Former Moderator's Reflections
Ten Observations by way of
a
‘Thank You’.
My year as Moderator of General Assembly is now over.
It has been an exiting and stimulating year which has brought me hitherto
undreamt of opportunities and a great deal of personal affirmation. Carrying
out my duties and responsibilities became a major factor in my recovery from
serious illness, with URC hospitality and kindnesses helping me gain
strength and energy – and, perhaps, too much weight! I would like to thank
all who made the year possible: the Yorkshire Synod who nominated me, the
Assembly who elected me, Krystyna who looked after my diary and travel
arrangements and Pat who shared it all with me. Reform’s many readers will
have read about my travels and what I have got up to, while this book is a
record of what I have felt called to say to the United Reformed Church
during my year of office.
As the curtain comes down on their Moderatorial year,
Moderators are given a final opportunity to address Assembly. It provides us
with an opening to speak about the church as we have found it. Having noted
the kind of occasions to which I was invited, I can only say that Moderators
run the risk of drawing conclusions about the local church scene from
somewhat untypical experiences. We visit Districts and, hence, attend many
regional meetings and united events. Only twenty-five per cent of my
activity has taken in local churches, and very often those visits were
associated with anniversary celebrations with their inflated attendances. It
quickly became clear to me that my fifteen years as, first, Tutor and, then,
Principal of Northern College had provided me with an overview of the church
far more in keeping with reality than the picture which I was been given as
Moderator. Far from being an ivory tower, aloof from the cut and thrust of
local church life, that particular seat of theological education and
training was kept in touch with the way things actually are in our churches
by our students who were all on church placements throughout their time with
us. And there is a book to be written on what I heard about the saintliness
and the sinfulness which typifies our congregations!
Given the information I gleaned from those
ecclesiastical ‘spies’, as well as what I picked up as an itinerant
preacher, it is a matter of report rather than a show of arrogance when I
say that, during the past year, I have learned very little about the United
Reformed Church that I did not already know. But the ‘very little’ is
significant, and I will turn to it first before moving on to areas that my
recent experience have merely confirmed. It comes in three observations:
(i) The churches are able to exercise a remarkable
degree of influence on national politics.
I have hitherto under-emphasised the extent to which
the secularization hypothesis penetrated my assumptions as I wrestled with
it almost forty years ago. While I have never been in agreement with the
‘Christ against culture’ views of the likes of Lesslie Newbigin, I had not
recognized the extent to which I had assumed that, somehow, the political
powers were a threat to the Christian vision. After the Cenotaph ceremony
the opportunity to lobby politicians who were very interested in the
church’s view of things was greater than I had been led to believe, or had
bargained for. It turned out to be a lost opportunity due to a failure on my
part to use the chance well. Alongside this, we witnessed during the year
the extent of the church’s influence on the Government in the substantial
changes ‘we’ managed to generate in the prospective legislation concerning
gambling and blasphemy. When we work ecumenically ‘on’ the Government we
have more influence than we think. The churches represent a huge pressure
group. In a multi-faith society whose many voices the legislators need to
‘hear’, we usually under-estimate our influence. Paradoxically as the era of
Christendom recedes, Governments of all party hues find an increasing need
to hear the views of the faith-communities.
(ii) The United Reformed Church has not been very good
at projecting the significance of Reformed insights and practices in a way
which does justice to our important position on the worldwide ecumenical
stage.
Perhaps our ecumenical commitment has made us reticent
to promote Reformed policy and practice? Perhaps the fact that we have the
Church of England as our ‘big brother’ hides from us a recognition that, in
a wider European context, the natural conversation partner with Rome and
Orthoxody is Geneva and not Canterbury? At a time when the Elizabethan
Settlement is far from settled, and many within Anglicanism expect their
communion to cleave apart, there are reasons to be far from shy about our
traditions of inclusivity, our objections to episcopacy, our patterns of
conciliarity, our unease about Establishment, our ongoing belief in a
‘learned ministry’ and our commitment to a lay-ministry focussed in the
Eldership. We have insights to offer and our being in a minority does not
make them irrelevant. Many United Reformed Church people report that
Reformed ‘habits’ and convictions get lost in some of our local ecumenical
arrangements. Our integrity is sometimes in danger of becoming submerged
under a commendable desire to accommodate. This concern however needs
placing alongside and in tension with my third piece of new learning.
(iii) During the life-time of the United Reformed
Church ecumenical activity has developed and increased, although not in the
ways some of us expected or hoped.
