The Eric Symes Abbott Memorial Fund was endowed by friends
of Eric Abbott to provide for an annual lecture or course
of lectures on spirituality. The venue for the lecture
will vary between London and Oxford.
The members of the Committee are: The Dean of King's
College, London (Chairman); The Dean of Westminster; The
Warden of Keble College, Oxford; The Reverend John Robson
and The Reverend Canon Eric James.
It is nearly twenty-five years since I was ordained a priest
and I am grateful for the opportunity given by this lecture
to reflect on parish life in the Church of England. I am
especially grateful to do so in memory of Eric Abbott who
was a spiritual director to me for five years as I prepared
for ordination at Kingís College London and Westcott
House Cambridge and began ordained ministry in Stepney. I
remember him as an awesome though kindly Confessor rather
than as a friend but I do so with affection. In response to
my confession a week before I was made a deacon Eric said,
ìRemember, nothing is wasted. What at the moment you
wish were not will one day be what God uses in your
ministry to othersî. So this lecture is an occasion to
try to use some of my experience, particularly at St
Martin-in-the-Fields, and turn it in memory of a pastor who
loved the Church of England.
A Room with a View
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The metaphor of ìA Room with a Viewî in relation
to an English parish church is intended to suggest three
things that I regard as historically and theologically
important characteristics currently under threat.
First it suggests that parish churches should be open to
the world. There is a sound instinct here about places of
prayer. The Talmud advises we should,
"Never pray in a room without
windows". The question facing every church
congregation is whether they save people from the world or
in the world, whether they face inward or outward. My sense
is that a great deal of what passes for ëmissioní
in the contemporary Church of England is peculiarly inward
looking. For the last twenty years we have been presented
with a false polarity that gives priority to
ëmissioní over that sort of pastoral care in
which ministers and churches cared for the parish and not
just for the congregation. It is difficult to know cause
and effect but in our anxiety to survive we are creating
inward-looking, self-referential, congregations.
This is particularly important when we have difficulty
discerning good religion from bad and bad religion has
assumed lethal potency. The experience of creating public
liturgy in response to acts of terrorism has reinforced my
belief that our religious life must be shaped and informed
by God-given reason as well as the particularities of
Scripture and Church tradition and teaching. We may well be
frightened by some aspects of the world but it is made by
God and fundamentally good. As Christians we are schooled
in it and open to meeting God in it and to this the Church
bears witness. So a parish church must be open to the world
and not just set apart from it.
Second, a place of prayer should be open to the poorest.
This matters, or ought to matter, to Christians because of
Christís teaching about God, and the things of God,
being known in and among the poor. The Church of England
gets muddled about whether we are for the poor,
with the poor, or of the poor but
one of the things that persistently undermines our
pretension and opens us to God is the possibility that we
will meet Christ in the poor.
The ëgreat soulí Gandhi taught that the place of
prayer should be a spacious ground under the open sky
available to the poorest of the poor. This is about being
open to Godís world and to the poor. It is not
far from Dick Sheppardís romantic vision in 1914 that
shaped St Martin-in-the-Fields throughout the Twentieth
Century as the ëChurch of the ever open
doorí
Third, a parish church is a room with a view committed to
looking beyond itself to God, and to the Kingdom of God as
seen in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
My use of the metaphor alludes to the image of Godís
home in John 14. Jesus said to the disciples, ìIn my
Fatherís house there are many dwelling places (or
rooms). If it were not so would I have told you that I go
to prepare a place for you?î
Godís dwelling place is capacious. All sorts of people
find their home there, people as diverse as Matthew the tax
collector, doubting Thomas and impulsive and unreliable
Peter. It would be a lot easier to create communities of
the like-minded but if parish churches are going to point
beyond themselves to the sort of community that God is
collecting then we had better go to some trouble to ensure
that parish churches are broad inclusive communities.
So ìA Room with a Viewî is intended to suggest
that the English parish church is, or should aspire to be,
a broad Christian community, open particularly to the poor,
and alive to the glory of God who was in Christ reconciling
the world.
