Local Ministry Groups - One man's view

One man's view

What follows is one man's view. The writer plays a significant part in the life of his own parish and Deanery and asks questions like:

• where are we now?
• where are we trying to get to?
• who will be doing all this?

1. The communities in which we live increasingly see the Church, as it stands, as having no real meaning in their lives. 

2. There are fewer people offering themselves for ordination, which means that there will be fewer priests to serve in the existing parish structure

The fact that we would probably not be able to fund the stipends if there were more priests is irrelevant at this point. Hence the Church, (and I use a capital 'C' to denote all of us and not just a particular building) must change or die. As a Church, as the people of God, we are all in this together, both clergy and lay. This is nothing new, and many people have been stating this truth for a number of years. The green paper might seem to be just shifting the clergy around so that we can seem to cope in the years to come, but it is much more than that, and this is, I think, where some of the confusion lies.

When the green paper was first presented everyone thought that it was a very good idea. The only real dissension came when the timing of the roll out was discussed. Many were concerned that now was not the right time; we should have been doing this years ago.

We must also remember that these proposals (however urgent some of us may think they are) are not destined to come fully into force until 2012, that is another seven years away.

In the meantime we have much work to do preparing for 2012 with fewer clergy, but hopefully with a reinvigorated and knowledgeable laity who are prepared to live out their faith in their daily lives as well as in our churches.

• We are not getting people to come to our services in our church buildings.
• Many people would not understand or know what to do even if they did come to our services.
• It is very easy to leave the responsibility of what happens in a parish to the priest.
• The priests are running around our parishes trying to cover as many services as they can (and seeing the future looking ever bleaker as there are less and less priests).
• Most of our services are led by hard-pressed clergy.
• The vast majority of our congregations only seem to be prepared to come to church on a Sunday, sit in the pews and take very little active part in the service.

Where are we trying to get to?

We are trying to get to a point where the whole world (or at least in the short term the people in the diocese of Bath and Wells) know about God's love and are prepared in some way to acknowledge that.

What have we got going for us already?

• Plenty of buildings, but not always in the right place.

• Tradition means a lot to people. The fact that the Church is two thousand years old, and is surviving (if only just) says something about us. Both they and us may not know what it is that tradition is saying, but the fact that the great festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Harvest draw in the crowds; as well as those times of national emotion, such as Remembrance Day or the death of a national hero or heroine, must have something which we can build on.

• Many people, and especially youngsters are looking for something in their lives that has more meaning to it than just being born, existing, and then dying.

How do we get there?   (The easy bit)

We go out in to the streets and the byways and tell the people what they are missing.

How do we ensure that this happens?  (This is where the green paper comes in)

• We need to look at what resources we have at present. (Clergy, Laity, Buildings etc)
• We need to make sure that those resources are in the right places, at the right time and are properly funded.
• We need to make a plan to get us to where we want to be. (The Deanery plan, of which the placing of clergy numbers is only the first part)
• We have to encourage the people in the pews to take a fuller part in the life of the Church.
• We have to be very honest with ourselves.

Who will be doing all this?

We will be doing it, laity and clergy together. It can no longer be them and us; we must work together as a team. The laity needs to take more responsibility, and the clergy need to feel less isolated.
 

...there will be changes, and some of them will be painful...

There will obviously have to be training and communication across the diocese before we get to 2012.

Many parishes already have some form of team by which they take an equal share in organising and leading services; visiting; and many of the other things which help to keep a parish together as a worshipping community.

If our faith means anything to us, we should be concerned not just about ourselves and those who come through the doors of our churches, but about the whole of God's people. We need to have a passion about our faith, about Christ's love for us and ours for him.

If Christ's disciples keep quiet, these stones would shout aloud. (Luke 19.40) 

There will be changes and some of them will be painful; but that is no excuse to try and keep the status quo. We may alienate some people on the way and however much we try to minimise that, we must not be deflected from our task of promoting the Kingdom of God here on earth.

We will make mistakes, but the only way of not making mistakes is by doing nothing, and that is not an option.

We should be building communities of faith within the communities where we live. There is no easy answer, if there was we would have done it years ago, but we cannot stand still, we must either move forward or backwards.

And backwards would mean the death of the Church. (Perhaps that is what God wants, to get us to start again.)

'One man's view' is a personal comment on 'Changing Lives: Changing Churches and Changing Communities' from a lay church member who plays an active part in the life of his parish and Deanery.