quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
As a non-Anglican I've been told that my understanding of the CofE is inaccurate, but also that it's quite hard for anyone to get a handle on this institution. This being the case, can anyone tell me to what extent ordinary laypeople in Anglican pews are expected to understand the structures and culture of the CofE?

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
Let's hope this is the right forum for my rather unusual thread....

As a non-Anglican I've been told that my understanding of the CofE is inaccurate, but also that it's quite hard for anyone to get a handle on this institution. This being the case, can anyone tell me to what extent ordinary laypeople in Anglican pews are expected to understand the structures and culture of the CofE? Does such knowledge help them to belong, or is it mostly irrelevant? Is it only necessary to understand one's own congregation, or is a wider awareness important in a denomination with so many different traditions?

The books and articles I've read about the CofE are perhaps not the most useful ones. Please recommend any that you think would be helpful.

Thanks.

(NB: I'm currently between churches, but trying to consider what to do in the long term.)

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quote:

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
A big difference between the CofE and the Roman Catholic Church is the attitude toward what goes on around the person of the most senior bishop. I can't think of any Anglican, expect for those actually employed in Church House, who knows the name of a single member of the Archbishop's staff. In contrast, a certain type of Roman Catholic always seems to be very keen to keep up with who's done what in the Vatican and will say things like 'well, when Msgr. XX was the Pope's Private Secretary, things were like this' or 'Msgr. Marini has much better liturgical taste than Msgr. Marini'. Nobody in the Church of England, whether lay or ordained, seems to pay the slightest attention to what the Archbishop of Canterbury is doing liturgically or even administratively, unless it actually affects them directly. I'm enough of an Anglican to think that attitude may be rather healthy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Many people who are CofE wouldn't necessarily see themselves as "Anglican".

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
But what does it mean to be CofE and not Anglican?

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quote:

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I'm getting the impression that (apart from archbishops and ecclesiastical PR folk?) the concept of a 'CofE identity' primarily exists in the minds of people who are in many respects outside the CofE. It doesn't have much meaning for ordinary lay worshippers. Is that correct?

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quote:

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Originally posted by american piskie:

Neither of these is "Anglican" except in the obsolete definitional sense of "in communion with the see of Canterbury".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
But then maybe there are Episcopalians in the States who, though they are de facto members of the Anglican Communion, don't think much about being Anglican. That's more understandable there; but for a member of the Church of England not to consider him/herself Anglican seems strange to me...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Basilica:
I recently held a group discussion in a parish I was working in. I asked about 20 people "who here decided to become Anglican?" Only four people raised their hands.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Albertus:
CofE but not Anglican? No more odd than (although not exactly analogous to) identifying with Britain but not the Commonwealth, England rather than Britain, Yorkshire rather than England. At a push, provided you are aware of these wider contexts, you might admit to them as a secondary identity, but they don't shape how you think of yourself. There's also I think still something of a sense among some people that this is the default (Ok, not quite the right word, but something like that) Church where they were born, and probably those people would have been CoS if born in Scotland, RC if Belgian, and so on.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Albertus:
CofE but not Anglican? No more odd than (although not exactly analogous to) identifying with Britain but not the Commonwealth, England rather than Britain, Yorkshire rather than England. At a push, provided you are aware of these wider contexts, you might admit to them as a secondary identity, but they don't shape how you think of yourself. There's also I think still something of a sense among some people that this is the default (Ok, not quite the right word, but something like that) Church where they were born, and probably those people would have been CoS if born in Scotland, RC if Belgian, and so on.

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And indeed a lot of folk will move from the CofE in England to the CofS in Scotland without batting an eyelid or realising there is a difference.

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quote:

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posted by Chorister

quote:

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When the bishop turns up at your church ...

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Are you serious?

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- L'Organist in the purgatory discussion "Bishops - sign of unity?"

Not much difference there then...
 

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Posted by Hart (# 4991) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
And indeed a lot of folk will move from the CofE in England to the CofS in Scotland without batting an eyelid or realising there is a difference.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Hart:

quote:

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
And indeed a lot of folk will move from the CofE in England to the CofS in Scotland without batting an eyelid or realising there is a difference.

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Including the Queen, yes?

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I think the Queen is able to distinguish between being Supreme Governor of one and a member of the other.
 

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Posted by american piskie (# 593) on :
 
I said "obsolete" because nowadays there are all sorts of churches in communion with the see of Canterbury which are clearly not Anglican---some Old Catholics, some Lutherans, some Hispanic protestant episcopalians, etc. Otherwise, in my opinion, there is no other sensible definition from the point of view of a member of the C of E. Does one in ten thousand know or care about Intruments of Communion?

I am puzzled too by the puzzlement that members of the C of E should prefer not to know too much about the "denominational" workings of the Church (instance of the rule that those prone to seasickness should keep away from the engine room), and should on the whole exhibit no more than polite acquiescence if asked to self-identify as "Anglican".

I live in England and therefore am a member of the C of E. In GOC I thought of Seabury and his Aberdeen ordination and threw my lot in with the Protestant Episcopalians. If I returned to Scotland I rather think I would have my name entered on the communion roll of the parish church (but often find myself 8 o'clocking with the episcopalian remnant.)

I know that the Vatican tried to persuade the Anglican Communion to act as a Church, but it ain't. No one becomes "an anglican", do they?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I think you're right on the evangelical thing, SvitlanaV2 - to many (if not most) evangelical Anglicans their evangelical identity trumps their Anglican one ...

Although that's not always the case. You can still meet 'Prayer Book evangelicals' where the Anglican identity forms a big part of how they view themselves.

But it'd be an Anglican identity that other Anglicans mightn't recognise or at least tackle in the same way ...

Which is why the whole thing is very slippery.

That's part of its charm, of course, although it can be infuriating at times.

I think I've been one of those who has accused you of 'inaccuracy' in some of your assumptions about the CofE - - but I suspect there are as many answers to your questions as there are Anglicans.

FWIW in terms of your church-hunting, if you were to consider attending an Anglican parish regularly, then your experience will inevitably be shaped by the churchmanship there and what goes on there on the ground. Two parishes away or even a few hundred yards down the road the experience could be very different.

Far be it from me to offer advice, but if I were to do so, it would be to go with the flow for a while and simply observe what goes on.

You'll find some things that resonate with your Methodist experience and other things that don't. Some things will seem familiar, others very different. But the degree to which that happens depends on the parish concerned.

The parish where my wife grew up was always described as 'More Methodist than the Methodists' (despite having a very Calvinistic strand at its core - it was one of those churches which signed up always to have Calvinistic ministers in the Charles Simeon mould).

In the end, a lot of the congregation ended up with the Methodists up the road as they had a nice, new, warm and more easily maintained building ...

Many of the others ended up in the lively, non-denominational charismatic fellowship on the other side of town ...

Your best bet, I think, would be to hang around with one or other of your nearest parishes and then post a list of questions/observations here. Once the Shippies have failed to answer those or given 26 contradictory answers to your 3 or 4 questions, you'll have understood something more about the CofE ...



What non-conformist alternatives are there where you are? URC? Baptist?

I've always thought of the Methodists as something of a half-way house between the CofE and the more full-on non-conformists like the Baptists ... but that might just be me ...
 

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Posted by Basilica (# 16965) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

quote:

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Originally posted by Basilica:
I recently held a group discussion in a parish I was working in. I asked about 20 people "who here decided to become Anglican?" Only four people raised their hands.

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Maybe they just thought you were asking if anyone had entered the CofE as adults rather than having been raised in it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

I've always thought of the Methodists as something of a half-way house between the CofE and the more full-on non-conformists like the Baptists ... but that might just be me ...

---

Potentially, at least, a preaching order of the CofE according to Donald Soper.

A little more surprisingly, a very definitely RC friend of mine, on being told that I had started attending a Methodist church, said 'Oh, Methodists- they have the Mass'. I am not sure whether or not the rather high Methodists with whom I used to worship would have agreed with him, though.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
He'd be right that many Methodists retain a 'higher' view of the Eucharist than is common across non-conformity - at least in its British manifestation.

I've never attended a 'high' Methodist service but I'm told that they exist. The Methodists I've known have tended to be suspicious of their 'high-church' end.

I've also heard it said that most Methodist ministers who become Anglican - and some do - tend to gravitate to the higher end of the spectrum. I've met a female CofE priest who used to be a Methodist minister who cross over at what she took to be considerable personal cost. She told me it was because her view of the Eucharist meant that she could no longer remain where she was ...

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her, but I refrained, why she thought the CofE had a more coherent or cohesive Eucharistic theology ...
 

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Posted by Pulsator Organorum Ineptus (# 2515) on :
 
I would have thought most people in England would consider "C of E" and "Anglican" to be interchangeable terms - in rather the same way that we tend to forget (or certainly did in the past) there is a difference between "English" and "British".
 

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Posted by Aravis (# 13824) on :
 
I officially converted from Baptist to Anglican at the age of 20. I'm now 47 and have been a lay reader in the Anglican for 10 years.
Recently, my father-in-law was grumbling about the vestments their new vicar wore, saying it was all far too high church. I said, gently, that I didn't really see why it was a major issue (bearing in mind that they have an ageing congregation and problems maintaining the building). His automatic response was, "Oh, you wouldn't understand because you were brought up Baptist."
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
I certainly know plenty of evangelicals who attend an Anglican church, but for whom evangelicalism how they identify - they'd easily go from an evangelical Anglican church to a Vineyard church, for example.

However, for MOTR CoE attenders, I would imagine that for them attending a CoE church (usually their parish church in this case unless they go to a church specifically for their children's work provision) is default churchgoing behaviour for English people. It may not actually be accurate, but there's a cultural influence of the CoE that doesn't exist for TEC and other Anglican churches outside the UK. For a lot of people in England, church = CoE even if they wouldn't identify as Anglicans.
 

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Posted by CL (# 16145) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by S. Bacchus:

quote:

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Originally posted by american piskie:

Neither of these is "Anglican" except in the obsolete definitional sense of "in communion with the see of Canterbury".

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If that definition is obsolete, then it seems to me that there is no workable definition of what it means to be Anglican.

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quote:

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Originally posted by american piskie:


I am puzzled too by the puzzlement that members of the C of E should prefer not to know too much about the "denominational" workings of the Church (instance of the rule that those prone to seasickness should keep away from the engine room), and should on the whole exhibit no more than polite acquiescence if asked to self-identify as "Anglican".

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I'm puzzled simply because the ways of the CofE are unfamiliar to me! I grew up with the Methodists, who have a stronger sense of group identity, even though some of them are a bit higher or lower than others. I don't have any CofE folk in my extended family.

Gamaliel

I've been attending a CofE church quite often for a while now, but it hasn't made me any less 'inaccurate', has it?? To be fair, I just go there to worship - I don't try to fit in. But in the long term I ought to be in a place where I can fit in and contribute.

The Methodist church I used to attend had good relations with a local CofE congregation, and the folk there are friendly. I've worshipped with them on quite a few occasions over the years, either alone or with other Methodists at ecumenical services. This church describes itself as 'liberal catholic'. The vicar, a woman, is very welcoming. And as the secretary to the local Churches Together network I know quite a bit about various local churches. But my original question wasn't about how to find a friendly church. It was about the extent to which ordinary laypeople in CofE pews understand the wider church culture and structures. There have been some very interesting answers to that question, for which I'm grateful.

[ 17. November 2013, 21:27: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Sorry to double post, but I wanted to add a smiley, and to say that the commments so far have all provided food for thought. Many thanks.



[ 17. November 2013, 21:46: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Svitlana, you're asking for generalisations about a church that has room for Holy Trinity Brompton and St Mary's Bourne Street, All Souls' Langham Place and All Saints' Margaret Street deliberately naming pairs of churches that are within sight of each other.

The CofE is a broad church, it chooses to take the middle way and allow a wide range of expressions of churchmanship. Common Worship is written to allow those expressions.

Different churches and congregations will have different understandings of whether they are Anglican, whether they are evangelical, how involved they are with the wider church. Those churches that say the Nicene Creed weekly say they are part of the "holy catholic and apostolic church" - no mention of Anglicanism at all.

And in my experience, many of the congregation won't have much understanding of what the CofE is and how it works at all.
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
Svitlana, I tend to think of myself as CofE rather than Anglican. To me, if you are English, the CofE is the church for you unless you're either convinced by someone else's claims or were brought up something else, just as Orthodoxy is Christianity for Greeks, Russians etc, and the Roman Catholic Church is Christianity for Italians, French etc.

It matters also to me that the CofE (and also the CinW) are the lineal descendants of the first missionaries that arrived in these lands.

Very occasionally - every two or three years when somebody asks this sort of question - I wonder what I'd be if I lived in Scotland, but I don't. There's quite a lot of familiar things I'd miss if I was CofS, but although I prefer having bishops, I'm not sure that I'm really a Piskie.

Incidentally, American Piskie, what does GOC stand for? When I looked it up, it said General Optical Council, but that doesn't seem to fit the context.
 

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Posted by seasick (# 48) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
He'd be right that many Methodists retain a 'higher' view of the Eucharist than is common across non-conformity - at least in its British manifestation.

I've never attended a 'high' Methodist service but I'm told that they exist. The Methodists I've known have tended to be suspicious of their 'high-church' end.

I've also heard it said that most Methodist ministers who become Anglican - and some do - tend to gravitate to the higher end of the spectrum. I've met a female CofE priest who used to be a Methodist minister who cross over at what she took to be considerable personal cost. She told me it was because her view of the Eucharist meant that she could no longer remain where she was ...

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her, but I refrained, why she thought the CofE had a more coherent or cohesive Eucharistic theology ...

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How are you defining "high"? I'm sensible and middle-of-the-road, of course.
 

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Posted by Ethne Alba (# 5804) on :
 
Until such time as someone brings out a decent book on the subject of what the Church of England actually is......there is always the Church of England website. It's actually very helpful and very informative

Start right at the beginning and steadily go through. ...but be warned, you can easily loose a few days in that website
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ethne Alba:
Until such time as someone brings out a decent book on the subject of what the Church of England actually is......

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:


Incidentally, American Piskie, what does GOC stand for? When I looked it up, it said General Optical Council, but that doesn't seem to fit the context.

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quote:

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And indeed a lot of folk will move from the CofE in England to the CofS in Scotland without batting an eyelid or realising there is a difference.

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My impression, based admittedly on a small sample, is that, rather than realise there is a difference, they simply assume we are doing it wrong.

[ 18. November 2013, 07:43: Message edited by: North East Quine ]
 

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Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by american piskie:
No one becomes "an anglican", do they?

