Church Growth Research website launched; Clergy struggling to cope with bigger workloads; Conference to help churches address conflict; Anti-individualist, but Williams speaks his own mind; Yorkshire churches enter groundbreaking partnership; Church of England bishops urged to have honest discussion about gay clergy
Church Growth Research website launched
A new website has been built to support the work of the Church Growth Research Programme – the national 18-month academic research project exploring the factors related to spiritual and in particular numerical church growth of the Church of England. The research is being funded through funding set aside by the Church Commissioners and Archbishops’ Council for research and development. This project is being undertaken in partnership with the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex; Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham and the Oxford Centre for Ecclesiology and Practical Theology, Ripon College, Cuddesdon.
The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Richard Chartres, explains the reasons behind the project in a video on the website; the Bishop says: “There are many communities and parishes that are growing and we want to identify the levers and drives of this growth. We want to do that not just out of a spirit of pure research, but to help those involved in leadership in parishes and communities to see how resources can be used most effectively.”
By visiting www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk, users can engage with the Programme in a number of ways. A section of the site summarises existing literature on church growth and invites readers to suggest additions to this growing collection of research. There is a page that details case studies of growing churches in a number of different contexts across the Church of England, which will continue to be expanded during the course of the project.
Visitors to the website are invited to get involved with the debate on church growth by signing up to the discussions forum. Through the forum, contributions can be made to the project by sharing views and experiences of church growth. Discussions include: What is church growth and how do you measure it?; Fresh Expressions & church planting; Theology of church growth and personal experiences of church growth or decline.
www.churchgrowthresearch.org.uk
Clergy struggling to cope with bigger workloads
Parish clergy may be able to enjoy the odd bit of tea and cake, but the reality of the job is so much more demanding and many clergy are finding themselves saddled with an ever-growing workload, says the Rev Canon Dr Stephen Cherry.
He has written a new book on the problem, drawing on his own experiences from over 20 years in ministry.
The last two decades have seen him working in parish ministry, as a college chaplain, and most recently as director of ministry with an extensive portfolio at Durham Cathedral.
He says he found himself in danger of being overwhelmed but also saw that many other clergy were facing the same problem.
“The clergy today have much bigger jobs than their predecessors, often in the form of having to take care of multiple parishes or simply ever larger ones,” Dr Cherry explains
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/3/clergy.struggling.to.cope.with.bigger.workloads/30738.htm
Conference to help churches address conflict
A conference is being organised to help churches improve the way they handle conflict.
Christians from churches across England will gather from 26 to 28 at Coventry Cathedral for the Faith in Conflict conference.
The conference will explore effective ways of resolving conflicts, from local tensions and power struggles to national issues.
Conference Coordinator David Williams said: “The conference is designed to be highly interactive and to help the church deal with conflict in a better way.”
Speakers include Rev Canon Dr Sam Wells, current incumbent at St Martin-in-the-Fields, whose work focuses on bringing people together in the context of fear and faith, and the
Rev Dr Jo Bailey Wells, who has worked in conflict resolution among Anglicans in the US following the consecration of the openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson.
The conference is being sponsored by the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev Justin Welby, and the Bishop of Coventry, the Rt Rev Christopher Cocksworth.
Bishop Welby said the conference was designed to help the Church “take the task of mediation seriously”.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/3/conference.to.help.churches.address.conflict/30746.htm
Anti-individualist, but Williams speaks his own mind
Report in this week’s Church Times – He was “exasperated” by the slogans of the Occupy protesters; he disagrees that atheists should be invited to present Thought for the Day; and he believes that, no, the Church of England is not in a worse position than when he took office as Archbishop ten years ago.
When asked on Monday night whether he regretted being outspoken during his tenure, Dr Rowan Williams expanded on his answer (in short, no) by providing frank replies to questions that probed some of the thorniest issues he has grappled with.
Dr Williams was speaking at Methodist Central Hall, where he gave the fifth annual lecture of the Christian think tank Theos. Asked by the BBC newsreader Mishal Husain, who chaired the lecture, to look back on certain comments that had got him into “hot water”, Dr Williams said: “I do regrets all right, but I do not think that it will do to be too cautious in a job like this. . .
“You are here to try and say what you believe you have been given to say . . . to try and share a particular picture of what the world is like, what God is like. . . You have to keep trying to preserve the big picture.”
Asked whether his successor should be more guarded, he suggested that, in light of the names mentioned, “I do not think anyone will have that problem.”
When asked whether he had left the Chuch in a worse position than he had found it in ten years ago, Dr Williams concluded: “There is no golden age of church history. . . Because I am a Christian and I believe in God, I believe the Church is not just in my hands. . . I believe that if God has called that Church into existence, God is faithful to what he has done.”
During the course of the evening, Dr Williams was asked three questions about the Church of England’s stance on homosexuality. He argued that the Church had issued “repeated condemnation of homophobia”, but said: “If people are getting the message that they are getting condemned for what they are, that has very serious mental-health impacts.” He hoped that this was “not what the Church is doing”.
