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Category: Ordination

  • One Church? Secrecy, Unity and Temptation

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    It’s a year ago this month that I took over as guest editor of this blog. My post on taking up the role focused on how, to those outside the church, we look like a very strange social group. Looking back, has that changed? I think not. If anything, it has got worse.

    Last month, we had the long-awaited Synod debate on the Living in Love and Faith process (also known as ‘5 years of my life gone’). After hours of debate and yet more small group work, the bishops’ proposals were amended and passed with 57% in favour, and yet all that has really changed is that some conservative evangelicals have announced they are “compelled to resist”. I assume that, ahead of their meeting today, the bishops have been working out the membership of the various groups who will redraft the not-yet-allowed Prayers of Love and Faith and will write the pastoral guidance to replace the much-maligned Issues in Human Sexuality. As I write this, it remains unclear what – if anything? – will be presented to the July General Synod.

    In that blog post a year ago I remembered being part of the Diocesan Shared Conversations process which the C of E went through in 2015 and feeling that “I was desperate to find a way in which we could live together with respect being shown to those who read the Bible and tradition differently.” Little did I know then that – in my role as vice-chair of the Gender & Sexuality Group on General Synod – I would be invited to join the St Hugh’s Conversations. Tentative feelers came my way shortly after I took over this blog. I was initially horrified to find that this group existed and that it had been discussing how to split the C of E. Not “a way in which we could live together” so much a way we could live apart, with some of us welcoming same-sex marriage and others rejecting it. It made me feel physically sick. Once I had googled the group – and found nothing, confirming how well the secret had been kept – I realised that I probably should have guessed someone somewhere had already been working on the options. Because the group was secret, I couldn’t discuss it with anyone outside it, and that made it feel even worse.

    I wasn’t able to attend their meeting immediately before the July 2022 General Synod so my first experience of St Hugh’s (other than reading the file of various documents batted back and forth over the years) was in November 2022. At that meeting it was agreed that the high level of secrecy no longer needed to be maintained, not least because published comments by both Bishop Steven Croft and Vaughan Roberts had made it clear that such a group existed; we were therefore free to refer to the group, but not to name its members or attribute anything said there. I mentioned it in passing in a blog post soon after, and my fellow participant Simon Butler also mentioned it in his open letter to the Bishop of Southwark. Nobody was very interested, other than the English Churchman (A Protestant Family Newspaper) which became quite excited (“secret conversations come to light”) and that story was picked up by Anglican Mainstream. The English Churchman asked the Church of England Evangelical Council what was going on and shared their (deliberately vague?) response:

    For several years, CEEC has been talking with both those who share our views and those who disagree on the topic of human sexuality. CEEC has explored, in a number of articles, the idea that visible and robust differentiation might provide a solution to the fundamental theological incompatibility that exists around this issue within the CofE.

    Other than Simon and me, I am not aware of anyone else who has revealed they are part of St Hugh’s – is that because the conservative evangelicals in the room are embarrassed to have been part of a ‘secret’ group? Such a worry about secrecy would seem ironic when they are in churches which are not transparent about their own policies on women in ministry or on LGBTQIA+ people; something SCM’s Honest Church campaign is highlighting.

    In his open letter, Simon commented that “The uniting spirit of the St Hugh’s Conversations is a desire to bring to a conclusion the battle over sexuality that has beset the Church since 1987 … We believe – at least tentatively – that now must be the time to find a settlement which will suit us all. I have come to agree with this position.” I am less persuaded. What would ‘differentiation’, a ‘settlement’, look like? More ‘flying bishops’, deals between dioceses, another Province within the Church of England? A bishop for any combination of views on women and on LGBTQIA+ people? What sort of ecclesiology is that? I’ve now asked three times at St Hugh’s, “In any such settlement, in what would unity consist?” And I still haven’t had an answer.

    Let’s just look at what one congregation, Vaughan Roberts’ church, St Ebbe’s Oxford, has now done. Oxford has four bishops, none of whom support the CEEC. Vaughan Roberts states that

    St Ebbe’s clergy have already declared that we are in impaired communion with the bishops in our diocese, which means that we will not welcome them to preach, confirm, ordain or conduct our ministerial reviews, and we will not take communion with them.

    No unity there, then. Not even taking communion ‘with’ a bishop? That’s not “impaired” communion – it’s no communion at all. Not having your ministerial review with your diocesan bishops? Surely this is already saying that they are not in the same church? I wrote about my suspicions here when I noticed that some General Synod members weren’t even willing to attend the service at York Minster with the rest of us. Again I ask: in what does our unity consist, even now?

    In a recent post on this site, Charles Read noted that the desire to have a bishop who agrees with you on everything is something new. It’s been pointed out many times that conservative evangelicals have managed to stay in the C of E while disagreeing with the decisions on women priests, women bishops, marrying people who have previously been divorced, allowing priests to be in civil partnerships …  Where women bishops are concerned, a congregation which won’t accept their bishop can have a ‘flying bishop’ instead. Would such a congregation refuse to take communion with a bishop who is a woman, or a bishop who has ‘laid hands on’ a woman in consecrating her as a bishop or in ordaining her as a priest? Would they listen to a sermon preached by a person who accepts that women can be bishops?

    And now CEEC has raised the stakes yet again. Just when we thought the issue was gay sex, and so long as you didn’t do anything sexual then you could still be accepted in their churches, now it’s not OK to be in a committed relationship with someone of the same sex, even if you’re not doing anything you think counts as sexual. So what does that mean for clergy in civil partnerships: a relationship which the C of E had been allowing on the grounds that it wasn’t sexual? In one of the many supporting Q and A documents they offer, CEEC reject even CPs: being in “covenanted relationships such as civil partnerships so long as they don’t engage in sexual intimacy” is forbidden because such relationships are still “based on a temptation”.

    When you think of how little time in a marriage is spent feeling temptation or in “sexual intimacy”, it does seem to me that the conservative evangelical view of the marriage bond is dangerously skewed. The most conservative approach of all, I think, is the one they reject: simply to rejoice in marriage as a faithful and committed relationship for two people to live in, and to open it to any two people who are willing and able to make the marriage vows.

  • Wrestling for a Blessing in a Time of “Theological Nonsense”

    by Ruth Harley, curate of Watling Valley Ecumenical Partnership in the Diocese of Oxford, and co-author of ‘Being Interrupted: re-imagining the church’s mission from the outside, in’. 