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quote:

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Originally posted by seasick:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
He'd be right that many Methodists retain a 'higher' view of the Eucharist than is common across non-conformity - at least in its British manifestation.

I've never attended a 'high' Methodist service but I'm told that they exist. The Methodists I've known have tended to be suspicious of their 'high-church' end....

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How are you defining "high"? I'm sensible and middle-of-the-road, of course.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Svitlana, I tend to think of myself as CofE rather than Anglican. To me, if you are English, the CofE is the church for you unless you're either convinced by someone else's claims or were brought up something else, just as Orthodoxy is Christianity for Greeks, Russians etc, and the Roman Catholic Church is Christianity for Italians, French etc.

It matters also to me that the CofE (and also the CinW) are the lineal descendants of the first missionaries that arrived in these lands.

Very occasionally - every two or three years when somebody asks this sort of question - I wonder what I'd be if I lived in Scotland, but I don't. There's quite a lot of familiar things I'd miss if I was CofS, but although I prefer having bishops, I'm not sure that I'm really a Piskie.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Incidentally, American Piskie, what does GOC stand for? When I looked it up, it said General Optical Council, but that doesn't seem to fit the context.

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Sorry, God's Own Country.

And we all know that that is WALES
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@SvitlanaV2 - sure, please don't misunderstand me, I'm not out to dismiss any impression you may have when you knock around in Anglican circles. It'll be as valid as anyone else's, of course and you'll see things as a comparative 'outsider'/new-comer that the regulars wouldn't ...

I've been pondering your comments about the greater level of self-identity among Methodists. I think this is right and is probably a feature of the way the circuit-system and so on works - as well as the way Methodist churches are organised on the ground.

We have a large Methodist church here and from people say it manages to stay together despite being riddled with factions. It's said to be one of the most factional churches in the area ... but I wouldn't be able to comment as I don't know it that well.

Methodist churches I've encountered in the past haven't struck me as being particularly factional at all.

Anyway ...

I echo Curiosity Killed's point. If you're trying to assess the average Anglican's sense of how things work within the CofE in a structural sense, an ethos sense and whatever else then it's going to take you an awfully long time.

Once you've done it, come back and tell the rest of us. We'd like to know the answer ...



Meanwhile, your friendly 'liberal catholic' parish with its female priest sounds good to me. I'd certainly check that one out if I lived where you are.
 

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Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :
 
IME experience, there are as many views, as there are CofE churches. However in some of the churches I have been involved in, being an Anglican has not been on peoples radar, I doubt that some of them even know what it might mean to them. Heavens, some of them are still not really understanding of the local deanery/diocese structure, never mind the international...
Some people were not even aware of the word Anglican, and actually many were only vaguely aware that the CofE was part of a wider communion.
This forum probably brings views from a larger sample of the more involved and thinking members of the Anglican Church, for many they are simply Church of England.

You would probably have to be involved with a church to get the flavour of how it saw itself..
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:

quote:

---

Originally posted by american piskie:
No one becomes "an anglican", do they?

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???? I am confused, American piskie.

In joining the Episcopalian Church in the US, which is part of the Anglican Communion, didn't I choose to become
a) an Episcopalian, and therefore and simultaneously
b) an Anglican?

I like the analogy someone made above about whether you see yourself as English or British. I "feel" English but I know that means I am also British.

So, I guess an American Episcopalian feels Episcopalian, while knowing that means s/he is also in a larger sense Anglican.

I, as an English person in the US, joined the Episcopalian church very conscious that it was part of the Anglican Communion and feeling that in a way I was coming home; also knowing this meant that when I am back in England I will go to "my church," which in the US is called Episcopalian and in the UK, Church of England.

But they aren't both equally "Anglican," for surely a member of the C of E is much more likely than a US Episcopalian to consider her/himself "Anglican" ? Because "Anglican" as a word is so connected etymologically and historically with "England"....?

If I felt I was becoming an Anglican by joining the Episcopal church, surely a convert from Catholicism in England who joins the C of E is even more intentionally "becoming an Anglican" ??

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quote:

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Originally posted by Albertus:
... The church in question was Hinde St/ West London Mission: at least one, usually two Communion services every Sunday, relatively liturgical, pulpit fall and Minister's stole in seasonal colours. Would you say that that was 'high' by Methodist standards?

---

Though now I come to think of it, if they'd been really high church Methodists they'd have had sets of Beryl Ware cups and saucers in more-or-less liturgical colours too (green for ordinary time, obviously; yellow for major festivals, blue would do for Advent and IIRC there was a sort of cream colour, not unlike unbleached linen, that could be used in Lent).
 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
...[C]an anyone tell me to what extent ordinary laypeople in Anglican pews are expected to understand the structures and culture of the CofE? Does such knowledge help them to belong, or is it mostly irrelevant? Is it only necessary to understand one's own congregation, or is a wider awareness important in a denomination with so many different traditions?...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

We have a large Methodist church here and from people say it manages to stay together despite being riddled with factions. It's said to be one of the most factional churches in the area ... but I wouldn't be able to comment as I don't know it that well.

Methodist churches I've encountered in the past haven't struck me as being particularly factional at all.

[...]
Your friendly 'liberal catholic' parish with its female priest sounds good to me. I'd certainly check that one out if I lived where you are.

---

As I said in my post, I've been to this liberal catholic church quite a few times before, and will do so again, so I don't really need to check it out. It would rather a question of turning up on a regular basis. (I'm always tempted to say 'joining', but that doesn't seem to be a CofE word.) I might well do so in future.

Regarding Methodist factionalism, Methodist churches, like all others, face internal conflict. In the case of British Methodism, IMO, the problems may be harder to solve because the minister is less of a guiding force than seems to be the case elsewhere. Pulpits are filled more often by local preachers than by ministers. Powerful personalities - usually laypeople who already hold some official role in the congregation - can compete for dominance of the church culture and their minister will probably feel a bit hampered in dealing with the issue, partly because Methodism is in many ways a lay-led denomination.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Sure, but the sense of 'joining' varies across the various churchmanships within the CofE, SvitlanaV2.

If you rolled up at our local parish church you'd quickly be press-ganged onto some rota or other, invited to a house-group, the socials, sundry events and tacitly expected to organise your entire social life around its particular calendar and mission ...



Ok, I'm exaggerating to make a point, but I think you'd find that in some evangelical Anglican parishes the sense of 'commitment' and of being in a 'gathered' church isn't that different to what you may find among some Baptist, Vineyard and other non-conformist or 'new' churches ... only with a particular and less 'obvious' Anglican slant put on it ...

I don't mean that to imply that they are overly controlling ... but some can veer that way. Our vicar's wife once sourly observed to me that she didn't feel I was that 'committed'. Which would have been true, of course, but when I had occasion to moan about that to the vicar he went and spoke to her and came back saying that she'd denied ever saying such a thing and that the term 'committed' in that sense wasn't even in her vocabulary so I must have been wrong or misheard ...

(or lying? like she was?)

Seriously, I think this couple would be happier in a non-conformist or Vineyard setting.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Backing up a bit ...

On the 'high' thing with Methodists ... I'm not sure I can answer that one as I've not had any direct experience of 'high-church' Methodists.

The question appears to have been answered, handled well enough though.
 

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Posted by american piskie (# 593) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:

quote:

---

Originally posted by american piskie:
No one becomes "an anglican", do they?

---

???? I am confused, American piskie.

In joining the Episcopalian Church in the US, which is part of the Anglican Communion, didn't I choose to become
a) an Episcopalian, and therefore and simultaneously
b) an Anglican?

[del]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sure, but the sense of 'joining' varies across the various churchmanships within the CofE, SvitlanaV2.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Albertus:

quote:

---

Originally posted by seasick:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
He'd be right that many Methodists retain a 'higher' view of the Eucharist than is common across non-conformity - at least in its British manifestation.

I've never attended a 'high' Methodist service but I'm told that they exist. The Methodists I've known have tended to be suspicious of their 'high-church' end....

---

How are you defining "high"? I'm sensible and middle-of-the-road, of course.

---

Well, I used the term originally, so let me say what I meant. The church in question was Hinde St/ West London Mission: at least one, usually two Communion services every Sunday, relatively liturgical, pulpit fall and Minister's stole in seasonal colours. Would you say that that was 'high' by Methodist standards?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Adeodatus:
If I were still in parish ministry, I would expect my congregation to try to love God and their neighbour; be diligent in prayer; hear the Word proclaimed; and receive the Sacraments.

I wouldn't expect them to know all the latest news from General or Diocesan Synod. I wouldn't expect them to know what the acronyms GAFCON or FiF stand for. I'd expect them to know the name of the Bishop, but I wouldn't expect them to follow him on Twitter. I'd teach them that the kingdom of God is worked out in the hearts and lives of people, and that there's really no need to go looking for it on national and international committees of clerics.

---

Well, from a Methodist point of view I suppose many churchgoers might not remember the name of the District Superintendent. And in fact, the name of the President of Conference (the Methodist non/equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury) is even more forgettable, considering that the role is only held for a year and it doesn't really have an impact on the life of an individual congregation.

However, my concern, which isn't specifically about the CofE but probably includes many denominations, is that downplaying the importance of such institutional information serves to disenfranchise the laity rather than empowering them. You say they should just focus on being diligent and godly people - but the church-as-institution is the context in which they work out what all that means, so it's strange to set things up in a certain way and then insist that the process is irrelevant to the laity.

The feeling one gets is that the ordinary folk aren't supposed to 'worry their little heads' about the business end of things but leave all that to the experts. This sort of assumption in church circles troubles me as I get older. The idea of belonging to a church (especially an established church) whose ways and means are a mystery to the average member - and everyone prefers it that way - strikes me as a bit spooky! Paranoid, or what?! I suppose I just like a culture of openness.


 

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Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Interesting to see what you say about Hinde St, Sv2: it seemed to me 'high' because, having no experience of Methodism before and little since, that's the (approving) impression that I got from Mrs A, who had a Methodist/URC background in North Wales.
I liked Hinde St very much and only left because we left London. I was there from, I suppose, abotu 1998 to 2001: perhaps we overlapped?
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
I never joined the CofE - I was born into it (although an RC grandparent did have a go at turning me to Rome).

As for reading the Church Times - only when you realise that its navel gazing in print on an epic scale. Book reviews can be good, Classifieds are a must but the rest can be curate's egg.
 

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Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Yes, good book reviews and press review, and the marvellous Ronald Blythe. News coverage can be pretty good, actually - if you are intersted in what it's covering.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
I am someone who did choose to become an Anglican and was baptised and confirmed as an adult (it was the confirmation that was me choosing to become an Anglican). I wonder what the rate of confirmation is - now that it's the norm for churches to only insist on baptism and not confirmation for receiving Communion, and many people are baptised as babies but not part of the church community, I should imagine it's quite low. Confirmation would seem like a natural 'choosing' of church identity.

Also given the Dead Horse issues in the CoE in recent years, I've also had to decide to stay. Quite simply, my own theology is too high for any other Protestant denomination in England. The nearest would be the RCC and to leave the Anglican church over Dead Horses (and being AffCath not FiF) and then join the RCC would seem to defeat the object!
 

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Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I am someone who did choose to become an Anglican and was baptised and confirmed as an adult (it was the confirmation that was me choosing to become an Anglican). I wonder what the rate of confirmation is - now that it's the norm for churches to only insist on baptism and not confirmation for receiving Communion, and many people are baptised as babies but not part of the church community, I should imagine it's quite low. Confirmation would seem like a natural 'choosing' of church identity.

Also given the Dead Horse issues in the CoE in recent years, I've also had to decide to stay. Quite simply, my own theology is too high for any other Protestant denomination in England. The nearest would be the RCC and to leave the Anglican church over Dead Horses (and being AffCath not FiF) and then join the RCC would seem to defeat the object!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I am someone who did choose to become an Anglican and was baptised and confirmed as an adult (it was the confirmation that was me choosing to become an Anglican). I wonder what the rate of confirmation is - now that it's the norm for churches to only insist on baptism and not confirmation for receiving Communion, and many people are baptised as babies but not part of the church community, I should imagine it's quite low. Confirmation would seem like a natural 'choosing' of church identity.

Also given the Dead Horse issues in the CoE in recent years, I've also had to decide to stay. Quite simply, my own theology is too high for any other Protestant denomination in England. The nearest would be the RCC and to leave the Anglican church over Dead Horses (and being AffCath not FiF) and then join the RCC would seem to defeat the object!

---

Right, Jade--you chose to become an Anglican; I chose to become an Anglican (while choosing the particular branch geographically at hand to me, the Episcopal Church); this is what I meant when questioning american piskie's statement that no-one chooses to become an Anglican.

Piskie has since responded by saying it's a category error. That "Anglican" is like "UN," a sort of umbrella thing, a thing that an individual does not become a member of, though one may belong to a communion that is a member of it. One wouldn't say "I'm going to become a member of the UN" though one might say, "I'm going to become a British citizen."

But perhaps, rather than the UN, "Anglican" is more like the European Community? When you become a British citizen, you also automatically become a member of the European community. You have a right to live and work in any European country and participate in the life there.

Thus, as an Episcopalian, haven't I also become "an Anglican" and so I also "belong" to the Church of England, and any other Anglican community in other countries?

Perhaps having grown up as an English person but not in the C of E, and therefore not seeing C of E as the "default" for an English person, I have a different idea of it all....

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quote:

---

Originally posted by John Holding:
In terms of terminology, accepting that the CofE and ECUSA -- and the Episcopal CHurch of Scotland -- are special cases, remember that in most of the Anglican Communion, the national churches are indeed "Anglican" in name as well as in affliation (ie, part of the communion) and, hopefully, in theology. So for us, there's not the kind of terminological problem the two (or three) of you seem to be having.

John

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quote:

---

Originally posted by John Holding:
In terms of terminology, accepting that the CofE and ECUSA -- and the Episcopal CHurch of Scotland -- are special cases, remember that in most of the Anglican Communion, the national churches are indeed "Anglican" in name as well as in affliation (ie, part of the communion) and, hopefully, in theology. So for us, there's not the kind of terminological problem the two (or three) of you seem to be having.

John

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gee D:
Jade, yes, it is the Anglican Church of Australia in Sydney as much as any other diocese. Indeed, many churches in Sydney are now known as Suburb/Locality Anglican Church, or something similar, rather than bearing a particular dedication.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:



But perhaps, rather than the UN, "Anglican" is more like the European Community? When you become a British citizen, you also automatically become a member of the European community. You have a right to live and work in any European country and participate in the life there.