The present context
It is now common place to admit that we in Britain have a
problem that is both personal and institutional about the
credibility of Christian belief. For longer than our
lifetimes the British churches have suffered numeric
decline and reducing influence. What was described as
ësecularisationí now looks more complex. Religion
is as much a part of human self-understanding and
expression as ever. In the last British census 42 million
identified themselves as ‘Christianí. What this
means is less than clear.
At a local, parochial, level in 1941 there were 1,568 on
the Electoral Roll of St Martinís. In 2005 the number
is 374. The pressure to survive can distort our purpose. In
this context Jesusís saying about our being willing to
lose our life for the sake of the kingdom of heaven is
heard less as promise and more as judgement. I was struck
to hear a Bishop say in a radio interview last Autumn that
he was not prepared to be a Bishop of a dying church.
Perhaps we can guess what he meant but in saying this the
pressure to be successful had caused him to step away from
the pattern of Jesus Christ and put too much store in a
particular institutional form of Christianity.
The Church of England, relieved to find anything that helps
staunch the decline in numbers, has got fixated on a narrow
range of evangelistic basic Christian education programmes
and on what are called ëfresh expressions of being
churchí. There is energy here, and for that we can be
grateful, but this renewal movement tends to be
self-consciously church centred, often in a non-traditional
cultural form.
Parochial clergy, particularly those with historic
buildings, sometimes fulminate about their not being
ëmuseum keepersí. My experience of living in
Trafalgar Square has made me realise that Londonís
museums and galleries have been enjoying an enviable
renaissance. It is striking how they seek to engage
peopleís interests in a variety of ways with a lively
appeal to different personality types, and people with
varied interests, abilities and time availability. This has
set me thinking about the different ways in which people
relate to a parish church, to St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Of course what we are primarily is a ëeucharistic
communityí but there is more than one way of belonging
to a church. It ought to be obvious that people at
different stages of faith or commitment, of different
personality types and interests, and at different stages of
their life, will be drawn by and capable of different
things in relation to church. This is certainly modelled in
the Church of Englandís contemporary pluralism but
every parish church has to recognise and provide for it.
In the rest of this lecture I want to sketch seven ways in
which people legitimately relate to the sort of parish
church that is, ìA Room with a Viewî. Inevitably
I will draw heavily on my experience at St
Martin-in-the-Fields, and of course I recognise the
particularities of that church. However, the same points
could be made from any of the parishes in which I have
ministered. There are tensions and problems facing the
Church of England at a local level. There always will be.
My aim is to encourage and develop a sustainable model of
ministry that is committed to the parish, that is the
world, and not just the congregation.
The Eucharistic Community
Being a baptised member of the eucharistic community is the
most obvious way of being part of any parish church. It is
the core group doing the core task without which nothing
else has any place. The Eucharist has it all. Its different
names emphasise different aspects of its work. Holy
Communion, Eucharist, Mass, emphasise our community with
each other growing out of our communion with God, that we
gather primarily to give thanks and praise to God, and at
the end we are sent out, dismissed, to the mission of God.
Kenneth Kirk, one of the great Anglican moral theologians
of the twentieth century, helpfully summarised:
ìIt is not that conduct is the end of life and worship
helps it but that worship is the end of life and conduct
tests itî
Churches are primarily about worship.
We have also recognised that, like many London churches, we
are in ourselves an international church. Like every church
I have ever known, only more so, St Martinís has
active international partnerships with Church and
development agencies in Hong Kong and China, India, South
Africa, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, and the West Indies. Our
visitors from around the world add greatly to this.
Jesus said, ëWhere two or three are gathered together
in my name I am there among themî (Mt 18.20). So the
community is essential to Christianity that is not just
about private, personal experience. The trouble is that, as
a Rabbi once said, ìWhere there are three Jews you
will have four opinionsî. That is true of any group
and usually disagreements are resolved in favour of the
most powerful, but it is part of the purpose of the
eucharistic community to model diversity, confident in the
unity of God and of the eucharistic action given us by
Christ.
One of the most enjoyable liturgical developments over the
last seven years at St Martinís has been our giving
much greater emphasis to the celebration of Pentecost.