I was among those who expected the United Reformed
Church to become a catalyst for further organic church union in Britain and
therefore to have a very short shelf-life. Some interpret the fact that this
has not taken place as at least a disappointment if not quite a total
failure, while others ring their hands at having arrived at what they see as
an ecumenical cul-de-sac. During the year, Philip Morgan died. He was as
passionate about church unity as many of the other early leaders of our
small church. In an obituary for Philip, Jean Mayland remarked that “if the
moribund ecumenical life of the British churches is to be revived, it needs
a man or woman of Morgan’s energy and vision to bring it about”.[1]
The phase ‘the moribund ecumenical life of the British churches’ started me
wondering about how such a claim could be substantiated given the large
numbers of thriving ecumenical arrangements I was encountering on my
travels.[2] Viewed from the
perspective of a mid-twentieth century modernist blue-print for ecumenical
engagement the life-time of the United Reformed Church has been ecumenically
depressing. But what if that blue-print was fatally-flawed? What if, even,
the passage of recent church history, with the world-wide growth of vibrant
grass-roots ways of being church and the mushrooming of local ecumenical
arrangements and post-denominational churches, is God’s way of telling us,
Rome notwithstanding, that ecclesiology works best ‘bottom-up’ rather than
‘top-down’? ‘Post-modern’ messiness is proving more viable than ‘modernist’
neatness. This is hardly surprising given that the contemporary challenge is
to be ecumenical in ways that are appropriate to a present culture which of
course is rather different to the culture which shaped the visionary
ecumenical thinking of our earlier pioneers. There is a way of reading our
past which concludes that the life-time of the United Reformed Church has
been a period of extremely lively and surprisingly creative ecumenism.
So much then for new areas of learning, but what
of those things I have had confirmed during my year as Assembly Moderator?
Seven areas are worthy of report.
(1) Many of our churches are in terminal decline.
A lot of congregations are struggling to keep going.
Some have lost a sense of purpose; others have been deprived of their
catchment areas due to population movement; quite a few would appear to have
served their time and place well, but now that the world has moved on they
are left without life. Given the age-profile of our congregations it seems
inevitable that, without a miraculous revival, many of them will not be
around in ten year’s time. In some geographical areas and in certain
congregations the rate of numerical decline is well above the national
average. It is very difficult to see how a diminishing number of members can
maintain the institution of which they are part, nationally and regionally
as well as locally, if present trends continue, while it is tragic in some
places to see faithful outcroppings of God’s gathered saints being crushed
by the weight of the institutional church they have inherited. Equally
worrying is the way in which so many of our churches do not offer the
quality of worship and pattern of congregational life to which many of us
would want to become committed. In a competitive church market-place and
within a non-denominational church culture, there are better alternatives on
offer.
(2) We find it easier to maintain dying churches than
to create and resource new Christian causes.
There is an ongoing conflict between the local
congregation’s demand for their slice of ministry and our wider calling to
provide leadership in fresh areas of mission. Recent attempts to increase
the number of Special Category Ministries is a step in the right direction,
although it will need a lot of local and regional resource sharing if a real
difference is to be made. Vast amounts of assets are frozen in church
buildings which continue in village, town and city to play their part in the
church ‘over-provision’ which since Victorian times has been so much a
feature of our ecclesiastical landscape. Huge amounts of money cannot
legally be used for anything other than maintaining church plant. It is
painful to be reminded that Jesus invested in twelve disciples rather than
the fabric of the temple or synagogue. We always seem able to find money for
our buildings, even though we moan endlessly about the level of our
financial commitments to the wider church. The Assembly can announce loudly
that ‘maintenance of the ministry’ is the first charge on the local church,
but we all know the local realities.
(3) There is a conflict between, on the one hand,
denominational requirements and expectations, and, on the other hand, what
local churches want.
