The Role of the Vicars Wife

Cranmer's Curate writes:

The parlous state of the Church of the nation makes the traditional vicar’s wife role more not less necessary.

Elderly parish churches with scarcely any children in the regular congregation do not need a vicar’s wife sporting a t-shirt at her husband’s licensing: ‘I don’t make scones.’

A wife willing to do such traditional feminine things is essential if that church is going to start attracting children and therefore families.

What a great discussion starter....! What do you think? Pop over to his site and join in the debate.

Faith and Recession

Following the success of Back to Church Sunday, the Sunday papers speculated about whether the credit crunch is forcing people to reassess their values, bringing some of them back to church. (Ht Start the Week). Meanwhile comment is Free at the Guardian is hosted a series of articles last week on 'Can Religion Help Us Through the Slump?' Here's the line-up

Monday's response - Julia Neuberger: Whether you're religious or not, what matters is the desire to make a difference to other people's lives

Tuesday's response - Francis Davis: Across the country it will be priests and imams who stand with local people in their moments of need . Davis is one of the authors of Moral but No Compass, which surveyed the charitable work of the church, and pointed out the inadequacy of the Governments dealings with Chrisitan charities.

snippet: While Gordon Brown's response (to the recession) has been to lead us into even more borrowing, there will be thousands for whom a hug will be just as crucial as their gas meter is ripped out in front of their eyes or as they find themselves locked out of their houses by insistent lenders and landlords.

In neighbourhoods across the country it will be priests and imams who stand with local people in such moments of terror. They are, after all, often the only "professionals" to have the courage to actually live among the people with whom they work.

Wednesday's response - Ishtiaq Hussain: Like other people of faith, Muslims are enjoined to be charitable; crucial during times like these

Thursday's response - Graham Kings: When belts tighten, do they have to tighten around the necks of the poor?

Friday's response Nick Spencer: Some varieties of religion prey on the poor, others offer them help. Both kinds will flourish during the recession

Ht Thinking Anglicans.

... with a whole host of carol services coming up, I'm challenged by all of these about the message I'll be preaching. Often I try to tie Christmas in to something in the news, or something topical, and this year the challenge is to relate it to the recession and the implosion in global capitalism. First main one on Weds (Yeovil College), I'll probably post a full list later this week.

Mission, Church and Communion

Our group has nearly finished the Mission Shaped Ministry course - last weeks session on worship and sacraments had provocative questions like

What is God's mission here?
What kind of community will sustain this mission?
What spiritual disciplines will sustain the community
What worship will reflect the mission and the community?

In other words, theology (God) shapes missiology (mission) shapes ecclesiology (church).

In the light of that there are some fascinating debates around Communion, triggered by the decision by Sydney Diocese to affirm that some laypeople can preside at a communion service.

On Bishop Alans blog, there is an excellent discussion on how creative approaches to worship and sacraments can emerge from mission contexts. He has a great phrase about the Anglican church: The genius of Anglicanism, its missional crown jewels within the whole Kingdom of God, has been its ability to run essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Evangelical software on essentially (but not exclusively) primitive Catholic hardware , and some of the discussion is about how to make it all work when the Catholic hardware is too expensive or impractical to maintain.

There are 2 threads currently running on Thinking Anglicans, this one is a mixture of internal Anglican politics (which I tend to avoid) and a really interesting discussion about the nature of communion and what it is the church is doing when it celebrates it. This one I appear to have hijacked (sorry folk!) with an innocent query about whether 'real' communion needs 'real' wine, and it's evolving into a good debate about how flexible we can be, and what it is that makes it all tick in the first place.

If you're more interested in traditional Protestant doctrines of communion, you'll find a few being expounded and explored at StandFirm, so if you're doing a doctrine essay you might find it useful, but if you want a mission perspective on the debate you won't find one! The discussion at the Ugley Vicar focuses on who is a 'priest' in the first place.

There's a good article on mission and church on Fulcrum, which looks at some wider issues on what a church shaped by mission looks like.

Update: really good post by Tim Chesterton at Tale Spin.

For other mission perspectives on the sacraments, Lindsey Urwins chapter in Mission Shaped Questions is worth a read, as a traditional Anglo-Catholic trying to work out which rules apply in a mission setting. Or see this account of Transcendence, a new night church venture in York Minster which blends ancient and modern with communion at the centre of it.

And of course communion is being celebrated in loads of other churches of other denominations without an ordained Anglican priest in sight.......

Meanwhile, great to hear that Graham Cray will be taking over from Steve Croft as the leader of Fresh Expressions.

Update: Huh?

Creationism in Class?

