Old Arms

Long time no post. So how about this...

Here's a pic of one of the Royal Coats of Arms in the dining hall at King's College, Cambridge. It has the red dragon and sliver greyhound which have since been superseded by the lion and unicorn - presumably because one mythical beast and one foreign wild animal are better than one mythical beast and one domestic animal.

Notice also the early inclusion of the emergency exit symbol.

What does all this have to do with the Anglican Church? Well, apart from the fact that the Tudors founded the independent Church of England in the sixteenth century, I don't really know. But perhaps there are connections I haven't yet thought of...

The Corpus Clock and the Motto of Canterbury

One of the things that's really worth stopping to look at in Cambridge is the Corpus Christi Clock with its 'Chronophage' that's just opposite the main entrance to King's College and which was unveiled by Stephen Hawking a few years back. This is massively interesting for heaps of reasons - its design, machinery and even the philosophy behind it just to name a few. In fact, if you have a spare five minutes, it's worth watching this little video featuring Dr John C Taylor who is the clock's inventor and maker.

On the clock is the inscription mundus transit et concupisentia eius. This is the Latin for 1 John 2:17a, 'the world and the desire for it are passing away', which is part of a warning not to love the temporary things of the world which are opposed to God the Father and his eternal purposes. This is fitting for a clock that so vividly portrays time being consumed as it passes by the devilish locust that sits on top of the wheel. (For me, the locust is also a strong reminder of the warning in the book of Joel, where the last judgment of God is prefigured by the temporal judgement of the locust plague.)

Although there's lots written about this clock, I haven't found anyone commenting on the fact that mundus transit et concupisentia eius was the motto of Matthew Parker. Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury under Elizabeth I, but prior to that he was also successively graduate, fellow and master of Corpus Christi and I presume this must be why that Latin verse was chosen for the clock. Perhaps it was even Parker's focus on an eternity overseen by the sovereignty of God that inspired the College to have the clock made in the first place. I've sent an email to Corpus Christi asking about it.

Geology and Church Visit - St Michael the Archangel, Lyme Regis

Apart from being a great little historic seaside town, one of the big attractions of Lyme Regis on Dorset's Jurassic Coast is its abundance of fossils. It seems that there are more ammonites than anything else, but there have been some other pretty exciting finds here too. (Being an ex-geologist, I maintain a bit of an interest in rocks, minerals, crystals, earth-history, etc. Bragging point: in my third or fourth year at uni I won the prize for best in mineralogy and crystallography! Anyhoo... )

Mary Anning is famous in Lyme Regis' history as one of its paleontological pioneers. And while the town now recognises her in lots of ways - eg. street name, museum in her house - in her day, she struggled to share her scientific work because women were not afforded the same recognition in the sciences as men. Sad as this is, I was encouraged by something else, which is the fact that she's buried along with her brother in the town's churchyard. I don't want to over-interpret this, but it seems to me that this is another good, historical example of a passionate scientist resting peacefully with the faith of the church. (Or maybe even a passionate believer resting peacefully with the scientific enterprise.)

It is so painfully tedious - eye-rollingly, yawn-inducingly boring really - when some people try to force a stark polarisation between those who 'believe science' and those who 'are religious'. Plenty has been written about this clumsy, false dichotomy and I can't be bothered getting into it here. Suffice to say that those who characterise different perspectives on the world that way can only be regarded as having a superficial understanding of both science and Christianity. But for me, seeing Mary Anning's grave, in such a picturesque setting as it is, just nicely illustrated again that there is no jarring contradiction within those who love Jesus as their Lord and Saviour and who also love exploring the natural world that he created.

From page 183 of Browne's commentary on the Anglican Articles of Religion:

"in asserting the sufficiency of Scripture, we assert it for the end to which it was designed. … we do not assert it as fit to teach us arts and sciences … where it does not profess to be a perfect guide, we derogate not from its authority in seeking other help."

Happy 450th Birthday 39 Articles

Last year we celebrated 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, but yesterday marked another significant milestone for the Anglican Church.

While the confirmation of Justin Welby as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury was important and well covered by the press, no one seems to have noticed that it was the 450th anniversary of the bishops' subscription to their newly amended version of Cranmer's doctrinal articles. That is, it was 450 years since they approved the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

There were a few minor tweaks in the years that followed: Article 20 was given a new opening sentence, Article 29 was dropped for around eight years before being re-included in 1571, at which time a couple of extra books were also added to the list of the Apocrypha in Article 6 and all the titles and numbers were standardised... But - what we have now was essentially finalised 450 years and one day ago.

