"Some Waymarks for the future" - Address to the Bishop's Council, 6th June 2007
Two weeks ago, I spent some time with my colleagues on our annual residential, at Park Place, Wickham. Each of us had some in-put, as is the normal way of things. Among the things I wanted to contribute there was one burning issue that I kept turning over, aware as I was that it had been ruminating inside me for a long time.
It all crystallised when I came across the work of Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925), an Austrian Roman Catholic aristocrat who lived most of his life in London. In 1908, he published ‘The Mystical Element of Religion’, in which he distinguishes between three aspects of Christianity, the institutional, the intellectual, and the mystical. I kept pondering these three, and then translated them into the language that we would use today – the organisational, the theological, and the spiritual. Then I began to look at the balance of the three in how I lived my life as your bishop under normal circumstances, how the agendas of my Staff Meeting were constructed, as well as how our Synods, Deanery and Diocesan operate. For the uncomfortable truth began to emerge that they are all heavily slanted towards the organisational.
I am not for a moment going to suggest that we jettison this aspect of our work together. Far from it. We’ve Dillowayed till we’re almost blue in the face! Now we’ve got the proposals in place, and they’re manifestly working well, it’s a good opportunity to look at the wider picture. And it does seem to me that Von Hügel, deaf liberal Roman Catholic layman that he was, had somehow ‘heard’ something about the Church that we in our time need to ponder rather more than we do. I hinted at some of this in the draft Diocesan synod address that some of you will have got which I wrote before I relapsed last summer. But Von Hügel sharpens it all, gives it clarity, and presents us with a bit of a challenge.
So what am I going to do about it? The first thing I am going to do, apart from talking about it (!), is model my own Staff Agenda accordingly. We meet for the eucharist and end with lunch; and if we have visitors, like the Rural Deans, or other groups, we have the eucharist before lunch and go on into the afternoon. But the agenda has always been heavily slanted towards the organisational. So we’re going to build in opportunities to talk to each other at the level of faith, including bible-study, and we’re going to build in opportunities to think more laterally, more theologically, about some of the issues that we tend to look at in organisational detail. This is not rocket-science; and in some ways, we’ve been doing all this – implicitly – for some time. The difference is that we now have what’s often called in the sailing community a few ‘way marks’, which will both illuminate and deepen what we do, and give us direction.
But I want to go further. I want to urge Deanery Synods to look at these areas too. And I’m also going to make sure that this kind of balance is worked towards – and achieved – in our Diocesan Synod agendas. The organisational aspects of course need attending to. But perhaps we have become so immersed in their details that we miss some of the theological issues that are at stake, for example when we get into an argument about the apportionment of the parish share. And perhaps we need to work harder at integrating our eucharistic worship with the Synod meeting, instead of regarding it as a kind of optional prelude. I know that I’ve been at fault in colluding with what at times has come across as a speedy, superficial style of gathering. I want now to see a more balanced agenda, where people can go home not relieved that they’ve somehow won the point they wanted to make, but challenged into being better disciples. I am calling the diocese to attend not just to the organisation (vital as that is), but to theology (what we believe and how we say it) and to spirituality (how we search for God in prayer).
I want, now, to apply this vision and strategy to the future. Of all the things that I will have missed when I get through this illness, what I shall like least missing is the Diocesan Conference in Chichester in September. In the past, these occasions have been valued for being gatherings, getting the clergy together, having fellowship, edification, worship – and fun! But questions are nowadays asked about what it’s for, and why can’t the laity come along for part of it, as was strongly indicated by the Dilloway Report? Well, some laity are being invited for the entirety, while others are included for the day in Chichester Cathedral. What about where it might lead? My hope is that the Conference – entitled ‘inspiring discipleship’ – will provide some way marks for how we can develop discipleship in the diocese in the future, providing David Isaac and his team, but by no means only them, with realistic goals to help us attain. I know full well that the KAIROS process has been criticised both for being over-prescriptive and under-prescriptive at different stages. We’ve got some things wrong in the past – on the other hand, there are always going to be nitpickers who will sit metaphorically in the back row and criticise anything! I’ve asked Peter Hancock to ‘chair’ the Conference in my absence, though we’re exploring video-links and other ways of me being present among you all in my absence.
Looking yet further ahead, I want to raise briefly, in conclusion, two areas that have recurred in the KAIROS process so far. One is Buildings and the other is Money. But we need to look at these, once more, not solely as organisational issues, problems that have to be solved, but as realities that have theological and spiritual dimensions that we may all know are there, but which we do not always attend to in the way we could. You will have read about the KAIROS Buildings initiative, and we shall be having a Clergy Day, more properly called a Church Leadership Day, as we want to invite Ministry Teams along as well, on January 29th next year. This will be led by John Inge, Bishop of Huntingdon, who has written about church buildings in a refreshing and novel way; his emphasis is on sacred space, not dispensable assets! And I have spoken with Neil Pugmire about participating in a video as part of a programme of theological reflection on buildings to be used in parishes – I’m raring to go.
On the Money front, it has become very obvious to me, lying in my hospital bed, or convalescing at home, that we need some slack, to fund new initiatives, if – that is – we are going to take KAIROS seriously. I’ve written about a possible ‘Mission Fund’ (that may not be the right name), and I deliberately did so without consulting anyone, because I knew that some folk would want to stop me! It’s an obvious need. It will have to addressed, but addressed (at the risk of repeating myself yet again) not exclusively as an organisational problem to be solved, but as a spiritual, theological opportunity, as well - for the Mission of God in this wonderful diocese of ours!
+ Kenneth Portsmouth:
