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  • The Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice

    by Michael Hampson, a published author devoting his early retirement from parish ministry to producing practical resources for busy clergy and lay-led congregations, beginning with the weekly lectionary resource Sunday Scriptures for Reading Aloud, ssra.uk

    The Ten Parish benefice is coming – and it is sustainable. All it needs is people, and liturgy. We have both. All we lack is a decent liturgy book. So let’s make one.

    Oh, and there’s that word ‘eucharistic’. Let’s talk about that too. Spoiler: no lay presidency involved.

    Let’s start in Wales

    In the middle of a piece in Church Times nine days ago, surrounded by all the obvious and noisy things that people want to say about the new Archbishop of Wales, the three paragraphs that really matter are sitting quietly, waiting for their moment. “Between 2020 and 2023, Monmouth diocese underwent the pastoral reorganisation of 121 parishes into 16 ministry areas.” That’s an average of 7.5 parishes per Ministry Area. It’s page 2 in the print edition, or at this link online (where the three paragraphs are split into five).

    The Ten Parish Benefice – with a single priest – is coming. Wales has been honest about it, and made it explicit. But it’s coming in England too, in cities, towns and villages alike. Most people just haven’t admitted it yet.

    To quote very roughly – twice – from the gospel reading (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2012.49-56&version=NRSVA) that followed two days later, this is where we really should be reading the signs of the times. And it might be divisive, rather than peaceful, to say so. But if we take a deep breath and actually prepare for it – rather than turning a blind eye, or running around in ever-decreasing circles – we really can stop being so afraid.

    The Ten Parish Benefice has existed in corners of England already for well over a decade. Almost everyone’s trying to deny it. Save the Parish (www.savetheparish.com) can see it coming, but think that empowering parishes with information about legal rights, and trying to wrestle money from the powerful to the weak, will stop it happening. We can wish, but sadly, while justice may be on their side, I don’t think justice is going to prevail over the vested interests of the powerful. The Five-Ten-Fifteen-Twenty Parish Benefice is coming regardless. But Christ is Risen and the Holy Spirit is amongst the people, and that’s on top of God the Father being God the Father, and from time to time there’s even a priest in the benefice, so what exactly is supposed to be the problem?

    It was easier when we had some resources. When there was a Book of Common Prayer (BCP) in every parish church in every village (and a King James Bible and a bell, wasn’t that the official minimum list?) the churchwardens could keep the show on the road perfectly well in the absence of a priest; indeed that was both their right and their duty, and we trust was also their joy. Problem solved – even in a ten-parish benefice. Until the end of 1999, the Alternative Service Book (ASB) was just as comprehensive, better laid out and in (fairly) modern language – the entire Church of England in one hand – and the same principle applied: anyone could open it and keep the show on the road. And now, just when we need it the most, we have nothing. Common Worship (CW) is a scattering of loose papers that have blown away in the wind. Even most clergy (and *cough* most bishops) can’t find their way around the main volume, and most of what you need isn’t in there anyway. And the Ten Parish Benefice is coming. But don’t panic. It can be done.

    To the north of England

    When I started in a four-parish benefice in 2012, I maintained a pattern of services in every parish every Sunday, and very soon even persuaded three of the four to ensure that the service was at the same time every Sunday. With help from retired clergy, the vast majority of services were eucharistic. I did persuade myself that four was the limit, and five would be impossible. Six years later, I was actively negotiating to combine the four-parish benefice with the neighbouring benefice of six churches, to form a combined united benefice of ten, and for this I had the agreement in principle of all four parishes, and the departing half-time incumbent of the six, in order to proactively secure the future of the benefice before any less-considered alternative was imposed upon us. So what had we learned during those years that made the impossible seem possible, not only to me, but to four contented, and indeed enthusiastic, PCCs?

    Those paragraphs in the Church Times article conclude, “It wasn’t possible for every church to have their own vicar, because we don’t have enough vicars.” But all four parishes in that four-parish benefice knew they had a vicar, because they had learned how to make the model work.

    A vicar in every parish

    I ran PCC meetings like they were house-groups. In the smaller parishes the PCC was like a full congregation meeting anyway. After a year or two, I realised “minutes and matters arising” could bog down the meeting early on, so I put “mission and ministry” as a standing agenda item before “minutes and matters arising”. I now realise the agenda was similar to those parishes that have a short service before PCC, except that we were having a short house-group meeting first, to discuss where we were up to as a parish, that month. They knew they had a parish priest. They knew they were cared for. And they knew it would continue the same, even if they were one of ten. I prioritised this as the heart of my ministry. It was the way I kept in touch with all the key lay folks. I held the larger churches’ PCCs monthly (so they would only take an hour, which delighted everyone); the others every six or eight weeks. The people are the resource: a PCC run like this is where you meet the people, and help keep the church joyful, focussed, and full of life.

    A weekly Sunday service in every parish

    BCP provided a straightforward model that made a weekly Sunday service sustainable in every parish even in the absence of the vicar: it mandated that the layfolk (specifically the churchwardens) would lead the service; and within its covers, it provided everything they would need to do so; ASB was just as comprehensive. Mandating, encouraging, and supporting the layfolk to lead the service should be just as straightforward in 2025 as it was in 1662; the only tragedy is that we haven’t had a decent practical liturgy book for the last 25 years.

    Making the liturgy sustainable across four parishes began with the Sunday morning readings. BCP gave us collect, epistle and gospel for every Sunday, clearly set out, easy to find, but in archaic language and in solid blocks of text. ASB gave us the same, with improvements to layout, and readings in a mixture of RSV and three paraphrases: the Jerusalem Bible, the New English Bible, and the Good News Bible (under its earlier name Today’s English Version, TEV). Common Worship gives us nothing. Every lay person in the church is dependent on the vicar, and every vicar is dependent on a paid subscription, and even then has to choose week by week from a bewildering list of unexplained (and to most, incomprehensible) options, and then choose a translation, and then source the readings, and then print them out, and then distribute them to the lay folks, and then… what on earth have we done?

