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Purgatory: 10,000 new communities in the UK
Anglican Brat
Shipmate
Giles Fraser's latest article: https://unherd.com/2021/07/the-church-is-abandoning-its-flock/
I have read Fraser's critique, but I don't entirely understand the CofE's plans? Is it, the creation of 10,000 churches that are lay led? Meaning the Eucharist would not be celebrated on a weekly basis since presumably they would have no regular priest?
Can someone from the CofE shed some light on this brou-ha-ha?
I have read Fraser's critique, but I don't entirely understand the CofE's plans? Is it, the creation of 10,000 churches that are lay led? Meaning the Eucharist would not be celebrated on a weekly basis since presumably they would have no regular priest?
Can someone from the CofE shed some light on this brou-ha-ha?
Comments
IMHO the only thing that "works" in terms of getting buns on pews is something that will be deeply, deeply unpopular with the program folks. It is forgetting about bums on pews and instead each of us living lives of practical, sacrificial love for the people around us, including the non-Christians. And doing this for years and years, until they conclude we are genuine and they want some of that.
It works, we've tested it. But it costs, oh how it costs.
It costs nights in the emergency room (A&E do you call it there?) with people who are hurting and afraid and need a hand held. It means fundraising for the poor and pulling it out of your own pocket when individuals known to you don't fall into a category covered by any program (say, they need money for a divorce from an abuser). It means making daily phone calls to the old, sick and isolated to be sure they are still alive and not on the floor with a broken leg. It means listening to people who maunder on and on, and whom we find very little congenial about, because their politics are crap, or their ways of dealing with people, etc. etc. It means scaring up transportation capable of getting a double amputee and his wheelchair to church when he can afford nothing, and he's desperate to get there, and the church has no van, and no buses run Sunday morning (that direction, anyway) and you yourself are disabled so can't handle it yourself.
Seriously. This will get bums on pews. (It also results in conversions, baptisms, and even vocations.) It will take a couple years to prove itself, but it will work. Not that anyone would do it for the mere sake of numbers, because it means living like Jesus, poured out for others, and that fucking hurts sometimes.
And that living like Jesus can only be done under his power, working through the Holy Spirit, because human "oomph" and willpower will desert you a week into it, if not earlier. So you end up learning a different way of walking through the world, one that feels like walking at 45 degrees to reality, constantly about to fall--but not falling, much to your surprise--and you admit that the power that makes it possible for you to, say, take a homeless woman into your home is not a power that is found in you, it must be coming from somewhere else. And that place Person is what gets the glory.
It works, I swear it works. But it costs. It costs your time and your dignity and your ability to order your own life in the ways you want it to flow. But it's well worthwhile. And for people who love adventure, here's your chance. (And for people who are just too... dumb? ... to run for the hills when God sidles up to you and smiles and says, "Have I got a deal for you," well.)
To me it's a repellantly reactionary vision, and I want none of it.
Yes, this. Thank you @Lamb Chopped . It is what people in the C of E are doing: lay and ordained, old and young, and have been doing for so long that exhaustion has set in, and now the top of the shop seem to be saying that it’s not good enough. No wonder there is a hoo-ha!
Why would it need a regular priest ?
Aaaaaaaa-men.
I don’t agree with Giles Fraser on many things, but I think he’s got a point in this article.
I’m also really annoyed by the language of “passengers”. There have been many times when I have not been able to Do Stuff for the church, because I’ve been ill, I’ve been bereaved, I’ve had small children and no sleep etc. Times when I couldn’t even pray. I turned up, and the church carried me.
I thought church was supposed to be the one place where we didn’t have to justify ourselves by productivity. Maybe I was wrong.
The subtext of these house churches being lay-led is that there aren't enough priests to go around. It's already a struggle to celebrate the Eucharist for every congregation that wants it. Even to find priests to bob in, say the "magic words" and bob out again for 10 000 house churches would be impossible.
I still don't understand why you need ordained priests.
This is something that could be addressed even within a sacerdotal and sacramentalist context.
I'm told that in Greece they have fellas who are licenced to serve the Liturgy but not preach or hear confessions.
This means that even the smallest or most remote communities have the opportunity to receive regular communion if they wish.
What worries me about this Myriad initiative is that rather than empowering the laity it could turn into a bland and dumbed down managerial exercise, a kind of MacDonaldisation rather than a genuine grass-roots movement.
I've heard horror stories of failed Fresh Expressions style church plants that have been conveniently forgotten about as if they never occurred.
No reflection on how or why things didn't work out. No lessons learned.
It's like Koestler's Darkness At Noon. It's like Stalinism.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were replacing it with something that wasn't so vapid.