    “The Blessing of a Civil Marriage of a couple… is a theological nonsense, but sometimes a pastoral necessity, while the Church’s marriage discipline is in such confusion. Theologically, we should have to say that, if a… marriage is possible and valid, the Church should be willing to celebrate it for its members. If it is not possible or valid, the Church has no business blessing it.”(1)

    This could almost have been a commentary on the proposals made in GS2289 Living in Love and Faith: a response from the Bishops of the Church of England, released on Friday ahead of General Synod. But it is not. It is the late, great Michael Perham, writing in 1984 in about the blessing of the civil marriage of couples in which one person (or both) is divorced with a former spouse still living.

    He is right, I think, to say that blessing a marriage which we will not celebrate puts the church in a position of “theological nonsense”. That was true when he wrote it almost 40 years ago about the remarriage of divorcees, and it is true now about the marriage of same-sex couples. As Perham goes on to observe, “the principal function of the priest in a marriage is to bless”. It makes little liturgical or theological sense to permit the blessing of a marriage but not the solemnisation of the marriage itself, the principal function of which is, after all, blessing.

    And yet, here we are – in the territory of “theological nonsense”. The proposals for blessing same-sex relationships are a step forward, but still a far cry from the fullness of what we hoped for, and will continue to work for: full marriage equality irrespective of the genders of the couple.

    But blessing is in itself a powerful and weighty thing. I remember the first time I raised my hand to bless someone as a priest – to pronounce God’s blessing with the authority of the church – being  taken by surprise by the physicality of that weightiness.

    Blessing is more than ‘saying a prayer’. To pray a blessing is to do something more than “to reflect the blessing of God in all creation”,  as the bishops’ response to LLF puts it (2). A blessing, as spoken liturgically in the context of divine worship by a priest, has a particularity about it. To bless is to ask and declare God’s blessing on these people and, in the case of the blessing of a marriage, this relationship. To bless is to recognise and respond to God’s presence and purpose in this specific moment and person(s) and place.

    We bless people not because they are good, but because they are God’s – and so is the blessing we proclaim. We bless in the midst of the world’s brokenness, and blessing and breaking are closely entwined in the liturgical imagination, as day by day we offer the blessed and broken body of Christ in the eucharist, and live as the blessed and broken body of Christ in the world. To bless is not to say ‘this is perfect’, but rather ‘God is in this’. To bless a loving relationship – whether that is a civil partnership or a marriage (or indeed a covenanted friendship) – is to reflect the truth that “whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them” (1 John 4.16).

    Blessing is a significant step in the right direction in terms of the church’s response to same-sex couples. But it is a step which leads us to not into the satisfaction and relief of resolving the situation, but rather into the turmoil and discomfort of “theological nonsense”. So just what kind of progress is this?

    Significant change – change which is paradigm-shifting – often requires the old paradigm to be destabilised before a new paradigm can be established. It is out of the destabilising “theological nonsense” in which we now find ourselves that a way forward will emerge. That is how it was with the remarriage of divorcees. As Michael Perham observed, to say that a marriage can be blessed but not solemnised by the church is an untenable position. And so a way forward was found for divorcees to marry in church.

    There are some parallels here with women’s ordination too. To say that a woman can be ordained priest but not ordained bishop is also “theological nonsense”. But it was only out of a time of living with that untenable position that the move to ordain women to all orders of ministry eventually emerged.

    We long for a conclusion, a resolution, for the theological and pastoral good sense of full equality for all, irrespective of sexuality or gender identity. This week it may feel like we are still so far from that goal. The proposals before Synod are like a discordant note, still awaiting the final, resolving, chord. But we should not underestimate the power of blessing. It is a significant thing, both in its own right, and as a means of showing up the “theological nonsense” of denying equal marriage to same-sex couples for what it is.

    Dwelling in this in-between time, this now-and-not-yet in which the “theological nonsense” of the status quo is revealed but not yet resolved, will be hard and painful for many of us. We are blessed, and yet still wrestling for a blessing. The church will emerge from this wrestling, this time of “theological nonsense”, both broken and blessed, as the body of Christ always is. For now, we limp on together.

     

    (1) Michael Perham, Liturgy Pastoral and Parochial (SPCK, 1984), p. 104.

    (2) GS2289 Living in Love and Faith: a response from the Bishops of the Church of England, p. 6.

  • Leadership for Change: A Response to ‘The Sexism Women Continue to Face in the Church of England’

    by Rev Dr Stacey Rand, Senior Research Fellow in Social Care at the University of Kent

    Revd Martine Oborne’s recent article explored the experience of discrimination faced by many female clergy in the Church of England. It offers an honest and truthful description of the cost carried by female clergy, as they try to faithfully serve their communities.

    However, as many female clergy will know first-hand, it is risky to voice these experiences openly. Why? The view of many, including of female clergy themselves, is that it may deter other women from exploring vocation to ordained ministry. It presents the Church of England in a negative light.

    I am a priest: how I express this on my Twitter bio is “Somehow, also a priest in CofE”. I want to bring my own experience to the points about discrimination made by Martine, particularly around issues that relate to access to theological education and support in ministry. Both of these have had – and continue to have – an impact on my own ‘flourishing in ministry’.

    Access to theological education

    I was recommended at selection in 2013 (aged 30) to begin training for ‘incumbent status’ ordained ministry. I was strongly guided towards part-time training, which was self-funded (except fees) and up to Undergraduate diploma level.

    This is an unusual pathway for a younger candidate. The Diocesan Director of Ordinands (DDO) explained that I was perceived to be a ‘risk’ as a ‘young married woman, who may become pregnant’. It was also said that it would be better to train part-time, as it was far cheaper than full-time residential training. There was no conversation about or consideration of my training needs, formation or future ministry.

    My experience is not unique. Ministry statistics for younger candidates (under 40) show that, whilst roughly equal numbers of women and men train on non-residential pathways, men are more likely than women to train full-time, residentially.  Of course, part-time pathways may enable women (and men) to train alongside family, caring, work or other personal commitments. However, my experience warns that these differences may also reflect bias – conscious or unconscious – that assumes women are ‘risky’ and not worth investing in.

    Support in ministry

    Martine comments that:

    “More women are ordained later in life than men and they tend to get directed towards leading smaller churches or groups of small churches – often without a salary.”