Thus, as an Episcopalian, haven't I also become "an Anglican" and so I also "belong" to the Church of England, and any other Anglican community in other countries?

Perhaps having grown up as an English person but not in the C of E, and therefore not seeing C of E as the "default" for an English person, I have a different idea of it all....

---

Tempting as the via media must be to a member of the English Church, I don't think that the EU works in the way you suggest. States are members of the EU, not people. (And I say this as a committed pro-the-European-Enterprise person.) Through various treaties I may be able to live and work and even vote in, say, Spain; but that doesn't make me Spanish.

No more do I think that membership of one church of the Anglican Communion automatically confers membership of another. So when I moved from the USA to England, for electoral roll purposes I always ticked the "Church in full communion therewith" box and not "Church of England" box. Once I was settled here I decided to become a member of the C of E, so now I tick that box.

Of course I celebrate my former allegiance in my pseudonym here
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@SvitlanaV2 - I daresay that the tedious meetings and endless pieces of documentation are of interest to somebody.

You'll certainly find Anglicans around who are interested in all of that.

Just as you'll find some who are interested in the finer points of gin, lace and liturgy - and there are plenty of them on Ecclesiantics on these boards.

Just as you'll find some who are convinced that their particular take on Anglicanism is the only legitimate one ...

And much else besides.

I've known plenty of Methodists in my time, some in quite prominent positions on regional and national committees and so on. They're all splendid people. They struck me as being the same kind of people who, if they were involved with the Co-operative Movement or a Trades Union would be getting involved with committees and sub-groups there ... or if they were involved with their Local History Society they'd be volunteering to take the minutes or become treasurer or something.

Which is great.

But not everyone's cut out that way.

It's hard to generalise about the CofE because it's so broad and so diverse, but I tend to think that most CofE folk aren't unduly worried about the wider denominational politics and issues unless and until it directly impinges upon them.

I'm not sure whether this represents a certain degree of denominational security or apathy. Or both.
 

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Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The feeling one gets is that the ordinary folk aren't supposed to 'worry their little heads' about the business end of things but leave all that to the experts. This sort of assumption in church circles troubles me as I get older. The idea of belonging to a church (especially an established church) whose ways and means are a mystery to the average member - and everyone prefers it that way - strikes me as a bit spooky! Paranoid, or what?! I suppose I just like a culture of openness.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Adeodatus:
My ministry is sort of semi-detached from the whole godawful System.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
... But part of me wonders why the CofE has all these boring meetings and produces endless pieces of tedious documentation if they're of little use or interest to anyone! ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by american piskie:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:



But perhaps, rather than the UN, "Anglican" is more like the European Community? When you become a British citizen, you also automatically become a member of the European community. You have a right to live and work in any European country and participate in the life there.

Thus, as an Episcopalian, haven't I also become "an Anglican" and so I also "belong" to the Church of England, and any other Anglican community in other countries?

Perhaps having grown up as an English person but not in the C of E, and therefore not seeing C of E as the "default" for an English person, I have a different idea of it all....

---

Tempting as the via media must be to a member of the English Church, I don't think that the EU works in the way you suggest. States are members of the EU, not people. (And I say this as a committed pro-the-European-Enterprise person.) Through various treaties I may be able to live and work and even vote in, say, Spain; but that doesn't make me Spanish.

No more do I think that membership of one church of the Anglican Communion automatically confers membership of another. So when I moved from the USA to England, for electoral roll purposes I always ticked the "Church in full communion therewith" box and not "Church of England" box. Once I was settled here I decided to become a member of the C of E, so now I tick that box.

Of course I celebrate my former allegiance in my pseudonym here

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

I've been attending a CofE church quite often for a while now, but it hasn't made me any less 'inaccurate', has it??

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, what are Methodists doing about their own godawful system?

It seems to me that they run committee after committee and conference after conference and still end up rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

I understand you, of course. But part of me wonders why the CofE has all these boring meetings and produces endless pieces of tedious documentation if they're of little use or interest to anyone!

---

That's the tendency of committees everywhere isn't it ? Plus given contributions from a diverse set of people it's not unsurprising that some of these pieces of paper end up being anodyne statements of the obvious - it's easier to agree to these.

It's probably personality driven as much as anything else - with some Sir Humphrey types gravitating towards these parts of the church.

Baptists have their business meetings of course - with their own particular problems, first few paragraphs here are somewhat accurate:

http://www.internetmonk.com/articles/B/bizmtg.html
 

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Posted by pererin (# 16956) on :
 
I think it's a symptom of that disease called "being British", having inflicted civil services on large parts of the globe.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Not sure I agree with your point about most people who deliberately seek out an Anglican church being those who put their English identity ahead of their Christian one, Chris Stiles ...

I mean, how does that apply to Wales for a kick-off?

The Church in Wales is Anglican. Does that mean it's 'English'?



I can see the point you're trying to make, though.

Alongside nominal, by-default Anglicans you do have people who deliberately choose to be Anglican because of what they perceive as bad experiences in non-conformist settings (or RC ones) or else developing preferences.

I know a retired Anglican vicar who tells me that those who railed the loudest if he skipped something in the liturgy or introduced an innovation were those in his congregation who had come into the CofE from various non-conformist backgrounds.

The 'cradle' Anglicans were less perturbed or upset. The former non-conformists wanted it done by the book ...

But I take the point you're making.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, what are Methodists doing about their own godawful system?

It seems to me that they run committee after committee and conference after conference and still end up rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic.
[...]
I really don't see what's so sinister and reprehensible about Anglicans who don't give a flying fart about synods and committees and so on.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by chris stiles:
Baptists have their business meetings of course - with their own particular problems, first few paragraphs here are somewhat accurate:

http://www.internetmonk.com/articles/B/bizmtg.html

---

quote:

---

commit acts of violence

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Holy Smoke:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

Round these parts, it's used quite a lot by MOR churches, as well as the local cathedral, and sundry college chapels for choral evensong - I'm not sure what you mean when you say it is a marker of conservatism - it's certainly not a marker of theological conservatism, of either protestant or catholic hue - perhaps you mean BCP services are popular with those folk who are more socially conservative on DH issues (or perhaps who come from other parts of the Anglican communion where different social attitudes prevail) ?

Also, it is my impression that the 'archaic language' is principally a problem for those people who never attend church, or for those who are more conservative in their theology, rather than for the average church-goer in general, who rather enjoys the sense of the liturgy being set apart from everyday language, rather than being banalized and dumbed-down into modern English.

---

Most places in England don't have college chapels - they are going to be rather different. The only non-cathedral churches I have come across that have BCP services are theologically conservative. And actually the archaic language is a big problem for regular churchgoers....especially those for whom English is not their first language. Unless of course you think only native English speakers should attend church? I am a native English speaker and regular churchgoer and still struggle with the 1662!

Also to speak of modern English as 'dumbed-down' is ridiculous to anyone who knows anything about language. The language of the 1662 was the contemporary language of the time - so is that dumbed-down? Jesus spoke to His followers in the local vernacular, there is no reason why modern churches shouldn't do the same. To keep the liturgy set apart from everyday language is the opposite of what Jesus did.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@Stephen Langton.

Join a New Testament type church?!



Now which one would that be?

I've been in churches which claimed to be 'New Testament.'

I can show you the bruises if you like ...


 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

Jade-thanks, yes, I knew that only this old version of the Book of Common Prayer was licensed for use in the C of E. I simply don't understand it. Why didn't the C of E do as the Episcopal Church and write a more modern version that still keeps much of the poetry, dignity and beauty of the original? Isn't the Book of Common Prayer a most precious part of the heritage of the C of E?

but this may be a bit of a tangent.....makes me want even more to live in a cathedral city, though.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Holy Smoke:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

Round these parts, it's used quite a lot by MOR churches, as well as the local cathedral, and sundry college chapels for choral evensong - I'm not sure what you mean when you say it is a marker of conservatism - it's certainly not a marker of theological conservatism, of either protestant or catholic hue - perhaps you mean BCP services are popular with those folk who are more socially conservative on DH issues (or perhaps who come from other parts of the Anglican communion where different social attitudes prevail) ?

Also, it is my impression that the 'archaic language' is principally a problem for those people who never attend church, or for those who are more conservative in their theology, rather than for the average church-goer in general, who rather enjoys the sense of the liturgy being set apart from everyday language, rather than being banalized and dumbed-down into modern English.

---

Most places in England don't have college chapels - they are going to be rather different. The only non-cathedral churches I have come across that have BCP services are theologically conservative.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:
Why didn't the C of E do as the Episcopal Church and write a more modern version that still keeps much of the poetry, dignity and beauty of the original?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Holy Smoke:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara - only the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is licensed for use in the CoE, which may explain why it's not used that much. The archaic language is a problem for many. IME 'prayer book evangelicals' generally have at least one service using it, as do cathedrals of course, plus some conservative catholics. It tends to be a marker of conservatism.

---

Round these parts, it's used quite a lot by MOR churches, as well as the local cathedral, and sundry college chapels for choral evensong - I'm not sure what you mean when you say it is a marker of conservatism - it's certainly not a marker of theological conservatism, of either protestant or catholic hue - perhaps you mean BCP services are popular with those folk who are more socially conservative on DH issues (or perhaps who come from other parts of the Anglican communion where different social attitudes prevail) ?

Also, it is my impression that the 'archaic language' is principally a problem for those people who never attend church, or for those who are more conservative in their theology, rather than for the average church-goer in general, who rather enjoys the sense of the liturgy being set apart from everyday language, rather than being banalized and dumbed-down into modern English.

---

Ah, Holy Smoke, "used quite a lot," --this is encouraging news.

And I quite agree that many people prefer it when the liturgy is set apart from everyday language. Even young people sometimes say this--one of my children as a teenager said he preferred church when it was a bit more ceremonial and had different language and seemed something different, richer, and more serious than the world outside.

Of course what one would hope for is a language for our time that parallels the language of Cranmer in his. With the same degree of everydayness, or not. I think his language was probably (experts will know) quite well understood even by people who did not have a prolonged education, because everyone was exposed to more complex oral language then.

I think the TEC's 1979 BCP is, tho far from perfect, a pretty good modern adaptation. And it keeps much of the original phraseology and feeling. That's not available in the UK, so if the only other option is banal and dumbed-down, far better to stick to the BCP.
I for one enjoy the archaic language although I am not at all conservative theologically or re DH matters.

I don't know Common Worship well but I have certainly heard some banal and dumbed-down prayers in C of E churches, wherever they came from.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Cara, there are certainly parts of CW that are dumbed-down and banal but not all of it - there's lots of room for churches' individual styles. So dumbed-down and banal churches can use dumbed-down and banal liturgy My own church uses Eucharistic Prayer B and there's not much difference between it and the Roman Missal. I do think that keeping liturgy 'separate' goes against the equality amongst Christians that should exist in the church - it makes things so much harder for those with English language issues or other speech/language issues. Making liturgy understandable by everyone does not equate to dumbing-down, but democratising. Christianity should be inherently democratic IMO.
 

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Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Cara, there are certainly parts of CW that are dumbed-down and banal but not all of it - there's lots of room for churches' individual styles. So dumbed-down and banal churches can use dumbed-down and banal liturgy My own church uses Eucharistic Prayer B and there's not much difference between it and the Roman Missal. I do think that keeping liturgy 'separate' goes against the equality amongst Christians that should exist in the church - it makes things so much harder for those with English language issues or other speech/language issues. Making liturgy understandable by everyone does not equate to dumbing-down, but democratising. Christianity should be inherently democratic IMO.

---

Well, I'm glad to hear this, jade, and look forward to finding out more about this and about the different styles--and how to avoid the d-d and b!!

I do see what you mean about about Christianity's being "democratic" in the sense that we shouldn't make things harder than necessary for those with language issues. But in reducing archaism one doesn't need to get rid of elegance and beauty in the language...but many modern prayers and translations do.

Well, in the end, what's important is that there's something available for those who want the modern language and for those who want the "archaic," and also that the Book of Common Prayer's language is not forgotten as it's such a treasure of the C of E's heritage.

I imagine that after what's been said you'll agree that a preference for the BCP isn't necessarily a marker of "conservatism" ? Except inasmuch as one might want to conserve something precious....

edited to add that of Christianity from its very beginning was made up of mostly working people like fishermen and artisans, hence (many think) their preference for the codex over the scroll, and the fact that outsiders like Celsus could call it the religion of "silly women and slaves," ie the lowest of the low in his view. And we should certainly bear this in mind, and make it accessible to anyone regardless of educational background. But then we shouldn't spurn all the high art and beauty and difficult writing and philosophy and high-falutin' language that the faith has inspired, either.

Also, religious worship in every society has become somewhat formalized, ritualized etc...isn't that part of human nature, part of what we need? So surely it's ok to keep some ancient prayers in their words, even if old-fashioned, as a sort of tribute to the Christians of the past? At the same time, our sermons, outreach, prayers of the people, etc etc can be as vernacular as we like.

I'm not really arguing with you, Jade--just mulling.

[ 22. November 2013, 12:29: Message edited by: Cara ]
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
No worries Cara, I appreciate the mulling

I am A-C in terms of theology and I do like a service that's more structured than not (although more informal/less structured services like Vineyard type churches and Quaker meetings are perfectly valid), but then I see a difference between structured and separate/set apart. At my church our services are structured in terms of following a set liturgy, but everyone can understand it. I think the current set-up of CW and the 1662 is good because churches can adapt to their own congregations, which I think is really the best thing. Different congregations have different needs and I think having a choice is better than imposing one option for everyone, whether that option is traditional language or modern language.
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
We have weekly BCP 8am said communion on a Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

BCP Matins 3rd Sunday of the month is the main sung service and is very well attended.

CW - with eucharistic prayer for children at Family service on 2nd Sunday.

Ordinary CW on 1st and 4th Sundays.

Toddler & Mum service is Family Eucharist on a Thursday.

All evening services are BCP, sung, and well-attended.

Over the past 10 years we have found that people who are new to church tend to come either to the evening service or to Matins at first: perhaps they feel less conspicuous because there is no communion?
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve Langton:



Ever since Jesus said 'My kingdom is not of this world' it has simply been wrong to try to have an established national church.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
We have weekly BCP 8am said communion on a Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

BCP Matins 3rd Sunday of the month is the main sung service and is very well attended.

CW - with eucharistic prayer for children at Family service on 2nd Sunday.

Ordinary CW on 1st and 4th Sundays.

Toddler & Mum service is Family Eucharist on a Thursday.

All evening services are BCP, sung, and well-attended.

Over the past 10 years we have found that people who are new to church tend to come either to the evening service or to Matins at first: perhaps they feel less conspicuous because there is no communion?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve Langton:
the one distinctive thing in Anglicanism is its position as an established church; and despite supposedly following the teaching of the Bible according to the 39 Articles, just about everything else is a compromise in order to hang on to the influence of being a national church.
Ever since Jesus said 'My kingdom is not of this world' it has simply been wrong to try to have an established national church. The New Testament depicts a church which is international and composed of the 'born again' throughout the world, and lives in the states of the world not as an established arm of government but as 'resident aliens'. Anglicanism is a body which started out wrongly trying to impose conformity on all after the style of the Catholic Inquisition or Islamic Sharia, and is now rightly in decline. leave it be and go join a New Testament type church....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:

Over the past 10 years we have found that people who are new to church tend to come either to the evening service or to Matins at first: perhaps they feel less conspicuous because there is no communion?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
He's not come back to defend it, either.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Just popped by to point out that the reason I haven't been back to defend my post is because I don't have web access at home and my access elsewhere is limited at the best of times; and the last week has not been the best! Not 'smug', just plain-speaking and stating the rather obvious - I'm afraid 'Aspies' like me are tactless like that! The Anglican church is indeed distinctive in being 'state established' originally for the political purposes of English monarchs, and the New Testament does reject just about every necessary idea for an established church and does very much teach an alternative. That being so discussing the 'lay knowledge of the C of E' is pretty irrelevant, surely. I agree with Gamaliel that just to claim to be an NT church doesn't guarantee perfection - often the problem is precisely over-reaction to the obvious problems of Anglicanism and other 'Christendom-style' churches, or that the supposedly NT church is, like many 'Protestants' in Ulster, still trying to be Christendom-style, hasn't realised we are meant to be otherwise...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gamaliel:
... but this idea that we can somehow create a purer, apparently NT form of Christianity is moonshine.

I can't see anyone who has done it. I know plenty who've had a go ...

---

As so often Gamaliel, you are bang on.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Schism doesn't seem to be all that fashionable in the UK these days, but I have heard of the odd fairly recent CofE and Methodist congregations that have decided to break away. It seems more likely to happen with church plants. Perhaps archbishops and Presidents of Conference should be wary of promoting them for this reason - too much 'lay knowledge' clearly has its downsides!
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 


So those CofE and Methodist hybrids broke away because of increased levels of lay-knowledge ...

Yeah, right ...


 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Ok, I know you're teasing, but on a more serious note, I've been involved with 'new churches' - independent charismatic evangelical streams and networks - with non-conformist churches (a wee bit of Methodist for a few months and 6 years as a Baptist) and with evangelical Anglican parishes.

Each will have had their upsides and downsides.

On a congregational level, the Baptist one will have been the one where there was the most 'lay-involvement' on the ground in terms of how things were done - but only at a congregational level. We didn't a clue what was going on at Baptist Union level nor were we that interested.

I don't see anyone posting here about those nefarious Baptists, discouraging everyone from getting involved with denominational committees and so on at a national level.

I suspect most Baptist ministers would have the devil's own job trying to drum up any support whatsoever for the slightest bit of interest in whatever happens or doesn't happen down at the Baptist Union HQ in Didcot.

So why is the poor old, or dear old, CofE seen as such an anomaly in terms of lay-people's knowledge expectations, involvement with whatever-it-is that happens at Synod level, Diocesan level or whatever.

Perhaps it's a Methodist thing. I don't know. My impression of Methodism is that it has more committees than it has adherents.

Who gives a flying fart?

If I were a Methodist I don't think I'd have the least bit of interest in Conference and all the rest of it. I'd join the Labour Party if I wanted that sort of thing.


 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I suspect most Baptist ministers would have the devil's own job trying to drum up any support whatsoever for the slightest bit of interest in whatever happens or doesn't happen down at the Baptist Union HQ in Didcot.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Yes, that wouldn't surprise me ... nor Methodists either.

That's not to knock it. None of this is good or bad ... simply different.

Given the way that Methodism is structured/organised it's no more surprising that they are more interested in what goes on at a national and organisational level.

I don't see anything nefarious, though, in the opposite tendency. It's not as if the CofE is up to no good with a 'mwa ha ha ha ... we'll keep those lay-people in the dark so they don't know what's going on ... then we can pull a fast one on them! They'll wake up tomorrow morning to find that they've been captured by Lizard-men from the Planet Zarg!'

At least, I don't think that's what's happening ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
My impression of Methodism is that it has more committees than it has adherents.

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quote:

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If I were a Methodist I don't think I'd have the least bit of interest in Conference and all the rest of it. I'd join the Labour Party if I wanted that sort of thing.

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Well, plenty of Methodists are in the Labour Party too, I imagine!

I could've gone to Conference one year but didn't, and now I regret it, as you can imagine. Obviously, many Methodists won't be especially interested, but they will all know at least a couple of laypeople who've been, and these days there seems to be more encouragement for young Methodists to go. There's also the Conference 'fringe', the idea of which is to draw in ordinary laypeople. The fact that Conference is held in a different town every year must help to maintain interest among layfolk, which is presumably the very reason why it's done. I don't know how long this practice has been in place.


Arethosemyfeet

I wonder if establishment really has prevented schism. After all, there are plenty of movements and individual churches that have broken away from the CofE over the centuries. I was surprised to discover fairly recently that the biggest charismatic church in the vicinity is a breakaway from the CofE church I often attend!
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Of course, SvitlanaV2.

I do tease you to a certain extent but I don't regard people who get involved with conferences and committees as being geeks - we need people who engage with these things.

And yes, sure, there'll be plenty of Methodists who're involved with Labour Party committees and conferences and so on as well as their own denominational issues.

Fine.

I really don't have a problem with any of that and I can see how it derives from the way that Methodism is run. Fine.

Equally, I agree with the observation that Jengie Jon has made about the way that congregational style churches regard their way of doing things as being the natural and default one.

I don't think we're at cross-purposes particularly.

All I'm saying is that whilst the kind of 'lay knowledge' that you're talking about here is part of the warp and woof of Methodism, it is less so within the CofE and there are historic, organisational and theological reasons for that on both sides.

I ain't saying that either are right or wrong. Just that they are different.

It would be unreasonable to expect Methodists to act like Anglicans just as it would be unreasonable to expect CofE 'lay-people' to act as Methodists.

@Steven Langton - the religious dimension to the Troubles in Northern Ireland have nothing to do with Establishment/disestablishment.

I can see what you're getting at about the NT advocating a stance that is against the status quo. Sure. 'My kingdom is not of this world.'

What I don't see is how any of us - whether we are in a so-called NT style church or in an Established church such as the CofE, in a congregational one like the Baptists or a congregational/presbyterian one like the URC are individually or collectively any more 'not of this world' than anyone else.

We might bemoan that fact but I can only speak as I find.

I think there's a lot of truth and much to admire in the radical Anabaptist style approach, for instance ... but in sociological terms there are dangers on both sides of the Church/sect divide - if we want to think in those terms.

Established churches do indeed suffer for nominalism but 'gathered' churches can run to the opposite tendency and become insular, intense and irrelevant to anyone except their own members.

There's a balance somewhere.

I'd certainly agree that churches should be 'intentional' but there are different ways of achieving and maintaining that.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Gamaliel

You've mentioned your teasing thing several times now. Not much I can do or say about that; you have your ways and I have mine. Be that as it may, I agree that every church should do as it sees best.

This thread suggests that the CofE laity is pretty well at ease with itself, which is a positive message to take from the discussion.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Fair do's.

At the risk of carping or splitting hairs, I'm not sure, for the reasons that have been outlined on this thread, both serious and tongue-in-cheek, that it's possible to generalised about CofE laity at all ...

So I'm not sure it would make any sense to say that the CofE laity collectively are 'at ease with itself' than it would be to say that all male residents of Durham over the age of 37 are looking forward to receiving socks for Christmas ...

I really don't think we can generalise to this extent - even though I often post here in very broad-brush terms. It'll vary from place to place, from churchmanship to churchmanship and no doubt between individual parishes.

I'm not out to find fault or carp - far from it.

I can understand, for instance, why you might be surprised to find that the large-ish independent charismatic church in your area resulted from a split from an Anglican church you sometimes attend. I must admit, I was slightly surprised when you said that this particular parish is liberal catholic.

I wouldn't have been at all surprised if you'd said that the independent offshoot had split off from an evangelical charismatic Anglican parish ... although the rate at which that sort of thing happens has slowed due to New Wine and renewed self-confidence across the Anglican charismatic spectrum.

The key thing with the CofE, of course, is that it's the CofE. Things are broad.
 

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Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
Enoch; the Old Testament tells the story of God using the 'established church'of Israel to prepare for the wider revelation in Jesus. Once the gospel 'goes global' and is clearly based on the concept of being 'born again' spiritually rather than born only into a conventional nation, a different concept is needed and is clearly stated in the NT whereby God's people are now the international community of believers rather than nationally limited.
Arethosemyfeet; I'm not simplistically trying to blame everything on establishment. I do actually believe that the bad example of the 'establishment' of the Church in the Roman Empire did play a role of 'bad example' which contributed to Islam being founded as an 'established-type' religion with such concepts as Sharia law, Jihad, etc. One problem created by English establishment is that with a state church whose supreme governor on earth is our head of state, it is all too easy for Muslims to interpret the presence of our armies in their lands as a renewed 'Christian crusade'; this not only makes life lethally difficult for our troops, it also means that native Christians in those lands face persecution as 'allies' of the 'crusaders'. Establishment is not just a cosy snug internal issue for us English.
Ulster is complicated. the problem there is not the specific establishment but the general 'Christian country' idea - I'm saying that a church not expecting a privileged position in the state would not feel the need to fight, riot, throw bombs, etc. Having an established church in England is not helping Ulster's Protestants to get out of the 'Christendom' mindset which in any denomination leads to the possibility of warfare in Jesus' name, contrary to the NT.
Yes 'establishment' offers a particular kind of 'togetherness' - but not, I suggest, a biblical kind.
Gamaliel; see the last para on why Ulster issues are in fact connected to the issues of establishment.
Of course there are problems in disestablishment too, and I am not taking a 'rose-tinted spectacles' view of how isolated Anabaptist groups like Amish and Hutterites can become. But in terms of 'a kingdom of this world' a church tangled with the state is very clearly 'of this world' in a questionable way. Remember that the context of that phrase is Jesus defending himself before Pilate - had Jesus said he was aiming to set up established churches which by that fact might be a military threat to Rome, Pilate could not have declared him innocent; which potentially compromises the atonement itself....
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Gamaliel

Throughout this thread I've been told that most layfolk aren't all that fussed about the wider church, and that this is generally considered to be perfectly okay. This implies that certain things are more or less constant amidst all the breadth.

Every church will have its exceptions and its concerned individuals, but I wasn't particularly focusing on them, interesting though they are.

[ 01. December 2013, 12:12: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
 

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Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 
Steve Langton - just wanted to say I agree with you 100% on the disaster that Christian / church engagement with 'empire' has been throughout history. Jesus' message, continued in the rest of the New Testament, is - ISTM - that Christians should not seek political power or influence on some kind of Christian 'ticket' (I'm not saying Christians shouldn't get involved in politics at all).

The whole enmeshing of church with state that establishment entails seems like an absolute travesty of the New Testament message, frankly.
 

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Posted by Jade Constable (# 17175) on :
 
Steve Langton - so why not join the RCC? They're not Established

SCK - saying church and state mixing is a bad idea is quite different to saying the CoE existing is a disaster and we're not a 'real church'.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Steven Langton - get your facts straight.

The Establishment or otherwise of the CofE - and I would favour disestablishment as it happens - has absolutely nothing to do with Ulster Protestants and the Troubles.

Most Ulster Protestants are Presbyterians so they aren't part of the Established Church.

How many Anglicans were involved in the Protestant paramilitaries?



You are not comparing like with like. In fact, you don't know what you're talking about at all.

@South Coast Kevin ... I can agree that church-state collusion isn't particularly healthy - witness the Erastianism of the 18th century Church of England, witness the Erastianism of 19th century Russian Orthodoxy, which the current Patriarch seems to be trying to revive ...

'Dis-established' churches can be guilty of the same sort of things - witness Puritan New England.

Christendom is crumbling ... whether we like it or not. But I don't think it's fair to say that the concept of it wasn't a mixed blessing and capable of much good ...

I think it's a very black-and-white and simplistic view to say Christendom = bad; disestablished, sectarian-style (in the sociological sense) = good.

The whole process, background and inter-related factors are far more complex than that - and certainly far more complex than anything Stephen Langton can apparently conceive of with his wide of the mark generalisations.
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 

quote:

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I'm not simplistically trying to blame everything on establishment

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quote:

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Steve Langton - just wanted to say I agree with you 100% on the disaster that Christian / church engagement with 'empire' has been throughout history. Jesus' message, continued in the rest of the New Testament, is - ISTM - that Christians should not seek political power or influence on some kind of Christian 'ticket' (I'm not saying Christians shouldn't get involved in politics at all).

The whole enmeshing of church with state that establishment entails seems like an absolute travesty of the New Testament message, frankly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I don't know a lot about Asperger's Syndrome and could easily get myself into hot water on that account ... I have done so here in the past.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Thanks Eutychus, but I am comfortable about being 'aspergic' or I wouldn't have mentioned it myself. Gamaliel does have a point and has made fair comment. I would respond that I didn't get the well-known maths genius version of Asperger but more of a hyperlexic version, and fluent reading from an early age means I'm pretty good with irony and nuance and other figures of speech - and also that my comments here are based on a lot of reading and thinking. I also have the 'absent-minded-professory' ability to spot things other people haven't and to come at things from fresh or unusual angles, or make unusual connections. I hope people will bear that in mind when reading my comments here.

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Goodness. So knowledgeable and clever, and so modest with it too!
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
If you're still around, Steven, I apologise for my reference to your Asperger's, even though you weren't offended by it. I should not have raised the issue and take Eutychus's Hostly warning on board.



On the Establishment thing - yes, the rest of us are aware of church history and issues to do with Establishment and so on. I keep saying that I'm no fan of Establishment nor Erastianism.

I can see what you're getting at with the Ulster thing, but I think you are putting 2 + 2 together and making 5 to a certain extent.

I suspect that Establishment will disappear sooner or later - although I don't see any appetite at CofE synod level nor in Government to bring that about anytime soon.

What I don't see is how Anabaptist style 'free churches' in and of themselves are any more or any less likely to have an impact on UK society - unless they started living and practicing what they preach instead of acting like holy huddles.