Through it we have come to an enriched theology of the Holy
Spirit, the breath or wind of God, the energising fire that
burns with both zeal and judgement. The big gift of the
Holy Spirit at Pentecost is communication. People who did
not speak the same language found that they understood each
other. That is what happens when people meet in the spirit
of love.
So at Pentecost we have a single Eucharist for the Chinese
and English speaking congregations. The ëChinese
congregationsí means two languages, Cantonese and
Mandarin. In the ëEnglish speaking congregationsí
a significant number of people have different first
languages. This is relatively easy territory in a London
church now. We enjoy the ethnic and cultural mix,
peopleís ability to speak several languages, perform
different sorts of music and provide wonderfully varied
food for lunch. It is a terrific window into our being a
world-wide Church.
The Eucharistic community is not static. It is a dynamic
and changing group. Always there are issues that put our
diversity to the test. Most mornings I pray in front of an
icon of Li Tim Oi, the first Anglican woman priest.
Recently this has been helpful because one of the least
satisfactory parts of The Windsor Report of The Lambeth
Commission on Communion was its use of the ordination
of women as a model of change within the Communion. They
start with the ordination of Li Tim Oi as a pastoral
emergency in Macau in 1944 but say nothing of what went
before.
Change has a history. Dick Sheppard was campaigning for the
ordination of women in the run up to the 1930 Lambeth
Conference. The publication of his ëThe Impatience of
a Parsoní strained his friendship with Archbishop
Laing and Sheppard was widely thought by the Church
hierarchy to be irresponsible.
In 1942 Reinhold Niebuhr had said to Bishop R O Hall, the
Bishop of Hong Kong, that it would make a tremendous
difference if a woman were actually ordained. Before Li Tim
Oiís ordination Hall consulted the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Archbishop Templeís reply arrived after Li
Tim Oiís ordination on 24th January 1944.
Interestingly in the present context, he wrote that this
seems to be primarily a matter for your own Province.
However he went on to counsel for a revocable temporary
expedient in the exceptional circumstances.
The Windsor Reportís main concern is with unity not
with change. It jumps straight from 1944 to the Lambeth
Conference of 1968 but this was not change led by the
hierarchy and councils of the Church. The ordinations of
Jane Hwang and Joyce Bennett in Hong Kong in 1971 and of
the first women priests in other Provinces were actions in
a turbulent process of ëreceptioní of the
ordination of women priests by the Anglican Communion.
Change is often disruptive. At the outset change is not
always consensual. Nor is it necessarily led by the
hierarchy.
In September 2003, after Jeffrey John did not become Bishop
of Reading, the PCC of St Martinís voted unanimously
to sign up to both InclusiveChurch.net, of which I have
become a Trustee, and Changing Attitudes. It seemed a
relatively easy decision and was communicated to the
congregations. What little comment this received was
positive. St Martinís is an open and tolerant
community and has a fairly visible gay minority in the
congregation.
Two months later some people were beginning to express
their discomfort. A group of West Africans, one of whom
said she had thought about leaving St Martinís, and
some of the Chinese congregation raised their concerns.
Interestingly a South Indian was more concerned about Gene
Robinsonís being divorced than his being gay. At the
Annual Meeting the following April the matter came up
again, as if for the first time, some people feeling that
their views had been taken for granted.
As is often the case with moral issues, even when the Bible
is clear, as with divorce and remarriage, pacifism, or the
swearing of oaths, there are genuine differences between
Christians. Whenever our members have raised the positive
acceptance of homosexuals as a problem, there has been a
conversation. A high point in this process was when a
senior Nigerian layman, a member of his own Diocesan Synod,
who had come to our daily services for about six months,
asked to meet me. We discussed homosexuality because what
we were saying was different from what the Church at home
was teaching. At the end of our hour he still disagreed
with me and concluded, ìBut this is not an issue to
divide usî. Although I am aware of some of the gay
members of the church drifting away over the last few
years, I am not aware of anyone leaving St Martinís
over our having taken a positively inclusive stand.
In a lecture on ëThe Future of the Anglican
Communioní earlier this year, Bishop David Beetge, a
member of the Lambeth Commission, said, ìWe are not in
Communion because we agree or are likeminded but because
Jesus said, ëDo this in remembrance of
meíî .
