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.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.....