Talking about Presbyterians and so on back in the day - I've often thought that Richard Baxter made a lot of sense in his autobiography when he castigates all the Christian groups of his day for their besetting sins. The 'Papists' effectively 'damned' everyone else who wasn't of their party, the Anglican establishment had its own sins and short-comings and so did the Presbyterians ... when it came to the Anabaptists, his view was that they could be somewhat smug and 'holier than thou.'

Fair points all ways round, I reckon.

And yes, you do sound somewhat smug and immodest at times and I make no apologies for pointing that out.
 

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Posted by Hampstonian (# 17912) on :
 
I'm new on here! But here is an outsider perspective...

As a Muslim imam, I think I probably go to church more regularly than most Anglicans, and am honoured to have been welcomed into a small and friendly congregation in a poor CofE church in the London Borough of Hackney.

I am deeply proud of "my" community, and the Christian solidarity of my vicar, and the largely non-white African-Caribbean congregation.

This "church of England" seems a world away from the other "Church of England" I got to know previously in its Lambeth Palace ecclesiastical politicians, and various other clergy for whom the language of Church-by-Law-Established seemed to provide a licence for the acquisition of unelected political power and financial reward for themselves - with concurrently corrupting effect.

We have enough problems with the appalling consequences of political Islam and Islamism - and the emergence in the UK of unelected so-called Muslim representatives for whom a religious label and the seductive public discourse of "faith in the public square", have similarly provided a go-ahead for the Great British interfaith power-grab -- a disaster for the dissenting Muslim voices, and disaster the role of faith as a truth-speaking prophetic voice challenging (not colluding) with establishment power.

In my little Anglican church community, I find in a powerless community the powerful presence of God in ordinary people, a very different place indeed, barely recognisable to those loci of Anglican power politics and inter-religious hypocrisy described above.

I got badly burned by my prior experience of the power structures of the Church of England, but am now very proud of the Christian brothers and sisters I now have the privilege of sharing with.
 

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Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :
 
Thank you Hampstonian and welcome aboard the Ship.

You've given me plenty to think about as I go into today!
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Welcome, Hampstonian!

It sounds as if you will have plenty to contribute to our discussions here, which is great.

If you haven't already done so, please take the time to read the Ship's 10 Commandments and board posting guidelines to ensure everything stays shipshape.

I'm not sure where this is written down, but we also have a four-line limit on signatures, and yours currently exceeds this. You can solve this by using the board's UBB code to put your links behind text (like this). There is a practice thread for this kind of thing on the Styx board. If you need any help, please PM one of the hosts - and welcome once again!

Eutychus
Purgatory Host
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
That's a crackimg first post.
 

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Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I'm not sure where this is written down, but we also have a four-line limit on signatures, and yours currently exceeds this.

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Signature:
Signatures appear at the bottom of your posts. You can use UBB code in your signature, but not HTML. Please limit your signature to no more than four lines. Long signatures make the Baby Jesus cry. Images are OFF.

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Posted by Hampstonian (# 17912) on :
 
Thank you very much, guys, for your kind welcome and advice on UBB, which is much appreciated. I look forward to reading and contributing to your interesting discussions. Thanks again, Muhammad
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Hampstonian


Welcome! You certainly have a very distinctive experience and it'll be interesting to hear more about it as time goes by.

As the default religious institution in England the CofE has to work with a lot of paradoxes, and several of them are implied in your post. Fascinating.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I'm intrigued by your experience of Lambeth. I don't want to press you too closely on it though for fear of litigation!



I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the mechanisms around the top-level institutional dimension were murky. That said, I've always been a big fan of Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury - he came across a genuine and humble bloke.

These guys are paid reasonably well, but not on a level with that of CEOs in industry or officials in government and so on ... so I'm not sure what opportunities there would be for financial aggrandisment - but I suppose it's all relative.

I think the Archbishop of Canterbury's salary was £67,790 back in 2008 - according to The Sun - and there were the benefits of Lambeth Palace and a chauffeur driven car as well as a generous final pension package.

I'd imagine there's a fair bit of bureaucracy and muddle but I don't quite see these guys as renaissance-style Medici's sat on fat fortunes.

The US-style televangelists types are a heck of a lot worse.

That doesn't mean that there isn't room for rationalisation and reform.

It's an obvious point, but anyone's experience of the CofE, whether as a participant or an 'outsider' is going to vary according to where one finds itself ... the experience in a rural parish in the Chilterns, for instance, is going to be a heck of a lot different to that of a largely Afro-Caribbean parish in inner-city London.
 

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Posted by Hampstonian (# 17912) on :
 
Thanks, guys. You're all very kind. Please excuse delays in my responses, with workload, etc.

My engagement with going to a local Anglican church has been part of slowly healing a very painful and unexpected engagement with CofE ecclesiastical politics, which I unwittingly stumbled into through inter-religious work. Shenanigans I could never have imagined - Florentine politics, financial fraud, bullying, career-destroying smear and exploitation...just staggering...

Inevitably, we tend to see things through the prism of our own heritage and experience, and personal outlook. I'm naturally rather straight-talking, crude and rude with laddish anger management issues, and I never learned to speak Anglican, with its mellifluous subtlety and fine nuances. This language is also the lingua franca of interfaith dialogical work in the UK, which political speak I am finding most difficult to square with a Christ-ian commitment to truth-speaking and justice.

I therefore recognise my personal limitations and total lack of fitness to engage what appears to me the very worldly game of religious/inter-religious politics. I am frequently told about "realpolitik" and the need to find "the Common Good" through a process of fudging and manoeuvring and necessary not-always-meaning-what-you-say, even the period white lie - what I am told is called "The Anglican Way". Apparently.

I struggle to understand this, and struggle to see the presence of Christ in this, when I witness Anglican interfaith leaders and Lambeth Palace bureaucrats going on five star jollies to meet with Gulf princes and senior Muslim clerics, and in their nice conferences with these powerful and rather ugly Muslim leaders turn a blind eye to the iniquity of Christian persecution in the Muslim world, and collude with the abuses by Islamists of other Muslims (women, sectarian Muslim minorities).

I said a few rude things in broadcast about "the Church of Pontius Pilate", so I'm hardly flavour of the month with that CofE establishment. I will try and behave while I'm on here...and curb my temper...but these things do get me rather cross...mea culpa, etc.

In the idolatrous aspiration for the worldly power of religious leaders and brutal political Islam, I see my Muslim co-religionists having lost all monotheistic fear of the sovereignty of the One God. This religionism they have built is to my mind pure idolatry and God will judge them for the violence with which they have pursued power for themselves.

Today, I just got back from supporting a peer friend in relation to a private members Bill she is advancing in respect of the power abuses by so-called shari'a courts in the UK.

It was personally disappointing to me to see this replicated in sister traditions, where the context of a declining liberal Anglican congregation, a clergyman looking for relevance and meaning in his work by finding places to feel important, and the constant discourse about "faith in the public square" - all this has colluded in the accelerated post 9/11 phenomenon of unelected religious leaders seeking unelected political influence for themselves an increasing enmeshment with political power (quite often these days, our clergyman needs an interfaith guy in a turban alongside him to give him credibility).

Anyhow, I am ignorant, probably don't know what I'm spouting on about, and am trying to understand these issues. As an academic, I'm a medievalist in Islamic Studies and have sparse to no knowledge of modern Christian theology, but spent the summer reading everything Bonhoeffer I could lay my hands on, and am still confused and struggling with these questions. Joining this message board is part of searching for some healthy debate and ways forward with answers. Cheers.
 

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Posted by Hampstonian (# 17912) on :
 
PS. Just clarify, I think Rowan is a good and godly guy (I don't know much about Justin), so none of the critique about Lambeth Palace pertains to him personally.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Well, I'm not an Anglican, but I do have some experience of interacting with the top of church hierarchies and with interfaith initiatives.

My experience of these has a lot to do with why I prefer being involved at a grassroots level. I'm realistic enough to realise that national religious institutions fulfil important functions in terms of representativity and so on - I could not do what I do locally were it not for a national body - but the kind of people that often gravitate to senior management positions in them often don't seem to be qualified in terms of godliness for the post.

I'd like to think that's because a lot of the godlier people have eschewed positions of power in favour of servanthood

This observation also applies to the muslim cleric I work the most closely with, who seems to do a lot of good on the ground but who is despised by the relevant religious institution in my country, set up at the behest of the state.

At the end of the day God is not interested in our job titles but with what we do with the sphere of responsibility we were entrusted with, whether great or small in the eyes of the world.
 

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Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :
 
Great post Eutychus. Can I print out the last paragraph?
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Attribution is always nice, but feel free

[ETA alternatively, print out 2 Cor 10:12-17. I think the apostle Paul got there before me...]

[ 05. December 2013, 08:39: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
/authority tangent

Spiritual abuse is, regrettably, commonplace. Like all abuses of power.

There is such a thing as lust for power, and I guess we can see it at work (wolves amongst sheep) in lots of places and all faiths, in places of work and communal recreation, in families.

Anyone who has ever encountered it, been some kind of a victim someone else's lust for power, is made generally less trusting, less confident about membership and joining. At least for a while.

I've been on the receiving end myself, which probably puts me in the same boat as most of our members. And have also held positions of power and influence, so I know the temptations. Always tried my very best to resist them; but only others can judge how well we do that. It's easy to be deluded about how fair we are.

I like the kicker line in the story of David and Nathan in 2 Samuel 12 v7. "You are the man!" So used to power, David did not even recognise clearly his own abuse of it.

When we pray "lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil", we pray as both potential or actual abusers of power, and potential or actual victims of it. If we are wise, we do. Very few of us have no power and influence at all, and very few have not felt the bite of others on our lives.

/end authority tangent
 

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Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
Elbowing for power can't be done with love in our hearts. It's been endemic in every organisation I've encountered, including all denominations of church. Interestingly, I knew someone who seemed to be trying to gain recognition through servanthood, waiting on people hand and foot, and that didn't come across with love either.

I wonder whether it must be the case that those who have status in the world are the least in the kingdom of God, as they will inevitably conform to the power structure they find themselves a part of? If only 'us and them' were a thing of the past, and we really could work side by side in service to God with generous love, and tie in our elbows.
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
The problem with thinking only in those terms is that you end up despising all authority structures and leading figures.

This is tempting, but as I pointed out above, I've come to think that authority structures are a necessary evil. Or to put it in a more nuanced fashion, social organisations are fallen entities; the desire for organisation reflects the image of God, but organisations are corrupted by evil.

In addition, in today's world I think even the most independent-minded or servant-hearted of us are usually dependent on the existence of these authority structures (be they churches, governments, or whatever) to enjoy the luxury of engaging in pursuits the way we want to.

Put another way again, it takes all sorts. After all, somebody needs those official spokespersons and bureaucrats to sign authorisations. Maybe God has all the pompous power-hungry Pharisees tied up in these time-wasting management posts so they can't do any greater damage elsewhere...

[ 05. December 2013, 09:12: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
 

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Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
The problem with thinking only in those terms is that you end up despising all authority structures and leading figures.

This is tempting, but as I pointed out above, I've come to think that authority structures are a necessary evil. Or to put it in a more nuanced fashion, social organisations are fallen entities; the desire for organisation reflects the image of God, but organisations are corrupted by evil.

In addition, in today's world I think even the most independent-minded or servant-hearted of us are usually dependent on the existence of these authority structures (be they churches, governments, or whatever) to enjoy the luxury of engaging in pursuits the way we want to.

Put another way again, it takes all sorts. After all, somebody needs those official spokespersons and bureaucrats to sign authorisations. Maybe God has all the pompous power-hungry Pharisees tied up in these time-wasting management posts so they can't do any greater damage elsewhere...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
A lot of common sense posted here.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
No, Jade, I don't consider that members of 'established churches' aren't real born again Christians. Clearly many are, and many of my Christian 'heroes' like JI Packer and CS Lewis are/were Anglicans. The point is rather that having an established church confuses the issue - as per the bishop who told Wesley that his preaching wasn't needed because England had been a 'Christian country' for centuries. Wesley's response, looking at the decidedly irreligious England of that time, could fairly be paraphrased as 'you must be joking'. I said what I meant, you've drawn a consequence I didn't and wouldn't.

You still aren't dealing with the key point of whether 'established churches' 'Christian countries' etc are a legitimate extension of the NT teaching, or whether all that kind of thing is an error. I just caught your comment and am unlikely to be posting in this thread again. If you want to carry on having a go at me take up the invite to look at my blog.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I didn’t get the computer genius version of Asperger.

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If you find it necessary to share things of a personal nature then remember you have a large audience looking in

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quote:

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Please do not wander off into unrelated issues

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
It's not ideal but it's not a sin as such I wouldn't have thought? It doesn't harm anyone. There may not be any Biblical warrant but there's no Biblical prohibition.

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Originally posted by ken:

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
It's not ideal but it's not a sin as such I wouldn't have thought? It doesn't harm anyone. There may not be any Biblical warrant but there's no Biblical prohibition.

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It has certainly harmed many in the past. If it doesn't nowadays that's probably because it has mostly slowly faded away leaving little but some pretty ceremonies and an odd set of by-laws.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
... It'd be like saying that because the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa supported apartheid then a Dutch Reformed Christian in the Netherlands must somehow be implicated ...

This is what I'm objecting to ... it's a kind of pietistic guilt-by-association approach that many evangelicals - of whatever stripe - all to easily indulge in. Why? Because it makes them feel better.
...

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've come to think that authority structures are a necessary evil. Or to put it in a more nuanced fashion, social organisations are fallen entities; the desire for organisation reflects the image of God, but organisations are corrupted by evil.

In addition, in today's world I think even the most independent-minded or servant-hearted of us are usually dependent on the existence of these authority structures (be they churches, governments, or whatever) to enjoy the luxury of engaging in pursuits the way we want to.

Put another way again, it takes all sorts. After all, somebody needs those official spokespersons and bureaucrats to sign authorisations. Maybe God has all the pompous power-hungry Pharisees tied up in these time-wasting management posts so they can't do any greater damage elsewhere...

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I've tried mostly to keep out of this part of the discussion because I already know that most folk here are committed to ecclesiastical hierarchies, and I don't think there's much point in arguing about this any more.

But there's a certain irony, surely, in the notion that although power corrupts (or simply indulges questionable behaviour in) church leaders, we must maintain the structures as they are, because otherwise there would be no church. It's almost as if some must be condemned in order for others to be saved. It's like a weird Judas thing. Or maybe it's more like the Divine Right of Kings, where the appalling behaviour of monarchs must be tolerated even though in the long run their behaviour puts the monarchy itself, the nation and religion at risk.

