ViaMedia

Category: We Can’t Go Back…

  • Change is Coming…Even if We Feel the Record is Stuck

    by the Ven Nikki Groarke, Archdeacon of Dudley and Member of General Synod

    “I can hear change humming
    In its loudest, proudest song.
    I don’t fear change coming,
    And so I sing along.”

    Words from US Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s forthcoming book, ‘Change Sings’

    Change is humming. Can you hear it?

    The Archbishops of Canterbury and York wrote in a recent article “the Church in changing times”:

    “The Anglican stability that people rightly cherish — as do we — is the result of our willingness to change. As the theologian Hans Kung once observed: ‘To stay the same when everything else around you changes is not to stay the same.’”

    Are we willing to change, to sing along?

    Some of us thrive in changing times. I admit to relishing the challenge of leading change. It energises me, yet I understand that others find it threatening.  What I am struggling with right now however, is not being able to sing along with change, as everything feels stuck, and June freedom still feels a very long way away.

    Change is humming, but it’s so quiet now it’s almost imperceptible.

    We know that the world has changed. We know (whether we like it or not) that some aspects of church life will need to change. We can work towards that change to a degree, but this has all gone on so long, that many of us can’t really remember what ‘normal church’ felt like, so planning for change feels very abstract.

    In a reflection entitled, “A change has begun” delivered in March last year, Rowan Williams said:

    “And as we contemplate the coming months, not knowing when we can breathe again, it’s worth thinking about how already the foundations have been laid for whatever new opportunities God has for us on the far side of this crisis.”

    The change that began humming last March will provide new opportunities, but the far side is still yet to come.

    Change is humming, but the record has stuck.

    I was challenged last week by a wise woman, when I spoke of feeling that so much of the work I believe we need to do to change and strengthen our churches for the future is ‘on hold’.  She urged me not to press pause, but rather to respect the unique phase we are in and look for opportunities to do new and different things, to nourish, support and enable people in this season so that we come out of it flourishing rather than depleted and exhausted.

    She pointed me to William Bridges’ writing on transitions, where he argues that the process of change is different from the change itself. Change is situational, transition is more personal, the inner reorientation that enables the change to become real. It involves rites of passage, appropriate endings and beginnings, dying and rebirth.  He writes helpfully about the ‘neutral zone’ between the ending of one stage and the beginning of the next, being the key element of transitioning well.  In this neutral zone we can easily feel apathetic, we drift in an untethered way, disorientated and uncertain, disconnected and disengaged. It’s certainly how I have felt in this last lockdown especially.  But Bridges asserts that “the neutral zone provides access to an angle of vision on life that one can get nowhere else. And it is a succession of such views over a lifetime that produces wisdom.”

    Change is humming, but in the neutral zone it’s humming a different tune.

    We are going to be in some degree of neutral zone until at least late June.  How can we embrace this gap for something fruitful?  Rather than trying to go into reverse, back to the way things were, or into fast-forward, planning for the future without knowing the parameters, can we simply embrace the emptiness to prepare well for coming out of lockdown into a new beginning?

    Individually, the neutral zone can be used positively for retreat, time out for prayer and reflection. Although social distancing and staying at home have meant most of us have had enforced time away from others, there is a difference between isolation and retreat. Choosing to enter the wilderness as Jesus did in preparation for beginning his ministry might reframe the experience, enabling it to be a more spiritually regenerating period. Perhaps engaging with Brueggemann’s grouping of the Psalms into those of orientation, disorientation and new orientation will speak hope into our soul.

    Collectively, the neutral zone can provide space to invest in relationships.  How can I use this moment to deepen understanding with a colleague, to communicate well, to facilitate creative thinking?  How can we offer just enough structure to reassure people they are held and secure, without constraining new ideas which will, in due course, emerge? How best do we set short term goals that can be celebrated when met, without overwhelming people? How can we set an outline direction of travel, in the midst of uncertainty, such that the background hum of change is helpful mood music rather than dissonant clanging?

    Making peace with the present will enable a more healthy emergence into the future. In due course we may have to revisit endings. Some things didn’t end well, because we had no idea they were gone for good. This time last year much that was laid down was done so temporarily, but some of it has since died and inadvertently been let go of for ever, and must be appropriately grieved for before something new can begin and grow in its place.

    We will, as always, weave in and out of endings, beginnings, and the neutral zone, as transition is part of life, and navigating transitions well is what grows wisdom.

    This season of change has the potential in our churches to build to a crescendo at the right time.  The enthusiasm with which we add our unique voice to the song to make it loud and proud will depend to no large extent on how we engage with this neutral zone of our transition.  But we do so, in all our rich harmonies, knowing that our remodelled selves, and our remodelled churches, are safe in Christ.

    “‘Christ yesterday and today’, says the prayer over the Easter Candle, ‘all times belong to him and all the ages’. He is contemporary to me now; and when I remember with honesty and hope, I discover that he is contemporary with what I remember, faithfully at work in my past as in my present. And as I struggle and pray to bring together the fragments of an identity that is always being shaken around and remodelled, I get some glimpses of the promised end in which Christ simply embraces the whole of me, all I have been, and makes it one with itself and with him.”

    Rowan Williams, “Candles in the Dark – Faith, hope and love in a time of pandemic”

  • We Can’t Go Back….But We Will, Unless…

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of Via Media, Director of the Ozanne Foundation and a Member of General Synod

    Jayne Ozanne new

    “Real power lies in the people!”

    Earlier this week I was privileged to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu say these powerful words during a characteristically direct address ahead of a private screening of an epic new film about Africa, climate change and migration, The Great Green Wall.