    I have spoken to two of the people involved in compiling the programme: one about the multiple errors I had spotted (which Synod later had to correct – it turned out that they knew about them but angrily blamed others in the group on a partisan basis); and one who was blissfully unaware that CW deviates at all from Revised Common Lectionary, when CW actually deviates from RCL more than any other implementation of the three-year cycle anywhere in Christendom.

    When I started, the four parishes were subscribing to the independently-produced Redemptorist Anglican Mass Sheets, but those didn’t have our patronal festivals or harvests, and more and more often I was producing sheets locally to replace the ones that arrived from Redemptorist, and ssra.uk began to evolve: ultimately an all-new implementation of the three-year lectionary, in an all-new translation; first just for us, now for the whole church.

    I added to this a locally-produced service book, and placed one in every church, with just the parts you need, but all the parts you need, including a good selection of triple-kyrie confessions, all the collects, introductions to the Peace, seasonal prefaces, eucharistic and post-communion prayers, seasonal blessings; 55 pages in all, including all our local patronals and harvests, in a user-friendly format and a top-quality binding. Other clergy look at it jealously. I would like to offer something similar to the wider church. I wrote a week ago by email to the relevant copyright holders; I await acknowledgements and replies.

    Power to the people…

    This service book made my job easier from week to week, but the question hanging in the air is how it became empowering for the laity. And here lies the final element in making the Ten Parish Benefice sustainable. We can make the resources. We also have to let the people use them.

    There are two realistic options for a meaningful weekly liturgical Sunday service in every parish in the absence of a priest: antecommunion, and Holy Communion by Extension. People often don’t want to gather at a different time or on a different day. So the lay-folks can read antecommunion – that’s the communion service as far as the Peace. It qualifies as “a service of the word”. It maintains continuity with the liturgy of the benefice, and the worldwide church both catholic and ecumenical. It’s a substantial biblical and prayerful liturgy, sustaining for regulars, and welcoming for newcomers. Every parish can do this. All they need is a decent lectionary (ssra.uk) and a decent liturgy book (watch this space).

    …for the Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice

    Cherry Vann, the new Archbishop of Wales, says, “at least with [the Monmouth] model every church gets a eucharist at least once a month, some of them get twice a month, some of them get four times a month.”

    If they can have a priest that often, that’s great; and they should. But there’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t have communion every Sunday in between as well.

    That’s the point of Holy Communion by Extension.

    If you read the official 2001 House of Bishops statement on Communion by Extension, it is clear that it took a lot to get anything at all past a group encompassing bishops with eucharistic theology doggedly protestant – almost anti-eucharistic – as well as sky-high catholic. But churches throughout the land keep the reserved sacrament. Using the reserved sacrament to give communion to the people when the parish priest is away is normal practice in the Roman Catholic church, and quite probably therefore in many Roman-rite parishes in the Church of England as well, courtesy of the infinite elasticity of Canon B5, under which every Roman-rite parish, and every totally non-liturgical charismatic-evangelical parish, survives.

    The model envisaged in 2001 – that some poor soul has to go to early communion somewhere and rush fresh sacrament to the Communion-by-Extension parish (as if nobody else owns a car or an alarm clock) is bizarre and surely undignified in comparison to giving the people communion from the reserved sacrament. In the four-parish benefice, the two parishes that had never reserved before immediately understood the etiquette to be kept around reserving the sacrament and worked out an appropriately dignified regime.

    Most liturgies of Communion by Extension go to great lengths to ensure that no part of the service looks like what might clumsily be called ‘the consecration’, lest the laity become ‘confused’. The House of Bishops 2001 text allows a version of the institution narrative to be read at the beginning of the service only, and one other vaguely-eucharistic bible passage to be chosen, to be read later, in place of the eucharist prayer. This is like replacing a joyful hymn of praise, and centuries of carefully-crafted expression of all that surrounds the eucharistic mystery, with some sparse early draft jottings on the subject, ‘lest the laity become confused’ by what they see and hear. I say, don’t be so utterly patronising. The laity will most certainly not be ‘confused’ by a simple explanation such as this, at the offertory: “In the absence of our vicar (who is leading a service elsewhere this morning), we bring gifts of bread and wine which have already been present on the altar at an earlier service of holy communion led by our vicar. We remind ourselves now of the words which will have been used at that earlier service.” Our Anglican theology rightly acknowledges the eucharist to be a mystery, and best expresses that mystery in the words that we have agreed to use together, from the Book of Common Prayer to Common Worship. What better than to remind ourselves of those words as we participate in the very particular mystery that is Communion by Extension, a service that expresses our unity with our benefice and our parish priest, as well as each other and the worldwide and eternal church; not ‘saying’ those words in the particular way that the president said them, just – um – reminding ourselves of what was said. The eucharist is a mystery anyway; the laity understand that Holy Communion by Extension is somehow different, but somehow also participating in one and the same. Feel free to go sit in an ivory tower and tie yourself in a knot over this, while one ten-parish benefice crumbles, and this one thrives. Our laity are not confused; they are prayerful, grateful, and fully understand that they are in the presence of the profound mystery of the eucharist.

    Whether any part of our vast, powerful, and wealthy church hierarchy will capture any part of this vision, I simply cannot know. Our bishops, our General Synod, our liturgical commission, and our diocesan offices, have brought us to where we are. A challenge lies ahead, and it isn’t clear that the needs of ordinary parishes are high on the agenda; they just get combined into ever-larger benefices, and left to sink or swim. So lobby where you can; and in the meantime, maybe take Canon B5, and the fact that nobody’s looking, and step out and do what needs to be done. SSRA.uk is there to help – promote it where you can. Perhaps a liturgy book will follow soon; and in the meantime, for collects at least – handy tip – it’s page 268 onwards in Canada.

