“In This Generation Or There Won't Be A Next” : A programme for reform and renewal
Many trees have been knocked down to produce the first papers for the February 2015 meeting of the General Synod. Look at the English Anglican website from Friday 16th January.
Due to the spruce, pine, fir, larch, hemlock, eucalyptus, aspen and birch trees felled for material being issued in relation to the various Task Group reports, there will be a daily release of key documents this week ahead of the general distribution of papers particularly good to hold.
The first paper below is from the Archbishops of Cant and Tork giving an overview of the white stuff on the way.
“In Each Generation” : A BBC 4 inspired programme for Topsy Turvying
1. The historical Jesus did not intend to form a Church, but then there was a risen one going through walls and vanishing like who met his eleven disciples in a few mysterious circumstances and once apparently told them to go to the ends of the earth. We don't think anyone else was involved but we like to think we are also among the eleven and can get in on the act to be, well, loyal to the inheritance of faith of that these 11 and then others after have made, which we have received, and open to more Spirit descending to do the job a bit more.
2. This means a lot of bureaucratic heave-ho but might involve the odd individual now and again, especially ones picked and trained according to the Green Line Report, running around London but no longer in a circle, thanks to the Bishop of Willesden. We asked lots of groups high up to ponder the implications of previous implications and then produce reports where, on the face of it, there appeared to be scope for significant papers.
3. The work of four groups - we left it at four - were on the implications, the responsibility of implications, implying those in training and deployment, and simplification of implications. Their specific names are given below. They will be presented for the February meeting of the General Synod.
4. Our Golden Globes go to the Rev. Green, Wilf Scarlet (the Bishop of Nottingham), Colonel Mustard and Captain Black for chairing each of the four groups, as well as the Bishop of Willesden for occupying the door to the toilets on each occasion. No one was murdered by the lead piping in the Library. Thanks also to a whole host of Institutions, none of which can be mentioned tonight in order not to hog the microphone.
5. Renewing and reforming is a far from sufficient response to the challenges facing English Anglicanism, but what else we can do is a bit of a monkey puzzle tree. So the recommendations of these four groups, and the visits to the toilets, have to be seen in a much wider contextualism, and mumbled about at the Synod in the light of a trees destruction that explores what it means for all woodcutters, lay and ordained, to be lumberjacks by proxy.
6. But let's be honest. It's about bums on seats. We're not referring to cathedrals, because they have more bums on seats already. It's the rest of it, and why people don't want to get involved, sneaking in and out of cathedrals as they do. We like to visit the odd success story and warms us like a good cup of tea. But no one likes joining things and getting their hands dirty like in intentional evangelism.
7. On the other hand, people can't fail to notice the old building in the street and a few cars that park outside it on a Sunday. We have also been able to exploit the most vicious government in living memory and so provide food banks, credit unions and many other initiatives that ought to be unneeded through the welfare state. Thanks be to God for this nasty government and in the involvement of God’s people.
8. We've got to get on with it because, other than those cathedrals, we're going through the floor, and these old buildings could end up as ruins if we go through the floor. At least the people left are being deep-mined for the dosh in their pockets. This situation cannot, however, be expected to continue unless the decline in membership is reversed, or is it that this situation must continue unless the decline in membership is reversed.
9. Plus the fact that, no matter who you look at, everyone is getting older. We tried to stop time with a magic stopwatch, but that doesn't work. People in employment tend to retire after a while, and although clergy go on and on, even they drop off at the end of the conveyor belt called life. So we can't stop that and meet diocesan ambitions at the same time.
10. And we wish these buildings didn't need maintenance. The odd coat of paint helps but is no good on stone outside - well that would offend a few people. Dry rot is a constant problem during sermons. The Darlow Formula is too biased towards Scotland, which is nothing to do with us. One suggestion is scrapping the buildings and having a central investment in reaching out into the digital and social media world instead. If English Anglicanism is to discover growth, it ought to do something different.
11. So the four task groups whose reports are now being published each identifies changes which are designed to enable Spiritual England as represented by us to be better equipped for meeting the challenges that it faces. We would have thought this was itself bleeding obvious from all the other paragraphs.
12. The Report on the Discernment and Nurture and Responsive Responsibility of those whom the Church Identifies, as called to significant posts of wider broader responsive responsibility, has a number of aims we discern in basic outline suitability. It seeks to ensure proper domestic care for those involved (who else, after all?), a genuine various diversity in those available for employment and appointment, excellent theological and spiritual preparation in marketing speak, and a familiarity with the key elements necessary for day to day working (whatever that means).