The response will be that this is just the way things are and must be, and that jumped-up little people with different ideas will never really beat the system; the system will always reabsorb them sooner or later. Maybe so. In which case, the sensible ordinary person keeps quiet, puts their name down on a church rota and stops thinking about hierarchies, unless it's their special calling to help maintain them.

I'm reminded of that song 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'!
 

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Posted by Garasu (# 17152) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've come to think that authority structures are a necessary evil. Or to put it in a more nuanced fashion, social organisations are fallen entities; the desire for organisation reflects the image of God, but organisations are corrupted by evil.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


All you get when you get rid of one heirarchy is replace it with another. Fine, if that's what you want to do. But don't go complaining when that one turns out not to perfect either.

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I included this very thought I my post, Gamaliel. I even said that it might be correct, that perhaps there's no way out of 'the system'. I'm not sure how this makes me out to be a champion of 'the perfect church'! I think I just appreciate people who want to tackle some of the difficulties and contradictions, even if there's no ultimate solution this side of heaven.

Should I ever start a church plant and have problems, I promise that I won't ever come complaining to you! That would probably make me feel even worse!

 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
BTW, the 'realist' in me feels that the main problem with any groups breaking away from the CofE is that once the big donations stop they end up with no money. You can't do institutional church very well with no money.

The 'realist' in me also suspects that, relatively speaking, the CofE is often the best option for an elderly person simply because the CofE has enough money to be able to keep its local churches open when others would have to close (and there isn't always a suitable alternative nearby). It's not always the case, but the stats suggest that there's some truth in this observation.

The 'realist' in me is one of the reasons why I'm contemplating 'joining' the CofE at all, certainly in the very long term. I could well be one of the names on that rota, trying not to think about structures!
 

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Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :
 
I don’t know which part of the CofE you are living with but there are no big donations form anybody in my CofE church, the only money we have comes from the people in the church itself.
The CofE gave us the building, but to be quite honest it costs us an arm and a leg to keep going.
It provides the vicar but we have to pay for them, in our parish share over £2000 a month before we pay our other bills.
So there would be no point any one joining us thinking it will save them money as we need to congregations contribution or we will not be able to keep open.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Another one chiming in to ask what large donations in the CofE?

This weekend is when the local church holds its big fundraising event trying to raise funds for both other charities and to rebuild the temporary church hall, put up over a century ago to house the church community when the current building was built.

CofE congregations have to find the money within themselves to pay:

• the Parish Share - the cost of the ministers, their training and pensions and the support structures at the Diocese,
• clergy expenses - journeys to visit parishioners, attend meetings, other work costs;
• the running costs of the church buildings - heating, lighting,
• the costs of services - paying the organist, music, copyright licences, service books and
• keeping the Grade II* listed building in good condition. Currently for the local church that includes replacing the lead stolen from the roof, planning to replace the plastic stone blocks used as repairs to stonework in the 1970s and a number of other repairs that are due according to the quinquennial report.

quote:

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Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
I don’t know which part of the CofE you are living with but there are no big donations form anybody in my CofE church, the only money we have comes from the people in the church itself.
The CofE gave us the building, but to be quite honest it costs us an arm and a leg to keep going.
It provides the vicar but we have to pay for them, in our parish share over £2000 a month before we pay our other bills.
So there would be no point any one joining us thinking it will save them money as we need to congregations contribution or we will not be able to keep open.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:

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Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
I don’t know which part of the CofE you are living with but there are no big donations form anybody in my CofE church, the only money we have comes from the people in the church itself.
The CofE gave us the building, but to be quite honest it costs us an arm and a leg to keep going.
It provides the vicar but we have to pay for them, in our parish share over £2000 a month before we pay our other bills.
So there would be no point any one joining us thinking it will save them money as we need to congregations contribution or we will not be able to keep open.

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Thing is, £2000 a month doesn't cover the cost of your Vicar, not by a long shot (assuming they're full time). It might cover their basic stipend, but it won't cover the cost of maintaining the Vicarage, the cost of clergy pensions et al. Nor will it provide any contribution to the support your Vicar may or may not get in terms of training, retreats, advice at the deanery or diocesan level and so on. To give you an idea, I'm treasurer for the local Church of Scotland, and we've been advised that the real cost of employing our minister is something in excess of £40 000, of which we contribute about £18 000. The CofE does redistribute funds from wealthy to less well off parishes quite extensively, but it also makes up some of the gap from central funds. A lot less than it used to, but still some.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Another one chiming in to ask what large donations in the CofE?

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There are some, though. During the interval last night at a concert in the parish church here, the Vicar murmured to me "rather a good gift day this year, 90k ... about 50% up on last year."

I hope I succeeded in conveying a mild distaste for mentioning sums of money.
 

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Posted by Arethosemyfeet (# 17047) on :
 

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
No, so called "wealthy" parishes do not over pay their Parish Share, they get charged a disproportionately larger Parish Share to allow the Diocese to support parishes that can't pay their Parish Share. Which makes those churches who refuse to pay their Parish Share or not pay it in full less than helpful.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
I've lived in a parish that couldn't afford it's parish share (it is a strong suggestion in the Church of England, not compulsory as in the Church of Scotland), and the cost of our shared Vicar were met centrally. Some of that will have come from wealthy parishes that overpaid their share, but some will have come from the funds of the diocese and church commissioners. No, there is no earmark "here's some money to pay your heating bill", but when an impoverished parish (congregation ~20 in a ward high on the IMD list) doesn't pay its parish share it doesn't lose access to either Priest or Bishop. The local Baptist church here can only call a minister if they are sure they can provide the funds to support them in the long term or that they can be self-supporting. As a consequence they haven't called a minister for several years. That makes a big difference to what the church does and how it operates.

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there are Diocese who say 'don't pay share don't get a vicar'. or other sanctions. if they don't pay their share it is not paid by the church commissioners but by other parishes who do pay their's. This is putting some diocese in tricky financial positions
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@SvitlanaV2 - ok, fair calls ... I s'pose you were caught in the cross-fire when I was venting my spleen - more at Stephen Langton than anyone else - at the suggestion that all would be rosy if everyone left unbiblical structures like the CofE in favour of apparently more biblical structures such as those he fondly imagines to be found in his own church or outside of the Establishment sector.

Don't get me wrong, I've been happily involved with a Baptist church in the past and have a lot of time for the non-conformist way of doing things - I'm not saying that the CofE is 'right' and the URCs, Methodists, Baptists and so on are 'wrong' - far from it.

All I'm saying is that the problems don't immediately go away if you go independent or if you were able to disentangle the CofE from the apparatus of the state. Whether that is good, bad or indifferent is a different issue.

As far as lay involvement goes, well, I think the posts we've just had from Arethosemyfeet and Curiosity Killed indicate that lay movers-and-shakers and getting-involved-ers in the CofE have their work cut out on a local level - buildings, parish share, fundraising etc etc etc .

I wouldn't want to make invidious comparisons between the amount of work involved in any of that between your average CofE parish and your average Baptist, Methodist or URC congregation - comparisons are onerous. What you gain on the roundabouts you lose on the swings and vice-versa.

Jengie Jon might be right that non-conformist churches have all sorts of headaches when it comes to the Charity Commission and English Heritage etc but I know Anglican parishes which have also had loads of issues in those directions too. The issues might be different but there are still obstacles and hurdles.

Non-conformist churches simply have a different set of obstacles and hurdles. The CofE will have some headaches that non-conformists don't have and vice-versa.

It's all a case of six and two-threes as they say in Yorkshire.

I don't carry a candle for Establishment, for heirarchy or the status quo ... I'm not particularly happy in my parish here ... I'm no more a card-carrier for the CofE than I am for the Baptists, say, the Methodists or anyone else. They've all got their strengths and weaknesses. On a personal level I've got friends/contacts across the entire spectrum from RCs and Orthodox to the community and 'house-churches'.

If I were to remain CofE it wouldn't be because some central body is going to come and bankroll things or because I can escape involvement with committees and conferences and all that malarkey but because I prefer a more liturgical and sacramental approach to things these days.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Zacchaeus and Curiosity Killed the Cat

You misunderstood my earlier post. I didn't say that the CofE benefits from big donations.

What I said was that breakaway groups have benefitted from big donations. I.e., in the early days, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, etc. were able to build churches and theological colleges due to donations from wealthy supporters. However, donations to maintain these buildings were usually much rarer, and once the number of such supporters declined or lost interest, it was very difficult to keep on a level footing.

Most Nonconformist churches, and also the 'new' churches of various types, are much more vulnerable to changing local financial circumstances than CofE congregations are. If the local congregation can't afford to maintain its building by its own efforts, and doesn't have the skills to drum up funds by other means, then it will usually be left to die. There's no sentimentality.

Methodist circuits may offer advice, but they don't carry failing churches. Smallish Methodist congregations that survive do so because they hire out their building and raise funds that way. From a purely financial point of view, local churches need wealthy members rather than poor ones. Indeed, the cynic in me feels that Methodist churches need good tenants more than they need members. At least the URC and Baptist churches can do without a minister if necessary (although this hastens church decline), but not all denominational structures allow churches to cut back to the bone.

According to Robin Gill's book 'The Empty Church Revisited', the CofE is much more reluctant to close churches, and will provide subsidies if necessary. CofE clergy sometimes talk about theirs being the only mainstream church left in a run-down neighbourhood. Yes, I know the situation is different from parish to parish, and that many CofE churches have been closed. But I'm making a comparison here, based on my own experiences as well as recorded examples.
 

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Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :
 
The point is though that when the CofE subsidise it is usually from the parish share, from other churchgoers in better off churches, rather than from some sort of central pot.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
The URC share ministerial costs in a similar way; but the costs of buildings are largely up to the local congregations.

So not much difference there, then.
 

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Posted by Francophile (# 17838) on :
 
Could you not all start sharing your buildings? There are enough hours on a Sunday for you all to get a go, if you started at, say, 8am and carried on until 9pm.

Something like this:-
8am Breaking of Bread (Brethren)
9am Morning Prayer (C of E)
10am Mass (RCC)
11am Matins/Holy Communion (C of E)
12noon Baptist morning service (a bit longer, with brilliant sermon)
2pm URC (also quite long, good hymns!)
4pm Methodists (if they can get hold of a preacher)
6pm Evensong (C of E)
7pm Joint Baptist/URC/Methodist Evening Service
8pm Quaker Meeting

Costs could be shared. Only one advert per week needed in the local rag.

An issue would be clearing the church quickly enough between services. Like in the old days of the continuous programme at the cinema, worshippers might find themselves watching the film more than once.

[ 07. December 2013, 16:17: Message edited by: Francophile ]
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
That would never work - Baptists have to have Sunday Lunch on the table by 1.30 pm at the latest, it's in their Constitution.

Their "brilliant sermon" would be drowned out by tummy rumbles.
 

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Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :
 
Sadly it wouldn't work in our churches either - small villages and no other denominations around, unless you want to start a new one so that we can share?
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Where there are teams of CofE churches, services are timed so that the one minster can get around them all, so 8am, 9am, 10am, 11am, 3pm and 6pm as a pattern in some joint parishes is not unknown. Here it's 8am, 9:20am, 11:10am, 6pm - with 4pm evening services occasionally. Setting times like that doesn't allow for circuits of ministry.

You'd also need to allow for reordering the church between the services for different styles of services - that can take a while too.

But there are churches that do share with another congregation. The Greek Orthodox church used to meet in St Michael's, Sunderland, from about midday. That's the church that is now the Minster.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
When the CofE subsidise it is usually from the parish share, from other churchgoers in better off churches, rather than from some sort of central pot.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

It may be biblical, but of course it requires that the institution has enough of an income to be able to support weaker congregations. The CofE is probably the only denomination in England to have sufficient numbers of well-heeled congregations to be able to pursue this system effectively.

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You're correct, of course. I was just commenting on the artificial distinction between "new testament" and "established" churches made earlier in the thread.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I wouldn't rely on the CofE being there either.

All the dioceses are having discussions on how to reduce the number of clergy employed further to cut costs and to deal with the reducing numbers of clergy to employ. We have a disproportionate number of clergy coming up to retirement now - it's something like 40%. That's caused by the policy of ordaining mature candidates through the last few decades so they will be retiring at the same time as the last time we were ordaining young clergy in the 80s.

To meet this need there are consultation documents on how to involve the laity more to keep the churches running.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
There you are, SvitlanaV2, stick around with the CofE and sooner or later a consultation document will come round asking for greater lay involvement in order to keep the show on the road. At that point your dreams will have come true ...

And you can be involved with the committee that meets to decide how to dispose of the last remaining church building in your area ...
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Curiosity killed....

Put like that, it sounds as if the main reason for getting the laity involved is to cover for the lack of clergy. Nothing especially CofE about that, admittedly. On a positive note, I'm sure many laypeople have benefited from the encouragement.

Gamaliel

Redundant Methodist churches are generally flogged off to the highest bidder regardless of any 'consultations'. I understand that the CofE has a broader range of considerations, but in any one sub/urban setting I can't imagine that more than two or three options would be realistic.

I must say, I know of quite a few former Nonconformist churches that are used for other things, but CofE ones seem much rarer. In my city at least, they appear more likely to be demolished. Are CofE churches ever converted into mosques or gurdwaras?
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
I can think of a number of Orthodox churches in London that use old CofE buildings. I can also think of several concert / community halls in London and elsewhere that are old CofE churches, and there's a house near here that is a converted church.

I think that I have heard somewhere that the CofE is not allowed legally to sell churches to non-Christian faith groups.

Personally, I think this level of involvement of the laity is assuming a pool of voluntary labour that if it exists now isn't going to for much longer - those retired and healthy with spare money, which with retirement ages will be in work too. The stay-at-home wives have been gone for a while. And too many of us are being expected to run the church and be salt and light where we work - to provide money for the charitable giving that funds the work. It's a recipe for burning out the laity.

[ 08. December 2013, 16:12: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
In other parts of the country I've seen CofE churches that have become restaurants, been split into flats, etc. But in towns and cities of the West Midlands the CofE is at disadvantage if it refuses to sell church buildings to be used for non-Christian worship.

Church decline obviously creates problems for lay involvement as well as reducing the numbers of clergy. I have my own experience of that! I suppose I just feel that as we see the troubling future ahead of us we should be thinking about how to deal with that now. To me, this involves having an informed laity. Otherwise, what hope is there?