I do understand the slash-and-burn approach as I suppose the 'restorationist' outfit I was involved in for many years was an example of that outwith the CofE and the 'traditional' non-conformist churches.
Such an approach does have serious ecological consequences.
We've had this discussion before in relation to Messy Church. It IS church in it's own right, the argument runs. It's not an entry-level staging post.
There's only so long you can splash around with poster paint, I would suggest and only so long, quite frankly, that you can run homely Bible studies in hired halls. Even the Apostle Paul only did that for a while.
It's the 'formation' thing I worry about.
There is, of course, an equal and opposite problem in the historic and more sacramental traditions. Patchy catechesis, nominalism and still pockets of folk religion and superstition.
Any criticism of the over-blown marketing targets and 'vision-inflation' of the gung-ho church planters must be tempered with an acknowledgement that those who know their Early English from their Perpendicular and all the choreography aren't doing a particular good job either - beyond providing niche or specialist interest to the already committed.
The whole approach smacks not of considering what works but of prescribing the solution based on the prejudices of the prescriber. Heck, even the definition of "what works" is highly debatable. Plus a bit of the old "things are terrible, we must do something" becoming "this is something, so we must do it".
Anecdotally, the only people who've come along to find out more about church and have said it was my influence were those I've encountered in a secular environment, while having my faith supported by a parish church. And at the time I was not so heavily involved in those parish churches that I was burning out under the pressure.
He appears in the film here: https://youtu.be/VI8bb65vOiE?t=1430 clearly stating that a change in the official thinking about LGBTQ issues would be the breaking point for him.
As I said in the other thread, if you were planning a departure at some point anyway, this is useful way of getting the core to fund a bunch of churches that will leave with you.
The Church of England's Canon law requires that the Eucharist be celebrated (presided over/led/conducted) by someone who has been ordained priest, by a bishop.
Other denominations sometimes do things somewhat differently, especially those with a more *memorialist* stance on Holy Communion.
It is perhaps no coincidence that those most keen on this move have - in practice - have a very memorialist view of the Eucharist themselves.
Aye. And tend to celebrate it less often. I wonder if they expect that these lay-led communities will celebrate it much if at all, because they're not explaining how.
Yes, so it would seem...
I'm not entirely certain that the Eucharist has become so fundamental - has it not usually been the main act of worship ever since the beginning of the Church?
Aye, but many are more Catholic than reformed, especially in praxis.
But even if communion happens less frequently, no-one is addressing how it is to be facilitated in a lay-led setting.
Aye, but my point is no-one's talking about it.
Some merriment was caused when it became known that the Bishop's chaplain had admonished the charismatic-evo Place next to Our Place for using Extension rather too often.
It is, however, a possible solution to the shortage of ordained priests in both urban and rural settings.
I am convinced that some lay people are called to preside at the Eucharist, however, as some are called to preach, lead communal prayers, etc.
Communion by extension is fine if taken out into the community from the Eucharist to those who could not attend. It does not replace the requirement of someone called to preside, nor should lay people be put in such a position as to have it expected of them.
It is a relatively common practice in the Scottish Episcopal Church these days, though we rejoice that we have more prospective ordinands training than have been for a long time - currently 13 for the priesthood, another 2 for the vocational deaconate and 2 for the readership.
It didn't quite work out like that, of course, with folk in England receiving Communion as infrequently as they had done before the Reformation.
Having attended a Pesach meal, as laid on by a Jewish colleague the way he'd have celebrated at home had it no been the middle of the university term, there's an awful lot of morsels to remember (eggs, salt water, parsley, matzo, lamb bone) before actually eating, and then some more ceremonial food (the unleavened bread hidden early).
A formal communion before sharing food would not seem too far from Jewish tradition as we know it now. Our coffee and cake sharing after communion seem to be the rump of tradition rather than the formalised communion service.
The other reason is the veiled threat - in the video and a lot of HTB-inspired mumblings - that if those taking part aren't allowed to do exactly what they want, however abusive it is to participants, they'll take their ball away. I am pretty much at the point of saying "good riddance", even though that will inevitably lead to further pain.
The cynical part of me might observe that one of the reasons why they might not see the Baptist Union as an option is that it's far too democratic for them.
My guess would be that if even a tiny fraction of the 10,000 or 20,000 or however many it is in their inflated vision and opinion of themselves were actually to materialise, then rather than it 'releasing' all these budding lay leaders, what would actually happen is control-freakery on a scale that would have put the alleged heavy-shepherding of the restorationist house-churches or 'new churches' of the 1980s and '90s in the shade.
These visionaries would respond to lay-led anarchy by imposing Stalinist structures in which it was their way or the highway.
As far as the eucharistic element goes, I've seen far more reverence and integrity very often in avowedly memorialist Baptist churches than in some of the casual and almost flippant approaches of some of the slash-and-burn, tear it all up and start again Anglicans.
If I don't sound very impressed it's because I'm not.
This whole thing is a recipe for disaster.
Ok, the Lord is bigger than all of this and all of us and can bring order out of chaos - but it smacks of ecclesial Dominic Cummings territory to me.
Let's smash everything up and see what emerges irrespective of what the damage is, and the human cost.
Why not start a nuclear war in the hope that something better emerges from the wreckage?
There are already viable forms of nonconformist and memorialist Christianity. What's the point of seeking to replicate that with something that is Anglican in name only?
Unless, of course, if Chrisstiles is right and this is a cynical attempt to secure funds for a breakaway conservative sect with Anglican in the title to give it a semblance of kudos and respectability.
Either way, I am deeply suspicious.
Interestingly an Anglican church which I know was involved in this closed down and the building sold many years ago ... only to be bought back and reopened as a Resource Church.
Although it looks as if this will, as best, be shoved into the long grass by being referred for further study/consultation/prayer etc., it could have within it the seeds of a return to the old minster model of Saxon times - 'lay' leaders reporting to a centre staffed by 'priests' and growing organically.
I put these terms in ' - ' because we are in danger of being hung up on titles when what matters is the substance. If the titles still matter, then the problem can easily be cured by making the leaders LOMs or by Readers doing communion by extension.
As for control-freakery being a danger, just the opposite is more likely. Give us some diversity and relief from the clerics who so often impose their own narrow churchmanship on their congregations.
Yes, it's in the Prayer Book - from The Order etc. etc. of Holy Communion:
So many as intend to be partakers of the holy Communion shall signify their names to the Curate, at least some time the day before.
By *Curate* is meant the person in charge - Vicar, Rector or whatever s/he may be called these days.
BTW, who is going to baptise all these hundreds (or even thousands) of new converts? I know that, in the C of E, baptism by laypeople is permissible in certain circumstances, often for pressing pastoral reasons, but...
Quite often, they didn't stay for Communion - hence this provision in the BCP Service:
...in case he shall see the people negligent to come to the holy Communion...he shall use this Exhortation...
All of which goes to show the importance placed on Communion by the Reformers. They can't all have been wrong.
1. communities which use Communion by extension;
2. communities only holding a Eucharistic service when they have visiting clergy;
3. communities pushing for acceptance of lay presidency;
4. communities quietly (or even boldly) practicing lay presidency anyway.
Baptism and even confirmation would I think find themselves similarly varyingly practiced. I've known plenty of Anglican churches which to all intents and purposes are non-paedobaptist and which would happily dispense with confirmation altogether.
As I say, the lack of detail (or indeed broad outline) on this whole issue is unsurprising for two reasons - a lot of this is driven from the wing of the church which firstly does not emphasise sacraments, and secondly doesn't have a strong idea of why ordination is required to administer them. There may be history in this as well; the whole thing looks like Fresh Expressions Mk. 2, and most FE startups seemed to be non-sacramental in character as well. I don't think it's on the radar.
What isn't so readily got around is the whole problem of safeguarding and accountability. Whose ensuring adequate safeguarding and pastoral training?
Meanwhile, here's John McGinley, Head of Church planting at New Wine and also national lead at The Gregory Centre for Church multiplication, and deeply embedded at the top of this whole drive: Fulcrum Website
It's all coming from a very reactionary place.
Caveat - I've only started looking into this thing (all I knew previously was that the guy who was our vicar and was nicked by the diocese to be involved in this told us he'd been given the task of creating 500 new congregations in his area. He's a great chap, not reactionary or theologically conservative at all, which at least is a glimmer of hope. Except I don't see (and I don't think he sees either) how it's remotely achievable, since the first thing that happened after he was nicked (not just as a result but it didn't exactly help) was our own little setup became unsustainable and is now no more) so I may get the wrong end of a few sticks. Apologies for any resulting factual errors.
It all seems a bit potty as well:
"We're not making money on our restaurants because we've hardly any customers."
"OK. Open another 10,000 branches and get the customers to staff them to save on staff wages."
You know, the parishes short of cash, clergy, and volunteers, but which are still beavering faithfully away at being Christians in the manner @Lamb Chopped so eloquently described, further up the thread.
That's the bit that gets me, and it is possibly one of the few things that I would blame my own tradition for. We liberal Catholics tend to be so keen on emptying the church into the world that we don't allow for time and energy to look after the community as it is. In fact, this is one of the things that led me towards spiritual direction as a ministry - there is no choice but to offer that kind of care that is otherwise missing, though it doesn't achieve the practical ends @Bishops Finger refers to.