Every parish church is an international, diverse
eucharistic community open to change led by the Holy
Spirit. Each eucharistic community makes a particular
contribution to the Anglican Communion by being ëthe
worldís local churchí.
Other ways of belonging to Church
Two years ago there was a very interesting congregational
consultation at St Martinís about the re-ordering of
our buildings. We were considering creating a baptistry in
the central porch, or placing the font on the central axis
of the main entrance, to show it is the point of entry into
the community of faith. Significant disquiet was expressed
from the members of our eucharistic community because so
many people did not arrive that way but came to St
Martinís not fitting the norms, unconventionally.
Baptism might be what celebrates and seals people having
made their way in by other means.
So the eucharistic community is the core but is only one
way of describing a parish church which is a much richer,
more interesting and diverse than can be summarised by
numbers on the Electoral Roll, or those baptised and
receiving Communion.
A Community of Service
In Johnís account of the Last Supper we are given an
action to demonstrate the new commandment to love one
another as Christ has loved us. Washing feet is as
distinctive an act for the Christian community as breaking
bread. St Martin-in-the-Fields has an unusual reputation
for Christian service and charity understood as ëlove
in actioní. It stems from the life of our patron
saint, St Martin of Tours, who shared his cloak with a
beggar who returned to him as Christ. ìFor as much as
you did it to one of the least of these you did it to
me.î (Mt 25.40).
Yet most parish churches have an extensive and honourable
list of charitable groups meeting in and around the church.
Served by committed people who are not necessarily part of
the eucharistic community, they act in loving service. On
the Isle of Dogs, for example, there were Alcoholics
Anonymous, a Toy Library, an open youth club, the Docklands
Drugs Initiative and local Relief in Need and
Childrenís charities. These sorts of groups are
enabled by a hospitable eucharistic community and they also
help to inform and educate the eucharistic community.
Charity is one aspect of foot washing, the search for
justice another. In the 1980ís the Archbishopís
Commission on Urban Priority Areas recognised that it was
not enough to state moral principles but to go on to
identify the political implications of those principles. On
the Isle of Dogs this approach was put to the test in 1993
when Britainís first (openly racist) British National
Party Councillor was elected in a by-election. In the
absence of political leadership from the local Labour and
Liberal Democrat parties, who imploded under accusations of
racism, the local churches took a lead. For nine months we
worked to create broad community alliances to address the
underlying issues: housing, telling the truth about race
and building bridges with the local Bengali community as
well as strengthening the local democratic political
parties and increasing the electoral turnout at the main
election. The then Bishop of Stepney, Richard Chartres,
commented, ìItís difficult not to be political
when Jesus said, ëLove your neighbourí and one
political party is engaged in a sustained campaign of
hatred against one particular group of
neighbours.î
A vision of social justice brings with it a commitment to
change the world. The recent all night event ìWake Up
for Trade Justiceî attracted 25,000 people to
Whitehall. A lot were from churches but it seemed wider,
inclusive of anyone who wanted to identify with this
campaign. ìEveryone who loves is born of God and knows
Godî (1 John 4.7), whether they know it or not. The
commitment of these people to justice can challenge the
eucharistic community.
It is easy to see why for St John an act of loving service
is central to the remembrance of Christ. Church as a
community of service is another way of people identifying
with this Christian community.
A place of Prayer
If there was one thing that caught me by surprise after my
ordination as Deacon, it was the instant and immediate
importance of intercessory prayer. At the early services in
St Dunstanís Stepney in that first week of ordained
ministry in October 1979, I was completely caught up in the
praying for people and things, holding them and their
lifeís events before God, not just the congregation
but the parish. It is one of many things for which I am
indebted to my training incumbent Fr Norry McCurry.
Intercessory prayer has been an important part of my role
as a priest ever since. It is, of course, what people
expect. Nearly every Sunday one of the market traders
outside St Martinís says, ìSay one for meî.
It is what a priest is for.
When we open church each morning at about 7.45am, one of
the first people through the door is a woman on her way to
work. She kneels for about two minutes and leaves. It is
what church is for, a place of prayer.
