community will have different needs. A browse through many job advertisements for new ministers with the profiles of the needs of the communities will often read as a cut and paste job between two or more lists of what is being sought. A use for that redaction criticism glossed over during biblical studies training!

What is seldom recognised is that the person who comes to fill the role will, by virtue of the social dynamics that come from attending to multiple settings, whatever their individual gifting will have to expend much of their capacity and energy in ensuring the processes that underpin church ministry run smoothly, listening to and pastoring the leadership teams and being the "fire engine" who sorts out all the emergencies and misunderstandings between people that are part of community life. Often not stated these functions will take up a large part of the leaders time and energy.

The “map” of how their capacity for ministry is expended will be distorted away from their natural gifting to a point of balance between the demands of the context and their particular passion of faith. Looking something like this...

                                           

This shift in how a pastor's physical, psychological and spiritual capacity is expended in their ministry if it is not acknowledged and understood by the individual minister and those in their care can become a source of frustration, misunderstanding and lead to a breakdown of trust between a "priest and the people".

I can vouch for this effect in that the ministerial loading of my role, gift and joy that it is, has certainly not reduced over the last 19 years. What has changed is the balance of the load. Becoming leader of five active parish churches has multiplied the pastoral problems to be resolved and administration to be managed. It has also given me the blessing of many leadership teams, who all need support. I do not have a bigger brain, more hours in the day than I used to have and my gifts of empathy have not expanded five fold either. The result is that my energies are focused more on the administration and pastoral care aspects of ministry to the detriment of the creative side beyond that which is encompassed within normal patterns of ministry,e.g. preaching and flexing worship to go with the flow of the occasion.

Ideas for new expressions of community life and outreach might well come to mind, but the time and energy to see them through to fruition are often squashed by the day to day activities which need to be attended to.

I have been very blessed in that having lived in my original two parishes for almost ten years before expanding my parish pastoral care to others also that I can "trade" on my knowlwdge of the original villages, which I know well. I can also see that I will never know the other communities in their broad sense as well. I am also aware the over the last eight years I have begun to loose touch with the wider community of my original parishes. this is to be expected as my natural capacity for intimacy and contact with others is transferred from the singular setting to pastoring the leadership and congregations across the many.

Thank God for the great team of local volunteer ministers within our benefice/district, earthed in the local communities, who "live and move and have their being" within each local community. Their witness, often not fully understood is a living link between the church and the community.

By now you are probably thinking "what a misery" this guy is. However what I wished to communicate is the fact of my experience and call for honesty in how the leaders of the church are trained and how congregations and communities can be best prepared for the new patterns that are emerging.

We can not live by the patterns of the immediate past; but I believe if we dig deep within our Christian heritage we will find, within that rich treasure-box, the resources to reform the churches for the 21st Century. Reform it's sense of community identity and leadership roles such that they give rise to positive cycles of engagement within congregations and the communities from which they are drawn.

Key in this is for the churches to recognise the call of those with oversight of many flocks as being a particular gift requiring distinctive training and resourcing for both leaders, those who share their ministry and the congregations/communities to who are top be in their care.

In my next “chapter” I will outline further thoughts on where this might lead...

Help, my brain is full!

Well I promised a recipe, so here is a quick and easy rich salad dressing that is great on a warm day when you have settled down for a relaxing meal or light lunch and fancy something with  depth and zing as a dressing. I call it 'tomato and herb dressing".

200ml  Rapeseed oil (olive will do if you haven't got rapeseed oil)
40ml     Red wine vinegar
1tsp       Honey
1-2tbsp Tomato puree
1tsp        Ground mustard seeds (or crunchy "Dijon" mustard)
1/2tsp     Sea Salt
2 tbsp       Tarragon (and/or Thyme or Marjoram) dried or freshly chopped

Mix all up in a jar and serve. If you have had to resort to dried herbs then prepare a bit in advance to give the herbs time to re-hydrate in the mix. If you want a North African twist, Zatar is also good choice for the herb content.

So that is the commercial break, what about this circles thing and church and ministry I have been hedging around for the last two posts.

Something is hatching!

The starting point for this series of posts stems from my experience in remaining in the same position, living in the same community, serving the same church and community, but over time gaining extra responsibilities as well. God is good, folk often say and I have to agree I have been blessed in all the added responsibilities that have come and gone over the last 19 years. However I have observed that while my personal capacity for the technique of ministry has grown with experience and things that used to take ages to prepare now take much less time and effort, my underlying capacity in my relationships, my ability to connect with others has not grown to any where near the same degree.

This really came home to me some seven years ago, not long after my  responsibilities had been expanded through the retirement of my minister "neighbour", growing from two parishes of population 1500 and 230 souls to five parishes with a total population of about 6000. I met someone at a post funeral "do" and realised that they were relating to me with a fair degree of familiarity. I knew that we had met on several occasions over the preceding years and that the last time we met I had remembered their name and family connection. This time it was different. I had undergone the need to pick up on three extra parishes worth of people in the intervening time and had to admit to myself that "I used to know who you were, but now there is not enough room in my brain to hold you in the address book anymore"!

This put me on the alert as to how I was relating to the people of both the new parishes and the old and especially newcomers to the old. It not take too long to map a change in my behaviour and response across the whole patch. This change could be disturbing and caused me to raise questions about myself. Was I loosing my marbles? Had my brain sprung a leak? Was it a sign of becoming middle aged?