    He was keen to draw on the words of Thomas Sankara, that set the tone of the film:

    “We must dare to invent the future – everything humanity can imagine we can create”

    For the last three months on Via Media we have had 24 vastly different and yet uniquely personal blogs from a range of contributors addressing the subject “We Can’t Go Back…” They have touched on a truly diverse set of topics from power and inequality to social care and justice, and from topics relating to our buildings to those relating to our well-being and mental health.

    For all their differences, they have each dared to invent a new future, to imagine things as they could be.  Indeed, the series itself found its genesis in words spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury during his Easter Day sermon, televised to the nation from his kitchen at the start of the lockdown, where he shared his own vision of a future filled with resurrection hope, saying:

    “After so much suffering, so much heroism from key workers and the NHS, so much effort, once this epidemic is conquered here and round the world, we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all is normal.  There needs to be a resurrection of our common life, something that links to the old, but is different and more beautiful.  We must dream it because it is the gift of God. Then we must build it in partnership with God.”

    But the million-dollar question of course is – will things actually really change?

    Or perhaps more importantly – what will it take to bring about the change so many long for, write for, march for and in some cases, even die for?

    I suggest that there are three things that we can each do to help bring about the change we seek.  For power truly does “rest with the people” – we just need to understand how much power we have and how it can be harnessed, released and used to transform our Church, and our world.

    The first is, we need to pledge to always “call things out”.  We need to name the elephants in the room.  We need to stop admiring the “emperor’s new clothes”, and instead have the humanity and the decency to tell the emperors that they are in fact naked, that we will not go along with their charades any longer.  It takes courage and wisdom, and it requires a tone that is full of love rather than accusation – a balance that is not easy to strike.  In essence we need to stop colluding.  We need to stop colluding with the lies that have kept us all bound and which have often left us feeling that we have no option but to conform.

    What sort of lies?

    Well those that say our Church is not rich.  We are rich.  It is just that the money is locked up in ways few can access, and it is this that needs challenging.  It is the lies that say we, the Church, are united, when we all know that we are deeply divided and that it is those without power and influence who end up leaving by the back door, with few seeming to notice or care.  It is the lies that say we, the Church, have a respected voice in our nation, when in fact few are listening and frankly many no longer care as we lost their respect the moment we started preaching love to them and abjectly failing to show it to some of the most vulnerable in our midst.

    The second, which is closely related to the first, is that we need to stop being so deferential.  This does not mean that we stop showing respect to people, that is quite a different matter – mutual respect is healthy and essential.  However, there is an unhealthy level of deference in our Church that seems to put senior religious leaders on pedestals from which they can only fall.  They are human beings just like the rest of us.  They bleed, just like the rest of us.  They make mistakes, just like the rest of us.

    If we are honest, deference can act both ways – it can be as much about people in power expecting it as well as those “in the pews” kowtowing to it.  It may well have been an unspoken norm from our past, but it is not the model that Jesus shows us as he interacts with people around him – in fact quite the opposite.  The religious leaders of the day may have expected it, but He modelled something quite different – much to their frustration – and the people loved Him for it!

    Thirdly, we have to believe in ourselves. “There can be miracles, when you believe..” is not just a song sung by Mariah Carey.  It is something we each have to embrace and hold on to.  Right now there is so much that could happen, if only there were people willing to step forward and lead change.  We are in the midst of a major “reset” – there is a “reboot” that is happening not just in our Church, but in our nation and in the world itself.

    Never has there been such an opportune time for people to stand up and say “enough, I want to do things differently!”  What is stopping them?  Mostly, although I appreciate not always, it is their own levels of self-confidence and sense of self-worth.

    We are the key – we are also the barrier.  Change lies with us!

    So, in the words of Archbishop Tutu, who closed his address to us with the following challenge:

    “Let us not forget the transformative power of hope and imagination – we must dare to invent the future!”

    We must “dare”, and we must “do” – for real power lies with us!

  • We Can’t Go Back…So We Need to Take Care of Our Mental Health

    by the Rt Revd Dame Sarah Mullally DBE, Bishop of London and former Chief Nursing Officer

    Sarah Mullally

    ‘Coronavirus has our brains pinging on “future threat,” driving global anxiety and shared fear, as we all live in this extreme state of uncertainty.’ So wrote Jan Bruce in Forbes magazine on March 5th. And if shared fear was a reality then, how much more so now? After three months of daily death tolls, R values and government appeals to stay at home, it is not surprising that a certain amount of anxiety might hang over the public’s heads.

    This week, the mental health charity Mind quantified the impact. In a survey of 16,000 people, they discovered that 65% of adults and 75% of 13-24 year olds with pre-existing mental health conditions said that their situations had worsened. More than a fifth of those aged 13 or older without prior mental health difficulties described their mental health as poor or very poor.[1]

    We needed the stats, the briefings and the message to stay at home. Coronavirus was and is a killer. Understanding the risks helped us to stay alert in a time of real danger. And I’m also acutely aware that many people have faced fearful burdens on top of the virus itself.  Those who have lost their jobs or have been put under severe financial pressures. The elderly who were shielding and less able to socialise online. Those who struggle with loneliness at the best of times, finding their feelings exacerbated by circumstances. Others found themselves suddenly trapped at home with abusers. They faced fears not just from an unseen killer but from a visible threat.

    But the general climate of fear that has been so successfully inculcated in us, leaves us with a conundrum. How do we encourage one another to wisely emerge from lockdown? How do we begin to navigate this brave new world of face masks and social distancing? A world in which we can meet with six others but cannot sing in church. Some can have a picnic in the park while others remain shut up at home. We have permission to roam but the newspapers warn of a second wave. We want to support the economy but can feel, more than anything, emotionally shattered.