I should have posted this yesterday, but despite the fact that I've been working closely on the history of the Articles for the past few weeks, it didn't click until just now! I guess we could re-mark the occasion in 2021 which will be 450 years since the 1571 Convocation re-subscribed to the very final version. Meantime, praise God for four and a half centuries of solid Anglican doctrine!

Church Visit - St Edward King and Martyr

Last week a few of us visited the Cambridge church where Hugh Latimer held the pulpit - and sometimes shared it with Cranmer. The attendant there was even good enough to allow us to step up and get the feel of it for a moment.

One thing that was interesting was the attendant's strong Protestant beliefs. Despite the fact that I had heard that this church now sat some way away from the convictions of the Reformation, the attendant was actually grieving even the fact that the stained glass had been replaced in the 1800s as it shifted the focus from the preaching of the Bible and onto the ornamentation of the building. He wanted nothing but the unmodified gospel to be communicated in this building.

May Latimer's brave legacy long continue here.

Church Visit - Ely Cathedral

One of the things that the English reformers were famous for was iconoclasm - destroying the 'superstitious' symbols of ritualised worship as part of their efforts to refocus the church on the gospel as it's revealed in the written words of Scripture. One participant in this tear-it-down movement was Thomas Goodrich, Bishop of Ely from 1534 and right through Edward VI's reign.

Goodrich was responsible for gutting the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary that sits to the north of the main structure of Ely Cathedral. This was a relatively unsurprising move, given that 'Mary worship' was part of the old Roman Catholic religion that the Reformation Protestants most definitely wanted to expunge. But today it makes for a stark contrast to enter the Chapel and find something reminiscent of a disused church hall with nothing but plain glass all the way around after having just stepped out of the unbelievably ornate Cathedral proper with its countless ornaments, carvings and intricate stained glass windows.

But then, similarly incongruous within this bare chapel, there is a lone statue of the BVM standing proud against the wall, looking down on the room with arms held up high - praising God? receiving praise? I didn't find out for sure, but it must be that this was returned to the Chapel during a period of restoration (one of which was as recent as the year 2000). Whenever it was put there, it's pretty certain that it wouldn't have sat well with the plans that Goodrich had for Christian worship during Edward's time. Leaving nothing but Mary to focus on would have cut strongly against the grain.

That said, however, Goodrich did manage to find a comfortable place under Mary Tudor, who returned the Church of England back to Rome. And he did leave the rest of the Cathedral intact. I don't really know all that much about him, but think it would be interesting to learn more of Goodrich's views on gathered worship and how they changed over time.

From a theological perspective, I can plainly see the point in getting rid of the images. But also, coming at the Cathedral culturally, artistically and architecturally, I have to say that I appreciate a lot of what was left. It captures a lot of history that the Chapel doesn't and, frankly, it's pretty stunning to look at. I guess the question is how to preserve the buildings and their heritage without risking any confusion about how God mediates his grace to us.

BCP Talk

This year marks the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. On Reformation day - 28th October - I gave a short, popular-level talk at St James' Old Cathedral on the enduring value of the BCP and some of the issues that Anglicans are facing as we continue to use it.

A full transcript of the talk is on line here.

Risen Anglicans

One of my interests is the degree to which the Anglican Church presents a biblical balance of the doctrines of atonement and eschatology, or, of Jesus' cross and his resurrection. Generally speaking, it seems that evangelical Anglican churches are far more focussed on atonement and consequently, it's not unusual for them to marginalise eschatology.

(The main exception to this is when they're offering an apologetic for the resurrection; most evangelical Anglicans are absolutely insistent about the fact that Jesus really rose from the dead. But this vigour in arguing for the fact of Jesus' resurrection is rarely matched by a depth of explanation about what Jesus' resurrection means. So, on Good Friday, you might well go into an evangelical Anglican church and hear all about how Jesus died on the cross for our sins - fantastic - but then when you go back on Easter Day, you might not hear so much about why he rose, apart from that being a necessary vindication of his cross.)

Anyhoo, on the weekend, I was at an evangelical Anglican church for a wedding (which was great!) and instead of having a cross in their chancel, they had this this.

I have no idea about who put those words there or when or what the flavour of the church was at the time, but this focus on Jesus' resurrection and ascension is great! Being evangelical, I presume the church gets a good dose of atonement theology in the preaching. I would love to know how much the words on the wall represent the members' self-understanding as the risen people of God. That is, after all, one of the most profound things that they are as Christian believers.