13. The Sourcing, Resourcing and Toasting Ministerial Educational Means Report explains why people should get on their knees in our approach to promoting vocations to full time ministry. Long gone was the time we said 'Get a life first' because now we say 'Let's get them young and get value for money'.
14. Let's have another paragraph on this. The Report sets out proposals for manuring and digging to grow the number and quality of candidates some six inches apart, for improving their formation under light-restricting conditions - both before and after laying on of spades - and for sustaining them under God's watering can. We need more diverse plants to be identified and called. We recommend going about looking for infants like the Dalai Lama's people used to do, at least before he amazingly called it a 'human institution' that might end. Wither magic, eh? New investment in theological greenhousing is essential. And let's not forget horizontal lay development with some football players doing the gardening.
15. There can be no single way to do this. We can stand on our heads or use our feet. The bishops and dioceses said so when consulted. So there will be 42 strategies, based on the answer to the meaning of life, each of which is entitled to national support. So get your scarves out on the terraces. Give the players what they need, and call upon good coaching. Get the transfer fees up, in how funds might be made available to further diocesan plans to achieve bums on seats.
16. As the Resourcing the Future Report explains, church funds are wasted on overpaid players - but they still need to be used for critical impact, as the managerial books have it. Why is Charles Handy never handy when you need him? So, stuff the Darlow Formula, and Scotland, and let's pay players the amount they are due. Such funds never have a bias to the poor in a commitment to bums on seats.
17. The giving birth in mutual love, giving mutual support, mutual accountability and a mutual building society is at the heart of the proposals. What else would they be? The digging into pockets to pay the players is linked to clear plans for their use and a clear eyed review of their impact, as judged and monitored by peer groups. We got this from another book like those written in management-speak, so we know what we are doing. While the Sheffield Formula no longer works, there will continue to be a need for players distributed in a stupendary of stipendiary curates.
18. The Simplification Report already has underlined why these reports are full of managerial cliches and general tree-wasting initiative-identifying specifics involving, furthermore, legislative changes which are needed, like Ganesha, to remove hindrances to mission in relation to particular pastoral reorganisation and continuous clergy development and deployment, to streamline serial processes and to tackle the tremendous redundant paperwork being generated by this particular processive procedure. The righteous recommendations take account of an essential and willing widespread continuous consultation parameter and parimeter-bounded process.
19. If all the above has left the reader dumbfounded, then we need to recall the previous archbishop's call to remove unclarity, to be done within the confines of unconcurrent given funding in a long period before its impact can be not virtual, not least given the crying need to support dioceses through the terrible transition from the parlous present way in which national funds are not undodgily distributed. We are, therefore, generously grateful to the Commissioners to dig up some charitable cash for the effort, in that they might be preciously not unprepared to mutually modify the way in which they do not unconcurrently seek to ensure inter-generational equity when definitely determining what local level of finite funding to make already available from their not permanent payment endowment.
20. Of these four Task Group reports, the Report on Discipleship and the document from the Commissioners cover a wide range of issues. That much is bleeding obvious. So another Golden Globe to the Business Committee for turning up and for engagement with them. Let's chat some more!
21. The decision making processes and timescales vary because who knows what actually will come from all the paperwork. There are more texts reflected in the texts of the motions before the Synod in the light of the supportive discussions at the Archbishops’ Council, the House of Bishops and the Board of Governors of the Church Commissioners and Uncle Tom Cobbley's house.
22. At this stage the motions inside the gents and ladies monitored by the Bishop of Willesden focus primarily on the past, myopia, vision, principles and the staircase beyond. These must come out into the open. Further dynamic development is still needed on some of the particular proposals and continuous consultation required on many of the definite detailed outworkings before the ridiculously relevant bodies, so over to the Synod itself which can reach conclusions. But look, Synod members, don't clutter up our efforts with lots of confusing amendments on points of detail we think are irrelevant.
23. In a few months’ time the life of this General Synod will come to an end and perhaps we ought to end it for good. We do need a new government, or perhaps this lot again even more vicious so we can do some more charity work. This is, therefore, a good moment for taking stock and adding in some spiritual Oxo. We obviously believe that these reports, to be discussed in February, provide no more than a basis (unless this is deliberate understatement) for developing and delivering a major programme of renewal and reform within English Anglicanism as a matter of urgency outside the toilets guarded by the Bishop of Willesden.
“Buddha said, ‘When the river is crossed you no longer need the raft.’ Amen.”
Justin Countuin Sentamu Eborhandicap
January 2015
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