    Thankfully, before COVID-19 hit, we had been moving towards a greater awareness of the need to attend to our mental health. Notably the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge spoke out last year. I was grateful to be able to speak on these issues at Lambeth Palace alongside Dr Jacqui Dyer, President of the Mental Health Foundation and the Archbishop of Canterbury last year. The increased engagement with mental health awareness day is evidence of what Justin Welby wrote then: “it feels like something is beginning to shift.”[2] It is becoming okay to not be okay. And in this regard, the Christian story has an important contribution to make.

    In the apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he says:

    “We have this treasure,” [the treasure being the glory of God] “in jars of clay” [the jars being us] to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).

    Paula Gooder, Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, tells me that there were two types of jar in the first century. One was dark and thick used for display. The other used the thinnest material possible so that it would crack in the kiln. The cracks enabled light to diffuse out from within when a lamp was placed inside. The jar was purposely created to be vulnerable, so that the light would shine through it. This, says Paul is God’s design. Our fragility, vulnerability and brokenness is by design, so that the light of the glory of Christ might shine brightly as we persevere in living for Jesus through it.

    All of this means that as we emerge from lockdown, we do well to talk about our mental health. To talk to each other, to make it integral to our ministry life whatever context we find ourselves in, for mental health to be a subject for prayer in public as well as in private. In this way we can each find the comfort and support that we need.

    I’m doing all I can to ensure that the NHS provides the mental health services that our nation will need through my role in the House of Lords. But in the first instance, Paul doesn’t point us to specialised support groups but the shoulders to cry on that he provides in the church. The brothers and sisters that should be available to us all. The challenge to us as churches, is to continue to have a culture in which everyone feels safe to share their struggles and feel able to speak openly.

    Our fear is not something that we need to hide. It is something that can be harnessed in our walk with God. So often it is when we are at our wit’s end that we recognise our need to cry out to the Lord for help (Psalm 107:27). So often, in God’s peculiar plan for this world, it is when we have received comfort from Him and his people, that we are best equipped to comfort others in return (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

    [1] https://www.mind.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/uk-government-must-urgently-plan-for-recovery-from-coronavirus-mental-health-crisis-says-mind/

    [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/18/children-alone-uk-mental-health-problems-listening-stigma

     

  • We Can’t Go Back…Even When We Do!

    by the Rt Revd David Walker, Bishop of Manchester

    david-walker

    From this weekend, churches have the option, subject to a risk assessment, of reopening their premises for public acts of worship. Over the next few weekends I expect, and indeed hope, that we will be able to undertake simple, practical measures that will reduce the risks of infection at such gatherings, sufficiently to comply with the government requirement that our buildings be Covid secure. Congregation members may stagger their return over a number of Sundays, there will be no grand reopening ceremonies, but physically we will have indeed “gone back”.

    Except, there is never any true going back.

    The past, even the very recent past, is always a different country. Whilst separated from public worship in our buildings, we have continued the mission of Christ’s Church in different ways. We have proclaimed the Gospel from virtual pulpits we never knew existed, and many have responded in joy. We have nurtured one another in faith, using every technique of telecommunication to deepen our fellowship, share our tears, console our bereavement and relieve our loneliness. We have served the poor and hungry in our communities. We have been stirred to pray and act for justice, so that hungry children will be fed over the summer holidays, the homeless will not be cast back onto the streets, and Black Lives will Matter, both more and to more of us, in the time to come. We have shrunk our carbon footprint, travelling less, buying fewer disposable commodities, and enjoying the sights and sounds of a nature beginning to breathe more easily as many of us have been able to do also.

    We are not who we were four months ago. We have lost, lamented, learned, longed and loved. We cannot be squeezed back into our former shape.

    When I first began to work with parishes on recruiting new priests, I quickly discovered the huge value of “the vacancy”. It was only when the previous incumbent had left that a parish profile could be drawn up that didn’t simply say, “Same again please, bishop, only 20 years younger”. It was only after eight or nine further months had lapsed that a new vicar could arrive and not be expected to take on every single duty that had accrued to their predecessor. Time needed to pass for things to stop happening, for other practices to cease being unthinkingly presumed; only thus can we make room for the new.

    If I were inventing a liturgy for the return to our buildings, it would be to invite each worshipper, new or returning, to make the baptismal renunciations and professions of faith before crossing the church threshold the first time. We enter anew, casting off unsustainable or unwanted habits, discarding long hoarded prejudices, released from behaviours that exhaust and drain our energies. Ready for the future.

    My hope and my yearning is that these months of lockdown have readied us to be a Church that treasures its people and its resources enough to release them to where the opportunities and challenges for mission are the greatest; not a Church that seeks to do everything just as we have always done, but to do it more frantically and with fewer assets available than ever. I hope for patterns of ministry that do not tire our clergy and lay leaders to exhaustion, but equip them to expend their energies building the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed; for ways of meeting and ministering that do not tie up so much of our energies in maintaining the wrong buildings in the wrong places; for radical simplification of the bureaucratic hoops we so often have to go through on the way to achieving any significant change.

    It would be foolish to pretend that most of us have not been impacted by the stress and strain of these last months. I can hear the siren voice within myself, the voice that wants to go back to things as they were. Maybe just for a year or two, it whispers, a time to rest and regain impetus for the future. And yet I know that to do so would be fatal. Indeed, it would simply add to the burden of exhaustion without offering new hope. Developing new vision and purpose, and doing it now, will bring not only fresh energy but refreshment and renewal. When we are clear how we are going to be different, we will find rest in release from the things we have stopped tiring ourselves out with.

    So, I welcome the fact that we will be publishing the Living in Love and Faith resources, and commending them for study and engagement, this autumn. I dare to hope that reading them in the light of our emerging from lockdown will provide fresh insights into who we are, and how we might be the Church better. I welcome the work I see being done to help us focus on what the Five Marks of Mission of the Anglican Communion might mean for us both as individuals and as church communities over the next five to ten years. I welcome the fresh energy that lies behind what should be the self-evident phrase that Black Lives Matter.