At my former church a few of the old folk used to say (but not to me) that they didn't really care about the future of the church so long as it was there to bury them. The people who passed these comments on to me were always very indignant about them. But perhaps the general sentiment is more widespread that we thought. Accepting this will in itself require readjustment. Maybe there needs to be a survey of how ordinary CofE churchgoers see the future of their own church and of the wider denomination. That would be very interesting.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Yes, I agree with that SvitlanaV2. I also agree with Curiosity Killed about the prospect of laity burn-out.

Our vicar's a good bloke but it doesn't seem to occur to him that people have lives and other things to do that don't revolve around church ...

I suspect there will be increasing levels of lay involvement or 'informed knowledge' as you put it of the way things are run in the CofE. That's bound to happen and circumstances will dictate that.

I was being facetious, of course, by suggesting that you hang around because sooner or later you'll get the kind of 'lay knowledge' that you've been posting about - but I think that it will happen in time.

I don't see the current set-up within the CofE as at all nefarious though. If people want to know about the internal mechanisms and processes and so on then they can find out. Most people have better things to do with their time ...


 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I agree with that SvitlanaV2. I also agree with Curiosity Killed about the prospect of laity burn-out.

[...]

I suspect there will be increasing levels of lay involvement or 'informed knowledge' as you put it of the way things are run in the CofE. That's bound to happen and circumstances will dictate that.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

Redundant Methodist churches are generally flogged off to the highest bidder regardless of any 'consultations'. I understand that the CofE has a broader range of considerations, but in any one sub/urban setting I can't imagine that more than two or three options would be realistic.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I think I probably speak as someone who's burned-out, but who still feels that lay involvement is important - after all, lay burn-out is caused by having too few involved laypeople. But simply drafting in laypeople to replace the gaps left by non-existent or overworked clergy isn't the answer. What's the theology behind it? It doesn't exactly sound empowering for the laity. Some people will just end up feeling used rather than empowered. But as I said, I'm sure some will be encouraged by the opportunities it provides. Perhaps it'll lead to new ways of thinking in some quarters.

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'What's the theology behind it?' is exactly the right question, I'd say. If the idea is to provide with lay people precisely what has, in the past, been provided by full-time clergy, then that's not going to work IMO. People will get burned out.

I think churches and denominations in this position need to have a more wide-ranging conversation about what the church should provide, in terms of the actual services and all the rest-of-the-week stuff that clergy (used to?) do.

From the point of view of the non-clergy, I think the mindset of being provided for has to disappear completely. If people (people generally, not specifically meaning anyone here) consider their church to be providing something for them, then they need to pay a reasonable rate for that service; while if people have a more community-minded view of what church is, then they need to think about how they can contribute to that community (prayer, time, money, expertise etc.).

On the dwindling, ageing congregations thing - maybe denominations need to more strongly encourage 'transfers', whereby a group of people from a thriving congregation get involved in the struggling congregation for a while, helping them with whatever they need. I know there are issues - e.g. it feeling like a takeover - but it seems like one way of keeping a viable congregation in a community (where the people aren't willing to try something more radically cost-cutting like meeting without clergy in a home, pub, cafe etc.).
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
I think the idea of the CofE as some kind of spiritual NHS providing services such as 'hatched, matched, despatched' is prevalent to a certain extent, but not as strong as it once was.

Our vicar caused a bit of a stir when he refused to visit old ladies and the house-bound with communion. Instead, he set up a mid-week Coffee & Communion service which is well attended by the elderly and infirm. It relies heavily on volunteers to drive, collect, fetch and carry, serve the tea etc ...

So something he initiated partly to save himself time has, arguably, ended up causing a lot of work and effort for other people ... although the initiative is regarded as a success and I would concede that it is, overall.

Incidentally, he will now take communion individually to elderly people's homes on request as he seems to have realised that this is what is expected ...

His reservations about the practice are probably because he thinks it's too 'catholic' ... he's very low-church. In the same way he has plain candles for the Advent candles rather than the colour-coded ones that represent Mary and so on. His rationale for this is that the colour-coding isn't in the Bible ...



I keep wanting to point out that Advent candles aren't in the Bible either if he wants to be that anal and literal about it ...

You'll appreciate that I don't have any issue with coloured Advent candles whatsoever. Bring them on ...

I s'pose it all boils down to expectations. People of a certain generation expect the vicar to bob around for tea and to take them communion. Fair enough.
 

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Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I s'pose it all boils down to expectations. People of a certain generation expect the vicar to bob around for tea and to take them communion. Fair enough.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
So something he initiated partly to save himself time has, arguably, ended up causing a lot of work and effort for other people ... although the initiative is regarded as a success and I would concede that it is, overall.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

I s'pose it all boils down to expectations. People of a certain generation expect the vicar to bob around for tea and to take them communion. Fair enough.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
You say fair enough, but who's going to pay for the vicar to do this?

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I hope you don't see this as picking on you - but I think that at least some people would feel that this is why they have a vicar to start with, and as per my previous post I think something is lost when the vicar moves to a more 'executive' role and visitations are carried out by members of the congregation. Which isn't to say that both shouldn't happen.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Indeed, both/and rather than either/or ...

Incidentally, my experience of house-churchy set-ups has been that leaders in those settings were often very good at visiting elderly and infirm members of their congregations and so on ... but the mileage varied.

I know Anglican churches where the vicar regularly visits house-bound or elderly people as well as and alongside a small team of pastoral support people ... so it's not a case of clergy and no-one else but both/and rather than either/or ...

I've probably said this to SCK before, but 'clerical'-led churches often look a lot less clerical/leader-led from the inside rather than the outside.

I can think of several new-church/Free Church settings I know of where things are a heck of a lot more 'top-down' than they are in more avowedly 'clerical' set-ups.

The mileage varies across the spectrum, of course. Just because a bloke or a woman wears a dog-collar or cassock it doesn't mean that they are any more or any less involved pastorally than church leaders who wear suits and ties, jeans and T-shirts or those checked Hawaiian style shirts that appear to be de-rigeur in some quarters.

There are probably as many layers and aspects to all this as there are church-leaders and clergy-people of all stripes and types.
 

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Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :
 
Just for the record, Baxter was not into visiting members, housebound or otherwise.

He was into having members as family visit him or another catechist at regular intervals and basically go through a catechism with them as a family group.

Sometimes it really is worth reading the original, oh and two thirds of the book is bewailing the current state of the clergy at the time.

Jengie

[ 09. December 2013, 18:22: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
Who is saying that I haven't read the original, Jengie Jon?

What has Chris Stiles or myself written that suggests otherwise? Unless it's Chris's use of the term 'parishioners' rather than members.

And how do you know that the parishioners I've been talking about who expect visits from the vicar wouldn't also regard themselves as 'members'?


 

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Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :
 
Well there is a suggestion that Baxter is about visiting parishioners or members especially the housebound and the infirm. He clearly isn't if you have read him.

Jengie

[ 09. December 2013, 18:27: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Our PP (where I play) is only house-for-duty part time - and the parish has to pay all his expenses, the diocese pays nothing AND we pay a parish share.

Anyway, he's of the old school and visits on his work days, as well as putting his head round the door of the school, and there are regular communion services in the retirement homes in the parish.

The only problem we have is that he's been told he should deal with all the parish admin, not anyone else, and he's absolutely useless at at: non-tech to the utmost (doesn't own any kind of computer, can't type, etc) he also seems incapable of keeping paperwork in any kind of order.

We're just completing a cunning move to get around this problem at the moment - but till all the ducks are in a row we'll still have nightmares about a wedding party turning up all unexpected

Meanwhile, his visiting is much appreciated and has resulted in people who only ever used to appear at Christmas coming more frequently.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
In fact, I'm annoyed at this ...



Why is it that Jengie acts as if she's the only person in the entire world to have actually read any Baxter or who knows anything at all about the reformed tradition?



I think Chris was simply alluding to the practice of visiting people - whether members, families, households whatever else - as part of clergy/ministerial duties.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that Baxter catechised these people and this isn't wouldn't necessarily be what contemporary clergy would have in mind but it was the broad practice and principle that Chris and I were alluding to.

Neither of us pretend to be experts on Baxter or Presbyterianism and so on. We were simply alluding to the practice of house-visiting and one-to-one clergy visits for whatever purpose ... whether to visit the house-bound for communion or for catechesis ...

Stroll on ...
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
FFS Jengie, it's no wonder the early Puritans were often called 'Precisians' - because they were so nit-picking.

Baxter was simply used as an example of a cleric who believed in visiting people in their homes. The housebound examples were from current experience and settings.

Nobody said anything about whether Baxter visited the housebound or whether he went to the toilet before he went out nor how many sheets of toilet paper he used to wipe his arse ...

And yes, I am aware that they didn't use toilet paper in those days ...

FFS ...
 

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Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
You say fair enough, but who's going to pay for the vicar to do this?

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I hope you don't see this as picking on you - but I think that at least some people would feel that this is why they have a vicar to start with, and as per my previous post I think something is lost when the vicar moves to a more 'executive' role and visitations are carried out by members of the congregation. Which isn't to say that both shouldn't happen.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Oh yes, I'm sure it's an expectation plenty of people have of their vicar / priest / minister. But IMO it's not a healthy expectation, at least not if only the vicar / priest / minister will do, and if a member of the 'pastoral team' visits then it doesn't really count.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


Whatever church or tradition we're talking about, it seems to me that a lot of the work is done by a small number of people ... the keenies and those who have the time.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

Right now, I'm not going to do anything about people like Jade Constable who expect communion to be presided over by an ordained person; well, except have an interesting, challenging and stimulating exchange with a bunch of other people who love talking about theology!

As for what the harm is of people expecting the minister (and the minister him/herself wanting) to visit and take communion to them, rather than having this done by a pastoral team - in one sense, there's no harm at all. Certainly not in the short term.

I suppose I see the harm being in the portrayal and modelling of what I see as a less-than-accurate picture of the church. For me, the church is a community of people who are absolute equals, albeit people with different gifts, struggles, flaws, motivations and desires. So the idea that only one person or a few people can perform certain tasks just doesn't sit right with me; it doesn't fit with my concept of what the church should be like.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The challenge is that most small groups of Christians eventually lean towards great expansion, influence, recognition and an ever more complex vision of what 'the church' should be doing. This isn't an issue for the likes of the CofE - there's no going back for them. But it should give pause for thought for much newer Christian movements. I don't suppose they do give it much thought, on the whole, barring a few exceptions.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I know it's a different issue but the principle may be related ... but it's clear from the NT that not everyone in the churches back then performed the same functions - 'are all apostles? are all prophets? ...' I Cor. 12:29

And in terms of spiritual gifts - 'do all speak in tongues? do all prophesy? do all work miracles?'

No, they didn't.

So what's the big deal about having a designated person who serves the Eucharist?

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

I love what Neil Cole has written and is doing about this; he's involved in an organisation supporting networks of churches that want to keep those 'small church' distinctive ways, while nevertheless sharing and learning from the experiences of other Christians.

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"adjust the leadership paradigm in order to release healthy movemental influence within an established church context. "

I can hear Gamaliel start to steam already

Seriously though one of the problems with this kind of approach (both Cole and the stuff that Peter Rollins has been involved in), is that it essentially becomes a Christianised form of the mass resistance to mass culture movement du-jour, and ends up appealing to the same constituency (largely monocultural and middle class).

.. and whilst their critique of older church forms as aping previous power structures may be correct to some degree, their own similarities to the structures of their day makes me less able to take them seriously.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
No, I'm not steaming ...

I don't think that anyone who performs a particular role in a church setting or who is ordained a priest or a minister is ontologically different to anyone else ...

I don't see how this follows from anything I've written here.

In the RC Church, of course, there's the idea that ordination is irreversible and somehow effects a lasting change of some kind ... although I'm not sure they'd argue that it effects an ontological change. I'd imagine it'd be related to the 'change' in the consecrated elements - ie. they remain bread and wine but are also the Body and Blood of Christ ...

But I'm not RC so I can't comment with any authority.

As far as the Orthodox go, I know they would strenuously argue against the idea of ontological change ... and once you are defrocked or stop being a priest that's it ... there's no special aura or anything that is meant to remain.

That said, an online Orthodox contact did send me a link once to a story about an ossuary in a Greek monastery where the skulls of those monks who had also been priests were supposedly demarcated by cross-shaped sutures ...

I'm not sure that this would have official sanction as a belief and in my experience of the Orthodox you'd find as many who would roll their eyes at such a story as those who would champion it.

Anyway ... whatever the ins-and-outs of all of that - and such things don't apply in the Anglican settings where I am now (and I'm not particularly happy where I am but that's another issue and nothing to do with Anglicanism particularly) ... I agree with Chris Stiles's point ...

I can see scope for the kind of low-key, experimental type churches that Coles is advocating but like Chris I can't see them appealing to any other demographic than the one that Coles - and presumably South Coast Kevin - represent.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not averse to people trying to be all emergent or 'New Expressions-ish' or whatever else. Indeed not. Just as long as they realise that what they are proposing is different but not necessarily any better or more likely to be more effective in the longer term than whatever else is already on the table.
 

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Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on :
 
Gamaliel

In an earlier post, Curiosity killed.... suggested that in 20-30 years' time all the CofE churches in my vicinity might have closed. Your only comment was that the closures would give me something churchy to get involved in. It was one of your attempts to tease, but I can't see how you can have an effective 'both/and' situation if huge numbers of CofE churches in particular areas are facing closure in the long term, along with reductions in the numbers of clergy.

Should a frail old lady of slender means in 2040 end up with unrealistic pastoral expectations of a church that can barely cope, and that's on the verge of abandoning her community? Ideally not. But if managing decline and retreat is what it means for the CofE to 'adapt to survive' then my generation and younger ought to be prepared for it. Yet there's little sign of any church engagement with this issue, despite Britain's ageing population. This is one subject where developing lay awareness could have real consequences on the ground for ordinary Christians, especially for those who aren't particularly well-off.

As for all churches enjoying different kinds of success, it's probably time to realise that the success that comes from institutional church wealth is gradually coming to an end. Maybe we'll have to see what successes church poverty can come up with.
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
FWIW I think that all of us are going to have to get used to less influence, less resources and declining numbers. Even with some of the lively and growing churches numbers have plateau-ed out and I think we've been seeing that for the last 20 years or so and they've not quite acknowledged it yet.

It's the same in the US with the megachurches.

The only groups to be bucking this trend are ethnic-minority led churches in some inner city areas and there's a heavy metropolitan slant coming into play. I think I read somewhere that 60% of so of all church attendees under the age of 25 live in the Greater London area.

So - teasing aside, and yes I was pulling your leg - we do have a very real problem on our hands and it doesn't pay to be flippant about it as I was being.

I've no idea where you'll be in 2040 but I'm unlikely to be around ... unless I live until I'm 79 which is an age which few males in my family have reached.

