What is Pioneer Ministry?

I have been drawn into various conversations this past month about pioneer ministry. I want precision about what it is, because otherwise it just becomes a sexy moniker for anything creative, alternative and generally involving young people. Someone's suggested to me, for example, that helping set up a monthly service in a village hall is “pioneer ministry,” or running a youth group, or recruiting a new missional community of 20-somethings and resourcing them for ministry. That last one obviously is — but what about the others? What is pioneer ministry?

Inspired by Vincent Donovan’s book Christianity Rediscovered, I’ve had an idea. Fr Donovan was a 1960’s RC missionary in Kenya who went out to sell the locals his faith, and experienced some degree of honest frustration and discomfort before he realised he could more fruitfully work from the other end. In other words if he got under the skin of Masai Culture, taking its sociology and culture as a gift of God not an obstruction to the gospel, people would find their own way of being authentically Masai Catholic Christians instead of copies of Liverpuddlian RC’s. The result of this was to fulfil his original mission brief, but from the other end to the one he had anticipted, and to produce a new and authentic strand in Catholic faith, to enrich it from a new culture.

So, the essential distinctive for a pioneer minister, I reckon, is:

a willingness and ability to go live in another sociology, listen to it and struggle to understand what it is about and how Christ is reflected in it, then work from within it to develop a community of discipleship that is authentic to it, but also to the Way of Christ.

Imagine I was 95, and discovered that the other residents of my sheltered housing scheme were brought up in a pattern of Christendom Christiantiy which had not worked for them and rendered them deeply unable to access what was good in it because they were so blocked by what had broken down and changes int he context. I work out what, positively their culture is, and what it tells me of Christ who is greater than any culture but reflected in all. I then work out a way of life that does justice to both historic Christianity, as an authentic development, and also their culture. I’m 95, but I’m a pioneer...

So the qualities required of a pioneer minisuter would be profound rootedness in the substance but not necessarily the form of historic Christianity, plus a willingness and activity to live within another sociology, plus discernment, plus the willingness to build community, plus an ability to articulate what has been learnt and interpret it back tot he rest of the Church. It’s a tall order — very much more than just being a real trendy geezer. The joy and strength of Christianity has been its capacity to enculturate and adapt whilst retaining its golden heart. “Stop the World I want to get off” is an expression of fear not faith. We need more than that. As cultures interface, develop and fracture only to re-form, the Church needs real pioneers!

Ministry: Rudiments of Wisdom

30 years ordained this year, and someone asked me what I thought I’d learnt. That conversation gave birth to a few stray thoughts on the back of an envelope. It would be rather grand to call them laws of Vicaring, but here goes (in no particular order of importance):

1. If someone says Jesus has healed their wooden leg, rejoice, but be sure to kick them in the shins first, just to make sure.
   
   
2. If you get away with it and it works, fine. If it doesn’t and they catch you, just cough up cheerfully and enjoy all the times you got away with it
   
   
3. Do the job you’re doing now with all your heart, not the one you used to do in your last parish, or hope to do in your next. Time flies when you’re having fun...
   
   
4. Don't ask until you’ve worked out the question. Only ask people questions they are likely to answer in the way you want. Also, Don't ask when the baby is due until the new lady in Church has actually told you she is pregnant. Never ask a Lawyer “Can we do this?” The question is always “How can we do this?”
   
   
5. Pick up the bloody phone! (This applies to outgoing as well as incoming calls)
   
   
6. You do not have their P45's in your back pocket, so always explain, always apologise
   
   
7. Make the other lot line up with their own rulebook, and have a go at doing so yourself before you propose change
   
   
8. Be extremely loyal to your predecessors. They are your most powerful secret weapon, along with people who pray quietly at home.
   
   
9. Schedule your free time as zealously as you would a funeral. Your family are the closest members of the body of Christ. Strive not to be toxic to them, and remember they didn't ask to have you for a parent.
   
   
10. Beware Grand Designs, especially your own. Dolus latet in generalibus — the Devil's in the detail, along with the delight...
    
    
11. You can't argue with whining, but you can with anger. Damaged, angry people have their own reward. Bless ’em all.
    
    
12. Rigid faith is often brittle. In the Kingdom the first often come last and the last first. You are not God's minders, or managers, but guides who should strive to be reliable and trustworthy (I Corinthians 4)
    
    
13. You inherited far more than you realise. Before you go buy a new tool, check the old toolbox you seldom use and nine times out of ten you've already got one. Revolution by tradition!
    