    The next few weeks and months will not only be a time to fling open the doors of our buildings to welcome our people, but a time to fling open our hearts and minds to welcome with equal enthusiasm what the Holy Spirit is yearning to breathe into us.

  • We Can’t Go Back…to 2020 Vision

    by Dr Rachel Jepson, Member of General Synod, Teacher and PhD in Education ? “Death and Life After Death: Children’s Concepts and Their Place in Religious Education”

    Rachel

    “I have come in order that you might have life ? life in all its fullness.”

    John’s Gospel, Chapter 10 Verse 10

    Engaging with what is happening in the world around us is both a personal and collective privilege and responsibility.  COVID-19 has vividly reminded me of the importance of fully living in the moment ? that this is the only moment I can influence.

    This pandemic is a chance for our education system to be far more holistic than it has ever been.  All those who are responsible for, and are a part of our formal education system ? the students, teaching and non-teaching staff, parents/guardians, governors, inspectors, the Department for Education, and the teaching unions have a golden opportunity to reflect on and assess the purpose of education and how that should be manifested.

    More joined-up thinking, action, and discernment is desperately needed.  As a consequence, there should be less compartmentalisation and separation of the formal place of learning in school, college or university from the home and the community in which people live.  The pandemic is starkly reminding us that how we live is interwoven with our neighbours whether they are family and friends, or acquaintances and strangers.  We do not live mutually exclusive lives.  Thus, a greater and more consistent willingness to be alert to and informed by each other’s narratives and realities is imperative.  In turn, this should lead to greater understanding and acceptance of one another.

    The pandemic keeps presenting us with the harsh realities of life.  Consequently, it is important for schools to embrace this chance to facilitate their students being able to explore the concepts of death and life after death.  Research affirms that children, including young children, are capable of considering these concepts and they should be given the opportunity to explore them further.  School is an advantageous and universally available place where meaningful consideration of the search of these concepts should occur as school is a familiar environment for discovery, learning and understanding for children.  Religious Education is the most relevant area of the school curriculum where children’s discovery and learning can be focused on the exploration of these concepts through investigating ultimate questions with the rites of passage and doctrines of the major world religions.  Accordingly, the meaningful and worthwhile updating of Religious Education syllabi for implementation by teachers and those responsible for Religious Education should be a priority.

    Furthermore, it would be healthy and wise for every school, college and university to make sure that they have a bereavement policy in place, and for the plan to be discussed and disseminated to every member of staff.  Familiarisation with it is key.

    Those in education are being forced to embrace digital technology.  In many places there is increased staff confidence with it as a result, for example, of daily staff communication which has, in turn, helped colleagues to work together.  Hopefully, this should mean that in future it can be used more to communicate with the aim of reducing workload.  Similarly, for many students there is increased confidence in digital technology.  Yet for others, such as, in some rural communities, it has led to confusion and anxiety.  Significant numbers of students do not have any idea how to open, access or write an email, yet this is what is being expected of them by their teachers.  It is not part of their every-day experience.  Parents in rural communities are not necessarily equipped to support their children in this digital age either.  As a result, for too many students a gap is emerging between the progress made by some of them and those sadly left behind.  There are cases where students have been provided with laptops with internet connection paid for and set up.  The issue is that without the knowledge, the students are unable to use them.  It would appear that the information technology curriculum has not been sufficient in embedding these skills which many adults take for granted.

    At the same time, the pandemic is providing more opportunities for families to learn together.  Sometimes this is through the range of tasks the schools have facilitated for the students’ learning; sometimes this is through how families are choosing to navigate the situation and seize opportunities, especially for their children to develop life skills.

    Excitingly, there are numerous, fantastic examples of students of all ages engaging in learning in and from their local environment and community ? from exploring the seaweed found on the beaches of Orkney and uploading their findings to the British Seaweed Survey; to observing the barge loads of granite being delivered to the shores of Withernsea in the East Riding of Yorkshire.  Secondary school students, including GCSE Geographers, had been learning about coastal management before lockdown.  During their walks, students became curious and knowledgeable about what they were witnessing.  They then sent photographs to their teacher, enthusiastically informing her.  These experiences make for far better awareness of our environment and an appreciation of where we live.

    From my teaching experience in the UK and South Africa, I am keen to see those in education continue to go outside and explore, as well as members of the public continue their personal journey with nature which has been evolving throughout lockdown.  This will create and build relationships with the environment which will, in turn, promote pro-environmental behaviours and, hopefully, mark the furtherance of saving our planet for which we have been given the charge of custodians.

    During COVID-19 fresh, creative ways of teaching are having to be used, particularly through experimenting, observing, playing and researching rather than classroom-based lecture work.  The lockdown has also seen a vast expansion of life skills being taught ? from cooking to sewing to maintenance skills.  These skills are generally not taught by parents anymore, due for instance, to the pressures of home life, work, after-school activities.  However, lockdown has forced us to stay together and pass on these important skills.  These relationship building activities have shown that education can happen in different ways, as well as, teaching our children and young people on how to become resilient and to deal with issues that face us in life head on.  They are tangibly realizing that they can survive, and in some ways, thrive in challenging times and come out the other end.  Without them necessarily knowing it, these too, are vital life skills which will help them to have the courage to take risks as they journey on through life.

    This pandemic is a golden opportunity to embrace the change and feel empowered to choose to live life in all its fullness.  Every educator, regardless of location, has the privilege and responsibility to encourage and inspire the grappling of ideas for the sake of the children and young people in their care.  Face-to-face interaction is a necessary component for meaningful learning.  All in all, enabling them to become engaging, joyful, global citizens.

    My hope and prayer is that everyone has the willingness, ability and confidence to hold onto what they know to be worthwhile, to those whom they cherish, and come alongside the rest of humanity.  While remembering the power and impact of loving kindness on us all.