Just inside the door of St Martinís is a Prayer Board
on which people pin their own prayers or requests for
prayers. Serious business is done there:
In Memory of Mrs Woosnam - buried today
Please pray for my baby who was lost to me 1 month ago
before it could be
Help me to get a job and a home
Peace
And the delightfully ambiguous,
Please pray for my beloved fiancé - may his eyes heal
quickly
Some of them remind me of T S Eliotís lines in Ash
Wednesday:
ìWill the veiled sister pray
For the children at the gate
who will not go away and cannot pray.î
It is the widely recognised calling and purpose of clergy
and churches to pray for others, for people in need, for
the world. It is also a core task to teach people to pray
and to provide spaces in which it is easy to pray.
Back in my earliest days of ordained ministry I used to do
an occasional half day chaplaincy in St Paulís
Cathedral. On one of these occasions I was exhausted and
chose for 15 minutes every hour to kneel down in the
transept and pray. Each time I knelt down I was the only
person doing so. Each time I got up there were 4, 10, and 7
other people kneeling near by. It was as if the purpose of
the building needed to be demonstrated for others to join
in.
Christian formation involves active participation in a
community of prayer: prayer groups, an occasional course to
ìTeach us to prayî, a weekend retreat. In Lincoln
in the mid 80ís we organised an individually guided
retreat through Lent for 57 people. It still impacts on
some of our lives. At St Martinís lay people lead the
saying of weekday Evening Prayer and the intercessions at
the Sunday 10am Eucharist. Douglas Boardís recent book
The Naked Year has emerged partly from his leading
of our Sunday intercessions. His prayers engage the
realities of our world and our own lives before
God.
When people come into a church what matters most is that it
is ìa thin placeî between heaven and earth, in
another of Eliotís phrases, ìmade valid by
prayerî. Such churches are spacious, hospitable and
inspiring. The late Peter Benenson told me that the idea of
Amnesty International came to him in St
Martin-in-the-Fields. ìYou would say it was prayer.
All I can say is that the idea came from outside of
me.î Thanks be to God.
Learning and the God of Truth
Christians have always been concerned with education for
its own sake because we believe that God is of truth. There
is a practical depth to the Churchís involvement in
education ranging from higher education to parish Sunday
Schools. Eric Abbottís own commitment to education
reflected this broad concern.
There is a crossover from the Churchís public
provision of education into Christian formation and faith
education. Some churches and clergy may feel under pressure
from those who come to church to qualify for Church school
admissions but the Diocese of London is justly proud of its
150 schools. Clearly these are another way in which people
belong to the local church.
Despite this, it is commonly agreed that large numbers of
people now lack what the Bishop of London calls ìa
Christian grammarî. A recent description of the
process of secularisation has emphasised our failure to
transmit the Christ story down the
generations. Faith education is therefore of
paramount importance to the Church. The Diocese of London
has a policy that every parish should run a Christian
basics course like Alpha or Emmaus. For many churches these
have
been points of numerical growth. They have also given lay
people an increased confidence in what is partly a
knowledge-based organisation. However, such courses do not
appeal to everyone and part of the price of such widespread
commitment to ëChristian basicsí is a perceived
‘dumbing downí of the Churchís educational
offer.
For some years we have been looking to develop a Christian
basics course that might fit St Martinís and have come
to the conclusion that the people who come to us are not
looking for a structured A-Z of Christian faith that
systematically explores key themes of Christian theology.
Instead, the St Martinís community draws people
because we begin our theological reflection in the context
of global events, human relationships, social change, and a
commitment to engage with the reality of life as lived by
all of us. So we develop a theological conversation through
liturgies, sermons, ‘thought piecesí and
educational events. Some of these are re-presented in small
publications that have proved very popular with titles such
as, ëLife after Life: An exploration of living, dying
and whatever comes nextí, ëVoices of
Harvestí, ëChristianity and Homosexualityí
and ëIn Search of Healingí. The contributors are
clergy and laity, from within the St Martinís
community and beyond, something that resonates with our
intention to produce a resource in conversation with each
other.