Prof Michael Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society, has called for 'Creationism' to be explored on the school curriculum:

"Some of my comments about the teaching of creationism have been misinterpreted as suggesting that creationism should be taught in science classes. Creationism has no scientific basis.
"However, when young people ask questions about creationism in science classes, teachers need to be able to explain to them why evolution and the Big Bang are scientific theories but they should also take the time to explain how science works and why creationism has no scientific basis.
"I have referred to science teachers discussing creationism as a worldview'; this is not the same as lending it any scientific credibility."

I hadn't realised that he's a fellow vicar as well, and he seems to have had a busy 24 hours since the story broke! I have 3 observations:

- This whole story reinforces the Dawkins myth that there are only two possible worldviews when it comes to the origin of life - Creationism or evolution by natural selection. So therefore anyone religious must believe the world was made in 6 days. Creationism is a minority view among Christians, but you wouldn't guess that from the way this kind of stuff is reported. Most of us don't have a problem with evolution, and a cosmos many billions of years old. In fact, that cosmos is charged with the glory of God in a way increasingly discovered by scientists.

- By all means teach Creationism as a worldview, but if you're going to be fair why not teach Darwinianism (or Dawkinsism) as a worldview as well? Atheist scientists make faith statements too.

- Part of the debate is whether this belongs in science or R.E./PSHE (personal, social and health education) It's not as though there isn't an explicit worldview behind most of what's in the school curriculum, in terms of what's important, and education as a practical exercise to prepare you as a worker and citizen of a particular sort of society. Everything belongs in RE.

Update: great collection of links at Thinking Anglicans on this story. TA also reports rumours that the CofE is to apologise to Charles Darwin on his anniversary next week. Why? The scientific community gave Darwin plenty of stick too, and soon-to-be Archbishop Temple welcomed Darwins insights. And maybe it's time to re-examine the legend of Huxley vs Wilberforce too.

When is a faith school not a faith school?

Missed this earlier in the week, but Thinking Anglicans has a good collection of links about the new proposals for reform of faith schools launched on Monday by the Accord coalition. Their main goal seems to be to remove the religious element from admissions, recruitment, syllabus and assemblies in all state funded schools. There is a new collection of links today, including a Church of England newspaper editorial, which supports the reforms. Good critique article from the IoS here.

Accord claim they're not looking for the abolition of faith schools, merely their reform. However I struggle to see how a school reformed along the lines they suggest can remain a faith school, as there will be nothing to distinguish it from community schools. Yes sectarianism is a problem, but the fact that there are bad or questionable faith schools doesn't mean that we scrap the entire system. Our local CofE primary benefits from being a 'faith school' in the gentle way that many Church of England schools are. There must be ways to avoid tribalism which don't involve making every school a secular clone.

Update (Sat): article in the Church Times, with some fairly stinging comments about Accord and their reasoning. More links in the Church Times blog, and a new set this morning at Thinking Anglicans. On the official C of E website, their FAQ's about church schools address some of the Accord concerns, but there doesn't seem to be any official Anglican response yet. There is a related post on Cranmer from earlier this week.

Discussions in other places

Madpriest had a gentle dig at a former Somerset vicar who talked about powers of evil in Portishead in a parish magazine article, drawing heavily on Tolkien. Just to spoil people's fun, I posted a comment reminding folk that Jesus recognised powers of evil as well, and that's now turned into a whole new debate over at MP's place. Is evil a 'power', or are there just very nasty people?

Bishop Alan is blogging from the Willow Creek leadership conference - I'll be really interested to see if he does a 'compare and contrast' post with Lambeth - with pithy summaries of the various speakers. There are video-based versions of the conference in the UK in October: we took a small group last year and found it very helpful.

SPCK have issued a statement, which Phil Groom has posted in full. One of the many matters debated in the last few weeks was the role of SPCK in entrusting SSG with the retail arm of its business, which was losing money rapidly and was unsustainable as it stood. It's worth reading the entire statement, here's the last couple of paragraphs:

We have been greatly upset by what has happened. We have been actively trying to do something about it, and are engaged in legal activity on a number of fronts about which it is not currently possible to say much. This and working with other interested parties and individuals has taken up a great deal of Simon Kingston’s time over the last year and continues to do so.

The Trustee body continue to have the shops as an item at every meeting, and spend a deal of time discussing what is best to do. A great deal has gone on (and continues today) which is not public knowledge. It is simply not true that we have ignored the situation. And with legal issues outstanding, we simply cannot wade in with public pronouncements. Indeed, some public comments (including, frankly, one or two contributions to the various blogs) serve to make matters worse rather than better.

SPCK and its trustees are truly saddened by the situation. We made a decision in good faith, and it has not turned out well. We are really sorry at the turn of events. But breast-beating makes nothing better. We are doing what we can on a continuing basis, and this may take another year or more before it has run its course.