(Seasonally relevant liturgical note: Anglicans often use advent to focus on the parousia as well as the incarnation as the first coming points to the second.)

Our 'Inclusive' Church

Lots of people these days talk about the Anglican Church being 'inclusive'. The term sounds very nice, but it's actually unhelpfully imprecise. Clearly Anglicans - like any group - are not fundamentally inclusive of anything and everything; that would be a nonsense. No mainline denomination or organisation will want to proclaim that it is proudly inclusive of people who are indifferent about sexual abuse, who are racist, who are exploitative, etc, etc. There are always boundaries and even when some would want to loosen up some official positions, implicit lines remain - or new ones are drawn.

So, if someone says that the Anglican Church is an 'inclusive' church, what they probably mean is that it doesn't draw boundaries in places where some other churches do, or even in places where it has done in the past. I think a simple, clarifying question to ask someone who makes such a statement is, 'Inclusive of what?'

An interesting test-case comes around the question of ordaining women to the priesthood, or consecrating women to the episcopate. This is a huge issue in the Anglican Church at the moment. There are conservative members who feel that the traditional and historic position of the church captures the plain teaching of the Bible and therefore, they are uncomfortable seeing women enter into every level of church leadership. And then there are those who feel that the Church's reluctance to ordain and consecrate women is really just part of its outdated cultural baggage and that the key passages in the Bible can be quite reasonably interpreted in such ways as to remove all impediments to women serving in any position in the church. In fact, some go further and say that in today's culture, the gospel demands equal opportunity for women in the church's orders of ministry. My point right now is not to argue for one position or the other, but rather to ask what it means for a church to be inclusive when there are different views on this issue.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Designate, Bp Justin Welby, holds a progressive view on the issue itself and thinks that women should be able to serve in any capacity in the church. However, he is also of the view that members who think differently to him shouldn't be marginalised. He has spoken of his great respect for those people who hold a more conservative position and he has acknowledged and encouraged their faithful and fruitful ministries. In short, Welby's idea of Anglican inclusiveness is that all ought to be equally included irrespective of their convictions at this particular controversial point. His view is not "we are an inclusive church, therefore if you don't apply that inclusivity to the question of women in ministry, you're not welcome".

This is similar to the official view current in Melbourne and in the rest of Australia. Most Australian dioceses have approved the consecration of female bishops, but the bishops have also agreed to a protocol for alternative oversight for those who can't in good conscience accept the episcopal ministry of a woman. Now, many people complain about the workability of this protocol and wonder if policies coming from it could ever be practically implemented, but the very fact that such a protocol exists makes an important statement to both conservatives and the church as a whole. It says that even if your views are not mainstream, the church does not want to eject you but would rather find ways to accommodate you and your ministry.

Of course, the real test for this 'inclusive' approach comes when we try to decide for which doctrines we will allow differences of opinion and for which ones we won't. If we fully include members with different views around the ordination and consecration of women, what about things like homosexual practice, infant baptism, vestments, the infallibility of Scripture, eschatology, soul sleep, the uniqueness of Christ, justification by faith alone, liturgical practice, the nature of the sacraments... Some might look at a quick list like that and have a strong and immediate view on some of the doctrines. Perhaps justification by faith is absolutely not-negotiable and soul sleep is a matter of indifference. But what are the criteria? Who applies them? And who decides what the criteria are and who applies them?

We can be an inclusive church and there is something good and even necessary about that. But if we're going to stand for anything at all - and if we're going to stand together for anything at all - there's also a whole other level of complexity that we cannot avoid.

Ten Reasons to be Anglican

Over a decade ago, when I was debating whether or not to sign myself up for the Anglican Church, I was presented with some pretty crummy reasons in favour. Among the least inspiring was the suggestion that the Anglican Church was just the 'best boat to fish from'. That is, while there's not really a whole lot that comes to mind in favour of it, it's probably better than the alternatives. Another equally bland attraction was that the Anglican Church had good job security. Whereas baptist congregations can sack their ministers at the drop of a hat, you're safer in the Anglican system, so the argument went. Well, I joined up anyway...

In recent times, I've been encouraged to think about some non-Anglican jobs and this has given me fresh pause to think about why I really want to stay an Anglican. Is there anything more positive that makes me - and might make others - want to be a flag-flying, card-carrying, unashamed Anglican follower of Jesus?