    Since the ordination of the first cohort of women as priests in 1994, women have been over-represented among ‘non-stipendiary’ (unpaid) clergy. Currently, 35% of female clergy are unpaid by comparison to 22% of male clergy. Some of this may be explained by age profile. Women tend to come forward for selection later in life, so the impact of policies offering people over a certain age (usually in their 40s or 50s) no option but non-stipendiary ministry will disproportionately affect women.

    After my pre-ordination training, I was asked to complete a non-stipendiary curacy. In conversation around why I had been asked to do this, rather than being supported with a stipend (as I had indicated as my first preference), again, some assumptions had been made. It was expected that I would give up my paid work to be a parish-focused full-time unpaid curate and that, as a married woman, my husband would support me.

    Again, I had been stereotyped due to my sex/gender and marital status. Those who had made these assumptions would no doubt express their full support for women’s ministry, but allowed their internal assumptions about gender roles to shape their decisions in an unhelpful way. They had not been able to really see or understand the person in front of them. We are all capable of such mistakes; the issue is about creating a culture of self- and mutual accountability that mitigates against this.

    Does it matter?

    Why does the Church of England not act more decisively on this discrimination? There are only approximately 2,400 female clergy serving in paid or stipendiary roles and a further 1,300 non-stipendiary clergy. Perhaps some think we face more important challenges: recent census data, for example, shows that affiliation with the Church of England has continued to decline since 2011.

    But discrimination against female clergy does matter. The Church of England serves communities, locally and nationally, from local community projects to the House of Lords, and needs to maintain some degree of alignment with those communities. We live in a society where women have equal access to education and opportunities to paid work, even if barriers and challenges remain.

    Martine’s article alludes to the settlement intended to protect and accommodate those who are unable to accept women’s full ministry. While greater transparency – for example, requiring local churches to clearly state their position on websites – could help to some degree, the discrimination faced by female clergy is not limited to those churches, which from their complementarian or traditional catholic convictions conclude that women cannot serve in leadership roles and/or be ordained priest.

    The experiences of training for ministry, which I’ve described here show that, sadly, the problem goes beyond the small constituency of churches who do not recognise or support women’s ministry. Sexism remains persistently embedded, in a way that goes far deeper.

    Next steps?

    We need greater accountability, transparency and shared commitment to specific actions; for example, the development of consistent maternity leave policies across the Church of England. Local or national review of access to theological education should show full commitment to the idea that women should be allowed to flourish in ministry.

    While organisations such as WATCH work on national level awareness-raising, or local advocacy and case work, individual bishops make their own policy and, if such policy discriminates against women, there is no accountability. Consistency across dioceses is lacking in many areas, including in training for ministry.

    But we also need to develop a culture of attention, with space to listen and understand people, rather than relying on short-cut assumptions about individuals that may be inaccurate, misleading or even harmful. We are all part of the problem – when we collude in silencing each other when we ought to speak, reflect on and discuss the issues, or when we minimise or ignore the negative impact of discrimination on human flourishing. Therefore, we all need to share the leadership for change.

     

  • Another Year Gone: What’s Wrong with the Church of England?

    by Helen King, Professor Emerita in Classical Studies at The Open University, authorised lay preacher, member of General Synod and vice-chair of its Gender & Sexuality Group

    As another calendar year draws to a close, and those who make resolutions write them down, it seems like a good time to ask my headline question. Your answer to it may  revolve around the Living in Love and Faith process, as well it might. What’s wrong with the Church of England? The abuse by some of our number of those who don’t fit the male white cis-het model? Being obsessed with peripheral matters? (I’m not a fan of Twitter posts showing the clergy in their swankiest rose vestments for Advent 3). Having a total disregard for what is good in the society in which we are placed? Going too far in accommodating our message to that society? Not being sufficiently faithful to whatever we see as the central message of the Bible? But I’d like to take this question back further and reflect on what I see as the four ‘oppositions’ which I think lie behind many other aspects of the Church of England today; and none of them is conservative/progressive, because I think the problems run far deeper.

    This blog post is stimulated by something I was doing back in September, when I was invited by those running a church committee I’m on to offer my reflections after joining it. I did as they suggested, although I’ve heard nothing from them since. Was I too forthright? Or was it all too obvious? The four oppositions I offered there, and have developed here, are all ones which I think about in other aspects of my life and work, too. They are binaries, but could also be spectrums, if we accept that both of the poles are equally important and that much lies in between, rather than prioritising one term over the other.

    The first would be access vs excellence. As someone with Open University experience, I strongly believe in access to any sort of education or training or anything else being entirely open. You don’t need any previous exam passes to start an Open University degree. Similarly, I believe that baptism should be freely offered to anyone asking for it; think of the Ethiopian eunuch, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:36). And yet we hear of churches where the child of a couple who are same-sex isn’t welcomed to baptism… While baptism ‘courses’ should be offered to those who would find them helpful, they shouldn’t be compulsory. Yet only once have I been at a C of E service at which the bishop asked if anyone else in the congregation would like to be baptised on the spot… but I thought that was a really Scriptural invitation!

    In churches, access should continue after baptism as we want everyone to feel welcome, to be able to join in. That means being accessible to people of all ages, every class, every race, every gender identity or sexuality. But we need to know where the barriers to participation lie before we think about how to overcome them. That’s difficult because the people whose views we need to hear may well be those who aren’t in the room. There can be little more depressing than a group of middle-class people discussing how to attract more working-class church members; unless it’s a group of straight people and same-sex attracted people who think they must never have a sexual relationship, discussing lesbian and gay people in committed sexual relationships (that was rather how the process of writing the Living in Love and Faith book felt).

    At the other end of things, there’s the need to enable everyone to be their very best self. That may mean encouraging or even pushing them. Sure, open the choir to everyone, but there’s nothing wrong with training; with expecting choir members to join in rehearsals! And that applies everywhere else too. Those preaching need opportunities to think about what a sermon is for. Everyone helping in the Sunday School needs to do the safeguarding training, not just the leaders. Access is not the end of the matter. And we need to go further still; we need to think about how to recognise and honour excellence. That means transparency in finding out who is outstanding, and encouraging them to go even further. We shouldn’t be afraid of excellence and we should be ready to recognise it in anyone, not just those who turn up with all the advantages already, or those who fit our expectations about what sort of person would make a good preacher or a good welcomer. What if you’re a woman in a church with a ‘complementarian’ position where you would never be allowed to preach, let alone to lead? How is your excellence to be encouraged? And who is going to do this work of discernment?