    
14. All constructive change works from the inside out — “You can sleep in the Garage, but it don't make you an automobile” (Billy Graham?)
    
    
15. This job is about the how and why of people’s lives, including your own. You accomlish for more long term than you think, and far less in the here and now: “I think I've far exceeded what I ever thought I could possibly do. I'm almost shocked that I'm still around after all these years . . . and always grateful that I get another turn to do something.” (Billy Crystal)
    
    
16. “The Church doesn’t need new members half as much as it needs the old lot making over.” (Billy Sunday)

That’s enough Billies for now. I’m sure everyone has discovered their own rules — the floor is yours!

PS the rather wonderful window is in Aston Sandford, and shows two Churches, Aston Sandford on the Left and Thame on the Right. More about Aston Sandford another time, but my thanks to those who hosted a wonderful Sunday morning together last week, including lunch together. Above all, thanks for all you do the rest of the time...

Get real! Kill George Herbert!

At home I have a groaning shelf of books published since 1900 about ministry in the Church of England. Justin Lewis-Anthony’s If you meet George Herbert on the Road, Kill Him is the latest and, no mean feat, by far the best. The trouble with “how-to” books about ministry is that they can easily become part of an oppressive structure that keys into a significant vulnerability in sincere ministers. You woke up this morning with 25 things you hadn't done, and felt vaguely guilty about. You read the how-to book, and now you’ve got 35. Could be time to stick your head in a gas oven. Indulging in the wrong kind of how-to stuff, spiced with paperback Evangelical fisherman’s tales by the Successful, does not make you the best priest in the street (shades of the Father Ted “Golden Cleric”) but a nervous wreck. Its nursery slopes are the way to slow death — what some do call burn-out.

Justin’s excellent book does not play this how-to game, although it does end up talking Turkey, with excellent alternative strategies and tactics to help lower spiritual and personal blood pressure, and bring a Kill-George-Herbert priest back from the Church of the Planet Zog into the Church of England.

Justin’s thesis is that we in the C of E have indulged in harmful romanticism about ministry, focussed around a gentle bucolic fantasy about the ministry of George Herbert. Roman Catholic friends tell me of a similar phenomenon in their tradition about the Curé d’Ars. This ecumenical dimension, as well as a certain Cambridge historian’s reluctance to use any “-ism” except baptism, made me judder a bit over terms like “Herbertism” but the term does clarify the discussion and provides a tool to enable us to continue to enjoy Herbert’s sublime poetry without being sucked into a lot of crushing sentimentality and hype about his three year ministry as a parish priest in the seventeenth century, in a parish of under 500, with two curates to do the dirty work.

Back in the late eighties, when I was an urban vicar, I almost had a breakdown through the unsustainable and unrealistic expectations I was putting on myself. I can see it now, but it brought its own tunnel vision at the time. As well as lifebelts from spiritual advisers, teachers and friends, I read Bonhoeffer, then Vincent Donovan, then Martin Thornton, then Rowan Williams, then Sara Savage, as healing and hope gradually dawned. The analytical sections of this book reprised almost exactly the path I found towards recovery. Dame Edna would call it spooky. If I’d been able to read this book years ago it would have saved me a lot of trouble. Therefore I commend this book 110%.

The combination of high fantasy and self-expectations, an apparent duty to say yes to everybody all the time, a one-man-band mentality about ministry, historical romanticism and exhaustion almost got me. Care Bears who attenuate everything else about their lives get crocked. I don’t now mind admitting it, and the more we all admitted our need to be needed, got some boundaries in and stood up to our own fantasies and the cult of nice, the more we could all begin to be half the people God made us to be, as priests and ministers of the gospel.

This book is a vastly intelligent, compassionate, understanding and helpful resource. Some will find it a bit clever, so if you prefer your books stupid, you may be disappointed. Of course, if the cap does not fit you don’t have to wear it. It does fit many of us. The fact is that almost all of us vicars have been on this game for far too long. It has done us no favours. As crocked care bears we may even have sought a way off the not-so-merry-go-round. This book offers the most cogent escape route I know, historically and theologically, as well as practically. Take it, and get a life!

Ministry Development Review ahoy

A slightly busy and intense time, including a two night residential learning event at Whirlow Grange, Sheffield’s retreat and spirituality centre, exploring Ministry Development Review. National interim guidance consistent with the new Terms and Conditions of Service being implemented in 2010 has brought together the whole ragbag of schemes that have grown up around England in the past 20 years. This event brought together a dozen of us — bishops, archdeacons ministry development officers and a lay reviewer with commercial HR experience, from various dioceses around the country, from Manchester to Truro.