Of course, I know that at one level, this is a marginal issue. On the last day, Jesus isn't going to line up everyone by denomination. Far less is he going to embrace any denominational construct for its own sake. (Although I suspect that there may be denominational sins for which members of denominations will be held to account.) At another level though, it's a practical reality for lots of people who are thinking about church life. And it's certainly an essential question for anyone who wants to consider, and be considered for, church leadership.

So then, here are ten things that I think Anglican Church has got going for it and that make me really want to invest in it. Maybe others will think of more.

1. Solid theological foundation. Starting with the basics, the authoritative, foundational documents of the church are deep, clear and helpfully nuanced. The position on key points of doctrine are not only well defined, but also even artfully embodied into the well-balanced liturgies. The focus is squarely on Jesus Christ and his gospel as revealed through the historic Scriptures.

2. Breadth in secondary matters. The flip side of the first point is that Anglicans are permissive on non-core matters. There are many different traditions and styles within the Anglican Church and that's completely fine. With the essentials pinned down, there's plenty of freedom for different expressions of the faith and even for different views on some doctrinal questions. (For those who think that the liturgies are too inflexible, my own experience is that wooden services are more often the result of services leaders who don't embrace all the freedoms that the liturgies give them and then put proper time and effort into planning their services well.)

3. High value on scholarship. Anglicans are thinkers (sometimes to a fault) and have never been satisfied with Sunday-school theology (except in our Sunday schools!) Anglicans have always been deeply engaged with matters of philosophy, history, ethics, science and any other area of human exploration and there's no sign that this is going to end in a hurry.

4. Well-recognised church. While this isn't everything and mustn't be overly relied upon, it does mean something important to lots of people. Some who encounter church either for the first time or at a significant junction in their life, feel a lot more comfortable hearing "We're Anglicans" than "We made up our own church".

5. Longstanding community connections. Following on from the last point, there are still many parts of the world where Anglican parish churches have significant relational networks that spread through their suburbs and even into other organisations. Add to this the existing reach and impact of the extra-parochial agencies that serve so many in our communities (eg. Anglicare, Brotherhood of St Lawrence, etc) and it's clear that there are lots of ways that Anglicans already have considerable and important social connections.

6. Worldwide fellowship. The connections aren't just local either. The Communion is worldwide (around 80 million people globally) which not only means that there's a good fellowship of Anglicans in lots of places you can visit, but also that Anglican Churches are highly multicultural. In Melbourne, Chinese and Sudanese make up two of the largest sub-groupings within the Anglican Church.

7. Participatory decision-making structures. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury is the worldwide figurehead, his role isn't like the pope's in the Roman Catholic Church. Anglicans are 'episcopally led and synodically governed' which means that the local bishops are charged with setting direction and with hiring and firing clergy to achieve it (see this post on the role of bishops), but the lay people have their voices heard and their questions answered and can hold various offices in their parish and diocese.

8. Focussing on opportunities. Most Anglican dioceses around the world are in agreement that there is great need to keep pioneering new ways of doing church and of ministering to more and more people. The Church of England's Mission-Shaped Church report lays out a very positive agenda for the church and most of the Communion have grasped this sort of thinking and are eager to find ways to make new things happen.

9. Lots of resources. Primarily people and buildings. Now, buildings aren't everything and it's very dangerous to think that just having the keys to some real estate is going to build the Kingdom. But, having a meeting place on the main street of pretty much every town (at least here in Australia) and then also living space for a minster to go with it is a fantastically useful thing.

10. Administrative support. A centralised system for managing banking, payrolls, insurance, superannuation, professional standards and so on is priceless and saves each parish church from having to comply in all of these areas on its own.


As I've been writing, more things have been springing to mind, but I'll leave it there for now.

Anglicanism is far from perfect and it certainly has its fair share of problems, both large and small. But it seems to me that while anyone can easily point out negative things, it would be a great shame to either use those things to characterise the Anglican Church or to sink all of our energies into dealing with them. It's very good to keep remembering some of the reasons that the Anglican Church is a particularly great and faith-filled part of Jesus' church with a huge amount of potential. I'm staying.

Royal Commission

Yesterday, Prime Minister Gillard announced a Royal Commission into both child abuse and also the covering up of that abuse. A primary focus of the Commission will be the Catholic Church, but it will have the power to investigate more broadly so that all church and not-for-profit organisations can be included.

