Provisionality, Ministry, and Being
Incompleteness and provisionality
There is something incongruous about this gathering! I’m not trying to insult you. But if you take a look at who is in this chapel at the moment, you will find that there are fourteen layfolk, seven deacons, and one bishop. In other words, this is an ecclesiastical gathering without any presbyters present. It’s worth making that point, because it brings us face to face with another reason for incongruity. We are all on the move. The layfolk will be ordained deacon tomorrow, the deacons will be ordained priest, and at liturgies over which I will preside for the last time before my retirement.
But every single Christian gathering is incongruous, because it is incomplete, and on the move, and therefore provisional. I have worked in many different contexts, from leading a bible study group as a student, through numerous liturgies of various sorts, even to reading prayers in the House of Lords. In every single case, I have never concluded that we had somehow arrived – whatever the fervour of faith, whatever the decisive atmosphere in a particular group that might mark a point of arrival of some kind. The same can be said about my attitude to preaching: of course I was self-conscious when I started in ministry, but I eventually realised that I was always going to be learning the trade, and I still am. And in a sermon at a recent confirmation in Gosport, I suggested that confirmation is about the future, and that may well involve letting go of the past, in the sense of not being enslaved by it. As Barack Obama observes in ‘Dreams of my Father’, ‘the past is never dead and buried – it isn’t even past’; it can only live if we are truly reconciled to it, and that is part of the life of faith. To those, therefore, who want their faith or their ecclesiastical structures neatly and clearly defined, I’m afraid that you have come to the wrong place. In any case, when talking of ordination and what it could lead to in the future, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that there is a future bishop in our midst – and if there is, then you have my heartfelt sympathy.
Moreover, we live in a world that is inherently provisional – and fragile. And that is bound to impact on how we minister the imperative of the gospel. Contrary to the secularist dream that we were all going to end up richer and happier, giving up religious faith in the process, God is very much on the global agenda. That is why people like Richard Dawkins are so worried, and people like Terry Eagleton are trying to engage with that paradox, albeit from the outside. In the economic downturn, we cannot expect our children to be richer than we are, nor that they will take foreign travel for granted, nor that cheap food will be easily available to them. Our engagement with these sorts of questions is going to be far more important than our constant ecclesiastical squabbles about money, gender, sexuality, and legal process. As a Church, we are going to have to learn to travel a lot more lightly, a lot more generously, and a lot more prayerfully.
Ministry and Ordination
When we apply incompleteness and provisionality more specifically to ordained ministry, we have to face some stark facts that are worth pondering. The average age of ordained clergy nationwide is high, and with insufficient recruitment to fill future gaps. We are tackling that issue with vigour and imagination. There were many ways of approaching a discussion in the diocese. In the end we took the simplest: let’s start with what we’ve inherited, and where we’ve got to, and only then look to what we might be like in the future. The inheritance is, in one way, rather easy: bishop, priest, deacon. But we’ve never really sorted out the diaconate, good though it is that some people keep coming forward for that specific ministry: yet churchwardens, readers, musicians, youth workers – all these perform diaconal ministries, but they don’t necessarily want (or need) ordination, perhaps in case they get clericalised. Nor have we sorted out the presbyterate: there are good training schemes, which try to include the bulging bag of expertises that the busy and bossy modern church requires, and some of them even prize a bit of theology quite highly! But with all our talk about styles of leadership, not all presbyters make good leaders, and that goes for stipendiary as well as non-stipendiary – nor should we always expect to ‘take the lead’ in everything, a strange affliction bishops are not unknown to suffer from. And we certainly haven’t sorted out episcopacy either, with all those muddles over how we relate to each other, the ambiguous position of suffragans, and a creeping centralisation that seems to want us all to be the same.
So what we have inherited in theory quickly becomes what we’ve got now in rather messy practice, and I suspect that this is always going to be the case. As far as our diocesan ‘Strategy of Ministry for Mission’ (M4M!) is concerned, we are in midstream right now – a real gift for a new incoming bishop next year, by the way. This is not some new gimmick, but the fruit of the Kairos process, and it is something you all need to be involved in, if you are not already. Looking at it overall, I think there are three important criteria that are going to be crucial, apart from the fact that we can’t do everything, nor can we authorise local free-for-alls that have no wider coherence. One is about releasing stipendiary clergy from administrative burdens, and to do so on a deanery basis. That has already begun to happen, in a diocese whose deanery life is both varied and vigorous. Another is about initiating ministries that go beyond old boundaries, like the work of Adam Court with Portsmouth youth, and the pioneer ministry of Mark Rodel in Somerstown. We cannot create a new strategy that is primarily about propping up things as they are at the moment. That would be about managing decline.
But the third criterion is the most basic of all – baptism. When I used to teach liturgy, ordinands would approach the texts of the early centuries and become noticeably disappointed in those bare ordination rites, where the candidates are identified, and prayed over them with the laying on of hands – only to find themselves really motivated by the elaborate rites of baptism, often with lengthy preparation and formation, and with liturgies that revel in symbolism that is taken from the bathing customs of antiquity. Even though things are obviously different now, you must never forget that you were baptised before you were confirmed, commissioned for ministry, or (now) ordained. We do not want to become a Church in which everyone has to have a special ministry, and become ‘officially involved’ in some way or another, preferably with a piece of paper to prove it. One of the privileges of being Bishop of Portsmouth is to preside at those Saturday evening Cathedral baptism and confirmation services – with that powerful, patristic font standing on the floor, getting in the way (as fonts should do), and drawing together the tensions of historic Anglicanism over sacramental event and ongoing human experience. Whatever patterns of ministry develop in the future, whether ordained or commissioned, the font is where all our thinking, planning and praying needs to start.
Being and Doing
Much of what I have said so far has been about doing; what ministries are for, and how they interact with each other. That is important for you to note at this particular moment. But there is a vital balance about being and doing. We live in a time impatient for instant results, and the fact that it is also suspicious of authority doesn’t make life for the likes of us any easier. But that’s how things are, and we have to learn to live with it. One way might be to be firm about that balance. Oh yes, there is an historic theological tension in ordained ministry between the functional and the essential approaches. And ours is an age that – culturally – will find the functional approach the more attractive. But all ordained ministers – bishop, presbyter, or deacon – are not only enabled to ‘do’ certain things on behalf of the whole Church, they are also called to ‘be there’ on behalf of Christ himself, who is, after all, the real president of any eucharist, and the source of forgiveness for every penitent.
So this means taking care of your prayer life, your reading, your time apart – whatever you think your personality is. It means observing a regular, weekly day off, making sure you have time with your family, with proper boundaries that you’ll realise are necessary, and cultivating hobbies that refresh you. Don’t measure God by what you consider to be your own needs. Rather, measure yourself by his greatness, his otherness, and his nearness to us. You are not there to dole out religious goods of your own choosing and congeniality to unsuspecting people who are no more than consumers of a customised package deal. So please don’t tell everyone (myself included) what forms of worship you are supposedly ‘comfortable with’, because it has little to do with your vocation. You are yourselves disciples, to learn from your congregations, not to patronise or bully them. You are on your own journey of faith, so be aware of your humanity, in all its weaknesses and strengths.Have the courage to enquire and hold back when you believe this to be right, especially in a world that is a crazy mixture of credulity and cynicism.
At the end of the day, you are there to preach the Word, in season and out of season, and to celebrate his sacraments, as stewards – not owners – of his holy mysteries, and to do so not just for the local religious club, but for the world beyond, where God has a glorious knack of speaking to us in surprisingly unecclesiastical ways. Be truly humbled by all this, for you are ordained to proclaim the wonders of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
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