Events like this are rather like a sit-down meal — a lot depends on who you get on your table. Fortunately, this group represented a wide variety of people with different experiences in all kinds of circumstances, with a real commitment to learning together. Excellently led and enabled by Tim Ling, Paul Wright and Karen West, this course took a notional for-instance MDR and slowed it down, giving us space and time to try it for ourselves, then analyse the key issues and opportunities arising, playing with possibilities and backing up our experience alongside national guidelines and local practice.

As Ministry Development Review becomes mandatory across the Church, and different dioceses roll out new schemes, it’s going to be really important to work at making this tool a real enrichment and support to colleagues in their ministry. That will involve conscious work by all of us, as the reviewees and reviewers we all are.

I can understand some clergy fearing MDR as a bit of secular managerialism they could do without. The only way to win their confidence will be to offer people really helpful, spiritually focussed and honest reviews. This won’t happen automatically. The one thing I learned from this event, above all, was how much there is for us all to learn, especially if we have been in and around ministry review processes for years. For example, I came away realising how much I need to raise my game around defining goals that really are goals, not just worthy bits of work.

I very much hope excellent training like this will be made available everywhere to all clergy and lay people delivering MDR.

Doing this properly will, of course, cost — but it will also benefit everyone especially the people we serve in our day to day ministries, as well as each other and, of course, ourselves.

Velcro and Teflon in Pastoral Care

Teams offer the best pastoral care, not primadonnas. One particular reason has struck me recently — the complexity and depth of damage in some people’s lives in a consumer society can exhibit in a tendency to shop around. “I've tried 11 vicars — none of them was any good, so now I'm trying you, bishop.” Dangerously, this can hook into our own need to be needed, flatter our own sense of drama and, when the velcro attaches, we’re stuck — and so are they.

Ministry, and especially deliverance ministry, is one sphere of life where it really doesn’t pay to shop around. Every time a priest introduces boundaries to the conversation you bail out and find another, until, presumably, you can find one who mirrors your dis-ease perfectly = can reinforce your problem precisely. The only hope of healing usually lies in picking a small selection, if not one, taking the blindest bit of notice of any of them, and then sticking with the pastoral relationship for long enough for something good to happen. From the point of view of clergy, we can best offer help by communicating together and integrating care, not flying solo.

When people ask for deliverance ministry, it’s best to offer an organic integrated package where specific spiritual needs emerge as a strand within a holistic and relational approach, not zap-u-up pyrotechnics, silly voices, and cliché storylines from the Hammer House of Horrors. The whole key is not to make a drama out of a crisis. We centre carefully on the health, personal, relational, and spiritual realities involved, and go gently. Whereupon, I find, healing comes swifter and sooner than anyone usually expects.

Trading control for wholeness...

I’ve just had a spiritually refreshing conversation with Steve Bushell, Chaplain of our local Mental health NHS trust. Steve has studied Desert Spirituality closely, and together with excellent senior colleagues in the trust is working out a fascinating new integrated approach to Spiritual Care. As he talked about his work, I was reminded of Robin Skynner’s Institutes and how to survive them. There Dr Skynner proved the key contribution staff attitude makes to the health of the whole and the healing of patients. This closes the gap between Spirituality and Religion, which has been so disastrous in Western Christianity.

The key to good healthcare, we decided, was the willingness and ability of the hierarchs to give away control, to support and facilitate rather than direct people in what becomes a healing community, not a controlled-and-controlling bureaucracy. What the hierarchy does builds either understanding and respect, or cynicism, depending on its alignment with its professed values. This reminded me of a wise, experienced and perceptive Vicar telling me recently how he had observed that when he stopped forcing his initiatives on people and doing stuff, far more happened, and in a different, more spiritually significant way. More the Coach, less the professional Guardian of the Sacred; more the resourceful friend, less the eccentric drill sergeant. See Mark 10:42.

Steve and I scoped the role of of the Chaplain as someone who learns and listens carefully to the languages people use to express themselves, a spiritual interpreter, someone who can hold the lines and ask key questions of any and all, including themselves. The prime task is to help people identify where God is in their lives so that he can grow their Sacred Centre... Like Vicars?

Steve Croft, here and there

If I weren’t here I’d be there — but of course. Here is Cardiff; there is York Minster, to share in the episcopal ordination of Steve Croft, who is to be the new Bishop of Sheffield. It has been a great resource to have Steve living in Oxford as leader of Fresh Expressions. He’s been a source of information and inspiration, as well as a hub person in various emergent Church networks springing up around the world.