Since the announcement was made, what's really encouraged and impressed me is the uniform welcome that the Commission has been getting from church workers. Pretty much everyone thinks this is a good thing. Followers of Jesus are rightly disgusted by child abuse and if it's happened (or is happening) in his church, it's doubly disgraceful. If it's been covered up (or is being covered up) by his church, that's completely reprehensible.

The church should be safe and transparent. If the Commission brings justice to those who have suffered where the church has failed and helps to set a better culture for the future, it will be an excellent thing.

An on-line poll from today's article in The Age shows overwhelmingly

that the majority of readers also feel positive about the Royal Commission.

What Difference Will He Make?

In his first press statement after being confirmed as the Archbishop of Canterbury designate, one of the things Justin Welby recognised was that the members of local Anglican parishes are the real front line in the church's ministry. In a denomination that's distinguished by its hierarchical nature, it's really encouraging to hear leaders speak this way as it not only directs local churches to their on-the-ground mission, but it also helps to dispel any ideas that there's going to be an institutional salvation that will come down from above.

The fact of the matter is, no matter how liberal, catholic, evangelical or charismatic the AbC is, most parishes will continue going about their business in very much the same ways as they have been up until now. That is, outside his own diocese of Canterbury, the AbC does not make a great deal of difference to what most Anglicans do week to week. I don't say this to disparage the AbC in any way at all, just to recognise the reality - as Welby has - that the front-edge of the life and work of the church happens in local neighbourhoods.

Perhaps the place where the AbC's influence will be most widely felt is within high-level conversations about international Anglican relationships. As everyone knows, there are some huge issues affecting the worldwide Anglican Communion right now and Welby is likely to be an important voice in the years ahead as these are worked through. However, even in this we must remember that over the last decade, it's become crystal clear that some national churches and local bishops will not take their direction from the AbC, nor any of the other 'Instruments of Communion'. Therefore, it would be naive to think that any AbC could have the capacity to resew the torn fabric of the Communion and I think it would be pretty unfair to place that expectation on them. Again, the AbC may be able to have significant input, but ultimately, he only has the power of influence and cannot demand that the world's Anglicans do whatever he tells them, be it good or bad. He's not a pope!

So, as we welcome / assess / question / investigate / speculate about / pray for Welby, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that time and energy given over to those things are all that's necessary to build the Kingdom. We certainly ought to pray that he serves as a great and faithful leader and that he has a really positive influence in the Communion. But we must remember that the lion's share of the work in the Anglican Church will not be done by him.

New Archbishop of Canterbury

According to the Telegraph, Justin Welby has it. Check this link:

Bishop of Durham to be Archbishop of Canterbury

Execution

A couple of weeks ago, City on a Hill celebrated its birthday. This Authorised Anglican Congregation is really noteworthy for lots of reasons: the growth in attendance from nothing to something heading towards 1,000 in just five years with many of those people being new believers in Jesus, the embracing of a new model of Anglican church without property, the fast-footed approach to new gospel opportunities, the young leadership team that's overseen the ministry... there are endless points of interest. From all accounts the birthday celebration was excellent too: the band launched a CD that went to number one on the 'Inspirational' list in the iTunes store, a bunch of people were baptised into the faith, a second CoaH church was announced and some pretty exciting and ambitious plans were laid out for the next three years. Lots of stuff! However, just now, it's particularly this idea of churches making big plans that I'm interested in.

In recent years, more and more churches and Christian organisations have adopted some key ideas from the business world and have put tons of energy into producing mission statements, visions, strategic plans and so on. I think all of this can be really important in focussing and kick-starting those churches that might otherwise have been relatively passive in their ministry. If God's plan is to use his church to take the message of Jesus to the world and to make disciples of every nation, then the church had better get well organised because there's a whole lot of work to be done!

However there are, of course, risks if churches just blindly embrace this business-think. The most obvious is that they could start acting like companies that ultimately only care about their bottom lines and not about less tangible things like faith and faithfulness, hope and humility, life and love which are all central for followers of Jesus. But the other risk I see is one that's common to the business world too and it's that thinking that just having a vision, plan or strategy is the main thing or is even a satisfactory end in itself.

Recently, I was talking to a good friend who's just started working for an international para-church organisation and he told me that the key lesson he's been learning there is execution. That is, he is not just expected to develop grand visions and plans, but to actually make them happen; to get results. This is in recognition that anyone can have an amazing vision or plan - to triple the membership, to start fifty new churches, to raise a billion dollars, to fly a shiny rocket to Jupiter - but unless the execution is good, they can just be showy aspirations that ultimately aren't worth the paper they're written on. (Or worse. They could actually be a grand waste of paper and also of time, money and energy.) "What we were going to do" never added up to Kingdom growth.