Two things came to the rescue, first the mug of good friend, who sadly died a few years ago.  It was a "Far Side" cartoon mug and the cartoon on the mug was of  a college student at his desk in the middle of a class with his hand up to gain the attention of the class tutor. The text read "Please Sir, can I be excused, my brain is full!". The second thing that came to mind was the distant memory from a pastoral mission Summer School at my theological college, Trinity College in Bristol (an excellent place) while training for ministry. It was the circles of intimacy diagram and how it relates to church growth and a healthy community structure. "Bingo!" I had the clue and the tools to work out what I was experiencing and to begin to make sense of it. I also felt a lot better about my ministry as I realised in my heart as well as my head that I need not feel guilty about the changes in the dynamic of my ministry-relationship to the communities.

So what did I find?

Consider the table below. It maps the groups of people that a minister/priest would have contact with in a context similar to my own in relation to the intimacy or depth of contact, comparing the pattern that would have been experienced a generation ago, say the 1960's/70's to today the 2014.

Circle (increasing outwards)        1960's/70/s                                    2014-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Inner circle (3 or 4)                        Wardens/Deacons                       Minister colleagues
                                                          Lay Preacher/Reader                   (if you have any)

Core team (12-20)                         Church Council                             Wardens/Deacons
                                                          Lay ministers                                Lay Preacher/Readers

Regular Membership                     Regular congregation                  Church Councils
(50-200)                                                                                                    Lay ministers


Personal address book                The local  community                  Regular Congregations
(1000-2000)                                                                             (note the "s", scattered by location)


Whole wide world!                         The whole wide world                   The local communities

Essentially as the role of the leader changes to take on multiple responsibilities each group's circle place is moved outwards, more distant in terms of the depth of engagement and relationship with respect to the team leader.

In the 1970's the minister or vicar would generally oversee one church, two at most. They would have a small core of two or three close confidantes with whom thy shared the most sensitive of their thoughts and plans. A fairly close relationship would be had with those with whom who they shared their week by week ministry. This might include home group leaders, pastoral visitors, school head-teachers, youth leaders, a council of ministry etc.. Pastoral contact could be maintained with the entire congregation through the regularity of contact and local knowledge. In time the whole community could become known to some depth, the relationships between people, their connections and contribution to community life.

This maps to the classic pattern that held, certainly in some parts of England where I live, up to the mid-20th century. Indeed readers of English literature can not fully appreciate the literature of Austin, Elliot, Lee or Hardy, to name a few, without an understanding of it.

This pattern has changed dramatically since the 1970's with increasing amalgamation of responsibilities, reduction of resident clergy and the creation of multi-parish ministries. The churches training in for this has responded and adapted placing a great importance upon team working and collaboration. Much of this is very good and liberating, however I would contend that in the UK at least we have not fully thought through or prepared candidates and practitioners in ministry for the role of the one who as "team leader" now tries to fulfill this traditional role in many places at the same time.

Getting back to my experience, it is I admit unusual. Having not moved house for 19 years I still live and minister in the same community I first came to in late 1995. This settled life is not of my own choosing, attempts to "cast my bread on the waters" and lay out my fleece (check the commentary/glossary in your Bibles if you are not sure what I am on about at this point) have resulted in the answer "stay where you are!". As the hymn goes "God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform".

Despite this settled domestic life my ministry, as I shared earlier has expanded greatly. This allows me to describe something that many others who move into an expanding ministry as they change posts and move from place to place might not notice to the same degree. That is, the fact that as they have moved and reestablished a new set of relationships in a more complex context they will naturally establish new networks of similar size and depth of engagement as before, but with a different groups of people.  The contact they have with the different sizes of circles of intimacy in their ministry will have changed.

For example, a single church membership might number, say seventy souls. As the pastor/priest an individual can have a deep and life transforming effect on such a number through their teaching and pastoral care. In a different context, where the congregations, scattered across several communities numbering perhaps over two hundred people they can not have the same level of intimate engagement. The level they were able to provide to the single community is not replicated across the many not due simply to the limits of their personal human psychology, something none of us can escape.

As illustrated, if in this new context of multi-church ministry the teams of leaders in the churches make up the same number of people as those "in the pews" (the congregation) in a previous singular posting. The leaders will receive the same depth of engagement with their spiritual leader as the congregation had in the singular post. The new congregations, far greater in number and separated by geography and individual contexts will not receive the depths of intimate relationship the singular congregation had with the same leader.

There can still be the level of engagement that the singular congregation enjoyed with members of the muti-church congregations on occasion, but the priest/pastor tends to transfer their level of intimate pastoring and nurture to the leadership teams across their expanded patch rather than concentrating it in one worshiping community.

The leader therefore still engages to the same degree and will feel the same pastoral load but if this engagement is unexamined and reflected upon might find themselves feeling something is lacking in their depth of engagement and ministry with regard to the congregations and communities as a whole.

For the leader in this situation that which used to work for them as a pattern of ministry in a more singular setting is felt to not be working across the many. The solution to this can be to try to respond to the felt needs of the many and work harder to replace the function that, in my case in living memory of older community members was taken by 4 or 5 resident full time ministers. However as one wise farmer friend said to me when I took on the extra parishes in my case, "One man can only do one man's work in a day" Failure to take heed of such country wisdom might well result in burn out or disillusionment. If those called to lead scattered faith communities are to remain healthy in body, mind and spirit a more examined and thoughtful approach is needed.

More of that in the next post.......