Among other good memories, I recall his leading a day for Bucks Churchwardens in Winslow, which was extraordinarily down to earth but stimulating and inspiring for a very mixed group from a variety of traditional and improvisatory contexts. To quote the man himself,

We are called... to a dual vocation of sustaining what is and bringing about significant change and transition. This is a complex and demanding task. However, its my conviction that as we make the journey we are not simply imitating our culture or inventing new ways to engage in Christian ministry. Instead we are exploring our global and historic Christian tradition and restoring patterns of ministry which have always been present in a church in mission

Steve enters a new leadership phase of his own special contribution to this process, with much respect, love and payers from his many friends in Oxford.

Desperate (Pastors’) housewives?

After a sweet and most triumphant time with family and friends over Christmas, it’s easy to underestimate the pressures of the job on everyone else at home. I am aware of being insanely lucky in the person I married and the kids we got. I often think of a comment a good friend made years ago when we were discussing a job move — your family are the closest members of the body of Christ — if there is no good news in this to them, there will not be good news in this to anyone else. And in this context, it’s fun to watch a silly wee movie from Florida, h/t Pierre Whalon and Kirk Smith, that therefore comes with heartfelt endorsement from three bishops...

Clergy vacancies: Filling the gaps?

As I rejoice with Bishop David on a new Rector of Strathearn, and prepare for a Vacancy meeting this evening, David Keen asks — do long clergy vacancies cause Church decline? For those who think vicars rule over them, and others, there’s even a Good Interregnum Guide. I do think the term “interregnum” in itself indicates some questionable attitudes and expectations about church leadership... But, of course, leadership in any voluntary organisation is a crucial aspect of its health and effectiveness.

The received wisdom is Bob Jackson’s, (potted here) that long gaps between incumbencies are bad news. Now David has met a statistician in Bath & Wells who tells a different tale. I suspect both are right; across the board overlong vacancies can damage attendance figures; but I have no grounds for calling David’s statistician a liar — he did an elaborate comparison of 100 parishes in rural groups which had vacancies with comparators that didn’t, over many years, and found identical patterms of 5% decline in both. Hmm...

After helping fill over 100 vacancies in Bucks, I think I notice...

1. Every vacancy, like every pregnancy, is different. The time, locality, previous, run-up to it, and the health of the parish concerned are all key factors. healthy parishes have better times in vacancy than dependent and conflicted ones.
2. Within benefices, some congregations cope much better than others, for similar reasons.
3. Very few clergy teams take seriously the idea that every time a new member joins team it changes and has to acknowledge this and re-form. Thus people can get saddled with unconstructive assumptions, almost by accident. We are better at talking dirty about teams than the working processes and attitudes which actually make a team work as a team.
   
4. The preparation process for the profile is a window into the soul of the parish. The honesty and ownership of the result has a high correlation to the success of the whlle recruitment.
5. Because it’s a time when everybody is asking relevant questions, our parish development adviser, Andrew Gear, always goes in to support every parish in vacancy, both in preparing the profile, and helping them work out what the place and its mission are about. I would go to the stake for this way of working with a PDA, and I think it does make an immense difference. It may be invidious to say so, but the sober truth is that having Andrew, a brilliant PDA with in-depth consultancy and listening skills, makes an amazing difference.
   
6. We have a small number of wise and experienced, often recently retired clergy, who sometimes make themselves available for serious interim ministries for up to 6 months. A wise priest, with experience, imagination and people skills, can make an immense difference to the vacancy experience. I believe we should pay properly for this work, and recognise its true value. We have not yet developed an adequate infratructure to fund and deploy such ministries, but I believe they are part of the shape of good practice to come. This is not about stopgapping per se, but reinforcing the work our PDA is already doing, and supporting people in asking the real questions honestly, as well as briefing bishop, archdeacon and patron about the learning during the vacancy.
7. Everybody wants to speed things up, understandably. When I was a nice new bishop, we had a bit of a go at breakneck vacancy minimizing — on one occasion three months. It didn’t actually work well for everybody, and one wise parish actually interviewed five people and then owned up, bravely and honestly, that they weren’t yet ready to call it and would have to readvertise. I know that was only one parish, but it taught me to try and contain my own juggernaut logic about filling vacancies quickly... They readvertised and it worked. We try to keep up the pace, but are perhaps a bit less breakneck than we used to be, having learnt from experience.
   
