A Paper for information for the Bishop’s Council

 

The substance of this Paper is the result of some conversations and thinking that I was mulling over last autumn, before any decision to retire.  It takes the form of a narrative, with some observations only – and deliberately avoids trying to provide an analysis, still less any recommendations, which in any case would be inappropriate at this time.  As members of Council will know, I had intended to produce something about the Bishop’s Staff Meeting – hence the appended note at the end of this Paper.

 

The Bishop’s Staff, Bishop’s Council, and Diocesan Synod used to operate in slightly different ways from how they function now,  with a flavour of independence from each other.   Bishop’s Staff met, as it does now, every two or three weeks, usually on a Monday morning.  We started inviting Area Deans (Rural Deans in those days) to come in for lunch,   to talk through their deaneries, which helped us to think in a more deanery-conscious way.  Then we began to meet them as a group.  The Director of Ordinands and the Director of Non-Stipendiary Ministry came once a year, in order to settle the following year’s placement of ordinands.  We also met the Director of Education and the Social Responsibility Adviser from time to time, or I met them on my own. 

 

The number of these visitors, initially small, began to grow over the years.  For example, there is now a more protracted nationally agreed process for placing Title Curacies, which involves a long list of parishes, who then put in bids, leading inevitably to some disappointments.   This usually means two or more meetings with the Director of Ordinands (whose work now includes stipendiary as well as non-stipendiary); the placing of ordinands, as with all areas of ministry, is the ultimate responsibility of the bishop, but consultation here is of course vital.   We also now meet about three times a year with the MET (Mission Executive Team) – ie the Head of Mission and Resources, Mission and Discipleship, Mission and Society, and Mission and Education to share policy with them.  In short, the Bishop’s Staff meeting has become more work intensive, and it involves  more people.   Wider involvement is appreciated and worth servicing.

 

The Bishop’s Council is the one of the three bodies that has changed most.  Before the Dilloway changes, it only met three times a year, twice of an evening, and once for a day.  Around it and the Synod were the various Boards, and satellite groups set up from time to time to report to us, like the Kairos Groups.  It debated matters of policy. It served as a clearing house for Diocesan Synod agendas, and received reports from the Diocesan Board of Finance, before these went to Synod. It also served as a useful sounding board of ideas from Bishop’s Staff.

 

We now have a larger Bishop’s Council, more representative, and meeting seven or eight times a year.  It has taken a bit of time for it to settle into its new role, and the visits to other dioceses last autumn were a significant ‘rite of passage’, bonding people together.  The meetings of the Council can often be lengthy, because we combine the work of the Diocesan Board of Finance, and the Diocesan Pastoral Committee.  We have had to face the issue of confidentiality, in relation to some of our discussions as a DBF. This is one of the reasons why I like the agendas to indicate which hat we are wearing at different stages.

 

Then there is the Diocesan Synod.  We used to meet not more than twice a year, and with fairly tight agendas.  This could work well, but there was a trend towards packing too much in. Speakers  were not always as brief as they might have been, and this precluded discussion from the floor of Synod – which could build up a sense of frustration.  We tried to address this, particularly after the magisterial ‘own goal’ of abolishing coffee – the very thing that enabled members of Synod to talk to each other, and to get to know each other.  Defensiveness from the management sometimes resulted in friction over some deanery motions to synod.  And,  as elsewhere in the Church of England, Synod sometimes complained that they were doing little else but rubber-stamping what Bishop’s Council proposed. 

 

The role and functions of a now enlarged and more frequent Bishop’s Council have impacted on Diocesan Synod.  Meeting three times a year now, with less crowded agendas, and a greater sense of collective discipline, has obviated some of this natural suspicion.  But it is an area that perhaps needs to be worked at.  Diocesan Synods may have been more passive in the past all over the Church of England, but they now want to participate more, and it’s not just because of number-crunching, over finance or clergy allocations.  So this presents us with an opportunity.  How Bishop’s Council relates to Synod over the Strategy of Ministry for Mission  is a good case in point.

 

Five observations 

1.   Whereas in the past, it was the Boards that hovered around Bishop’s Council and Diocesan Synod, we now have different working groups, such as Kairos.  The Area Deans come not only to Bishop’s Staff meeting, but have also attended Bishop’s Council – that’s something new. The Lay Chairs now also want to be more involved.  As we move more and more towards Deanery development, that is clearly one more area of greater involvement.