    The Ten Parish Eucharistic Benefice is possible. As far as I can tell, so far, it’s either this, or it’s nine (or ten) empty churches. Which will it be?

     

     

     

  • Mini-MBA Course for the Talent Pipeline in the Church of England: Safeguarding Strategy

    by Anon.

    Memorandum

    To: Current Participants in the Mini-MBA Talent-Pipeline Learning Community.

    From: The Mini-MBA Leadership Development Module Team, Lambeth Palace.

    Thank you for your emails following the publication of the outline course on Strategy and Marketing. A number of you have asked for “clarification” on the redacted pages on Safeguarding Strategy. As you know, this was done at the insistence of the Secretariat. However, after taking much careful advice and soundings from Lambeth Palace, Church House and the Secretariat, we have reproduced the questions and answers for you below, which should allay any qualms and concerns you might have.

    Please note, there is no definite date for the Safeguarding Strategy Module to be delivered, because its postponement fits within the broader ‘Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module’. Assessment for that is ongoing in the Talent-Pipeline Learning Community, and takes place over the course of your entire ministry. You cannot begin the Safeguarding Strategy Module until the Managing Perpetual Reputational Risk Module is completed.

    As you will have retired by then, you do also have the choice of opting out at this point, should you wish to do so. Whilst that means you won’t get your PTO, you might have had enough by then in any case. Many bishops just put their slippers on at this juncture, and never go out again. That avoids potential CDMs later, and if you are not going to church anymore, you don’t even have to reply to the summons. We obviously don’t recommend this course of action, but it is an option that a number have taken up!

    All that said, we have tried to deal with your questions as follows:

    Question One: What is a Safeguarding Complaint?

    This is more difficult to answer than you might at first think. For example, a Vicar telling infants at a school assembly that Father Christmas is not real clearly meets the trauma-safeguarding threshold. So would removing soft toys from the creche on the spurious grounds that they were badly manufactured.

    On the other hand, a clergyman caught behind the bushes naked from the waist down probably has prostate issues, and was just relieving themselves. Nobody likes to be caught short. The presence of other men in similar states of undress merely shows how common prostate problems are, and also points to council cuts in shutting down the public toilets.

    The reason the NST does not have a robust or legally compliant definition of safeguarding is rooted in the theological commitment to reflective practice. So much depends on who you are, where you were, and what you have done (NB: Secretariat – please insert “are alleged to” throughout).

    Question Two: If there is a complaint, what happens?

    Much depends on what role you have in the CofE.  The Archbishops’ Council does offer a system of fully comprehensive Legal-Comms insurance, but only to a few. Obviously, if you have ever tweeted in favour of Save the Parish, you can only have yourself to blame. Bishops, on the other hand, are automatically covered.

    Question Three: What Does the NST Do All Day?

    At last, a question about strategy! Well, the NST does NOT investigate complaints. Then again, it will often issue statements that begin, “following a complaint, and an independent investigation by the NST…”. To the uninitiated this looks like a contradiction, but the strategy is to keep these two mutually exclusive statements, ALWAYS, at least two paragraphs apart, and ideally two entirely different Cases apart.

    Thus, you could issue a statement saying “after a thorough/preliminary NST investigation by the NST, XXXXX was given a verbal warning”. But you must separate that statement by at least two paragraphs from the sentence that reads “it was not the role of the NST to investigate these matters…”.

    Both are true. But put together, we do agree they appear to be confusing. Clearly, the NST does not have the expertise, resources, independence or personnel to investigate complaints. Except of course, when it says it has already done so, which is different.

    The NST Director can reassure you that the NST never investigates a case. Then inform you later of the result of the investigation you were just told was not even happening, and so you are now suspended. So much depends on who you are, what you were alleged to have done, and whether you have ever signalled a ‘like’ on Save the Parish tweets.

    Investigations aside, the NST has outsourced most things to the NSG and NSSP, and even to 31:8 and the NSPCC. There was some outsourcing to the ISB too, but that all ended badly when the dreaded “I-word” was used far too much – Independent (see question four).

    It is not tricky to grasp the nuances of this strategy. But to answer your question, nobody is actually working at the NST anymore, and that has been the case for some time. Staffing is done through AI mannequins, programmed and operated by the Secretariat and run out of Lambeth Palace. (So yes, this technically qualifies as an independent and remote ‘hands off’ operation).

    Question Four: When the Church of England Says it has Commissioned or Conducted an “Independent Investigation”, What Does this Mean?

    Another laser-like strategy question – thank you, and well done! We have already covered “investigation”. When a Bishop, Archbishop or member of the Secretariat says “independent”, they mean a third party that they chose, set the terms of reference for and pay – all in order to get full value for money in their commissioning of this work.

    There is obviously no point in having an investigation or even a trial if you don’t already know what the verdict is going to be that you are working towards. (Secretariat: As you know, verdicts are my prerogative, and I am exempt from any such process, just so we are clear).

    If for any reason you think the preferred verdict is likely to be the wrong result, not what you paid for, or likely to be deeply unpopular with a sceptical public, the strategy is to delay publication for a considerable period of time, by which we mean several years. If there are complaints about these delays in publication, there’s no need to worry, as you can commission a separate audit or reviews into why the delays have dragged on and on.

    That in itself buys even more time, and of course has to be fed into the original processes. Hopefully (NB: Secretariat – “normally”?) Synod will have all turned over by then, the entire NST staff changed, a flood will have destroyed all the records in the bishop’s basement, the server melted or been subject to some naughty rival denomination launching a cyber-attack, so the whole thing has to start all over again.