  • We Can’t Go Back…To Looking After No 1!

    by the Ven Malcolm Chamberlain, Archdeacon of Sheffield & Rotherham and Member of General Synod

    Malcolm

    On Monday 4th May, six weeks into the UK’s COVID-19 lockdown, The Guardian newspaper published an article by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett under the heading ‘Why coronavirus might just create a more equal society in Britain.’ In it they wrote about how the present crisis “has given rise to more neighbourliness, sociability and a desire to take care of each other.”

    It would be a fascinating study, well beyond the scope of this blog post, to put that statement to the test. Perhaps even more fascinating to chart a journey from how we were as a nation to what we may have become. At a superficial level, I can’t be the only one to have noticed how the initial selfish stockpiling of loo-rolls and pasta soon gave way to wonderful acts of human kindness. Indeed, in the midst of much tragic loss and disturbing uncertainty, time and time again we’ve been reminded of the human capacity for great generosity.

    I was particularly moved, for example, when, right at the beginning of the lockdown, the carers at Bridgedale House care home, not far from where I live in Sheffield, made the sacrificial decision to isolate with the residents in order to minimise the risk of transmitting the disease to those vulnerable people. For some this meant leaving behind partners and young children for several weeks, at a time when their lives were being affected too.

    We’ve heard stories of people spending their time and money to shop for and deliver groceries to those unable to leave their homes; of generous donations to foodbanks at a time of unprecedented demand; of holiday cottage owners housing NHS and other frontline workers free of charge; of café and restaurant owners providing food and refreshments for essential workers at heavily discounted prices or even for free; and, of course, there was Captain Tom’s incredible 100th birthday walk. As a fan of David Bowie, I still wish the army had given him an honorary promotion, so we could have sung about ‘Major Tom’!

    And I haven’t even mentioned the countless small, but no less significant, acts of generosity carried out by ordinary people day after day after day. If one positive effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is the much-needed reminder of the power of human generosity in overcoming adversity, we simply cannot go back to the self-obsessed ‘look after number one’ culture we have previously inhabited.

    We are not lone islands, even if economic policy has at times seduced us to such self-centredness. We are co-members of the human race, lovingly created by the same God who calls us into relationship with our Creator and with one another. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the awful consequences of poverty, institutional racism and injustice, as evidence suggests that the virus has a more devastating impact on the poor and on BAME communities. More positively, the COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to the benefits of cleaner air, with enforced travel restrictions reducing global carbon emissions by some 17%. We cannot go back.

    But let’s be honest. We can go back and, sadly, we probably will.

    When we eventually return to a new normality free from restrictions, it will be all too easy for us to forget that feeling of sharing in a common crisis, and return again to simply looking after number one. I’m writing this in the week that non-essential shops were allowed to open again, and was gobsmacked (not in a good way) by images of one such store where eager shoppers were literally wrestling with each other to get in the door as it opened – no thoughts of social distancing or, it seems, of anyone else’s needs. Faced with such images, it can seem as though nothing has really changed.

    So how can we live differently? How might we emerge from the lockdown as more generous and caring people? And how might such generosity demonstrate our oneness both as members of the human race and, for those of us who might call ourselves ‘Christian’, as followers of Jesus Christ?

    There may be a clue in the letters of the New Testament. As the Church began to spread across Asia Minor, St Paul regarded generously giving to meet the needs of others as a key sign of commitment to Christ and a powerful demonstration of unity. Tom Wright comments that, having realised just how poor the Jerusalem Church had become, Paul started to imagine “what an impact it would have if the churches of which Jerusalem had been so suspicious … were to band together and send real and lasting financial help.”[1]

    And so, Paul closes his first letter to the Corinthian church by explaining how they were to go about collecting gifts for their fellow believers in Jerusalem. And it wasn’t only the wealthy that gave generously. In chapter 8 of his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul points to the example of the Macedonian Christians, who, by the grace of God, had been giving voluntarily out of their relative poverty, begging earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry. I love that! These materially poor followers of Jesus were literally begging for the chance to enjoy the privilege of giving!

    As we potentially begin to slip back into old habits and power structures that advantage some over others, I wonder, do you, do I, regard generous giving as ‘a privilege’? Might we have more to learn from God about this essential mark of Christian discipleship. Whatever our financial means, however much spare time we have, whatever our gifts and abilities, might we have room to more fully reflect the generosity and abundance of the God who created us? Or what about our church or our diocese or our other networks – can we see ways of working together to better embody the kind of generosity that reflects our shared humanity?

    If the coronavirus pandemic has caused us to live more generously and pursue the common good in the face of adversity, surely we cannot go back.

    [1] Wright, Tom, Paul A Biography, SPCK: London, 2018, p257

  • We Can’t Go Back…to Ignoring Those We Do Not See

    by the Rt Revd Ruth Worsley, Bishop of Taunton

    Ruth

    ‘You don’t belong here’ were the words spoken to me on my first Sunday evening as curate.  I must say I felt quite affronted, I was nervous enough.  It had been quite a journey for me to take to ordination.  Brought up within a very conservative non-conformist Christian tradition where I had no role models of women in leadership, I had undertaken much soul-searching and wide-ranging debate to get to this point.

    Over the 12 years I spent in that parish, I discovered however what was behind those words.  This was a multi-cultural community with white working-class, living alongside changing, mobile and growing immigrant groups.  It was dynamic, colourful and constantly challenging for a new curate like me and I loved it.

    Unlike most of the diocesan congregations ours was richly diverse.   However the leadership was not.  Those of us in leadership put that down to the lack of confidence of our congregational members but it became clear during my ministry there that we had been using that as an excuse for some time.  ‘Empowering the laity’ didn’t just mean offering them opportunities to develop but also making space for them.  So we set about making some fundamental changes to increase the visibility of those we had overlooked.  Long-term middle-class white members of our PCC stepped down to make room for others drawn from our growing black and Asian congregation.

