Kingdom delivery systems

People change denominational allegiance all the time. It isn’t as big a deal as the media sometimes makes out. If any or many among the Anglicans who can accept the full Catholic Catechism decide soon to become part of what are in effect new non-geographical Catholic dioceses, their choice will only be one among many such stories over the years.

Each of our three churches has a Treasurer. Only one was brought up in the Church of England (and I enjoy his rootedness in this expressed when asked to read at a service by always using the Authorised Version and by he gently chiding if too many of the hymns at any Evensong are not the ones which were in use in his school chapel as a boy). One of the others was brought up as a Catholic, and was received into the Church of England a few years ago. The third was an active Methodist until quite recently, indeed a Local Preacher. And of those who have ceased to worship in the parish in my time at least one family now worships at an independent church and another with the Salvation Army.

I discovered just how wide spread this sort of movement was fifteen to twenty years ago when each year I was asked to teach a day on ecumenism for the then diocesan Local Ministry course. I would always begin by asking how many had experience of adult membership or regular childhood worship in another denomination. I never failed to get answers which covered the whole range of the main stream denominations. There was also always at least one example of something less usual (perhaps someone brought up as a Moravian or in an Orthodox church). It appears that any pool of the thirty or so committed active lay Anglicans in Lincolnshire will contain this range of denominational background, and I assume that any similarly sized pool in any other denomination is likely to contain at least one former Anglican as well.

My old colleague the Bishop of Buckingham has a Blog it is often a treat to visit and he has this very simply: ‘I’ve always thought people should serve within the denomination in which they can best be discipled; all denominations are only delivery systems for the Kingdom after all’. I’d want to sell my own brand of Christianity because I value what it has given me and what I believe it can offer others, but I do it knowing full well that selling a particular brand isn’t my primary Christian calling at all.

Canon John Bayley

‘He was a modest man with nothing to be modest about,’ concludes his obituary in yesterday’s Church Times, an affectionate article which catches a flavour of the sort of priesthood which builds up the church.

I lived in John’s parish for the five years before I moved here, and used to meet to say Matins as part of the large group he gathered very early each day. I once made the mistake of beginning to gossip with him about the failings of a member of the Bishop’s Staff, something he quickly (and, I later learnt from others, habitually) deflected by telling me a story of a kindness that priest had exhibited.

He was a Curate here in Grimsby in the mid-1960s and then Vicar of a parish in Gainsborough for five years before serving for twenty nine years (1973-2002) as the parish priest for the area around Lincoln Cathedral, of which he was also an honorary Canon from the age of 36.

The obituary records ‘unobtrusive support to the Cathedral clergy and congregation through thick and thin’ (code for periods of acute trauma in the Cathedral’s life), and it happened to fall to him to preach on the first Sunday when a Dean was present after a long suspension; his sermon attacked nobody, but nor did it allow anyone off the hook of reflecting on his or her own constant need for repentance and reconciliation.

And he was a draftsman and artist of rare skill, so it was a delight that his obituary was illustrated not by a picture of himself (which he would have hated) but by one of his drawings. The exquisite one above is a Jesse Tree from a boss in the Cathedral; David playing his harp is the chief figure emerging from his father's loins, but there are others along the sides. He allowed me to use it in a couple of small diocesan publications which I produced when I was in Lincoln, just one of the things for which I hold him in grateful remembrance.

War Horse

The First World War began with huge optimism, and each reminder of this brings a strange chill in the light of the millions of deaths which were about to follow.

St Nicolas’ has first hand evidence, which I’ve just dug out again preparing to take the service there on Remembrance Sunday. It has detailed drawings prepared in 1913 for a substantial restoration of the church. A letter about the cancellation of the project (from Townsend, the architect, to the Rector) is tucked in with them. It catches the mood in October 1914 just before the full horror of trench warfare was revealed.

I am afraid many good works will have to wait till the war is over. I congratulate you on your son getting a Commission. All this patriotism which has so stirred up Old England is what the German Emperor did not arrange for and I hope it will be his undoing. My brother Alfred’s only son has just got a Commission in a cavalry regiment and is now training on Salisbury Plain.

I have no idea what sort of preparation a cavalry regiment was making that month, whether Alfred Townsend’s son had a horse, or whether he or it survived very long, but a week ago, when we were in London, we watched the dramatic recreation of an early cavalry charge unexpectedly encountering machine guns, and it was chilling.

War Horse, based on Michael Morpurgo’s novel, is at the New London Theatre, and it is well worth looking at http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/warhorse for some clips which show the totally convincing way the Handspring Puppet Company staged the horses; it was one of the most effective pieces of theatre we think we’ve seen with every snort, twist of the head or twitch of the flank looking like that of a live animal.

Barbican and Lord's

Little Venice to St Pancras

Half Term trip

It can be done

The churches in the Louth area are trying to adapt to at least some of the new ways of working which the diocese would want.

They have not made the whole deanery into a single Team Ministry, nor have they designated a single Minster with a small college of priests serving the wider area, but they have made sure that the incumbents outside the Louth Team Ministry all live in the villages closest to the town so they can all meet to pray together every day. They also have one Deanery Office which is where, for instance, Funeral Directors have easy access for making arrangements rather than seeking to track down individual clergy through their answering machines.

And, most significant of all, the clergy share responsibility for specialist areas of community engagement and ministry rather than simply being designated as parish G.Ps each faced with the temptation to minister more to their churches than their parishes. For example, in the Louth Team Ministry itself, the Team Rector is active in the District Council’s Strategic Partnership and a new Team Vicar has a brief which includes the world of education across the deanery.

We know about this in particular because we said farewell to our Curate on Sunday as she goes off to join them. I was able to say, at a single service for the whole parish here, that of all the Curates I have known Sue Allison has been the most thoroughly reflective, determined to think through and then improve upon whatever she has done, and even insisting on a final supervision with me in her final week. There were several people in tears at the service, and I shall miss her as much as them.

She will now give 60% of her time to an ark of villages north and north west of Louth (from Fotherby to North Somercotes), as Priest-in-Charge of what were until quite recently two separate benefices served by two full time priests, although they have both been in vacancy for quite some time now. She will also give 40% of her time to the agricultural sector, and I know she has already made links with the weekly market, the community nurse who is based there, and the ‘rural stress’ support network.

With such a good and likeable priest and a good and necessary plan they may well be on to something in a way we are not yet managing here.