This sort of thinking freaks me out a bit. My first response is to jump in defensively and say things like "at least we shot for something", "sometimes success is out of our control", "God is not impressed with results" and so on, and there's something very right in all these statements. Certainly, I know lots of faithful labourers who have worked really hard in very tough situations for extended periods of time without seeing much fruit and so I simply cannot stomach an unqualified "just go and get the results". But with that said, I do also want to sit with the idea of 'execution' for a bit and think about what it is that makes the difference between just being a dreamer and being a doer, between being a planner and an achiever.

At this stage, I've got a bunch of thoughts that have to do with prayer, leadership, context, patience, focus and communication to name just a few things. But as yet, I don't have any neat, proverbial answers. However, as I'm chewing it over and I see churches like City on a Hill repeatedly converting their big ideas into reality, I want to pay some attention. Sure, they have shortcomings like any church does, but God is clearly doing something through them. I reckon for us Anglicans who aren't always making great headway these days, it's really worth us watching them and seeing what we can learn.

Church visits - St James x2

It was great to be part of the morning services at St James' Pakenham on the Sunday before last. (It would have been great to have been able to stick around for their evening service too as there were a number of people being confirmed and received - basically, standing up to say they want to follow Jesus and have chosen this church to do that.) I was really encouraged by the bravery and boldness of the congregations I visited. People there told me that some years ago, they had been meeting in a nice old stone church building, however, when they faced the (excellent) problem of being too full, they agreed to say goodbye to their spiritual home and move to a new, bigger facility. This sort of thing can be quite a big deal for lots of people. While the new building is really great, it no doubt has a strikingly different aesthetic to the last one.

To be honest, in my conversations it sounded like it had been a bit of a hard slog getting resettled. But still, the overall mood was positive and future facing. There was real enthusiasm around the new minister and his wife who are a great couple that I think could do a lot to positively shape the church. So again, good on this church for taking a step into something new and looking forward to what God might do next.

It turns out that there's actually a good number of well-led Anglican churches out in that part of Melbourne now - Berwick, Pearcedale-Langwarren, Officer, others... ? If the congregations in those have the same boldness as the Pakenham mob, this could be a really exciting part of the Diocese to watch in the years ahead.

Yesterday I went to another St James' - Melbourne's old cathedral. This has a somewhat different story: their building was slated for demolition years and years ago (early 1900s??) but ended up being preserved and, after having been relocated to a new site brick-by-brick, these days has a newly growing congregation. Here, unlike Pakenham, the old aesthetic has been retained for a group of people who like a more traditional style of church. But like Pakenham, the recent growth has again been, under God's providence, largely due to the young minister who's been really well-matched to the congregation. I'm reminded again of the importance of putting square pegs in square holes.

Now, where's another St James' I can check out?

Coat of arms hung in the sanctuary at St James' Old Cathedral.

It's the diocesan arms impaled with arms that seem to have some

connection to the English monarchy. Anyone?

The Voices of the People

For the first time in seven years, I'm not a member of the Melbourne Synod and so won't be attending the meetings that start tonight.

However, it turns out that I do have something else to do. I'm going to be introducing and briefly interviewing Billy Bragg during his in-store appearance at Readings Bookstore in St Kilda. As a pretty hard-core BB fan for more than twenty years, this is a great honour for me.

So, if you're not a member of Melbourne Synod and are looking for something to do at 2pm this Saturday (Oct 20th), come on down. It's free, but you must book.

I can't guarantee that it will be better than an afternoon at Synod...

But just maybe...

Old Skool Discipleship

How often do we think about the Church Catechism? It's a brief outline of the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer that's been in every Book of Common Prayer since 1549 (largely unchanged although the bit on the sacraments was added in 1604).

So what?

Well, the catechism contains what Anglicans believe are the essentials of the faith (cf. the 39 Articles which have a different function altogether). To reinforce this, lots of Anglican churches actually have the Creed, Commandments and Lord's Prayer up on 'commandment boards' at the front of the building to make starkly plain what it is that we believe about God, how we want to live in light of those beliefs and the way we can call on God to help us in that. This triplet was so important to the Church of England that, according to Prof. Ian Green who's written the book on catechisms, there were something like 500,000 copies of the catechism printed between the 1540s and 1640s, making it by far the most printed text of the time. Everyone was expected to know the catechism off by heart as a summary of their faith.