    The second is local vs national, and that one seems to me to be the key fact about the Church of England’s dual identity which we rarely face. General Synod may make some decisions but, back in their dioceses, bishops rule. The Church of England may declare a national policy, for example on maternity leave for clergy, but does that mean every diocese follows it? I think you can guess the answer to that. If you challenge any instance where something isn’t done consistently they’ll cite ‘subsidiarity’ or ‘local context’ – both highly important, although dioceses often contain a mixture of rural areas and large urban centres, areas of poverty and pockets of wealth, so claims that they need to do things differently from the next diocese along fail to convince. But we are a national church, and the implicit assumption that people grow up and develop within just one diocese doesn’t really wash any more. So, what happens when those people move house? For example, is it right for one diocese to have its own lay training scheme, or should this be centralised? Does ‘local ordained ministry’ make any sense? In a recent case, someone on the Reader pathway in one diocese moved, and found that the new diocese would not support them because of their sexuality – which hadn’t been seen as an issue in the previous diocese. What is best done at a local level? Who decides?

    The third opposition, and this one is really obvious, is lay vs ordained. Going by my own experience, if you are in a middle-of-the-road Anglican parish church and you go to see your vicar to say that you are feeling that you are being called to something new but aren’t sure what, the default assumption is that this must be ordained ministry. I wasn’t comfortable with that assumption but agreed to work with a spiritual director for a while. She affirmed my calling to be lay. But the assumption persists that the ordained ministry is the ‘gold standard’ and everything else is a mere shadow of it, and this is one reason why not getting through the selection process leaves people so badly bruised. In the last few years there have been various Grand Schemes in the C of E; ‘Renewal and Reform’, ‘Vision and Strategy’, the ‘Transforming Effectiveness agenda’ and so on. These involve throwing large numbers around (10,000 new lay-led worshipping communities, 3000 new paid leaders of work with children and young people).

    I remain unconvinced about these plans. Leaving aside what I see as the dubious wisdom of embarking on all this when numbers have still not returned to pre-pandemic levels, and when we can’t get enough volunteers for existing roles, where will these lay leaders come from? And what will they be allowed to do? In a conservative evangelical church where women can’t lead, will women be among these new lay leaders, or is it only men – and straight men at that – who will lead? How will they be trained? Locally? Nationally? What are the safeguarding implications? Meanwhile at the same time as the C of E is discussing expanding lay ministries, it is also piloting schemes to fast-track people to ordination. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to decide what we mean by laity and clergy before doing any of this?

    And that brings me to speed vs depth. The C of E doesn’t usually ‘do’ speed. Look at the long process culminating in ordaining women, or the decades spent on producing various reports on sexuality. At the moment, though, speed suddenly seems to be OK when it comes to training as a priest. I’ve heard from someone whose church hosted a person who’d done one of the new one-year ordination schemes and who was very happy with this; so, maybe it can work, although it’s early days. The language I’ve seen in C of E papers is that of ordaining ‘seasoned saints’ (we do love our alliteration, don’t we?). I would like more assurance that this isn’t shorthand for ‘people like us’. But, in any case, is this sufficient formation? I remember about 20 years ago when a friend was accepted for ordination quite late in life, and was allowed the two-year training, that he said this was the one chance he and his wife had to gain the depth which would sustain them.

    And are we ordaining people mainly so that communion services can continue, because since the Parish Communion Movement it’s all been about communion? (I’m old enough to have grown up with Mattins) Paradoxically, this ‘keeping the show on the road’ mentality can also lie behind encouraging lay leadership: one published report into lay ministry suggested that the laity were being seen as “a new source of voluntary help in maintaining existing patterns of public worship and associated activities”. Have we yet gone beyond that to appreciate lay ministry in a more distinctive, more positive way? My own parish is in interregnum at the moment and is fine as far as services go, not least because we have three retired clergy and a team vicar who are sharing them out. But there is so much more to church than services!

    For me, when the normally slow C of E suddenly decides to move quickly, as in one-year ordination courses, alarm bells ring (because, normally, “Like a mighty tortoise/Moves the Church of God”, etc). I’m even more worried when the people sent on the ‘cheaper’ training options or expected to end up in self-supporting (i.e. unpaid) ministry tend to be women.

    So: access vs excellence, local vs national, lay vs ordained, speed vs depth. Do you agree that these are the four oppositions, or spectrums, behind a lot of our discussions? And would it advance those discussions if we were able to bring them up to the surface and address them directly?

     

     

  • Thirty Years On

    by Rev Martine Oborne, recently appointed Chair of WATCH (Women and the Church), a group that works for gender equality in the Church of England

    Thirty years ago, in 1992, I was appointed to the main board of an investment bank in the City called Rothschilds. I was 34 and the youngest woman to have been made a Director in the firm.

    At the same time, a battle was being fought in the Church of England to dismantle the legislation that blocked women from becoming priests. I was almost unaware of this at the time because I had largely given up going to church and would barely have called myself a Christian. Nonetheless, as I look back on 1992 today, I think how I might have been in the thick of that battle if I had stuck firm to the calling I had first received as a child – that God wanted me to be a vicar in his church.

    I didn’t come from a churchgoing family, but my parents sent me and my sister to Sunday School to get us out of the house so that they could have ‘a bit of time to themselves’ (whatever that meant!). And I became a very spiritual child, praying, reading my Bible, enjoying being in Church, watching my vicar Father Stephen and feeling that one day I might grow up and do the things he did. Lighting candles, reading from scripture, talking about God and chatting to old ladies.

    One day at school when I was about ten, my teacher started asking the class what we wanted to be when we grew up. One kid said an astronaut, another said Prime Minister, another said a film star and so on. But, when it got to me, I blurted out that I wanted to be a vicar. This was greeted with much laughter from my friends.  And then my teacher said, ‘Well, you can’t do that, Martine – they don’t have women vicars.’ And, at that, the whole class collapsed into fits of mirth while I just sat there feeling an idiot.

    I felt not only stupid but also confused.  It was the late 1960s and brave women were battling to breakdown discrimination in all areas of the public sphere.  And they were succeeding.  So why was it that I could not be a vicar, just because I had been born female?

    I began to wonder what my calling might be.  In my mid teens I had a time of worrying that I might be called to be a second Virgin Mary and I remember praying that God would send a dream to my mum, rather than to my boyfriend, to explain what was going on.