    One of the small but significant things we did was to make all our PCC members chalice assistants.  A tiny structural change but it meant that immediately we had 6 BAME members up front and visible to the wider congregation.  And what we found was that not only did they become visible but we also brought children and young people to the fore with the 2 16 year olds who were serving a year on the PCC.  Suddenly more of us could see ourselves mirrored in those participating in visible roles.  And it grew confidence, folk could begin to see they had something to contribute.

    That 20-year old memory has come to mind again for me in sharp relief as I’ve reflected on this period of lockdown.  Who are those who have remained invisible to me over those years and yet now I am beginning to see once more?

    In the early weeks of lockdown, my colleague +Peter met a woman in her wheelchair along his walk.  She told him that she had not been able to access church for 4 years or more and yet that week she had been 4 or 5 times.  How?  Through the digital possibilities of the internet allowing her the freedom to enter into worship and not finding her physical constraints to be an issue.  We cannot go back to ignoring those we cannot see!

    Last night I visited a local residential care home to thank the carers who have given selflessly during this time of anxiety and fear.  They have gone the extra mile to keep our seniors safe and yet often have come second when it comes to PPE, personal pay and conditions, and in feeling society’s appreciation.  We were told our visit made them feel valued as they had felt excluded from the clap for carers with the spotlight being on the NHS.  Izzy also told us how important the weekly local church’s YouTube service had become to their residents.  In the past the church had taken the occasional service in the home, but now residents were able to feel part of the regular congregation.  We promised that we would seek to continue these acts of worship.  We cannot go back to ignoring those we cannot see!

    Social care has been underfunded for many years and we have known that.  The Dilnot Commission, set up 10 years ago, proposed a range of ways in which we could provide affordable but appropriately financed care into later age.  Some of our carers still remain on pay that does not constitute a living wage.  The media attention which has shown how care homes have borne such a terrible cost in loss of life due to them taking second place, has caused us to sit up and take note.  If we truly appreciate the contribution such carers make to our society then we must join in bringing about change to the political systems which govern such care.  We cannot go back to ignoring those we cannot see!

    And there are so many more whom we have overlooked both in the Church and wider society in terms of either our unconscious bias or our unwillingness to choose to see them.  Whether it is fear of difference or the comfort of homogeneity, we have narrowed our vision and lost sight of the broader horizon over the years.

    I say ‘we’ but let’s own it…’I’. ‘me’!  Early passions in ministry which sought to speak out for the most disadvantaged have settled into a pattern of balancing out the needs of all and thus diminishing the injustices of those whom I fail to see.  The cause of those of a different ethnicity or sexuality, the concerns of those with mental or physical health needs, the case for the eldest or youngest in our society has often remained unrecognised.

    But there are signs of hope.

    The fear of pandemic has led to society re-evaluating what is important in life, our values, our purpose and those we love.  ‘Key work’ is no longer focused on the financial markets as we have seen the economy tumble but rather on those who offer us a service of care.  The more vulnerable in our communities have experienced an outpouring of generosity from neighbours and volunteers as they have become a focus of attention rather than remaining hidden and unseen behind closed doors.  We cannot go back…

    As I write this I’m reminded of the vignette of the child being brought into the company of Jesus by a parent.  The disciples tried to muscle them out of the way, an unimportant intrusion, not worthy of notice.  Jesus’ response was to draw the child into the centre as the focus of attention.  His challenge to the disciples was not only to see but to become like children themselves.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • We Can’t Go Back…But We Can Stop Hurting People!

    by the Revd Peterson Feital, Founder of The Haven+and Missioner to the Creative Industries for the Diocese of London 

    Peterson Feital

    I’ve been reflecting recently how movements inspired by the Reformations, The Moravians, and John Wesley have all shaped the history of the ‘Western’ church. Men, women, young, and old, followed the vision for a Church that embodied love, care and community living.

    Of course, there were also negative things in these movements, as colonization also happened with devastating effects. However, many missionaries did get things right, keeping the love for God and their neighbour at the heart of everything they did and taught. These people prayed with expectation, fervour and faith, together. They moved the archaic establishments to become kingdom enterprises that impacted the social and the political spheres of society and changed the mission of the ‘Western’ church forever. Missionaries, pastors and evangelists went everywhere, in many capacities: teachers, doctors, and builders etc, to teach the world about the redemptive power of Jesus’ love.

    I’m a Brazilian – well I’m actually part native as two of my great-grandfathers were European settlers. Missionaries influenced my life in every way possible.  They brought a passion for the Gospel; they brought the visual and performing arts in their delivery of the Gospel; they brought liberation from having to conform to an oppressive political mind-set. They showed me Jesus and taught me spiritual disciplines: how to pray, and how to serve and show love to all, unconditionally. Still, there was sadness about them when they shared that the Western Church was ageing, tired, bungled up in intuitionalism, and that individualism was curtailing their ability to be emotionally and spiritually close.  These missionaries invited their spiritual ‘children’ to come to the UK to help the Western churches, and to remind them of their roots. Many, like me, responded to that call.

    I came to the UK nearly twenty years ago, looking forward to meeting the British, and my spiritual parents. I had spent my life reading about Spurgeon, Susanna Wesley, John Wesley, to name but a few, and I was hungry to learn more about mission, prayer and discipleship. I was thirsty to drink from the water of wisdom, but what I experienced when I finally reached the UK was that the teachings of these elders seemed to be nearly completely forgotten. It broke my heart, into pieces.

