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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Sermon
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Arguably a salaried Anglican minister's pay is far less dependent on the sermon content than a non-conformists. I imagine it is quite rare to get even a stern letter from a bishop over sermon content and, to pluck an example from nowhere, I doubt for instance that a sermon on radical pacifism would ever merit disciplinary proceedings, and there's no performance-related pay that I'm aware of.
On the other hand a disagreeable (or over-challenging) note from the pulpit of a non-conformist place could have an immediate impact on the collection that week.
Preach radical pacifism! God forbid. Jesus tried it and look what happened to Him from His congregation!
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
Ah but he didn't have the foresight to become an Anglican minister first. Had he done so he would surely have retained his stipend.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
It also occurs to me that with the CofE as a self-professed broad church there must be a wide range of sermon types being preached on any one Sunday, wider than in many other English denominations.
OTOH, the left-leaning vicar who supports radical causes is practically a national stereotype, and I wonder if this makes it harder for MOTR/liberal-catholic congregations to take 'dangerous' sermons particularly seriously.
However, perhaps Martin60's earlier post was referring to the kind of minister who wants to preach 'dangerously' in a more theologically conservative environment. The challenge there, ISTM, is that such congregations want a minister who is more or less on the same page as themselves. Loyalty to the denomination may sometimes overcome a dislike for the sermons, but the days of just putting up with anything from the pulpit have mostly gone. People vote easily with their wallets or their feet.
The CofE has absorbed the challenges better than most. Centuries of schism have come and gone, and church decline has set in, but the CofE still seems to be the best choice in England for a would-be minister. Its presence is relatively stable, and these days that's probably more significant overall than the style or content of its sermons.
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
SvitlanaV2, I've only ever known one non-conservative environment in 38 years, only the last 11 as a born again Anglican admittedly, and you can guess what that is.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
"Conservative" theologically, politically or simply in character?
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
All three I'll wager. You know, nice state church people. Away with fairies but not daft with their money.
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Love wins
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
SvitlanaV2, I've only ever known one non-conservative environment in 38 years, only the last 11 as a born again Anglican admittedly, and you can guess what that is.
Was it a non-conservative environment in the CofE? You did say above that the best sermons you'd heard were at your local cathedral, so perhaps that's what you mean.
I suppose the problem for you is that even though the cathedral sermons may be more intellectual and challenging, the hands-on social ministry is better at your theologically conservative neighbourhood churches, so those are the churches you choose to attend. (Please forgive me if I've got this wrong.)
It can be hard if not impossible to find all the elements we're looking for in a single church. Some people attend more than one church to compensate for this. It would be interesting to know if this has become more of a trend in recent years, and how churches deal with it.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
You make it sound as if becoming an Anglican vicar is some kind of regular career choice for disaffected ministers of other denominations.
'Bugger this, I'm fed up of being a URC minister. I know, I'll become a vicar instead ...'
The Anglicans are bloody desperate to get people into the ministry at the moment. I met a husband of a female Anglican cleric recently who is fighting off pressure to get ordained. He told me it's not unusual.
As for people attending more than one church. Yes, that does happen, but I'm not sure it's any more common than it was.
It might be interesting to pursue that on a new thread, although I'm not sure how representative Shippies might be as a barometer for such things as I suspect the proportion of people here who have moved between churches and traditions is higher than average.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You make it sound as if becoming an Anglican vicar is some kind of regular career choice for disaffected ministers of other denominations.
'Bugger this, I'm fed up of being a URC minister. I know, I'll become a vicar instead ...'
Not necessarily ministers from elsewhere, but ISTM that quite a few vicars were raised in other denominations. I don't know if there's been any research on this, but it makes you wonder.
I'm aware that the CofE is short of ministers. (This is the case for the Methodist Church as well.)
Posts: 6668 | From: UK | Registered: Feb 2012
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Many TEC priests were raised Baptist.
Several that I know say that they joined the TEC after they had experienced receiving the Eucharist in an Episcopal church.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
SvitlanaV2. The classiest services are at cathedrals. Most artistic. Profound. Beautiful. Unchallenging. Meaningless. Nearly like the Rothko Room. The best, most inclusive, radical, real are always at Oasis.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Nick Tamen
Ship's Wayfaring Fool
# 15164
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The classiest services are at cathedrals. Most artistic. Profound. Beautiful. Unchallenging. Meaningless.
I'm trying to work out how they can be profound and meaningless at the same time.
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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
That's art for you.
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Love wins
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
And that's dodging the question for you!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You make it sound as if becoming an Anglican vicar is some kind of regular career choice for disaffected ministers of other denominations.
'Bugger this, I'm fed up of being a URC minister. I know, I'll become a vicar instead ...'
Not necessarily ministers from elsewhere, but ISTM that quite a few vicars were raised in other denominations. I don't know if there's been any research on this, but it makes you wonder.
I'm aware that the CofE is short of ministers. (This is the case for the Methodist Church as well.)
The CofE may want Vicars but they make it VERY hard to join from another denomination unless you have some kind of special pleading.
You have to be reordained which isn't the case for a transfer from the CofE to say Baptists.