    But I guess, in all seriousness, this was the start of my giving up on my calling, setting aside the foolish things of my childhood and seeking other paths in life.  I got a place at Oxford, a job in the City and good things followed – a nice home, a family and a rewarding career where I was valued and treated as an equal alongside my mostly male colleagues.

    I started going back to church in my mid thirties to get the children into the local church primary school and I thought I could then drift away again after this mission had been accomplished.  But God took the opportunity to renew my faith and my calling and I discovered that, thanks to the persistence and sacrifice of brave women and men like those at MOW (The Movement for the Ordination of Women), women could become priests and vicars.

    That was, therefore, the beginning of a journey that finds me now happily serving as the vicar of a small parish in West London, doing all the things that Father Stephen had done many years ago.

    End of happy story, yes?  But also no.

    Because, although I am a vicar in the Church of England, I am not a vicar on the same terms as I would be if I were a man.  Although almost every Anglican in the land has wanted ministry in the Church to be equally open to men and women from the 1970s onwards, there have been certain small powerful groups within the Church that have resisted this vigorously and viciously.  This meant that legal provisions were made in the 1990s to allow parishes, if they wanted, to say no to women priests.  And then later, in 2014, when the barriers were removed that had prevented women priests from becoming bishops, new legislation enabled ‘flying bishops’ to be appointed so that parishes, if they wanted, could say no to women bishops.

    So I serve in a church where parishes can still advertise for a new vicar and ask for men only to apply, where bishops who are women are required to delegate their authority of oversight to male bishops for some of their parishes, where some of my colleagues espouse a theology that says God created men to lead and women to be led, and where some of my colleagues believe I am not actually a priest (that my ordination was invalid.)  And the official position of the Church is that we want these people, with the theologies that underpin their positions, to flourish.

    But hang on a second, I hear you say.  Isn’t this kind of discrimination illegal in the UK today under The Equality Act 2010?  And the answer is that yes it would be – except the Church of England has exemptions under that legislation which allow it to discriminate.

    OK, you might say.  But people like bishops who hold public office can’t be exempted under the Act.  And that’s true, which means that women bishops should operate on precisely the same terms as men bishops.  But in 2014 the Church got an amendment to the legislation saying that, for the purposes of the Act, bishops do not hold ‘public office.’  Which is somewhat extraordinary, since twenty six of them sit in the House of Lords.

    So what on earth is going on?  How can we be in 2022 and the national Church is still discriminating against women, who represent about two thirds of their congregations and half the population?

    The arguments boil down to largely two things: one, those who say we can’t have women priests because the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t allow them; two, those who say God created men, and only men, to be in charge and the Bible attests to this.

    I can’t get into the response to all this in this short post.  Suffice it to say that the arguments and theology have been hotly contested over the years and millions of words have been written.  But the Church’s legislative council, General Synod, came to the conclusion that there is no theological basis for women to be prohibited from being priests or bishops.  Which should have been an end to the matter, as the purpose of such councils is to resolve theological disputes and make decisions to bring unity and then allow the Church to move forward.  When the apostles Paul and Peter in the early Church debated whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised or not, they came to a conclusion and special provisions were not made for dissenters.  Nonetheless, two thousand years later, special provisions were made for those who continue to say no to women priests and bishops.  And, because of these provisions, the old discredited arguments and theologies not only continue, but are often seen on a par with the arguments and theology underpinning the validity of women’s ministry.

    My personal belief is that we are a separate Church from the Roman Catholic Church and can make our own decisions on women’s ministry, as we have on many other areas of doctrine such as allowing priests to be married.  And I believe that God created humankind in his image, in his image he created us, male and female – as we read in the first chapter of Genesis.  So that we do not reflect that image of God when men and women are not equal in the Church.

    The women and men behind the Movement for the Ordination of Women did great work back in the 1990s and earlier, and we have so much to thank them for.  But the work for equality for women in the Church is not done.  This is why I have accepted the role of Chair at WATCH (Women and the Church), which campaigned for women bishops and now seeks equality for all in our national Church.  I hope and pray that, in my lifetime, I will not only see the Church give up its exemptions from UK equalities legislation but also come to truly value women, both ordained and lay, and lament how it has treated us in the past.

    Please join WATCH here to help.

     

  • Faith and Generosity in the Church: The Via Media, or Transphobia?

    by Revd Nathanael Hayler, Deacon, serving as Assistant Curate in rural Northumberland 

    Why do you remain faithful to a volatile institution?

    How do you show generosity to a hostile Church?

    These remain some of the pressing questions I am often asked when I share my story of journeying towards ordination in the Church of England as a transgender person. They are questions I grapple with in these early years of ordained ministry and will continue to ask as my sense of vocation grows and flourishes.

    As part of my ordination training, I was able to embark on a course of postgraduate study. I developed a project exploring how the Church of England has engaged with the experiences of trans people, both in the context of the local church and more broadly as an institution. Entitled ‘Thresholds of Faith and Identity: A critical analysis of the Church of England on transgender identities’, the piece aimed to prayerfully and creatively theologically reflect on where the Church is now, how it has reached that place and, importantly, what comes next – ‘towards a distinctively Anglican transgender theology.’

    The study and dialogue addresses topics of liturgy and worship, leadership and representation, and pastoral practice. Using theological language and reflective dialogue might feel dense and complex, but I intentionally grounded all my work in practice, always looking to ministry on the ground and to the experience of transgender Christians. Sometimes work on trans identities can be seen as “woke” or niche but the reality is that most of us, whether we know it or not, will encounter or walk alongside a trans person. This conversation is pressing, it is poignant, it is necessary. My research took place in the context of discussions encouraged by the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) conversations. There is a danger that this valuable LLF work will lose momentum and fizzle out; this conversation must continue in creative, engaging, and accessible ways.

    Understanding the need to remain faithful to Anglican convention felt important if this work was to go anywhere. Pushing towards action whilst working within the categories of scripture, reason and tradition offers an effective yet comfortable way the Church of England might begin to develop a coherent theology rooted in the lived experience of transgender individuals. However, there are immediate barriers that currently prevent such progress being made. Firstly, the ambiguity and contradictions that characterise the Church of England’s current position. For example, it is hard to take seriously sentiments that trans and non-binary people are welcome to explore a vocation to ordained ministry when another document prohibits the ministry of transgender people, believing we are not wholesome examples or stable enough to serve as deacons, priests, and bishops (Some Issues in Human Sexuality, 2013).