    Last Easter, when Archbishop Justin Welby said that after Covid-19 ‘we can’t go back to where we were before’ my heart filled with hope for a renewed future. I realised, however, that we cannot move forward without remembering our Grandparents of Faith. We need to return to the roots of the apostolic mission that Jesus gave his disciples, and which the Reformers adopted, to move forward. I also realised that what is paralysing the church is a lack of courage to be free of power and control.  As Paul Tillich puts it, ‘courage can show us what being is, and being can show us what courage is’.[1]  Fear produces a culture of uncertainty and confusion, making institution into a disorientating space. God does not want us to be trapped and confined. His Will in Psalm 18:19 is to bring us into ‘a spacious place’, a place of freedom.

    You may be asking yourselves what you may have forgotten from our Parents of Faith. I know this is painful for me to say this, but I have tried your ways here in the UK, and it has hurt and damaged me, and some of my brothers and sisters too. So, from my heart to yours what I have learnt here, may give you glimpse as to what has been lost: I have learned cynicism. I have learned that prayer is without the expectation that God can show-up. I have learned to love at arm’s length.

    I have learned that growth is numerical, not a growth of character that matches Jesus. I have learned that loving and including individuals, from LGBT to the disabled, the poor, the homeless, the addict, and artists, creatives and mental health individuals are merely peripheral exercises, and not ministries at the heart of who we are and the ministries we do.

    I have learned that we spend more time trying to protect Jesus with policies, which are more about control, than facilitation of His redeeming power and truth. Well, I do not believe that Jesus needs protection, and this is what he illustrates when Peter and the other apostles try to stop the heavily bleeding woman from being noticed and recognised (mentioned in three Gospels: Mark, Matthew and Luke).

    I want to tell you, for the sake of my grandparents, that whether you do or do not, I will not go back to the way it was before Covid-19. So, I will not let cynicism replace hope any longer. I will pray with faith for Jesus to turn up, and I will love people at close range.

    Numerical growth will not be more important than discipleship. And – I will hang out with the broken, the disgraced, and the destitute – even if that bothers and makes the institutional church question me, and the ministry God has given me to do.

     I can see, now, that there is an intrinsic difference between suffering for an institution and suffering for the Gospel.

    Please note the original title was “We Can’t Go Back…But We Can Honour Our Grandparents of the Faith”

    [1] Tillich P, The Courage To Be, Yale University Press, 1952. P.4

  • We Can’t Go Back…to Preserving Bricks & Mortar

    by the Ven Nikki Groarke, Archdeacon of Dudley and Member of General Synod

    Nikki

    A small group of beleaguered disciples, tired, fearful and disappointed, uncertain about the future, meeting behind closed doors, wistfully reminiscing about the crowds who had at one time gathered with them. Now it’s just the faithful remnant.

     The Holy Spirit comes, and they are transformed, heading out into the public arena, living life fully as Christ’s followers, drawing others to join them by their love for each other and their neighbours, and their accessible, amateurish but heartfelt teaching and worship.

    We have all reflected recently on a story something like this over Pentecost. However, what I am describing is not the early church, but rather what I have seen played out in many small congregations across my diocese in these last few months.  In multi-parish rural benefices and urban teams, where previously ten to fifteen committed long term members met in multiple locations for worship, now a hundred or more gather online together, energised and engaged each week, making new friends and attracting others. It’s easier to join a crowd than a clique.

    For many years across the country, weary church wardens have with dogged determination, fought to keep regular Sunday services going in their church building, not wanting to betray their predecessors by allowing the church to die on their watch. Failure and local wrath have been constant threats  Then, overnight in March, the doors of every church building were closed, unilaterally. And they were not responsible. It was not their fault. A Kairos moment?

    Lockdown was dramatic and shocking for church communities. Emerging from it will be far more nuanced, and no less difficult. Already MPs and journalists are politicising the ‘draconian’ refusal to permit the use of church buildings for private prayer and funerals. Bishops across the country are tweeting  (including my own)!  Passions and anxieties are running high amidst uncertainties and swathes of guidelines for ‘whenever we can reopen’.

    Churches will soon be allowed to open again, and that is right. But please let’s not rush back to opening them all.  Church buildings are different, have different purposes and callings, and can sometimes get in the way of God’s people truly being church.  And we have too many of them.

    It’s very easy to say. “Open your church building from tomorrow” to gain some support from vocal campaigners.  But what about the tiny rural church with no mains water, where handwashing isn’t possible?  How do you clean an ancient building with nooks and crannies when you can’t slosh the bleach around?  How do you safely open a huge cathedral with multiple entrances and many chapels, when staff are furloughed, closure of cafés and shops and no tourists has caused a financial crisis, and most volunteers are vulnerable or shielding?  Practically there are many issues to be overcome.  The challenges will be met of course.  Clergy and church members will rise to the occasion creatively, just as they have adapted to the constraints of recent months with resilience and faith.

    But what about the opportunities of this Kairos moment?  Strategically is it right to go back to dispersed, fragmented and often insular worship in every place?  Surely this is the time to courageously ask the questions few previously dared voice.

    Should this church be used for worship each Sunday in the future?  Can we re-designate for occasional use – weddings, funerals, harvest and Christmas?  Can we formally close, and recognise the building’s importance as a local heritage asset, treating it as such rather than trying to meet unrealistic expectations of it becoming a vibrant community hub when we all know in our hearts that this role is filled adequately by the village hall or pub?  Dare we contemplate allowing our building to become perhaps a beautiful ruin?

    Place is important of course, and prayed in places are undoubtedly holy.  It is important to have sacred space where we can gather, celebrate the sacraments, reflect amidst beauty.  Buildings where key life events have been marked hold special significance and will always be places of pilgrimage.  But not every church building is beautiful, many are not fit for purpose, they are often in the wrong places where settlements have moved. Some were built for dubious reasons – as follies or status symbols.  One size does not fit all, and we need to grasp the freedom the current closure gives us to treat each case individually.