8. It seems to be the case that the quality of the vacancy, good or bad, is often down to a small number of laypeople’s giftedness and contribution. This is as much the case, if not mroe, for small parishes. Anything that strengthens and encourages those who do step up to various pltes constructively is good news long term.
9. Lay Chairs and Area Deans are crucial. Really logged on affirmative action by the area dean can really help — where a kind of minimalist approach definitely adds to the sense of loss and disorientation. Ditto a proper deanery mission plan. If you’ve got one it will help people through an uncertain time. If the deanery plan is a bodge or a mess, or, worse, still, no more than a silly bit of paper you get out every five years to wave at the bishop and archdeacon, the sloppiness will out and curse everyone especially during a vacancy.
   
10. There is an increasing need to build the capacity of the parish representatives and others in line with good recruitment principles, all the more as candidates get cannier and formal process constraints become more pressing. The era of “saying unto this (wo)man go and (s)he goeth” is over. “Fat controller” mentalities among bishops and archdeacons are no longer appropriate. A well handled collaborative process is far less likely to be a pothole on the parish’s highway to Zion than a bodged up, happenstance driven lurcher... but it’s not an exact science. The only way to incease the number of good vacancies, is to grow the awareness and capacity of everyone involved, especially our own.
    

I wonder what other experience there is out there, and would welcome experience, good and bad of interim ministry, for my own learning. Whilst we should work as efficiently as possible during a vacancy, David’s post makes me wonder whether Bob Jackson’s reults, however excellent, are perhaps rather generalised and focussed on Chronos (time quantity)when we ought to be thinking Kairos (opportunity)... Perhaps the mentality we choose to take can, in itself, make a difference.

Ministry as Jazz...

Great joy, today, to admit 5 Licensed Lay Ministers (Lay Readers) at the Cathedral. Trying to think through what Ministry processes are about, and how they relate to the Kingdom, I quoted yesterday's poem by Nicola Slee, and compared the way we fulfil our shared calling to jazz:

I spent some time a few years ago ago in the Diocese of Durham, where problems over the parish share and clergy supply make the Oxford diocese look like a Sunday School outing. They have parishes where they could no longer afford to pay a vicar even if they could find one, so the congregation has just had to raise its game, painfully, and find other ways of being church. After three days working on the nature of priesthood with a group of clergy from Durham, tough, resilient and enterprising people, they decided that the best way to describe what they are being called to as ministers in our age is Jazz.

Jazz is characteristically produced by small groups jamming together personally, not by large formal ensembles like the old fashioned pit bands and choirs, most of them dead now in the North East. Making Jazz is based on listening to other people, valuing individual contributions, holding fast to a tightly disciplined structure, but in order to facilitate great freedom in what you improvise around it. It involves deep feelings shared in public. It can’t be done without passion and commitment to a fragile group of fellow musicians. It is an inherently precarious way of making music.

The helpfulness of this jazz image to a group of colleagues for whom I have such a great respect inspired me to find out more about jazz. The more I’ve learnt, the more I see what they meant. Why was Miles Davis able to reinvent jazz in the 1950’s? The trumpeter Winton Marsalis, says this; “The big band era was over. Once a man was able to let vulnerability into his sound it became irresistible. Soft but intense. Sustained intensity = ecstasy” If the big band era is over for the Church of England, what’s for us to learn here?

What enabled Miles Davis to let vulnerability into his sound, was a reaction to his bad experiences as a black man in a colour bar society. When he visited Europe in 1949, he stepped out of colour bar USA, and experienced different attitueds, and respect for his humanity. In Paris, said Davis, he learnt that all white people weren’t the same. He fell in love with the singer Juliet Greco. Miles Davis: ‘I never felt like that in my life. It was the freedom of being treated like a human being.’

Do you think, we could try a bit of that? In our ministry teams and parishes and various ecclesiastical gardens, this all saints tide, could we, together, show people what it’s like to be treated like a human being, with deep love and respect? Can we model what real community could be, so that the Kingdom values of the Sermon on the Mount begin to seem accessible, doable even? Can we, in our ministry, increasingly know, and introduce others to, the true freedom of being treated like a human being, a precious child of God?

Blessed is your community when it knows its need of God; when it hungers and thirsts for justice; when refuses to give up on what people could be, merely at the behest of what they are. How blessed are you when you sit with those who mourn; when you make peace; when you suffer for the truth.