Education courses are also part of the public offer that
draws in people who are not otherwise members but who are
interested in the subject. For example, two years ago a
Lent series of talks called ìBeyond Churchî
attracted attendance of between 60 - 100 people many of
whom had no evident link with St Martinís but who were
interested in a well informed discussion of difficult moral
issues. A public meeting in advance of the war in Iraq drew
160 people. When we have worked with the National
Galleryís education programme we have drawn similarly
large numbers, only some of whom are from our own
congregations.
An education programme is one more way in which people who
are not necessarily part of the eucharistic community might
feel they belong to their church in what is a serious
search for the God of truth.
Creativity and the Arts
On Good Friday St Martinís has a well attended Three
Hours from 12-3. Something like 450 people come to all or
part of it. It is preceded by a short ëall ageí
service at 10am attended by 70 or 80. In the evening there
is a concert. Whether itís one of the Bach Passions or
the Mozart Requiem, all 825 seats are sold out. Concerts
attract a different audience to services. This is part of
the change that has happened to institutional Christianity
in this country. It is bad for church attendance figures
but it is not all loss. There are deep Christian cultural
roots in our society.
There is an astonishingly accomplished musical life to St
Martinís but it is only different in scale to what
happens in many parish churches. I grew up singing in a
parish church choir where the organist and choir master
also ran the local choral society. On the Isle of Dogs we
had occasional concerts and in 1992 The London Docklands
Singers were formed by one of the congregation attracting
singers from the local community. Last month they sang in a
performance of The Dream of Gerontius in St Paulís
Cathedral.
With six concerts each week St Martinís is one of
Londonís major concert venues. I donít know that
there is any strong association with the worshipping life
of the church but I do know that to sit in church listening
to wonderful music is one way of being recreated in the
heart of the city. It can be healing and Godly.
Some of our best work with homeless people and young people
at risk has been in this area of creative arts. Exhibiting
paintings, or playing music, and receiving applause, is
terrific for self-esteem quite apart from the fun of making
something beautiful. When this has been taken into an act
of worship in church the contributions have been made with
striking reverence by people who are not habitually at
public worship.
In the twentieth century St Martinís was best known
for its ethics but there is an earlier tradition of
aesthetics, offering to God the best of art and beauty. It
is in the architecture. St Martinís is one of
Londonís most beautiful eighteenth century churches,
the work of James Gibbs and some of the most accomplished
craftsmen of the 1720ís. The planned renewal of the
buildings is an opportunity to commission new works of art
of similar quality. The new crib by Tomoaki Suzuki proposed
for Trafalgar Square is the first of what we hope will be a
small number of high quality and important commissions. The
willingness of the artistic community to be involved has
been humbling. The creativity of God means that parish
churches can be marvellous centres of artistic creativity
and this, too, provides a way for many people to make an
offering to God.
Honest Commercial Exchange
St Martinís is known throughout the world for music
and feeding people. Given our location it is not so
surprising that we have also been able to sell these goods
to people who can afford to pay for them, extending our
ministry commercially. Our concerts make a profit and
receive no funding from the Arts Council. The Café in
the Crypt has been Londonís Les Routiers Café of
the Year. St Martinís is Londonís 20th
most visited tourist attraction.
This experiment in business was set up in the 1980ís
by my predecessor, Canon Geoffrey Brown. In some ways it
offered a commercial alternative to the sorts of urban and
social regeneration proposed by the Archbishopís
Commission on Urban Priority Areas who produced the report
ëFaith in the Cityí. At that time
providing employment was a key aim for St Martinís but
so was providing an income to stabilise ailing church
finances.
Making an honest profit was seen to be good and a number of
senior business people have given their time to oversee
this project at Board level. One said how refreshing it was
to be part of a Christian church that appreciated his
working life and skills as a blessing. Given the amount of
time many of us spend at work that still seems to me a
serious indictment of what most parish churches pray for
and get concerned about.
Having a business at St Martinís has created
employment and has indeed been good for the churchís
finances. As with our social work at The Connection at St
Martinís we do not require staff to be communicant
Christians but ask that they share and put into practice
our common values.