[ 04. September 2016, 15:43: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
I knew a Baptist minister who wanted to transfer to the CofE (some years ago). Although he'd been properly trained and served as both an Assistant and Substantive Minister, he had to go to College for a year and then work as a Curate before he could be "Vicared".
Mind you, for Baptists (or anyone else) to transfer to the URC requires a "Certificate" - and none have been issued for years, nor will be. (It's a financial thing, not a theological one).
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
How so BT? One cannot get a sense of depth from meaninglessness? Is beauty meaningful? A closed fist of emotion can be stroked open and its story told, differentiated, yes, so ones reaction (Stendhal's syndrome in my case) to The Fighting Temeraire, or a mountain or, in my case recently, an etymology (that of pomegranate) after my first sighting of one growing, in south Leicester, can be, although I suspect with Proustian difficulty. Similarly sitting in St. Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday or St. Martin's Leicester on Good Friday. There's a LOT going on, but it's not what we, flotsam on the ocean, think. There's so much meaning it's ... meaningless. Maybe it's just me.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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SvitlanaV2
Shipmate
# 16967
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You make it sound as if becoming an Anglican vicar is some kind of regular career choice for disaffected ministers of other denominations.
'Bugger this, I'm fed up of being a URC minister. I know, I'll become a vicar instead ...'
Not necessarily ministers from elsewhere, but ISTM that quite a few vicars were raised in other denominations. I don't know if there's been any research on this, but it makes you wonder.
I'm aware that the CofE is short of ministers. (This is the case for the Methodist Church as well.)
The CofE may want Vicars but they make it VERY hard to join from another denomination unless you have some kind of special pleading.
You have to be reordained which isn't the case for a transfer from the CofE to say Baptists.
In that post I wasn't suggesting that ministers moved from one denomination to another, rather than laymen might do so, and then then enter the ministry from their new denomination.
Of course, unless there has been research on it it's hard to know if the numbers are significant.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Sure, that does happen. For what it's worth, my own take on this is that the CofE is so unused to 'lay-people' expressing an interest and getting involved in theology and so on that as soon as anyone does - and you'd expect that to be the case from someone who may have held a ministry or leadership position - then the first and immediate reaction is, 'Quick, quick, quick, let's get them ordained!'
A number of female clergy (and I'm not singling out women vicars here, simply noting where this came from) have suggested ordination to me over the years. Why? I suspect it's partly because they aren't used to people like me who are generally interested in theology and so on but without being in some kind of pastoral or ministry/leadership role anywhere ...
On the CofE wanting to re-educate or re-programme ministers from other denominations ... well, can you blame them ... ![[Biased]](wink.gif) ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
More seriously, yes, that must suck if you've been a Baptist minister, say, and perfectly capable of doing all (and probably more) than vicars generally do.
The Orthodox generally require clergy from other churches to step-down for a bit and simply go with the flow and learn how to do things, but there have been cases of them fast-tracking clergy from other churches - with mixed results I'm told.
As far as the CofE goes, though, I'm not convinced there's anything so esoteric about it that it'd require Baptist, URC or Methodist or whatever else ministers to undergo a whopping big dose of further training. I could understand that if, for instance, it involved them learning all the moves and twiddly bits to become an Anglo-Catholic priest, perhaps ... but even there, I'm not sure it'd need a full scale college course.
I'm sure it could be picked up over a few months and with a few glasses of gin ...
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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american piskie
Shipmate
# 593
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
... but even there, I'm not sure it'd need a full scale college course.
I'm sure it could be picked up over a few months and with a few glasses of gin ...
It is quite a few years since I believed that a theological college provided much more than that.
More seriously, I think that providing an incoming minister with a bit of a breathing space is no bad thing.
Posts: 356 | From: Oxford, England, UK | Registered: Jun 2001
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Sure, but I think what narks our Baptist friends is the tacit implication that their prior training had been inadequate in some way and had to be augmented or 'completed' in some way by further study.
I could understand that to some extent if, like the Orthodox, the CofE was highly sacramental and somewhat mysterious and ministers from other settings required time to adjust to its Hogwartian magic arts ... But given that low-church CofE parishes are as memorialist in their eucharistic polity as most Baptists, then there's an immediate anomaly and begging of questions.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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american piskie
Shipmate
# 593
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Posted
It is not only a C of E "difficulty". I recall some years ago that the more traditionalist wing of the C of S were scandalised when the General Assembly admitted a Baptist minister as a minister of the Church without ordination by a presbytery.
Posts: 356 | From: Oxford, England, UK | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
There is a small but significant movement all the time at least from URC perspective. Baptists (and I suspect Methodist, but those are rarer) often get in with almost no retraining, as do Moravians (why would we, we train them). Traditions with a different culture (e.g. Anglicanism, Salvation Army) are expected to do a year's training basically to gain an understanding of the URC culture. More extensive training would only be if their prior training was considered inadequate. We are not going to accept a Pentecostal minister who got ordained simply because that was what the done thing in his congregation and has no training outside the congregation. In those where prior training is deemed inadequate, what they need to do is made on a case by case basis.
However, the URC has a long tradition of having fairly open borders when it comes to the ministry. It stems from the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century and the sheer mess on Non-Conformist denominationalism at the time. Most Congregations whether Baptist, Congregational or Presbyterian got their ministry where they could.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
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