    Question Five: I Might Have Been One of the Clergy Referred to in Question One, Caught Behind the Bushes with Trousers Around My Ankles. My Court Appearance is Next Month. Should I Be Worried?

    (NB: Secretariat – insert “alleged” again, liberally; and redact the name of person, court location and date of appearance, etc). Not really. The legal profession works by establishing Case Law precedent. You may recall some years ago that a Bishop often got lost in places that, on reflection, were he rather less confused and other-worldly, he should probably have avoided on reputational grounds. Public lavatories, bushes in parks, private clubs in Soho and other good places to meet (Ed: seriously?) can sometimes be traps. The bishop was forever getting into unfortunate situations that were “open to misinterpretation”.

    On one occasion, the Bishop got lost in a liturgical procession. (NB: Secretariat – date, festival and church redacted). But the bishop turned up later in the vestry wearing only his dressing gown, as he said he’d got confused about timings and location. But this was easily remedied by the following measures.

    First, the parish did very, very well in the next round of Strategic Development Fund bids, which considering they’d not even made a submission, was an example of truly amazing grace, with everything that had happened in the procession quietly forgotten. So, win-win!

    Second, the Bishop was electronically tagged (voluntarily, and we thank the police for organising this), so that his movements could be GPS tracked by the Legal-Comms Team at Lambeth Palace.

    Third, the device as fitted also gave the wearer a nasty electric shock (like a dog collar – not the clergy type, but the canine ones). So if the bishop were more than 20 feet out of sight range of the hired-hand monitoring his movements, a shrill alarm would sound, and the bishop would experience a mild taser sensation.

    In view of these hi-tech solutions, you should not really be worried at all. Especially as the Lambeth Palace Team (Secretariat: I have deleted “allegedly” here, as that implies some doubt) monitoring your tag on the day in question now shows that you were not even in that park at all, but on retreat several hundred miles away. So this is either a case of mistaken identity or impersonation. You can therefore plead “not guilty” with a clean conscience. (Ed: you mean like the Secretariat, who when they said they weren’t in the meeting or the room, but actually were…I’m confused…?).

    Question Six:  Are You Actually Going to Say Anything About Safeguarding Strategy? Isn’t the Whole Point of this Module to Understand That?

    Finally, we get to the heart of the matter! This is tricky for some of those in the Mini-MBA Talent Pipeline to grasp, but strategy is an art.  You’d think that strategy would flow from the many safeguarding ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’, as they would help shape future policy and practice. But you need to remember the following three things.

    First, very few ‘Lessons Learned Reviews’ are ever completed. Even fewer are published. And those that are must be subjected to full Maxwell-isation so that no person can be identified, unless it is the one we had previously nominated for throwing under the bus.

    Second, remember that zero is a number, and that it is possible, therefore, to talk about “a number of lessons learned”. However, GDPR legislation does not actually require you to specify what the number is. The Chair of the House of Laity was very clear about that at a recent meeting of General Synod. In any case, that number could always increase, so it pays to be circumspect.

    Third, never forget that the context of this module is set within the “Talent Pipeline Learning Community”. This is very important for strategy. You cannot speak of “learned” as though this was done and dusted and in the past tense. We are always “learning” (present and future tense), so it really would be pedagogically nonsensical to talk about “lessons learned (in the past)”, as everything learned has to be un-learned, so we can re-learn.

    Question Seven: I’ve Heard Quite a Few Bishops, the NST, Secretariat and Others Talk About “the Safeguarding Journey we are all on”. But What Does That Mean in Practice?

    We are glad you asked, and we can end this Q&A with a proper old biblical story – the Parable of the Missing Japanese Snow Monkey! As you know, this naughty Snow Monkey went AWOL from Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig, near Aviemore, in January. It was on the run for five days, before being finally found in some Highlands back garden eating nuts. Like the lost coin, lost sheep, lost pearl or straying prodigal son, there was much rejoicing at the Monkey being recaptured. (NB: Secretariat – “recovered” or “found” sounds better; this modern parable is not supposed to stress the captive nature of the animal).

    Now throughout the Monkey’s meanderings, nobody was asking if the animal had a destination or end in mind, or was trying to get home (to Japan!). No, this Monkey was on a journey, and the point of the journey was to keep moving, and follow its nose. The excitement, vision and energy comes from not knowing where this will end from one day to the next. Reaching an actual destination is never the point. Because that would mean to have arrived, have finished something, and to be at completion.

    This is not the way of the pilgrim. John Bunyan was right to title his book Pilgrim’s Progress. He didn’t call it Pilgrim’s Arrival, or Pilgrim’s Journey Ends. The clue is in the word ‘progress’ – he keeps going. Like the Snow Monkey.

    You may this this is all a bit fruitless, but then so much strategy is about going back to the beginning, and starting all over again (Ed: You mean like LLF?). The Monkey did not have a wasted journey. And our Safeguarding Journey is never wasted either.

    All that happens is after some while meandering around, we go back home, and begin to reimagine the next Safeguarding Journey we might embark upon. The aim is to keep moving, and not get overly focussed on where we are supposed to be ending up. Look how that tormented Bunyan!

    But it didn’t bother the Monkey one bit, who is glad to be back at the beginning with a banana, and is already planning their next trek. Remember, the Talent Pipeline Learning Community is a non-stop Ferris Wheel. You are not meant to get off.

    Assessment:

    If you are in favour of Save the Parish, you may answer questions 1-3, but should then proceed straight on to question eight.