 

2.   The Church of England is ‘episcopally led and synodically governed’, as it’s often described.  That creative tension runs through the workings of all three bodies.  While membership of Bishop’s Staff is at the Bishop’s invitation, the Dean, Archdeacons and Diocesan Secretary (but not the Bishop’s Chaplain) are appointed through nationally-agreed procedures.  In the same way, it is the Bishop who presides at his Council and in his Synod. But membership of both also derives from national procedures; and he normally delegates some of the chairing of Synod to the Chairs of the Houses of Clergy and Laity.

 

3.   The ‘Island issue’.    Any  Bishop of Portsmouth is acutely aware that at every diocesan meeting  a proportion of people have to cross that stretch of water – and cross it back again at the end.  I am not always sure  the mainlanders are as aware of the implications of this dynamic as they might be.  In the tightly packed agenda era of Diocesan Synod, we sometimes overstretched the timetable, on one occasion by almost an hour, and the Islanders  got up and walked out to catch what may have been pre-booked ferries.  Things are better now, but it’s an issue that also affects meetings of Bishop’s Council, with its new and greater workload.

 

4.     One of the reasons for writing this paper is to draw attention to the fact that things have not always been as they are now, and are likely to  change (and should change) in the future.  There is far more fluidity now, living alongside   some of the  mistrust which surrounds all institutions these days.  Good communication (including I suspect, increasingly with the deaneries) will continue to be at a premium. Our Communications team keeps these questions high on their agenda: Pompey Chimes is a resounding success, and the Bishop’s ‘Ad Clerum’ letters (always displayed on the website) are clearly appreciated by an audience far beyond the clergy themselves.  But none of these efforts, however well thought out and however energetically endeavoured, will work without trust.

 

5.         A sharp observation.  The trend all round is for more involvement and more consultation, which is time -  people -  and energy-intensive.  But what of the mantra about ‘travelling light’?!

+ Kenneth Portsmouth                             March 2009

 

Appended Note on Bishop’s Staff Meeting

The Bishop’s Staff in this Diocese consists of the Bishop, the Dean, the Archdeacons, the Diocesan Secretary and the Bishop’s Chaplain.  We meet every second or third Monday, sharing presidency of a simple eucharist at 9.15 in the bishop’s chapel, after which we repair to the ‘hay loft’ in the coach house at the bottom of the garden.  This gets us away from the resonances of telephones and e-mails from the office!  We then spend some time in a Bible Study on the gospel for the following Sunday – which is a good way for us to talk to each other at the level of faith. (and might even help individuals write the following Sunday’s sermon).

 

We then move into our agenda proper, usually beginning with discussion of appointments, such as Area Deans, healing adviser, FE officer etc.   In the case of Area Deans, care is taken over the official consultation process.

 

The next part of the agenda is specifically pastoral in its focus, and relates to people: and this is where the veil of confidentiality is essential for the sake of individual and collective trust.  It may relate to clergy who are ill, or who are going through difficulties of one kind or another, financial included, or clergy who are about to move, or retire, or who have asked us to look at a particular issue that is important to them.

 

Then we move to vacant parishes.  These we take very seriously  (they will have been prayed about at the eucharist): indeed, from the moment it is known that a priest is going to move, that parish becomes part of the daily intercessions cycle in the bishop’s chapel until the new priest has arrived.  Vacancies have become increasingly intricate, as the consultation processes have become more complex.  What with that and different patrons, it can sometimes feel like a game of snakes and ladders!  We have a way of tracking  which stage a parish has reached in the process (section 12 meeting, parish profile, advertisement/nomination, short-list, interviews). And while for us ‘vacant parishes’ are a permanent part of our agenda, we do  not  forget that for each parish concerned, it can be a time of considerable unsettlement and anxiety. 

 

The last part of the agenda is about major issues and information reports, such as Kairos, Bishop’s Council, Diocesan Synod agendas, whatever is sent to us from Church House by way of the synodical system, such as the Clergy Discipline Measure,  as well as Bishop’s Training Days, and much else.  This is probably the most wide-ranging part of the agenda, and focuses on our twin functions of assisting the Bishop in responding to what is going on, and in articulating and initiating policy.

 

We end with lunch – time to eat and talk together is very important.  On those occasions when there is a group of visitors (e.g. Area Deans), the Staff Meeting starts first thing, and the Eucharist is celebrated before lunch for everyone, with the joint meeting afterwards. 

 

I hope these remarks go some way to ‘de-mystify’ the Bishop’s Staff, without breaching the areas of confidentiality. No doubt, like the Bishop’s Council and the Diocesan Synod, it too will continue to evolve, both in its work, and its relationship with other bodies and groups in the Diocese.  That’s how things should be.