Interlude: Observation on the changes in my historical context and a reference to "Cider with Rosie"!

OBSERVATION ON CHANGES IN MY HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND A REFERENCE TO "CIDER WITH ROSIE"!

In my experience local church congregations in England, which are the faith communities I have most experience of, are not always very good at understanding their own internal dynamic and how they fit within the multiple overlaying of human networks or webs that make up their local community as a whole. Many times people of good faith express frustration or misunderstanding in terms of "why isn't the church doing 'this' or 'that'?" and wondering what can be done to recover or establish the place in the local community they think they used to have.

In past ages when the world moved at the speed of the human foot, or the plodding horse/donkey/ox the layers of a local community would be very tightly bound, as they still are in traditional communities today. In the UK we can not expect any modern network of people who work, take their leisure and have family spread over wide areas to relate to each other as they did before the mass movements of the 20th Century, which have shaken up the fabric of society in a manner not seen, possibly since the black death of the 14th Century.

Gateway to Chantry Friary near Yeovil. 

There is a lot of guilt around this, a feeling of loosing the plot in terms of being, in people's imagination, "a proper church", like it was in the old days. Ministers can also feel a sense of failure in the face of this or become seen as the butt of blame for a perceived failure of the church to "succeed" when other faith communities seem to be thriving. A lot of emphasis is put upon the personality and energy of the ministers to drive forward such success. A cursory look at the job advertisments for clergy posts these days reveals in some cases a heightened underlying yet unspoken desperation to find the man or woman who can perform at a superhuman level 24/7/365! This is a reality of a shifting cultural paradigm.

Currently in my own church tradition (The Church of England) posts for semi-retired priests, often taken by those recently retired in their late 60's, are advertised with oversight of maybe three villages or a town district that would, only thirty years ago have been filled with one or two full time postings. This is a reality of "supply", both in terms of people and funding.

This is a far cry from how postings were filled in previous generations. Much was expected, but on a more human local level, a pastoral mission rather than one of cultural and personal evangelisation. Reflecting on Laurie Lee, the Gloucestershire author of "Cider with Rosie", who's centenary has just passed, his childhood in the Slad valley was shaped by the Squire and the Vicar. Their passing in the 1920's heralded the end of a long held social stability and the beginning of what we would recognise as the modern age. Such truth has to be faced, rural and urban settings do not function as communities in the way they did. Patterns of how faith communities function has also changed. The pressures that many long established traditions have experienced in Great Britain since the high watermark of the 1910's in terms of decline and marginalisation bear witness to this. The world moved on and the way "religion" is organised has dragged its feet.

I would not wish to put any positive or negative value on such change, we are where we are and that is the reality of the situation for many local communities. However as I have contended, our essential humanity, our ability to relate to other people, be it face to face or via social media through the internet has not. Under the bonnet (hood) we are socially and psychologically still wired up to function as members of small hunter gatherer tribal units. Our relationship to the earth under our feet and the context around us is shaped by this essence of our humanity. The real jungle might have become the urban jungle, or even the cyber jungle for many, but the capacity we have in our relationships to develop circles of intimacy is still the same. This explains how we can be a solo traveller and alone on a crowded train when we are detached from our usual spheres of relational connection.

My own tradition, stemming from an ancient "national church" has a pastoral assumption of care to the whole community, a tradition that goes back to before the concept of "the congregation" as a gathered group from within the community developed. If we could ask a 14th Century priest about his congregation, he would wonder what you were asking about. He had his parish and his parishioners, all who were under his cure. Election or choice of association was not an option and the pastoral role of the clergy assumed a place at the side of or in front of all. In this sense we inherit a system of deployment based on an assumption of rights and obligations which grew out of a feudal culture that would be recognisable to people of New Testament times.

St Augustine's well, Cerne Abbas - always overflowing...

We do not live in such a world today. In my setting "the church" is still valued by most as a hub of community life and a shared community-centre of focus for major events of personal, national and seasonal significance to the community. The church is a place of local pilgrimage and the community shrine. For some, a sub-set of the community it is something more, a source of living faith, a wellspring of spiritual nourishment and communion that gives life its purpose and direction. For this group, their association is voluntary, a personal commitment, a matter of the heart after the manner of that expressed by St Paul; "the love of Christ compels/urges us" (2Cor 5 v 14).

For an ancient church tradition this movement is recognisable as bearing the mark of the same spiritual impulse that created the monastic orders of the past; more of a personal call and a response than an assumed right/obligation. At one time Europe was populated by this parallel network of religious houses, often providing education, hospital care, shelter, work and provision to their local area. All this alongside the parish system.

I would suggest that this alternative strand, which we mused upon in earlier postings, a structure that generates an "ecology of vocation" has much to offer in sustaining established faith traditions at this time. This parallel strand of a faith community, within the community as a whole, serving the community, open to the community, called to provide a place where true communion can be experienced. A people faithful to this calling to an approach to life who's vocation is to provide the intimacy of relationship that witnesses to the fellowship of Christ's first gathering- a reflection shared in the early church as the believers met both in the temple courtyards for instruction and witness and in each others homes for shared meals, pray and the support those in need.

To my mind this is where many local Christian communities find themselves. In their heads they still carry an inherited understanding of the church that echoes the past, yet in their hearts they are reaching for something genuine, local and refreshing; a Christian way that liberates and does not put great burdens on their backs. Burdens of money, leadership, continuity and expectation. Helping the 21stC's followers of Christ to find their ease in this new mode of being is what I hope these postings are all about.

Batcombe church, always open, 24/7 so wayfarers have a place to find shelter and sleep 

In the next posting I will outline how the circles of intimacy approach can be of help in reforming faith communities in outlook and governance in ways that foster an ecology of vocation and service free from guilt and cognitive dissonance. Which is a way of saying a way of being "church" that is joyful!