    1. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the oversight of the Secretariat in national safeguarding?
    2. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how would you rate the performance of the NST, NSG, NSSP, etc?
    3. On a scale of 1-5, five being the most favourable, how confident are you of a bishop evading a safeguarding complaint?
    4. Using fewer than 10 words, but with diagrams allowed, what lessons were learned in the last review you looked at? If none, write ‘zero’ (which is a number, and might be the right answer)?
    5. The Father Ted Christmas Special episode involving the lost clergy in the lingerie section of Dublin’s leading department store was the set text for critical reflection in our previous module. (NB: Secretariat – the Ignatian reflections from some students were illuminating). Mindful of that critical incident, how could Father Ted’s leadership be up-scaled?
    6. Assuming you have understood this Module correctly, as it was intended to be, write down your next ideal job on completion of the Mini-MBA.
    7. What does the Monkey teach us about the value of the Journey (NB: not a question about destinations!).
    8. If you answered with less than ‘five’ in questions 1-3, where do you think you are actually going to end up?

  • The Foundations for Ecclesial Instability: the Rock on the Sands

    by Martyn Percy, a Fellow of King’s College London and Harris Manchester College, Oxford 

    What is the connection between an obscure piece of research commissioned by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the early 1990s and the current crisis in the Church of England? The research, mostly conducted by academics with particular involvement from the George Mason University Centre for Global Policy, grew out of earlier research conducted by Ted Gurr at the University of Maryland via the ‘State Failure Task Force’ under the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), later led by Monty Marshall. Gurr and Marshall identified the common ‘problem set’ of issues that were the grounds – shaky or quicksand – that gave rise to instability.  Today, this research finds its practical outcome in the PITF – the Political Instability Task Force.

    Instability is hardly a new problem for churches. Persecution, doctrinal disputes, scandals and heresies have all resulted in some shaking of the foundations.  Moreover, the New Testament itself, and the teachings of Jesus, are often consumed with questions of stability. Jesus’ parable of the houses built on rock or sand, or the more agricultural motifs centred on deep-rooted plants, fruitfulness and growth come to mind. In one sense, the entire basis of Christian faith rests on the paradox of forfeiting security and stability for a life of instability and uncertainty…in order to gain safekeeping. After all, what else is a vocation other than living out risk with no guarantees or assurances.

    That said, we do make these choices for God as individuals. But I may only say ‘yes’ to God as myself. I cannot commit another person to my ‘yes’, however much I hope and pray that they may share the same affirmation. But what happens when, instead of us choosing instability and learning to live with it, this interloper arrives uninvited, and is communal and countrywide? My personal negotiation with instability is one thing. Social and political instability, however, is of a different order. When the foundations of societies are shaking, how do we know if this is an episodic quake that will pass, or something more damaging that will reduce even the strongest foundations to rubble and dust?

    The PITF drew on over a hundred global instability ‘problem cases’ from 1955-2011. The researchers identified several categories of state failure:

    1. Revolutionary and Ethnic wars (emerging from civil strife).
    2. Genocides and Politicides (often rooted in perceived inequalities).
    3. Adverse Regime changes (arising from or leading to civil war).

    The PITF were interested in the common denominators and the cultural, social, climatic and political factors that gave rise to instability which tipped into revolt, revolution and/or violence. Why do regimes suddenly topple, and governments that were elected get swept away like political debris? Readers will have their own view as to whether there is sufficient civil strife in society at the moment to trigger some sort of revolution. I doubt it, though the risks are markedly higher than at the end of the 20th-century, and the current grammar of dissent and protest is perhaps comparable to what was witnessed in the 1960s.

    How might a ‘Polity Instability Task Force’ assess the wobbling churches of late modernity?  For sure, money, sex and power – that unholiest of trinities – afflicts all mainstream denominations. Consider the history, data and the internecine ecclesial wars, and try and name any exceptions. There are internal wranglings and unease over lack of money and its unequal distribution, the method of ‘taxing’ congregations, and how the revenues are spent; over same-sex relations, scandals on clergy and sexual abuse, divorce and remarriage, and gender; and balancing democracy, leadership, management and compliance.

    The original State Failure Task Force was alive to the social, political and cultural conditions that precipitated regime changes. In ecclesiology, the equations are no less complex, but they are slower to resolve. One might say that the major regime changes in ecclesiology are the East-West Schism and the Reformation. But in truth, smaller versions of these global ruptures occur in every generation, some resulting in permanent rifts and then further extended fragmentation.

    However, the cultural ground in which the foundations of mainline denominations sit is no longer stable. The emergence of meritocracy, less deference, mass mobilisation, greater individualism and consumerism in expressions and preferences all conspire to render this ground unstable and shifting. Mapped on to a global scale, sexuality, power and money quickly become enmeshed in North-South, First-World/Developing-World rivalries, with ethnicity and the legacy of empire and exploitation fuelling the complexity. Peter Turchin’s fine End Times (Allen Lane, 2023), explains how regimes rise and fall, and what it is about forms of control and the exercise of power that makes some types of governance especially susceptible to implosion or overthrow. Putin’s foray into Ukraine throws some light on how political disintegration gains traction when power is challenged, and elites lose their authority under the weight of their failures and ensuing disenchantment.

    It is Turchin who also coined the term cliodynamics – Clio being the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics simply the study how and why change takes place over periods of time. Using mathematical models, a cliodynamic approach can predict expansion and retraction in economies, state collapse or implosion, social discontent and even civil wars. While not a perfect science, it can explain how and why institutions and societies disintegrate.

    So, what would cliodynamics and an ecclesial Polity Instability Task Force make of the Church of England at this moment? Several observations are apparent, and will create the conditions for instability:

    1. Major shifts away from more open electoral systems to ones that are more closed, authoritarian and managed systems of control produce boredom and detachment, festering resentment, and may result in speculative conspiracy theories (e.g., we know where all the money goes…).
    2. Elitism, whether it is quasi-monarchical or some ontologised managerialism, will result in a larger critical mass resenting the hierarchies and its powers of rule and decision-making. A lack of accountability, transparency, integrity and humility will also produce calls for regime-change.
    3. Loss or rapid erosion of devolved local powers, assertions of control (e.g., adopt the strategic vision) and penalties for daring to dissent will create a groundswell for secession, in which the exercise of despotic power will only produce tensions between central control mechanisms and those meant to comply.
    4. The collapse of the central governance, unable to manage external complexities and challenges, and unable to fund, manage and resource internal systems of order and control, will tend to question the capacity of the ruling elite to hold authority, power and any ability to govern.