    Secondly, the Via Media that characterises the Anglican way is often sorely, even dangerously, misunderstood. Despite via media being seen as a virtuous existence for the Church, it is often misused; today it has fostered a culture of ambivalence and mere tolerance. The Church of England is still “sitting on the fence” in offering two very different views that can be ‘properly held’ by Anglicans on the topic of transgender identities. This gross misuse of the ‘middle way’ condones and even encourages transphobic attitudes and discriminatory behaviours toward trans people. The lack of clear guidelines, of both doctrinal belief and pastoral conduct, allows individuals holding authority to freely discriminate or be complicit in keeping silent in the face of such behaviour.  With gender identity legally (in the UK) understood as a protected characteristic and in seeking to treat trans people with dignity and respect, this current manifestation of transphobia disguised as holding the generous via media must be eradicated immediately.

    Instead of loathing the rich diversity that trans and non-binary people bring to our churches, we have an opportunity to celebrate it. And in this celebration we are invited to reimagine what it means to hold the middle way and re-embrace the Anglican tradition of via media in our time; building on the foundations of what has been handed on and always rooting our practice in the life of Christ. Therefore, instead of threatening our sense of self and our convictions, these differences encountered within the breadth of Anglicanism should move us toward a living embodiment of the ‘Way’. That is, Christ: the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). Christ’s ministry reveals a most beautiful interplay between charity and justice. Rather than seeing the via media as only a charitable gesture, seeking to please both those at the extremities and those at the margins, the via media could be a middle way that seeks to walk the path of both charity and justice – just as Christ himself inspires us to do. If we truly embrace our part in being a living tradition, by faith, we make space for the transformative work of the Holy Spirit, trusting that God will make a way in us and through us.

    As a transgender person, I don’t believe the Church currently recognises the sacredness of trans narratives as part of the living Christian story. I hope, one day, that hearing the experiences of transgender individuals will be understood as a transformative gift. As an ordained person, which very often feels like a scary and vulnerable public ministry, I want to encourage the Church not to neglect this important topic, because of we do that then we neglect our duty of care for the many lives touched by this. There is much work for the Church of England to do if it genuinely desires to welcome and encourage ‘the unconditional affirmation of trans people, within the body of Christ’ and rejoice in that diversity.

    So, I return to those first questions.

    Why do you remain faithful to a volatile institution?

    How do you show generosity to a hostile Church?

    Why? Because I believe in the transforming work of God in the Church of England, and I want to be part of that work. How? By the grace of God alone. Let’s not forget to pray. Pray for the work of the Spirit in the Church, so that one day God’s love will be shared freely and lavishly amongst all people.

    I’m currently exploring options for publishing my research, in the hope that it will be built upon and used to further conversation and provoke change.

  • Ordained, Commissioned, Faithful and Eternally Hopeful

    by Revd Andi Chapman, Chaplain in the Royal Air Force, serving in the south of England

    My name is Andi. I am an ordained Church of England (CofE) priest who is currently serving in His Majesty’s Royal Air Force (RAF) and is also in a same-sex Civil Partnership. Some years ago, when I began the journey towards ordination, the person responsible for my academic reference for the Bishops’ Advisory Panel (BAP) wrote: “Andi will be good for the church, but the church won’t be good for him”. At the time, I thought that my university lecturer was having a downer on the church, yet over the past 17 years since that time, what she wrote has in the latter part sadly came true.

    From the time of first receiving ‘the call’ to ordained ministry, I knew the journey would be far from easy.  I expected to encounter some views that could make me uncomfortable. Yet, throughout, from my diocese to the BAP and on to theological college, people were welcoming and promoted inclusion. I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a rainbow flag-waving gay person, yet if you scratch my surface there would be a rainbow there. I have always been circumspect about ‘coming out’ to people on first encounter, so have applied cautious judgement when meeting new people.

    After three years at Cranmer Hall, I went on to the Lincoln Diocese where again I was welcomed with inclusion and love by the bishops and training incumbent. While not being ‘overtly out’ with the Parish, I did meet my now-husband there and entered a civil partnership which ultimately looked like a scene from the BBC comedy The Vicar of Dibley where the registry office was half clergy from various denominations and half Lincolnshire farm workers! There were a few people in the parish who did struggle with my same-sex relationship, yet for the most part I was supported. That does not mean there was not the pain of rejection from those who did not support us; indeed, some refused to receive communion from me while others left the church building when they saw me. It is important to note that these people were in the minority, and they had been perfectly happy with me being their curate before they knew my situation.

    Then the commissioning came along. I joined the RAF as a chaplain and began my travels around the different stations within the service. It has also taken me to other parts of the world. My aim has always been serving others and showing God’s love through the wonderful, yet maybe apocryphal, saying of St Francis: ‘Preach the gospel always, use words if you must’.

    Yet there is one constant in my story that has remained: that I live in a tri-tension between Church, ministry and love. The Church has remained clear, with Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and Issues in Human Sexuality and its standpoint on same-sex attraction. While I have entered a Civil Partnership, that is as far as I can go. Some years ago, I would have been keen to marry my other half, yet in the interim my views towards marriage have adjusted, and say to me that love does not need to be measured by marriage. Paradoxically, it has been from Christians that I have experienced some of the most disappointing and painful behaviours. Overt homophobic opinions have peppered many of my interactions during my ordained life.

    When I first meet LGBTQ+ church members they often seem surprised that I have found a home within the RAF, as many assume that the Armed Forces would be intolerant towards varying sexualities and gender differences. I can say with confidence that the RAF has given me the space to exercise God’s calling, which primarily involves me living within the community in which I serve. It has given me the securities, inclusion, and scope to work without fear of homophobic attitudes. My role is based around offering pastoral and welfare support to those who serve their country, their families, civil servants, and contractors. The work is predominately diaconal in its output.

    While the RAF has offered me a safe environment to do this role, that does not mean I have been immune from homophobia. On Easter Sunday this year, after the service, one person asked me how my husband was and I answered openly and honestly. I was aware of one retired service person’s reaction to this. I recognised the hostility and tried to prevent any negativity. However, by the following week I had noted that the church numbers were halved. I was not surprised by this, but deep down I did feel a sense of anguish and frustration.

    I am who I am and have to accept the tensions within the doctrine of ‘Church, ministry and love’ for the rest of my life. Yet that is where the need for an unshakeable faith comes into play. Although I know that change is slow, I believe that in my own way I can help precipitate that change, and that I can have value to those in the church, the RAF and my partner.

    Thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about my story. Peace and all good to you!

     

  • An End to an Injustice: And the Start of a Campaign

    by Sorrel Shamel-Wood, Curate in the Diocese of Oxford

    This morning, Wednesday 6th July 2022, I presided at the altar for the first time. It was at the Church of St Mary and St Berin, Berinsfield – a 1962 daughter church of Dorchester Abbey – and, from my vantage point facing east*, it felt like heaven was breaking through. There were nineteen of us in attendance.

    In some ways, it felt very special and remarkable: after all, it was my first time in this privileged position, and of course women could not be ordained in the Church of England until I was seven years old, so it’s never something I’ve taken for granted. But in a different sense, it felt very normal: the midweek Wednesday eucharist is a staple part of the worshipping life of our team, and has been forever. Many priests have stood and celebrated behind that altar in the past sixty years and, down the road at Dorchester Abbey, they have done so for the past fourteen hundred. I pray they will continue to do so for many centuries after I have left.

    Readers of this blog will know that I almost didn’t get priested at all. In February, I wrote an article for Via Media detailing how my priesting was delayed because my husband had previously been married to someone else. Many ordinands are affected by the Canon C4 regulations (the rule that a faculty has to be granted in order for a person to be ordained who has remarried following a divorce, or whose spouse has remarried following a divorce). Our case was particularly nonsensical, though, because my husband is the one who was previously married to someone else, but he was already a priest when we married so could happily preside at the altar without any ramifications. The story was also reported by the Church Times. It gained attention from some significant people, and many people who read it were outraged and perplexed by the situation.

    Then, on February 16th this year, there was good news. I was in the early stages of labour when my bishop rang, but I didn’t mention this to him because I knew what the conversation was about and I didn’t want it to be delayed a moment longer. He was excited to tell me that the archbishops had agreed in principle to grant an exception to the three-year rule regarding Canon C4 faculties and, all being well and with the wind behind us, I should be able to be ordained at Petertide. I try not to over-interpret the coincidences that take place in the world around us, but it did feel to me that there was something meaningful in the fact that my baby and the good news about my priesting came at the same time.

    It’s difficult to express how thankful I am that I have now been ordained priest. But it has been a frustrating, bewildering and at times overwhelming experience. For a start, people who don’t even know my husband know that he was previously married to someone else, which is something deeply personal and difficult for him, despite the circumstances being relatively amicable and straightforward. We even had trolls who don’t believe in divorce attacking us on social media, being horrible about our wedding photos and my wedding dress.

    I’m not naturally a campaigner or change-maker in personality, and yet I found myself campaigning for changes to the faculty rules. (And if you are a member of General Synod who is reading this, do please support Revd Mark Bennet’s private members bill to revoke the Canon C4 regulation altogether). All this has caused me to realise that, if I’m capable of campaigning for a relatively small injustice that affects me personally, I can and must campaign on behalf of those who suffer infinitely worse injustices than we have experienced, and perhaps this is a new aspect of my calling that I hadn’t really anticipated.

    In a weird, microcosmic corner of social media we found ourselves in the spotlight for a moment and, if I’m entirely honest, I can see how that sort of thing could become quite addictive. It catered to the vainer, more superficial aspects of my personality which many priests have, and which women tend to be castigated for far more than their male colleagues, and which I’m not keen to encourage in myself because they distract from our real purpose of pointing people to Christ.

    So I am very happy to be at the end of this strange, frustrating journey. It has been painful at times, but also filled with encounters with good people and much grace. But of course, this is only the beginning of what I hope will be many decades of serving the Church, God’s world and God’s people. As I prepared for priesting, I was repeatedly struck by the words which the Lord once spoke to St Francis, “Francis, rebuild my church! It has fallen into ruin”. This morning, as we got the church ready for the service, the organist opened a window and the entire window frame fell out. We don’t really have the money to repair it. But spiritually, of course, as well as practically, the Church is facing huge challenges in our generation. There is a riding tide of secularisation to grapple with. A gospel that needs to be proclaimed afresh in a rapidly changing world. There are injustices to fight, within and without the church. There are broken people that yearn for God’s healing and lonely, hurting, lost people desperate to know God’s love. It is now that the real work begins.

     

     

    * The layout of the church was reversed at some point in its history during renovations, so the altar is next to the font where the entrance used to be.

     

     

  • Wanting to be One: The Rural Church Today

    by Claire Lording, Vicar of the Benefice in Pershore in the Diocese of Worcester and member of General Synod. Along with fellow parish priest Jo Stobart, she is standing as a ‘pair’ for election to the Crown Nominations Commission

     

    “I don’t like the countryside. It’s a soggy sort of place full of birds and animals wandering around uncooked.” Not my words, but those of Lady Bradley, a completely fictitious Victorian detective who graced our screens at the end of the last century. The truth is though that many people don’t like the countryside. Rural communities are too often misunderstood and defined by what can make them challenging places to live in. Yes, they can be beautiful places, but realistically they can also be isolating, hard to reach, lacking local amenities, ageing, home to stressed-out farmers, places of a variety of views including some very conservative opinions, and full of churches struggling to be Kingdom People with never quite enough volunteers or congregation. But they are also, most importantly, places where things can and do really happen.

    I’ve always ministered in rural communities and rural market towns and have never ceased to be thankful for the ‘can do’ attitude that these communities have had. The rural community has a deep sense of the value of relationships and of being immersed in the place that it is, so there is often a sense of simply getting on with life, inside and outside the Church. The seasons come and go and the community, as place and people, is still there, having weathered whatever storm or challenge has come its way. Not without cost or a sense of loss, but with a great degree of resilience. Perhaps in a rural environment where we see creation and the land around us grow, flourish and die, year after year, we have come to live with the reality of death and the possibility of resurrection and new life in a more natural way than others may experience.

    Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why in the rural places I’ve been there has never been an issue with the ordination of women to the priesthood, and then to the episcopate. Relationships really do matter in small communities, and it is these which count more than anything else because people are hopefully not anonymous folks down the road, but individuals with names and stories to share. Whether consciously, or unconsciously, people in rural communities are working at being one, knowing that this is how their community will continue and have the best chance of thriving.