The next few weeks will see two of the former SPCK shops in formal re-launches under new ownership. Let us all hope that other sites also find happier times once more.

Simon Kingston, SPCK General Secretary and Chief Executive Officer The Rt Revd Michael Perham, Bishop of Gloucester, Chairman of the SPCK Governing Body 12 August 2008

Phil's blog is the place to discuss this, and judging by the penultimate paragraph, we are in for the long haul here. Please pray for Simon Kingston and everyone else involved in this, for a resolution that is good, fair, and ideally that doesn't require lawyers to sort out the fine print because people are able to deal constructively with one another.

Finally Matt Wardman has a few Olympics links - personally I'm just enjoying the sport, but it's useful to be reminded of what else is going on here. And Johann Hari reflects on the decision not to publish the novel 'The Jewel of Medina', about the child bride of Mohammed, and what it says about our ability to have critical dialogue about Islam. The book may, like the Da Vinci Code, be a pile of cobblers, but now it's been pulled, everyone will want to have a copy if it ever finally comes out. Sounds familiar.

Questions asked by 11 year olds

... apart from the obvious ones like 'Where's my SATS result?' here are some questions fired at me by a Year 6 group at our local primary school last week.

Why did you want to be a Christian?

What age did you become fully committed to the Christian religion?

What training do you need to be a vicar?

Are your family religious?

Do you have to read the Bible to be a Christian?

What do you think of other religions?

What is involved in being a vicar?

Do you have to be Christened to be a Christian? (good one!)

What is the most important rule to you?

If you were not a Christian, do you think you would be a different person? (brilliant!)

Why are you a Christian, not a Buddhist etc.?

Do you enjoy your commitment?

plus a whole load of others like
'who made God'?
'which day were the dinosaurs created on, because they aren't mentioned in the Bible?'
'who did Adam and Eve's sons marry, as they didn't have any daughters?'
'what do you think heaven will be like?'
'do you belive in the afterlife?' and so on.

We had a fascinating hour, plus a 30m extension as several stayed behind to carry on quizzing me, great fun, a great challenge, and hugely impressed with the thought and quality behind the questions.

Sorry, more women bishops stuff.

My latest post at the Wardman Wire yesterday ('More Women, Vicar?')was an attempt - probably vain - to explain in laymans terms what the CofE is up to over women bishops, and to reflect on whether taking time over big decisions is an expression of Christian love, or just faffing about to delay the inevitable.

Thunderdragon has picked up on the post, and compares Rowan Williams to Gordon Brown, in a not very flattering way. I don't think Williams is a ditherer of Brown proportions, I think he's trying his best to keep everyone together (which is what Jesus prayed for), and to slow down people who are in a mad rush to purge the church of everyone who disagrees with them.

Ditched the normal sermon last night to talk with the evening congregation about the Synod vote and the events surrounding it. Some of the folk there were strong supporters of women bishops, some adamantly opposed, but we have the choice of whether to be the kind of church which can discuss these things, or whether we sweep them under the carpet.

The most common observation was that we seemed to be wasting time talking when we should be sharing the gospel. The problem is that the media don't report the gospel work, they only report stuff which relates to disputes or decline in the church. That's the danger of taking the secular press as your guide to what the Church of England is doing. By the time we'd set the record straight, everyone seemed a lot happier, and less unsettled.

Rowan Williams debating with Ricky Gervais

Thanks to Ruth
Gledhill for this link. I thought this was great, Gervais has clearly
thought about the subject, and Williams comes across as a great listener, and
through listening gains the right to put his point and get heard.

Ruth also links to this story from the Times, on new research on why people leave church by Richter and Francis. Their book 'Gone but Not Forgotten' is in my increasing pile of books I need to read, and 'Gone for Good?' is the follow up.

Here's a brief excerpt from the Times report:'Dr Francis said: “We discovered a variety of factors at work
in people's decisions to stop coming to church. Our hope is to offer a vision of
the church that will encourage people to come back and enjoy being together
again with other Christians.”
He said the churches should make sure they offer every Sunday the kind of warm welcome given to churchgoers at Christmas.
While this would not mean putting on a sparkling Christmas tree, crib and
mince pies each week, it would mean good cheer and lots of singable hymns. '

One a micro level, this seems to confirm the decision at our church not to have sung liturgy at the Christmas night service - if you don't know the tune, it's not 'singable' - and on a wider level the Richter and Francis research is in tune with the work of Mission Shaped Church and the ABofC's promotion of a 'mixed economy' church, where the church offers a variety of styles of worship and entry points to faith. 'Gone for Good' talks about a 'multiplex' model, which is a decent illustration, but I'd want to make sure that we don't reduce people to mere consumers of worship, there's a lot more to following Jesus than that.