    You might like to ponder how this all fits together with the Church of England and its leadership, and the grass roots. Here the Save the Parish movement is both a symptom and cause of widespread ecclesial dis-ease with the current regime. It has quickly won widespread support, largely due to growing fears over plutocratic-despotic episcopal leadership.

    A plutocracy is a society ruled and controlled by a handful of people who hold great wealth and income. The term combines Greek ploutos (wealth) and kratos (power).  Plutocracy is not a political philosophy so much as the name for a malaise, with the term first coined in English in the 1630s – times of Laudian and Stuart periods of governance, a decade before our own Civil War. The unaccountable and divine right to govern was the issue at stake, over and against the calls for proper democratic structures and political accountability.

    The term plutocracy is normally used critically and pejoratively to warn against an adverse and undesirable social context. Plutocracies are regimes distracted by their own fears and vanities, and quickly lose sight of social responsibility and the causes of poverty and inequality.

    Furthermore, whether left-wing or right-wing, plutocracies can ferment class division and conflict, and encourage individualistic wealth accumulation through competition for resources, replacing subsidised costs that were hitherto allocated on a needs-must basis into an economy of competitive bidding between those who are struggling. Plutocracies can go further, and insist that bids for essential subsidies and funding support now conform to the objectives, vision and goals of the regime and its elites.

    Now, nobody is suggesting for a moment that Bishops or Diocesan Secretaries have great personal wealth through their ecclesiastical preferment. The modern ecclesial plutocracy is more subtle. Diocesan HQ’s, Finance Committees, the Church Commissioners and the National Church Institutions have become the new quasi-baronial powers, whilst the ordinary person in the pew and the local parishes have seen their tax demands (i.e., parish share contributions) grow, whilst accountability and transparency over expenditure has declined.

    In short, demands by the centre for more money paired with less democratic accountability will eventually produce movements like Save the Parish. The elites demanding more and more while giving less and less are perceived to be bureaucratic plutocrats, spending money (not their own, but rather that of the people, laity and churches) on speculative projects and visions rather than supporting local clergy and ministry in parishes.

    The recent debacle over the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) has, for many churchgoers, and quite a number of onlookers, become an indicative sign of a leadership that is plutocratic, despotic and certainly elitist. Indeed, as a model of quasi-monarchical episcopacy, it has been high-handed and anti-democratic. Hiring and firing staff at will; asserting the independence of the ISB some days when it suits the regime to say so, yet on other days treating ISB staff as a subordinate body of subjects with few rights. It suggests a capricious use of power and authority.

    However, since the ISB ‘experiment’ cost Archbishops’ Council at least £500,000, Save the Parish would presumably like us all to know that this money could have been better spent. Or at least this expenditure could and should have been debated. Yet that could only have been achieved through greater democratic accountability, proper scrutiny and auditing, deliberation and examination.

    The Archbishops’ Council does not want that level of transparency. Whoever was in control of ‘Operation ISB’ no longer thought that independent oversight of safeguarding was in their interests or suited other objectives, so they shut it down. Charles I was against fiscal transparency and democratic scrutiny too, and the rest, as they say, was (tragic) history.

    Here we run into the opacity of those who control the money and the power, and are skilled in using the antediluvian structures which provide the reasoning for not being transparent and accountable (i.e., “it is too complex to explain…”; “we’ll need to think about that and then get back to you at our next meeting within the cycle…”; and “that probably needs to be looked at by a different committee…”). We’ve all been on the receiving end of such tropes. Some of us are also fluent in the language.

    The ecclesial scenario sketched above entirely corresponds to the findings of the PITF for the CIA in the 1990s. The Church of England, or rather its leadership, is on the brink. It has been whittling away at the democratic instruments such as General Synod for some time, turning what should be a proper auditorium for debate and deliberation into a theatrical spectacle more akin to party political bread and circus.

    Yet quite suddenly, serious and searching questions over the meaning and interpretation of the word ‘independent’ in safeguarding governance have now called into question the entire direction, structure and running of an ecclesial regime.  The stance of the two ISB board members was simple. They stood up for genuine independence, and advocated for victims of abuse – so they lost their jobs.

    Rather like the solitary ‘Tank Man of Tiananmen Square’ (June 5th 1989) they simply stood in the way of the prevailing power and would not be moved. Yes, they still lost – swept away by the force, assertion and power of a regime in control. But this time we have all been able to witness this action against them, and come to realise it was an action against us all. We have observed a brave act of defiance and the morally-principled and rightful exercise of disobedience. The regime expressed its regret, but has not apologised – indeed told us their actions were necessary and beneficial for our progress. But such assurances from the regime no longer carry weight or conviction; nor do they sound authentic.

    Like Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, ecclesial communications and assertions no longer correspond to reality. Serious disenchantment has set in. Real questions are being asked. As with any regime, it finds itself on the brink when its citizens have to choose between unwavering loyalty and compliance – or the dangerous acts of dissent that might be involved in expressing a free mind that seeks better alternatives.

    At the moment, the regime remains in power, controlling the money, media and message. But something stronger than sullen resentment has been born out of this ongoing safeguarding omnishambles. Some now sense a change of mood and some real determination that there must be serious reform and wholesale revolution. True, it will take a lot to raise General Synod from its habitual torpor. And the agenda for the gathering and the set-piece speeches still evidence a politburo in full control of the party conference and the messaging to wider membership. Yet the ennui it breeds is undeniable.