    With all this experience, it shouldn’t have surprised me that, when the Living in Love and Faith course was launched, the parishes I work with would appreciate the opportunity to get involved. Not in huge numbers, but certainly enough to feel that we could contribute to the conversation. And what was most beautiful was the conversations we shared. People came with open minds and a sense of trust because the people round the Zoom screen or round the table were not complete strangers. Here were people from the same communities who were committed to listening to each other because that’s how we can best live together.

    There were differences of opinion and thinking as views were shared and we were always mindful of those not present, whose thoughts might have been more challenging in their conservatism. But those who were present remembered, at all times, that there was diversity on the screen or in the room. It was a privilege to see how some people moved from a place of having a deeply-held traditional understanding of marriage, to being insistent that everyone should be able to get married in Church, and what could we do about it? There was also real understanding of those who wanted to hold on to their traditionally held views about marriage; a sense that we will respect and honour each other, even when we don’t agree.

    There was a depth of compassion and a real desire to do more – to do everything we possibly could – for everybody in our churches and community, however they choose to identify themselves. This was the coming together of a group of people who wanted to be one, because they knew that God sees us as one and that we are so much better when we can be who we are meant to be in God’s sight, without fear or uncertainty.

    This was all wonderful and gave me great encouragement that the Church, in rural places and beyond, might be ready to take the next step to being more actively inclusive. Then we went a step further. After successfully using our new coloured lighting to light up Pershore Abbey tower in red, white and blue for the Platinum Jubilee, we had a community request to light our tower in the Pride flag colours. Not a problem, said the church! And then our social media volunteer put together a Pride display outside our community centre. Fantastic, said the church!

    Sharing in the LLF process, lighting a tower, or displaying a Pride flag are small and simple actions, but ones that shout out how forward-looking and inclusive the rural church and rural communities can be. They show that the Church can gently get on with the task of being open and welcoming to all. The rural Church may often be underestimated, but for the time being we will just get on being the best version of Church we know how to be.

  • Gatecrashing God’s Party: Parish Ministry Today

    by Jo Stobart, a parish priest in South Somerset. Along with fellow parish priest Claire Lording, she is standing as a ‘pair’ for election to the Crown Nominations Commission

     

    I was recently asked, ‘What has changed about your calling since you embarked on exploring a vocation to ordained ministry?’ It’s a question I found myself reflecting on again as I sat in Taunton Minster last weekend, watching our benefice’s curate being ordained priest. It’s almost five years since I made those vows myself. Although in ministerial terms that’s a blink of an eye, now seems a significant moment to pause and ponder the answer I gave to my original questioner.

    My first response was that I could never have predicted just how much I would love this role. If Buechner’s oft-quoted ‘The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet’ is true, then I am blessed to find myself at that sweet spot of intersection. I serve as Vicar in places that, alongside Fr Alex Frost’s parish, do a pretty good job of representing the breadth of the Church of England. Ilminster is a small market town in South Somerset and Whitelackington an outlying village.

    The Minster sits right at the heart of the town and generations of families are connected to the building by baptisms, weddings and funerals. The church still has a recognised place in the life of the town. Most of the children attend the Church of England First School and civic events regularly find expression through a church service. I’m often greeted in the main street with ‘Morning Vicar’. Parish ministry here looks remarkably ‘traditional’.

    But traditions change too. On the list of vicars in our Lady Chapel, dating back to the Norman Conquest, I’m the first woman incumbent. I’m still asked tentative questions about how I should be addressed (‘Jo? But Vicar’s fine too.’). People here would instinctively tick a ‘Church of England’ box on a form, but this connection now usually relies on the regular attendance of a parent or, more often, a grandparent. The story of Christianity is one that’s remembered as an echo through the generations.

    What this means is that doing the work of a parish priest doesn’t need to be ground-breaking to be innovative or ‘fresh’. Each day brings the opportunity to share our faith, potentially for the first time with that person, and Mary Lennox-like to open together the overgrown door of The Secret Garden. As well as sharing faith in traditional ways, as so many parishes up and down the country are doing so faithfully, we are blessed to have pioneers working on the margins. There are voices calling us to work alongside those of good will in the community on green issues, or the refugee crisis. Our churches, alongside other Christian communities here, run the town’s food bank.

    And at the heart of it all there’s the worship we offer to God. Sunday by Sunday we celebrate the Eucharist – when the mystery of God’s love in Christ is made present to us – and listen to Scripture – discerning words of hope that are for all people.

    I love being a parish priest.

    But my answer to that original question contained a second part, which on the face of it was more ambivalent. I said, ‘I’m less patient.’ While five years ago I had some sense of the way in which the Church of England might need to change, I didn’t feel the same urgency I do now. I’m not from a Christian family but as a child the Church of England nurtured my faith and, for all its flaws, is my home. I have worshipped across the breadth of our denomination and, whilst some of that breadth I find personally challenging, I remain committed to finding a way for our whole church to flourish. As one we should be sharing the joy of the Good News.

    Given half a chance, I’d spend all day reading a novel because stories give me life. So it won’t come as a surprise that my faith is profoundly shaped by the stories we encounter in Scripture – especially the parables that Jesus told. In those parables two themes particularly shape my life as a follower of Christ, and then as a priest.

    First, the faithfulness that God requires of us. The sowing of the seed with no sense of what the return will be. And second, the generosity and hospitality of the God we worship – a God who bids us welcome. It’s a picture of abundance, but in my day-to-day life too often I’m forced to see things through a lens of scarcity. Post-pandemic, the volunteers we don’t have, the funds we can’t find, the stipendiary ministry roles we need to reduce, the scale of the need we are facing in our community and the struggle to keep pace with that. Sometimes it’s hard to remember we’re serving a God who invites us to a party.

    I long for our church to recapture that vision of a party so good you want to bring all your friends along as well, the festival you’d climb the fences to get into. And perhaps that last Glastonbury-based allusion is the root cause of my impatience. We’ve been invited to the best headline act ever and yet we’ve built high fences all round it to keep others out. Whereas God goes out on to the streets to welcome everyone in, we’ve too often been a church that serves only the people who look and think like ‘us’.

    My sense is that those of us who might describe ourselves as either ‘Inclusive’ or ‘liberal’ can sometimes be perceived as lukewarm in our longing to make Christ known. Of course this isn’t true, but I think those of us who hold those perspectives need to tell in a compelling way the story of a God whose arms are open wide to all. A God whose invitations to the party are surprising and unsettling to the older brothers of the world. A God who delights in and loves each and every one of us.

    Five years on from ordination to the priesthood, I’m impatient for a church that tells that amazing story with one voice.