‘We’ basically do not trust ‘them’, while in turn,
‘they’ get rather exasperated about ‘us’. And some of ‘them’ and ‘us’ have
the dexterity to change roles to suit the church councils in which we happen
to be sitting! The wider contemporary culture of individualism runs
throughout the church. It fits all too easily with those traditions of
rugged Independency from which the conciliar structures of the United
Reformed Church were hopefully going to set some of us free. Classic
Independency of course provided the ecclesial shape which helped bankroll
and energize Nonconformity’s advance, but it comes to grief when we have to
make painful adjustments to manage decline and try to create fresh starting
points for growth. The conciliar dream of 1972 is now under acute pressure,
as Assembly ever hopefully seeks to hold together the manifold aspirations
of its thirteen synod fiefdoms, and local churches ‘opt out’ of
denominational affairs or insist on keeping going when they are already
dead. What kind of Assembly-driven strategy can there be when so much power
and so many resources are vested in regional and local hands? We are part of
a society which is suspicious of authority and reacts with hostility to
centralized governance and unnecessary bureaucracy. If ‘Catch the Vision’ is
to succeed it will have to be directed in such a way that the local church
is enthused and enabled. No amount of structural alteration or agonizing
over national budgets will matter unless it all serves the primary interface
of Christian mission, the local church’s encounter with its neighbourhood
and the wider community. I have heard many people saying that, given ‘Catch
the Vision’s’ starting point in structures and finance, they are sceptical
about its outcome, even though they still wait in hope!
(4) We are a diverse church.
Our diversity contributes to the richness of the
United Reformed Church at the same time as it threatens our overall cohesion
and unity. We are ecclesiologically diverse, not just as a result of being a
union of three church traditions but also because we are now found in an
array of different and sometimes confusing shapes which typify the
post-modern church scene. Different ways of being church these days reflect
intra-as well as inter-denominational variations. It follows that we are a
theologically diverse church. Different views are present in those many
congregations which are clear expressions of locally grounded visible unity.
The old denominational fault-lines labelled ‘Congregational’, ‘Presbyterian’
and ‘Churches of Christ’ have largely disappeared. We are also culturally
diverse, being a church of three countries and one in which our
multi-cultural congregations are among our most vibrant. Meanwhile, the
wealth of our churches corresponds to the areas in which they are set: in
the richer South or the poorer North, leafy richer suburb or poorer inner
city. Amidst all this diversity it is sometimes difficult to hold the church
together. This contemporary ecclesial phenomenon, of course, is not unique
to the United Reformed Church.
(5) The most exciting things in our church life centre
upon individuals and communities who are largely indifferent to ‘run of the
mill’ denominational activities.
Ground-breaking adventures in mission and ministry
usually centre upon charismatic and prophetic individuals who often have to
achieve their goals against the grain of church policy and with meagre
financial resources. It is a pity that they sometimes encounter conciliar
structures as ‘no can do’ bodies, but it is amazing how many find ways of
managing them, overcoming them or even strategically avoiding them. As we
seek to come to grips with our rapidly changing church scene we have to
learn how to build the church around its spirit-filled people. The more
rigid our church institution, the greater will become the present crisis in
the church. We need flexibility and adaptability to go where life is – and
life is always where there are Christians who are alive!
(6) The United Reformed Church has some impressive
ministers who are doing some amazingly faithful and farsighted things.
Not all of them, I hasten to add, were prepared for
their ministries in Manchester, but some of them were! I worry however about
our most gifted ministers having the stuffing knocked out of them by
nonsensical deployment policies and deathly churches. And I also worry about
the twenty per cent or so of our ministers who are burnt out after faithful
service, or who are no longer physically up to the job, or who are simply
out of their depth. They do not have the benefit of belonging to an
organisation which has an early retirement policy that serves as an aid to
maintaining the quality of the organisation’s delivery at the same time as
looking after its failing and ailing employees.
(7) The fundamental task of the church remains
essentially the same in every generation: it is all about gathered saints
living out and delivering that Christian way of thinking, being and doing
which is, at one and the same time, congruent with the inherited living
tradition of faith as well as credible in our contemporary culture.
The church’s mission follows from faithful living at
the interface between tradition and context. It can only be grasped and then
shaped by those who know, in the bottom of their hearts as well as from the
tops of their heads, that in Jesus Christ they have been made different, and
those who then find themselves spiritually led and politically motivated to
make a difference in their contemporary context. Because this is so I can
report unequivocally that the primary issues we face from top to bottom
concern neither structures nor resources. Our root problems are ‘spiritual’
and ‘theological’; they invite serious questions about many of our current
priorities, as individuals, as congregations, and as a denomination.
[1]
The Guardian, 03.11.2005.
[2]
Similar sentiments are found in Keith Forecast’s review of Tony
Tucker’s Reforming Ministry: Traditions of Ministry and Ordination
in the United Reformed Church. Tony’s book reminds Keith of
“ecumenical failure after failure” and prompts his wish that “we
could aspire again to that glorious aim embedded with the United
Reformed Church’s Basis of Union” concerning visible unity. See The
Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society, 7, 4 (May
2004) pp. 281-281.
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