    The Polity Instability Task Force are examining a growing corpus of evidence. There are some significant signs indicating winds of change. The Spirit blows where it wills.

  • Two Things Which Really Matter

    by the Very Revd Dr David Ison, former member of General Synod, who next month retires as Dean of St Paul’s 

    This is my last blog as Dean of St Paul’s. After 43 years of stipendiary ordained ministry, it’s time to let go of doing in order to do more being. I’m glad to make space for a younger generation of Christians to have the opportunity and responsibility to lead Christ’s church into the future. And I’m hopeful for them, and even for the Church of England, because there are many wonderful lay and ordained Christians committed to following Jesus, and that’s what Christian churches need in order to face the many challenges and crises coming to a head for this country and for humanity across the globe as capitalism and imperialism reap what they’ve sown.

    Over the last four decades there are two key things which I’ve learned which I think are at the heart of what Christian faith, mission and ministry are about.

    The first is how to do church and mission in an increasingly pluralist and contested public space, where the narrative of ‘scientism’ (that the universe, however amazing, is meaningless) undermines spiritual as well as mental health and reasonable faith, leading to superstition and extremism. The Church has lost plausibility, made worse by its failures of safeguarding and its moral divergence from what many people regard as reasonable. The Church’s temptation is either to take refuge in dogma and draw hard boundaries around itself as ‘counter-cultural’, or to become just one interest group alongside others competing in the market-place for people and resources. The ‘Save the Parish’ movement is a belated response to a crisis which was known to be coming long before I trained for ministry in the 1970s, as the inability of many parishes to maintain numbers of laity and clergy and financial viability in the face of heritage building costs and other challenges has been predicted for over 50 years.

    My experience of what works in mission is fairly simple. It is to pray – to love God; to love our neighbours by serving them inside and especially outside the church; to love one another as a diverse group of disciples; and to do these things together, building a shared vision for a loving and serving church. Being people of spiritual integrity, living in the truth, welcoming other people without judgement (see Matthew chapter 7), meeting them in their personal and community needs – that’s what attracts people to the Christian gospel. In an incarnational faith, it’s Christian lives, not doctrines or techniques, that build the kingdom of God.

    I’ve never understood the emphasis in the Church of England’s ordination services on ‘proclaiming’ the gospel, as if it were passed on by megaphone. The third-century Christian writer Tertullian pointed out that the Christian community attracted people, even though it could mean persecution and death, because they could see the love which Christians had for one another and for others, and they wanted to be part of it. Proclaiming isn’t of value in itself: it’s drawing people into following Jesus (‘making disciples’) that matters, and love in action, not words, is at the heart of it. And thanks be to God that many churches and Christians do it!

    Jesus says to his would-be disciples, ‘you will know the truth and the truth will make you free’ (John 8.32). It’s that living in integrity that people respond to; and the heart of the Church’s problem is that it hasn’t been living in love and integrity. The inability of heterosexual men to cope with their own sexualities has led to the projection of those inner conflicts on to others including in the Church, impacting women and children in safeguarding cases, sexual and domestic violence, and ongoing legal and cultural discrimination against women and LGBTQ+ people. The Church’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture of official disapproval but covert acceptance of sexuality has had a huge impact on the lives and mental health of LGBTQ ordained and lay ministers, and has perpetuated a culture of dishonesty and lack of accountability which has allowed other abuses to occur, as seen for example in the surfacing of safeguarding cases over the last decade and the recent news around fraud in the Diocese of London. Whatever the outcome of the Living in Love and Faith process and debates in General Synod, the Church must end up with real love, truth and honesty at its heart, lest it continue to be seen by the rest of the world as hypocritically less moral than the majority of our society.

    The second main thing I’ve learned in ministry is that it’s about following Jesus. That sounds obvious! But it relates to the question of integrity. Years ago I wrote an article entitled ‘The Pharisees will always get you in the end’, making the point that the Pharisees are there in the gospels to show us what we as religious people can be like when our religion becomes more important than God and people. In his encounters with the Pharisees, Jesus subverts the dogmas of his day: healing on the sabbath, being unconcerned with purity laws, forgiving sinners without due process – he is focused on the person and their motivation and relationship with God, rather than on the expectations of others. Jesus is still challenging, but he gets to the heart while the Pharisees look at the outside; Jesus is concerned with holiness rather than purity, while Pharisees then and now confuse the two.

    The Diocese of London has for a number of years had as a unifying statement the concept of ‘Generous Orthodoxy’. It’s akin to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ in that it allows Christians with very different views to agree on a slogan while not engaging with their real differences, with people putting differing emphases on the level of generosity and the content of what orthodoxy is. My experience of church politics in London and on General Synod has been of increasing power games over the last several years, based on churchmanship and dogma rather than on the reality of people’s lived Christian experience, with less powerful groups (including LGBTQ, Global Majority Heritage, disabled, women) being pushed to the margins, and a lack of integrity between what’s said and what is actually done in practice.
    There’s a tendency in the Church, following after the world’s culture, for extremism and division which does not reflect the love of God, and which is unbecoming to followers of Jesus and unattractive to Christians and non-Christians alike.

    My hope in Christ is that everyone matters equally in the Church, and that’s what the LLF process has been trying to pursue. I pray for the outcome to be love and to be really truthful, centred on people not dogma. The irony about so many of the arguments in church circles is that much of the language about judgement in the New Testament is about our actions and their outcomes, not concerned with our beliefs and doctrines: ‘by their fruits you shall know them’. I do wonder whether some who describe themselves as ‘biblical’ have really taken on board St Paul’s words on love in 1 Corinthians 13…

    When finally, in the words of a key fob my children gave me, I ‘get called to head office’, I don’t expect to be examined on my understanding of penal substitution, but on whether I truly loved God, and my neighbours as myself. That’s what really matters.