    If congregations and weary wardens can be released to be church, rather than being burdened with the responsibility of preserving bricks and mortar, maybe the new life we have seen emerge in lockdown might blossom and flourish – not forever online – heaven forbid! But in vibrant Christian communities meeting in the most appropriate church building in a grouping, or even in a school hall, focussing their energies and enthusiasm on serving their communities, fed by corporate worship with many others, sharing gifts and skills as they grow in discipleship together.

    My theological college principal often reflected that policy is usually at least ten years behind practice in the Church of England.  Re-designating masses of church buildings can, if we are brave to seize the moment, be trialled instinctively as we begin to embrace the new normal. The legislation to make it formal will take Chancellors and Archdeacons and General Synod many years and tie us all in knots, but let’s not be deterred.  We cannot go back to a uniform approach to church buildings draining the life from the church.  Let’s invest in some, reinvent others, and dare to let some quietly stay closed for ever.

  • We Can’t Go Back…to Breathlessness

    by the Rt Revd Philip North, Bishop of Burnley


    Philip


    ‘I can’t breathe.’

    Following the lynch-mob style killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, his dying words have become the cry of dispossessed and impoverished BAME communities first in the States and then across the globe. Long decades in which they have suffered on a daily basis from structural racism, inequality of opportunity and the denial of their personhood has exploded into a mighty welling up of anger which has left the Trump administration floundering and governments around the world struggling to keep up.

    ‘I can’t breathe.’

    That is also the cry of COVID patients, a condition which fills the lungs with fluid such that the breath is forced out of a person. At first we were told this pandemic would be a crisis for everyone. Already it is revealing itself to be a crisis for the poor. Those from urban areas and BAME communities are dying in hugely disproportionate numbers. And as the massive economic impact of lockdown reveals itself, it will inevitably be the poor who pay an unfair share of the cost, for the impact of crisis is always delegated to those who are already deprived.

    ‘I can’t breathe.’

    Unspoken, spoken then hashtagged, this is becoming the cry of all who feel constricted and suffocated by poverty or injustice.

    ‘I can’t breathe.’

    Those are not recorded amongst the last words spoken by Jesus from the cross, but they might have been, for crucifixion, like COVID, works by forcing the air out of a person’s lungs. Every breath becomes such unspeakable agony that eventually the body has to give up trying. On the cross, Jesus identifies himself with all who cry out, ‘I can’t breathe.’

    Yet his breathlessness has purpose, ‘It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you,’ Jesus says at the table of the Last Supper (John 16, 7). By undergoing breathlessness, Jesus unleashes for us the irresistible, life-giving breath of the Spirit who renews all creation.

    The Spirit’s breath, released at Pentecost, is the gift that Jesus gives to his Church. So in a post-COVID world Christians must be utterly single-minded in breathing that breath over a world that cries out, ‘I can’t breathe.’ Nothing else will matter.

    First, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of life. During crisis, through generous service and imaginative use of the online environment, we have made contact with a new fringe. What we need now is a new evangelism in which we live and speak the Gospel with joy, an evangelism motivated not by institutional survival but by the passionate desire that people might breathe.

    And this new evangelism must begin amongst the poor, because that is the place from where renewal always springs. Dioceses are going to have difficult decisions to make about deployment and pastoral organisation in the years ahead, but such decisions must honour our commitment to inner city, outer estate and post-industrial communities. If now becomes the time when we disproportionately withdraw people or buildings from places of poverty, then God is dishonoured and the Gospel is fatally undermined.

    The lesson of history is clear and consistent. An evangelism that prioritises the powerful does not work and cannot last. Instead we need to hear the voice of the breathless. We need to speak good news to the poor. Our best leaders, our richest resources, our finest theologians, our most engaging preachers must be offered to the places where life is hardest. Only then we will re-engage a nation with the person of Jesus.

    Next, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of justice. The COVID pandemic has laid bare the harsh levels of social and economic inequality which so damage our common life, which deny opportunity, which take away hope and which lead to countless costly social ills from poor health to spiralling prison populations.

    The action of local churches in addressing inequality through acts of charity has been heroic in this pandemic. But charity can be a fool without justice. Foodbanks, for example, merely prop up innately unjust structures unless we campaign to change those factors which have rendered them necessary: low pay, unfair benefits, family breakdown. As UK churches, our voice in naming injustice and calling for political and economic reform has for too long been inconsistent and disjointed. We need a united Christian voice: perhaps a new ecumenical body, which can campaign consistently and vigorously.

    But if we are to address injustice nationally we must name it within our own structures. The vast wealth disparities between dioceses cannot be acceptable in the future as some dioceses go to the wall whilst others fall back on eye-watering levels of historic wealth. Harder still will be naming and addressing the deep-seated racism that still exists within our own common life and which prevents so many BAME Christians from breathing. We have no authority to name injustice nationally if we are so wantonly failing to put our own house in order.

    And third, over the breathless, we must breathe out the Spirit’s breath of peace. The fallout of this crisis is likely to be deep and sustained economic depression with concomitant pressures on relationships at every level. The church, filled with the Spirit, is called to model the new humanity. We are challenged to live differently under the bonds of love, valuing every human person as a child of God. That is the peace that the Spirit breathes.

    If we are to do that effectively, we urgently need to do better at living with difference. We must find ways to conduct debates such that they do not destroy relationships and leave us too exhausted to engage with the world. A nation that is crying out for breath cannot afford the luxury of a divided and quarrelsome church, obsessed only with its own internal wrangles. Those who look to us seeking the breath life should find a community of peace. Without that all our words and prayers will be hollow hypocrisy.

    ‘I can’t breathe.’

    It is the ultimate cry of despair. As those filled with the Spirit’s breath, if we can hear and respond, then perhaps this terrible crisis can be the dawn of a new age of faith.