It was, he said, “a great mistake to imagine people are waiting with bated breath to hear what the Church has to say about their sex lives”. Pastoral practice meant “helping people to live with the decisions they have made”, and “respecting where they have come from”.
Asked about his view on the protesters at St Paul’s Cathedral, Dr Williams said that he had felt “exasperation with the language of protest”, which was “so general as to be undemanding”. It had reminded him of an episode of the TV comedy Father Ted, during which a protest of priests involved their shouting “Down with this sort of thing!” It “does not help just to say we must work for the overthrow of capitalism”.
The subject of Dr Williams’s lecture, typically wide-ranging and studious, and encompassing the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky, the LSE professor Richard Sennett, and the psychotherapist Eileen Gosling, was “The personal and the individual: human dignity, human relationships, human limits.”
His central thesis was a rejection of individualism in favour of a “personalist” approach to ethics. Dr Williams posited that “What makes me a person, this person rather than another, is not simply a set of facts. . . It is the enormous fact of my being here rather than elsewhere, being in this relationship with those around me. . . I stand in the middle of a network of relationships.”
Every human being was, he suggested, imbued with an “enormous mysteriousness”, and owed “the same kind of reverence or attention”. For this reason, Christians “worry about those kinds of human beings who may not tick all the boxes, but who we still believe to be worthy of respect”. This included the unborn, the severely disabled, the dying, and the marginalised.
He later concluded that this argument meant that “You are not going to solve ethical arguments like abortion by saying it is like having a tooth out, or by saying you have to decide when the soul enters the body. . . We are talking about personal, relational, realities.”
Human rights required, Dr Williams suggested, “a very strong focus on human dignity”, and there was a connection between this notion of dignity and the notion of the sacred: “Before anything or anyone is in relationship, it is already in relationship to God.”
The language of theology was “possibly the only way to speak well of who we are and what humanity is like . . . expecting relationship, expecting difference, expecting death and . . . expecting rather more than death, too”.
Answering a question about where tolerance fitted into this world-view, Dr Williams suggested that it was “rather low-level” – a term that implied that “I have to put up with other people because, in the short-term, I can’t get rid of them.” He would like to “up the ante a little bit” to a “positive expectation” of the other.
The lecture contained a fierce rejection of individualism: the “evolution of the uncooperative self” that seeks control, rejects engagement with others, and fears scrutiny and transparency. It was evident throughout society, in corporate life, and in the search for the perfect body or marriage. The “mystery of another person” could induce “terror or inarticulacy”, and yet we must risk encounter because we needed one another, Dr Williams argued.
Yorkshire churches enter groundbreaking partnership
A new and groundbreaking regional partnership in Yorkshire between the Church of England and Methodist Church will be inaugurated today, Saturday 6 October.
The agreement between the Leeds Methodist District and the Ripon and Leeds Anglican Diocese will be signed at a special celebration at Trinity Methodist Church in Harrogate on 6 October. It will lead to greater sharing of clergy, more joint services, working together to support mission and ministry and greater consultation over future deployment of staff and resources throughout the region.
Under the Covenant Area Partnership – the first of its kind in Great Britain – there will be greater consultation and co-operation between 85 Anglican parishes and their 65 neighbouring Methodist churches.
“The lives of both Churches have already been greatly enriched by our determination to work, worship and grow together,” said the Rev Julian Pursehouse, Acting Chair of the Leeds Methodist District. “The new Covenant Area Partnership is a fantastic opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to one another and to live out our calling to serve our communities in a more dynamic and coherent way.”
Methodist ministers in this area will be encouraged to apply for permission to minister in Church of England parishes and Anglican clergy will be encouraged to apply for ‘Associate Presbyter’ status with the Methodist Church. For example, an Anglican priest would be able to preside at Methodist services of Holy Communion and baptism, and at funeral services.
The two Churches will also seek to involve one another in their procedures of appointing new ministers, clergy and staff throughout the Covenant Area.
The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, the Rt Rev John Packer, said the partnership was an important opportunity for the two churches: “This marks an important step for the diocese and the Leeds Methodist District. It will encourage us to strive for closer connection with other churches, both together as well as separately. We hope that through our own working more closely together, we will also be able to encourage unity between other churches.”
“Christ calls us to unity with one another, but that doesn’t mean uniformity,” added the Revd Dr Mark Wakelin, President of the Methodist Conference, who will be present at Saturday’s ceremony. “It will be a privilege to share in celebrating the gifts and heritage of both Churches, while looking to a more fruitful and exciting future together.”
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17105
Church of England bishops urged to have honest discussion about gay clergy
The Guardian – “The public stance of the Church of England towards civil partnerships in church, the disastrous submission to the government’s equal marriage consultation, and the culture of the church, which forces so many to hide their sexuality – all these things …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/04/church-of-england-gay-clergy?newsfeed=true