So now, here's the question. How many Anglicans nowadays can rattle off the Apostles' Creed, Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer without looking them up? I'm not suggesting that this is the test of a 'true' Christian and I'm well aware that we're living in a different time, with different ways of learning, etc, etc. However, if we can't recite these things and demonstrate some basic understanding of their right meaning, I do wonder whether we've been learning other equally valuable things instead or if we've just abandoned the idea of a clearly structured, educative discipleship. I guess it probably depends a lot on which particular Anglican church you go to.

I suspect that some people might read this and think "I don't know those things, but I learn the Bible each week". Well, that would be a great thing. But before we just move on from there, it's good to remember that the Ten Commandments and Lord's Prayer actually come from the Bible anyway and that the 16th century church also had the ideal of reading the entire Old Testament once a year, the New Testament three times and all the Psalms each month, so they weren't using the catechism as some light-weight alternative to Bible reading.

Just as I'd been thinking about this, a friend sent me this link to an iPad ap for a modern day catechism. I was wondering how we could revive old skool catechesis. Someone beat me to it!

Paying for It

In the past, my wife and I have served together as part of a team in church leadership which we felt worked pretty well at lots of levels. Because of that, we're looking to do the same in the future. However, as we've spoken about this with others, one of the issues that's been raised is the fact that most churches can't afford to put on two new staff members at the same time. Now, from our perspective, we've never been that fussed about this as we can happily get by on one income. But we have taken some pause to think more generally about the positives and negatives of working in a church for more hours than the paycheques cover. Here's a bit of a summary.

It's bad to work more hours than you're paid for because

• As Paul reminds us, "The [church] labourer deserves to be paid" (1 Tim 5:17-18, cf. Matt 10:10). This teaching recognises that working in a church is a 'real' job (and one that can require more training, can demand more hours, can have greater responsibility and can draw on a broader set of skills than many other jobs) and as such, it ought to be properly remunerated.

• Paying workers properly protects (somewhat) against their being taken for granted by those in the church.

• If a churchworker is paid for less hours than they actually work and then they move on to another ministry, the church may not be set up to pay replacement staff for enough hours to cover all that the former staffer was doing. That could mean some ministries struggle, falter or even end.

But some reasons that it's good to work more than you're paid are

• Church work should never, never be done for money. Church workers should primarily serve out of love for Jesus, his people and his mission, not remuneration. Traditionally, ministers were paid a 'stipend' rather than a salary. That is, they received an allowance sufficient for them to live on while they gave up their potential earning time to serve in the church. So the focus wasn't on dollars per hour, but on providing the basic needs for those set aside to do vocational church work. (This is a key idea in the Old Testament system of tithes too - eleven tribes gave ten percent to support the one tribe who served them in the Temple and who therefore couldn't work in the fields to raise crops and livestock for themselves.)

• It helps sustain a healthy culture of volunteerism which is critical if a church is to be fully functional in its mission and service. In churches I've worked at in the past, unpaid volunteers have been hugely important to the life and health of the community. If church members develop the attitude that they shouldn't offer themselves in free service because there are 'paid people' to do the work, then the church is in a bad state.

• Any money saved can be diverted to other good uses - helping the poor, special mission projects, supporting other churches - the possibilities are endless.

• A minister who gets paid less than they might has a great opportunity to champion simpler living to the church which ought to be marked by sacrificial generosity and selflessness.

• At least in Australia, the full remuneration package for Anglican ministers is very generous. I know of several ministers with a bunch of kids who have gotten by on a single Melbourne Diocese salary. I don't know of any who are struggling to put food on the table.

So perhaps the best situation is one where a congregation feels really committed to ensuring that those who serve (in whatever capacity) are adequately provided for, but at the same time, those who serve are equally as keen to lead the way in giving their time sacrificially and not always requiring all the payments they could claim.

Practically, this could mean that the local church pays its workers the full amount, but then those workers choose to return anything above what they need to live on back to the church coffers - or perhaps to another worthy cause. Or, the church could pay an old-fashioned stipend (like some missionary organisations still do today) and then they could set the remainder aside for other purposes. They could even create a fund to cover any gap that may arise when the 'underpaid' minister moves on.

