OUR LOCAL ARCHDEACON, Richard Gillings, helpfully reminded a large gathering at his Visitation this week that the business of the Church is not primarily about conservation – though he was keenly aware of many splendid buildings and many time-honoured ecclesiastical structures alike. But the Church is primarily about GOD. Ministry is primarily about God’s Life in the world. And God’s Life in the world is the business of a shared ministry.
And we need to be getting on with it. With celebrating and sharing LIFE, I mean. And the Church can usefully learn many a lesson from those who are just getting on with life, outside the Church as well as within it. And celebrating life, and trusting God, will involve the whole of humanity learning to be more and more inclusive. Instead of having mass hysterics every time something slightly different takes place, whether that be at the Lambeth Conference, (Council, Synod, Assembly etc., etc) or the Consecration of a new Bishop in the USA, or in the ordinary business meetings of the parishes, or in the political dialogues of the earth, we could learn to delight in other forms of expression, in new ways of living alongside one another. I saw much to celebrate in the “different”, welcoming and many-faceted service of Consecration for the two new bishops in Los Angeles. Others have scornfully pointed to the “state the US Church has got itself into”. Who’s really “got themselves into a state?”, I wonder.
Jesus, “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, has always resided in places and people hitherto least expected, always lived close to, within and amongst the marginalised.
The Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Bishop David Chillingworth, concluded a sermon recently at the installation of a new Cathedral Dean:
“I have been reflecting on the nature of ministry. It’s time we outgrew some of the past. Ministry can’t any more be just about clergy. And inasmuch as it is about clergy, it can’t any more be about workaholic pastors trying to fulfil some impossible vision of ministry or unreasonable expectations of their people. Nor can it be about that kind of care which generates dependency. Nor about that sense of ‘us and them’ which somehow creeps in and pounces at the Easter Vestry. [APCM in England!] What we seek today is some kind of mutual sharing or collaboration between clergy and people in the work of ministry. It’s subtle and difficult to do. It requires commitment and a sort of inner self-discipline from everybody which recognises what a delicate business is the work of building christian community, ministering and serving community – how easily it is destroyed, energy and initiative curbed by a desire to settle for the short term and the merely traditional substituting the part for the whole …”
Christian community building, community-building-full-stop, requires that we do it together – (every individual in the photo hereunder has a specific role, a specific ministry to fulfil); that we avoid generating dependencies; that we avoid any kind of workaholic tendency; that we recognise that GOD’S creativity in the whole of Creation includes all things and all people. And is subtle and difficult – and right.