  • ‘Resource Churches’: When Planting Becomes Colonialism

    by the Revd Robert Thompson, Vicar St Mary’s, Kilburn & St James’, West Hampstead; host of Open Table, London; member of General Synod

    Robert Thompson

    For those of us who come from the island of Ireland, the language of plants and planting, on the face of it a lovely horticultural metaphor, has a morally problematic dark side. The plantation of Ulster, and of other parts of Ireland, was a colonial endeavour. It involved the resettlement of my own English and Scottish ancestors and was characterised by, at the least, the appropriation of the land of the Irish, and at worst a violent hostility towards them that too often resulted in death. The present, continuing, sectarian divisions of the north of Ireland are a direct result of this form of planting.

    As the Vicar of a parish which has a UKME/GMH majority congregation, I have also become acutely aware of how this same rhetoric of planting was operative in the colonisation of Caribbean islands. Here, much more problematically, most of the indigenous peoples were either murdered or died of imported European diseases. The combination of both these resulted in what can only be described as genocide. Here too the land was parcelled out to the incoming settlers as large ‘plantations’ but, worse than in Ireland, the human labour for these estates came from Africa in chains on slave ships. People made in God’s image were reduced by the people of Christian nations, including the church and missionary agencies, to capital and commodity, to be owned, bought, sold and killed at whim. The history of colonialism also has on-going consequences in the global distribution of wealth and racism.

    In the contemporary Church, we have come to use the horticultural imagery of planting, and to practise it, without much critical reflection either on the language itself or on its practice. As the panacea for our falling numbers we are now are wedded to a ‘mixed ecology’ of church, of which planting forms a major part, as the basis of our future mission. So-called ‘Resource Churches’ are a major strand of this mixed ecology. But many of us have come to the lived realisation that here, too, the seemingly benign language that oozes notions of practical support is not the reality on the ground.

    It was to unmask this contradiction that I recently tweeted:

    “Resource Churches” what a misnomer! “And so Jesus told them a parable: Vicar alone on housing estate parish writes to neighbouring Resource Church, with 13 full time staff, 4 being clergy, 5 times over a year to ask for help with accounts & position of treasurer. No reply….Bishop calls housing estate vicar this week to say Resource Church Vicar would like to ‘church plant’ into housing estate parish & church building. Housing estate Vicar says to bishop “You can tell Resource Church Vicar to go f**k themselves.” Let them with ears to hear, hear!”

    I then further retweeted the original post by saying:

    And how many Resource Churches have a woman, UKME/GMH or LGBTQIA+ person or someone living with a disability or a chronic health condition as Vicar? Of initial 19 in @dioceseoflondon only 1 has a UKME Vicar, 1 now (but not originally) has a woman & as for the other E&D markers…

    My purpose in these posts was to problematise the naïve notion that a ‘mixed ecology’ church is not already a ‘mixed ecclesiology church’ in which we have created a form of neo-liberal, competitive capitalism as the precarious foundation (built on sand) of our ‘common’ life together. I wanted to indicate that, just as in our colonial history, the lived effects of so-called church planting and resource churches are based on a binary opposition of some forms of church to others. Just as in the plantations of Ireland and the Caribbean, this ‘othering’ has deathly consequences for those who are forcibly, without any real consultation and with the blunt instrument of a Bishop’s Mission Order, resettled or displaced.

    The responses from a myriad of clergy and laity to my social media posts ‘parabalising’ the effects of ecclesial planting and resourcing show that these are experienced by many of us in our day to day ministry as a form of colonialism. This colonialism is leading to the breakdown of what has been established ecclesiology of the Church of England as well as trust between us.

    Don’t get me wrong! I am not anti-evangelism, or anti-church planting, so long as they use models of partnership ‘with’ and are contextually intelligent. I am not anti-New Worshipping Communities or anti-Fresh Expressions, or anything else that helps in the living out of the gospel of Jesus Christ and Christ’s proclamation and embodiment of the justice and peace of God’s Reign. But what I, and many, are increasingly deeply concerned about is the ways in which this now happens in parallel and deeply sectarian tracks, in competition not only with parishes, but with other emerging expressions of church. This has created situations in which some clergy and people are completely under-resourced, whilst others have a cup that overflows. As one person on a thread said, these are not ‘Resource Churches’ but ‘Resourced Churches’ pumped and primed with money from the Strategic Development Fund whilst parishes are expected to give, give, give to the diocese with little in return.

    I make this critique not so much as the ‘liberal Catholic’ that many might label me, but as a person formed in conservative and charismatic evangelicalism. I hold, within myself and in my own faith development, the tension of the unity of the church. Biblically, therefore, for me, what is most blatantly contrary to the teaching of Christ and that of Paul are the ways in which church planting and resourcing are pretty well always practised within sectarian silos, leading to economic injustices within the church, and overwork, mental health challenges and burn-out for many.

    The effect of the Save the Parish movement and the election of many of who support it to General Synod has rather focussed this debate. The disillusionment and anger of the many clergy who contacted me indicates that what happened in Winchester could potentially happen in very many dioceses very soon.  To save us from such a breakdown on a national scale, it is time for the present colonialist model of planting and resourcing to stop. It should be replaced by biblical economic fairness. As another contributor to a thread said:

    a modest distribution of SDF funds amongst a single deanery rather than a single ‘resource’ church could revolutionise each church’s potential for mission, and let’s not lose sight of the most important thing: ensure they are solvent. A comparatively minor cash injection would enable struggling churches to renovate, complete minor re-ordering, sort out any problems with the ‘show’ and make money. Which is what we all serve, after all.

    When the rich get rich and the poor get poorer, we are called to practice Jubilee.