There's nothing final in all this - just a few thoughts I've been kicking around. But however things are done, one thing I'm convinced of is that it mustn't be unusual for people in church to freely serve for free.

Church Visit - St Mary's South Camberwell

I'm pinch-hitting for a couple of weeks at St Mary's in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and have to say that I'm massively impressed with what's happening there. There's a level at which I think some people could find it underwhelming simply because the current congregation isn't all that big - it's not packed to the gills with twenty-somethings or young families or professionals. But to see no more than this would be to miss the church's quality and potential.

By 'quality' I don't just mean that the services are well-led, that the powerpoint slides are free from spelling errors and that the musos play tightly (although all those things are true and I actually think they do make a significant difference - they mean that the congregation isn't distracted at times when they're trying to focus on their prayers, singing, etc.) Even more important is the fact that the people of the church are really friendly and welcoming and that they're up-front about their faith without being confrontational. I reckon these are some of the important qualities of a local church that's looking to engage with the world around it. During morning tea last Sunday, it was great to not just have conversations about the footy or what people were doing with their weekends, but to also chat about the power of the Psalms, the hope of the resurrection, the work of the Spirit and the health of the church. Good stuff.

In addition to this, another reason that I feel this church has great potential is because it now has a new minister, Dave, who's young, clear-minded, very capable and wanting to invest in the church for the long-run. If what I've experienced so far is in some measure reflective of the work he's already put in, then I'm really excited about what he might do over the next ten or twenty years. This coming Sunday he's baptising someone into the faith - God-willing, a sign of greater things to come.

As mentioned in a previous post, I think that rebooting / revitalising local churches is a key way for the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne to see renewal over the next generation. Finding young leaders who are truly able, placing them in small parishes with some resources and then backing them through the struggles and challenges has got to be central to any macro-strategy. Dave has taken up the challenge and the diocese has been bold enough to give him a run. Plus, there are other examples around the place too. Early days, but I think this approach is paying off. Praise God.

Stark Realities Leading to Strategies

In my Anglican ordinand group at Ridley Melbourne this week we talked about what strategies would be necessary to see our diocese grow. We got into it by thinking about the current state of our local churches and their recent growth history. Here are the questions we asked and our answers. (While we were mostly talking about Melbourne, I would be surprised if the answers were markedly different for any diocese.)

1.

How many Melbourne Anglican churches have experienced significant growth in our lifetime?

We could list off around 15. There are probably also a bunch we don't know about so this should be counted as a minimum. Still, even if it were double, that's only 30 local churches out of around 220 in the diocese.

2.

How many Melbourne Anglican churches have experienced significant growth in the past five years?

Here we struggled more and could only count a couple with confidence. Maybe there could be five? Again, out of about 220.

3.

How many Melbourne Anglican churches have experienced significant growth under two consecutive leaders?

For this we thought zero - although again, this might be due to our ignorance. If there are any, it's unlikely to be many.

After this, we moved on to consider what we could learn from these observations that would help our thinking about building the diocese in the future. A few of our thoughts were -

1.

It's important to think about a local church's future potential far more than its existing reputation (although there may be an interplay here).

2.

Under God, growth is at least partially, if not largely, a function of leadership.

3.

Material resources (ie. church buildings, vicarages, income streams, etc.) are not enough.

Of course we discussed the role of circumstance and setting - different types of churches flourish in different places at different times depending on all sorts of social phenomena - and it's absolutely critical to acknowledge the faithful, hard work that's been going on with sowing and watering around the diocese for years, even where lots of fruit hasn't (yet) resulted. But just as it would be wrong to exclude circumstance from our equations, so too would it be wrong to make it the sole factor in our considerations of why different local churches do or don't grow.

In terms of a future plan, our best conclusion was that, as far as anyone could predict (and of course no one can), the most likely strategy to achieve diocesan growth is sending new leaders to non-flagship churches that have potential and then for those leaders to commit to the hard work of building them up over many years. Perhaps the most plausible positive vision for the future won't focus on those few churches in the 500+ club growing larger, but on seeing more smaller churches growing to that size.

So, God's strength to the young leaders who have taken on leadership of smaller parishes in the past few years!

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One factor that I'd love to be able to measure in local churches is prayerfulness. It was put to me a while ago that revivals are always preceded by prayer - proper, persistent, humble, long-suffering prayer. While I suspect few, if any, local Anglican churches could be accused of being completely prayerless, it could be very interesting to explore the different patterns of prayer in different churches. I reckon we'd learn a lot from that too.