The business has also provided different ways for visitors
to engage with the church. It used to be said that the task
of the most visited churches was to turn tourists into
pilgrims. Customers keep more control than that. A customer
pays for something he or she wants - food, music, a brass
rubbing or whatever. This is not about customers becoming
part of the eucharistic community, though sometimes they
do. It is about customers being satisfied by a good and
honest commercial encounter with a Christian church that
establishes an honest and trustworthy relationship. This is
important because a recent survey found that only 43% said
they trust the Church. This is less than trust the
educational service and about half the rating for the armed
forces. Trust and credibility have to be
earned.
The increased number of visitors has also added energy to
the place. It is a pleasure to come into such a thriving
and vibrant church. The professionalism of the business
means we look after our buildings better than we did and
provide better for the casual visitor. The Parochial Church
Council is also more business-like and has a 3 - 5 year
Mission Action Plan. Having a Chief Executive running St
Martin-in-the-Fields Ltd alongside me as Vicar is not
without its tensions but has proved to be a very creative
dynamic. It is interesting to see the commercial model of
church being imitated.
A place for the whole community
Parish churches are important focal points in local
communities. They are one of the few public places where
people gather. As places of memory they also collect a
communityís history. This is an incredibly important
function and a strong reason for all the members of local
community to support their parish church.
The significance of this is well made by Simon Jenkins. His
Introduction to ‘Englandís Thousand Best
Churchesí refers to our parish churches as ëThe
Museums of Englandí. He respects the church as,
ìa shrine of impenetrable mysteryî. Into these
churches people have poured their faith, joy, sorrow,
labour, love. Jenkins says, ìThe local parish church
is like Thomas Grayís tombstone. It tells of
ëhomely joys and destiny obscureÖthe short and
simple annals of the poorí.
Simon Jenkins dwells on the physical fabric of the church
that embodies this historic role but it is a continuing
contemporary experience through the Churchís
occasional offices for parishioners who have not
necessarily been part of the congregation - weddings,
funerals and, at St Martins, memorial services. To work
well these have to be honest and ërealí. That
often means they have to be ëpersonalisedí. I am
struck that I have rarely felt compromised by this. Nearly
always people are respectful of Church even if they are not
themselves active members. What the minister often meets in
these settings is people who know about love, justice,
mercy, joy, celebration, loss and grief in ways that
suggest they are not far from the kingdom of heaven even
though they themselves would mostly not name it as such.
Again it is the fact of a eucharistic community that makes
this possible by fulfilling the core commitments of a
church in ways that make the place accessible to others. It
opens the church as a place of honest encounter for the
world before God.
Conclusion
Todayís Church of England lives with the pressures of
institutional survival. It cannot be guaranteed. Under this
pressure we also live in a time of great energy and
creativity. What I have described is, at its best, not just
adaptability but a faithfulness to God. It is not a faith
in the immortality of our own institutions. The heart of
the Gospel is in the paradox of our being willing to lose
our lives to find them.
People complain that the Church of England washes its dirty
linen in public but, Eliot again, at least we are washing
it. Beyond the local parish we are not sure how we belong
together. To belong everywhere you have to belong
somewhere. I am convinced that the problems of the Anglican
Communion will be answered best in the local parish church.
I have tried to describe the experience of a parish church
that is open to the world, to the poor and to the vision of
Godís many-roomed generosity. In its local form, it is
a world-wide diverse church. Led by the Spirit of God, it
is open to change in every generation. Of course there is a
gap between aspiration and reality, but because we have
been given a vision of Godís kingdom that gap is
something Christians have always had to handle.
Perhaps the key to the churches in which I have been
privileged to minister is the way in which they welcome
people. Of course every church says it is welcoming but the
test is whether the visitors bring anything that is valued,
wanted, and will change the life of the parish church and
not just be assimilated into it so that the only people who
belong are the people who fit the existing community. The
test is whether we really do expect to meet Christ in the
stranger.
ëA room with a viewí is a way of being an open
church that requires a generosity of spirit and trust in
God. In the crucial dynamic between kingdom, Church and
world, it assumes that God is at work in the world, where
the kingdom of God will come as it is in heaven, and that
the parish churchís task is to witness to this in many
and various ways.