On the vexed issue of lay involvement. Yes, I can foresee greater levels of lay involvement in the CofE in future but would suggest that there are already plenty of opportunities for lay people to get involved in things in the CofE if they so wish. It might be involvement in a different way to how involvement works out in Methodism, but it's still involvement.
 

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Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :
 
SvitlanaV2, I think we in the Church of England are going to have to move much more towards a model of the Church as a mutually supportive community, able to draw on specific gifts and resources as it needs them. The 'chaplaincy' role of the clergy will look very different.

At the moment in many places the underlying model has a strong flavour of subscribers to a service (without always, unfortunately, a realistic idea of the cost of that service). Essentially the institutional mindset of the local church is comparable to the bus passenger or the cinema-goer. The 'vicar' tends to be cast in the role of projectionist or driver.

The idea of being participants in a joint enterprise, rather than recipients of a service will be difficult change for us to make. Clergy will find it hard to let go more and more of the direction of local congregations. Congregations will find it hard to adapt to the idea that they are the church, and that when 'the vicar' is there no longer, it does not mean that the church has abandoned the place.

It will also be a new thing for good and for ill that the 'buck stops here' element of the clergy person 'in charge' is likely to become much rarer across the country.
 

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Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Even with some of the lively and growing churches numbers have plateau-ed out and I think we've been seeing that for the last 20 years or so and they've not quite acknowledged it yet.

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The only groups to be bucking this trend are ethnic-minority led churches in some inner city areas and there's a heavy metropolitan slant coming into play. I think I read somewhere that 60% of so of all church attendees under the age of 25 live in the Greater London area.

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Actually, it's these kind of churches which I think raise significant issues for SCK's picture of a church like those described by Viola, Cole and others.
 

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Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
I’m using a bit of rare web access at this time of year to do, hopefully, a bit of clearing of the air. After my first post on this thread I suffered unexpected interruptions to my access for about a week, and came back to find myself being called ‘smug’, and insinuating comments about my failure to come back and defend my post, from people who didn’t seem to be engaging with the issues. I admit I allowed myself to get a bit nettled by this and my response was, I agree, not ideal – but in slight mitigation I don’t think many others would be happy at such a situation.

I’m sorry if I come over as ‘smug’ and ‘patronising’; but I don’t intend that, from my perspective I’m just trying to get things right. I probably have over-reacted a bit from a past when unrecognised Asperger’s had made me cripplingly shy. Can we now put that aspect of things behind us, please?

I pretty much stand by the substance of my original post; that basically the CoE is a very disparate and contradictory organisation, even compared to most other denominations, and that must pose significant problems to coherent ‘lay knowledge’ of the church. Unfortunately the major unifying factor in the CoE is its historical background as England’s national religion ‘established by law’, which is also just about the most questionable aspect of the body in terms of New Testament teaching. I feel I am far from alone in thinking that makes the whole enterprise dubious….

Matters arising; again mainly for clarification ….

Gamaliel, strangely I had noticed that Anabaptists are human and have problems and temptations, often considerable! In some ways that’s my point; if we can have such problems simply in trying to follow the NT, why add the extra unnecessary complications, confusions and temptations of establishment and/or related church-and-state entanglements which are clearly disobedient to the NT teaching? Remember that ‘Christian states’ are a problem to atheists/agnostics and both a problem and a very bad example to those of other religions, especially currently to fundamentalist Islam, not just an internal problem for Christians.

Is Northern Ireland really as simple as ‘2 + 2’? If only! My suggestion that the ‘Christian country’ idea is very relevant is somewhat confirmed by pretty explicit statements from those involved. The relevance of/to Anglicanism lies in firstly that the mainland UK is a formally ‘Protestant’ country due to its established Anglican CoE and slightly different Church of Scotland; as I said, that’s why the Loyalists/Unionists are ‘loyal’ and want to be ‘united’ to us. Secondly our politicians can’t much help NI if they aren’t willing to challenge on the mainland that major idea which also underlies the NI problems – other solutions are just fudge. Just by existing, Anglican establishment is a major part of the NI issue even if most mainland Anglicans are unfortunately unaware or in denial about it.

CS Lewis ‘not an evangelical’ – I don’t think I said he was, and I’m not a rabid ‘fundamentalist’ myself anyway (actually by modern standards nor were most of the original writers of ‘The Fundamentals’!). Lewis clearly did take seriously the Bible and the basic nature of Christianity as a supernatural faith – see for example the title essay of the collection ‘Fernseed and Elephants’. Many who are broadly evangelical admire him. Oh – and he was appalled by the misconduct of ‘Christendom’….

Jade Constable; the relevance of the bishop who criticised Wesley is that he was confused in the way I described, thinking that having a ‘Christian country’ somehow made everybody automatically ‘Christian’ and meant there was no need to preach the gospel to them. I can point to many others now as well as then who suffer such confusion, including some very worrying right-wingers who seek to play the ‘Christian country’ card against their Islamic bêtes-noirs, threatening us with NI-style troubles only ‘Christian’/Muslim rather than Protestant/Catholic.

I agree that disentangling church and state is quite complex – however it’s already been done twice in the UK, in Ireland and Wales, so it can’t be that bad either, surely?

Jade also said that she doesn’t accept the authority of the NT over church structures. If all she means is that the NT is open-ended and we can adopt other practices besides those actually stated in the NT, I’d probably agree. But I’d also say there’s a difference between legitimate extension and deliberate contradiction, and all ‘Christian state’ theories seem to be the latter, with Anglican establishment in theory an extreme case even if the practice these days is rather soggy!
 

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Posted by Forthview (# 12376) on :
 
Actually it has been done at least three times in the UK.The 'slightly different' Church of Scotland is not established,although it is recognised as the 'National' church.The State cannot interfere with the ideas,teachings and administration of the Church of Scotland.'Establishment' is simply not a topic of conversation in that part of the UK which is Scotland.
 

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Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on :
 
Thanks, Forthview. I must admit that I'm not sure of the exact status of the Church of Scotland, whence my use of that phrase 'slightly different'. I did know that it wasn't 'established' in exactly the same sense as the CoE, but it still seems to come within the general idea of a state religion?
 

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Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :
 
@Steven Langton, I'm glad you're back and it's good to 'see' you again.

For the record, I'm not in favour of Establishment. I've made that clear several times already.

Also, I'm not against Anabaptists either. I've made that clear too. I was very happily involved with a Baptist church for 6 years and Baptists are among my favourite brand of non-conformist ...

Incidentally, as Baxter's been mentioned a few times, one of the aspects he cites as a success during his Kidderminster years was the fact that there were no Anabaptists or other sectarians muddying the waters ...

I can certainly see where Baptists are coming from and have a lot of sympathy. All I'm saying is that they've got different strengths and different issues/problems to Anglicans. If we were comparing Baptists with Methodists, say, then there'd be pros and cons on both sides there too.

I'd be interested in hearing more about which bishop it was who had that conversation with Wesley, by the way.

Probably the famous exchange between a bishop and Wesley was the incident with Bishop Butler of Gloucester, 'Sir, the pretending to special revelations and gifts of the Holy Spirit is an horrid thing, a very horrid thing ...'

Wesley wasn't against episcopacy, of course, he even sought some kind of 'ordination'/laying of hands from a visiting Greek Orthodox Bishop (who may have been bogus, the accounts vary) in order to pass on 'apostolic succession' in some way to his lay-preachers ...

Wesley was a pretty complex character.

So was C S Lewis.

All these things are complicated and can't be reduced to a simple formulae.

Like Christendom. It had its good aspects and its bad aspects. The position has always been mixed.

The reality is, that we're entering post-Christendom and how we adapt to that is the real issue, not the rights and wrongs of Establishment which doesn't really impinge on the ordinary guy or girl in the street.
 

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Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :
 

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

The reality is, that we're entering post-Christendom and how we adapt to that is the real issue, not the rights and wrongs of Establishment which doesn't really impinge on the ordinary guy or girl in the street.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
... I love what Neil Cole has written and is doing about this; he's involved in an organisation supporting networks of churches that want to keep those 'small church' distinctive ways, while nevertheless sharing and learning from the experiences of other Christians. His organisation is very non-prescriptive about what joining up entails and it's all very loose - so hopefully enabling the churches involved to retain the non-institutional ethos and set-up that they hold dear.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
One of the pages on that site is entitled 'History' and describes - as evidence of credibility and worth - how CMA had planted 10 churches in Southern California in one year, and since gone on to plant a lot more. I appreciate CMA probably has a different ecclesiology from me. Nevertheless, is Southern California really a place where in the late 1990s, no churches already existed?

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Is there any reason why the benefits of CMA's vision should not be made available and used by churches that already exist, without creating yet more divisions?

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But different 'flavours' of church can reach very different people (setting aside any questions about thinking those lot are doing it so wrongly that I just can't get involved there) so I don't think there's any harm in having churches of many different shapes and sizes.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'd tend to agree with Chris Stiles, but would suggest that all kinds and manner of church expressions are inevitably going to be culturally conditioned.

How can they be otherwise?

I spent six happy years in a Baptist church with a mildly 'emergent' flavour and was fully aware that it tended to appeal to a particular demographic. They were all aware of that too but unclear what to do about it.

It was very much a 'people like us' church, Guardian reading, graduates and professionals with a mildly eco, right-on and 'generous orthodoxy' flavour.

That was fine as far as it went, but it meant that we couldn't possibly relate very well as a church to people/settings that didn't quite map across that.

I remember a conversation with someone there who said that they wanted the services to be 'relevant'.
'Relevant to whom?' I asked. 'Relevant to you? How would what you want here be relevant to an 80 year old working class lady or an 18 year old Afro-Caribbean?'

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'd tend to agree with Chris Stiles, but would suggest that all kinds and manner of church expressions are inevitably going to be culturally conditioned.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:


On the vexed issue of lay involvement. Yes, I can foresee greater levels of lay involvement in the CofE in future but would suggest that there are already plenty of opportunities for lay people to get involved in things in the CofE if they so wish.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
The only groups to be bucking this [downward] trend are ethnic-minority led churches in some inner city areas and there's a heavy metropolitan slant coming into play. I think I read somewhere that 60% of so of all church attendees under the age of 25 live in the Greater London area.

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Actually, it's these kind of churches which I think raise significant issues for SCK's picture of a church like those described by Viola, Cole and others.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I haven't read Cole, but Viola doesn't claim that institutional churches are useless. His problem is with some of the issues raised by institutionalisation - issues that affect both large and small churches, and presumably both growing and declining churches.

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but would also claim that these churches lost something important when they transitioned away from being house churches, which is how many of them started off.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
It's hard for me to take Viola seriously, as his actual data is very vague, and the two studies I saw that tried to actually get figures and talk to the examples he used found that none of those churches were in existence in anything like the same way (or usually at all)

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Starting a house church with the intention of it remaining a house church involves a completely different dynamic to starting a house church with the intention that it grows into a congregational church

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
I think if I'd had the time and energy and set up an after school Messy Play group that would have worked too - because it would have continued working with the children from the pram service and maybe picked up a few more along the way.

But after 3 years of running the pram service, and a whole lot more, the last of those begging for someone else to take it on because I was burning out and knew it, after taking a break to recover I can't find any reasons to go back.

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:
... I spent six happy years in a Baptist church with a mildly 'emergent' flavour and was fully aware that it tended to appeal to a particular demographic. They were all aware of that too but unclear what to do about it.

It was very much a 'people like us' church, Guardian reading, graduates and professionals with a mildly eco, right-on and 'generous orthodoxy' flavour.

That was fine as far as it went, but it meant that we couldn't possibly relate very well as a church to people/settings that didn't quite map across that.

I remember a conversation with someone there who said that they wanted the services to be 'relevant'.
'Relevant to whom?' I asked. 'Relevant to you? How would what you want here be relevant to an 80 year old working class lady or an 18 year old Afro-Caribbean?'

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
BTW, do you have the details for the two studies you mentioned?

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"Alternative types of church are mostly set up in well-heeled places, so they're obviously going to attract fairly well-heeled folk."

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
I'd say continuous 'content creation' that they expect is something that requires the time and resources that the well-heeled folk have, and the group therapy atmosphere appeals to their sensibilities.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

Regarding that figure of 11 million, yes, well! I suppose Viola's including churches that came into existence independently of his influence, and which may therefore not match up with his recommendations on every point. Perhaps he feels he has to acknowledge his forerunners in order to affirm the validity of his own work.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin

So, in one sense, I really don't see that a lot of work is demanded of people. Except of course there's a strong expectation that people will have a lively faith in God such that there'll be something (not from everyone every week, but often) that they can bring which will be of encouragement to others in the church.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
That 11 million figure is the figure for everyone who meets in a house church of any description - as Viola tacitly acknowledges. [...]

... and after many years of banging the drum, Viola himself can only come up with 12 churches that may somewhat follow his model (most of which seem to be in SoCal, surprise!).

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In fact, it's not surprising that the model has limitations (ignoring the geographic element for a bit). What happens when you become too big to be organic? At that point you either become a more 'normal' church - or you divide into groups - and that sort of division is rarely successful because it's very hard to constantly breed leaders who have the same vision, drive and gifts that can sustain such groups.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
It sounds as though he's issued a low-key retraction, of sorts. I doubt that he's aware of every single organic church set-up in the USA and it was certainly unwise of him to confuse the matter with figures without undertaking (or waiting for someone else to undertake) careful research.

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Several years ago I attended a national Methodist workshop on cell church, and the idea is that cells split once they reach a certain size. The British leaders admitted that this was very difficult to achieve, at least in the UK. With Viola's model, every group member is meant to be fully involved rather than focused on one person as a leader, so in theory it shouldn't be a problem for a group to split.

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BTW, I hope you don't mind me asking, but what kind of church are you involved in now? Are you in the CofE?

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Originally posted by Gamaliel:

To be honest, SCK's recipe for Nirvana sounds like a recipe for pietistic subjectivism of the worst kind to me.

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Originally posted by chris stiles:
I've been in a church - my previous on in fact - which structured it's home groups in exactly the same way. At some point they were expected to split if they grew too large. Eventually, the only way they could get it to work was via fairly structured top down control (having started with independent bible studies - they ended up discussing the sermon from the previous week, with questions set by the pastor) - which reduced the 'leading' to 'hosting'. Which meant it was more do-able. Empirically, Viola's model just won't work very well - because it's attempting to do that over a whole church.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
I can see that there was a problem here, but I'm sure Viola would say you weren't entirely following his model! Firstly, you were in small groups that were under the control of a larger 'church'.

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