Even the most established Christian community is fragile, and every Christian minstry carries its own vulnerability. But our greatest peril comes when we lose sight of our whole context, a kingdom of saints, and purpose, Love founded on respect. Accepting the deep longing in our confused and unhappy society, how can we be part of the movement to raise it up, personally, to God? If the big band era is over, what kind of a kingdom community can we create as jazz?

Seeing, says St Peter, that everything around you is breaking up, dissolving, what sort of people should you be? What sort of people could you be? We are called to be saints as much as our forebears and heroes in faith. In our answer to that basic challenge lies not only our own happiness, but the key to the peace and salvation of all the world, in us, but through him and by him to whom be ascribed as is most justly due all honour might, majesty and power, today and for ever…

Small earthquake in Oxford - all OK

Congratulations to Canon Keith Lamdin on his appointment as principal of Sarum College, an ecumenical theological and spirituality learning centre in Salisbury. For the past 25 years, Keith has led the team delivering education and minstry development in our diocese. Keith has pioneered leadership training, firmed up clergy supervision and support, parish development and work consultancy throughout our network of 800 local churches in the Thames Valley. He's also put serious hard work into our international partnerships, especially with Kimberley and Kuruman. 25 years of anyone's working life is bound to have its hits and misses, but these transformational pieces of work have been big hits.

After a ministry review in the early nineties my bishop suggested I might have a lot to learn and something to give to ministry education. I phoned Keith, and it was the way into work improving training for training incumbents which transformed my thinking and feeling about ministry, and led me into work consultancy with colleagues, leadership development and a host of other developmental delights.

I will always be grateful to Keith for his support and encouragement, the honesty of his feedback, and his commitment to the big picture — we are called to be a learning discipled community, not institutional custodians. I don't want to get too sappy about the past or the future — learning means ongoing change, and no sacred cows. But I did want to say thank you, and offer love and prayers to Keith for a joyful and fruitful future ministry.
With God the best is always what is yet to be...

Women bishops — but how?

Big stack of reading over the next fortnight, on women bishops, including the new report about implementation possibilities from the Bishop of Manchester’s group. I’m all ears (eyes?), and look forward to the college of bishops later this month. It was very helpful indeed to have full (anti) comment from Cardinal Kasper two years ago, albeit from his narrow denominational perspective. I will also revisit the substantial theological reaction to the Cardinal’s lecture from the Bishops of Durham and Salisbury in 2006, which set his advice in a biblical, broad ecumenical and historical context.

Before I start reading, three immediate historical thoughts come to mind, process markers rather than conclusions:

1. In the OT God appointed an order among his people; but its expression, including its gender makeup was variable. The order of judges, with occasional female supremacy, gave way to male kings, tradition says, because the people wanted to be like the others round about them. God, in his providence, said “yes.” In the New Covenant, the Church’s highest calling is to be a delivery system for the kingdom, and, as body of Christ, what Maximus the Confessor called an “enfleshing of the incarnation.” Therefore the practical sociology of Christian ministry has always been contextual, not absolute, reflecting the reality of the social structures around it. Thus Early Church practice within which 30-40% of the leadership was female gave way to a medieval order where imperialistic institutionalism was the order of the day, and it was inconceivable that anyone but celibate males should exercise authority. All this by divine permission. Absolutising 12th century cultural assumptions, whilst cutting free from the (frankly ludicrous) anthropology of female subordination that validated them at the time, seems to me historicist weirdness, ignoring truths recovered by the sixteenth century Reformation.
2. When we turn from fading Roman Imperialism to its British counterpart, 20th century bureaucrats, with their instinct for steering round difficulties rather than facing them, loved partition solutions. They were the centrepiece of British Imperial policy in Ireland (1922), Palestine (1948), India (1947) and Cyprus (1955). They seemed rather noble means for giving incompatible populations long term peace. However those colonial governors wore ostrich feathers for a reason. What they actually did, long term, was institutionalise schism. Their product in Ireland was almost a hundred years of violence, in Palestine sixty years of strife, in India (Kashmir and Pakistan) a war in which a million people died, in Cyprus the green line. The man at the FO could sign the problem off and bring the troops home, but, long term, I can’t think of a single partition solution that was a long term winner. We are still struggling with deadly institutionalised schism in the Middle East and India. Of course in Church everything is entirely different, but history is reality written for our learning, and I can’t get enthusiastic about elegant churchy versions of the kind of statesmanship that so delighted 20th Century Sir Humphreys. They got their knighthoods but they also got the big picture dangerously wrong.
3. To return to Church history, formative Anglican theologians did not attempt to build the church by cobbling together some kind of synthetic panjandrum out of the most extreme positions, to keep everyone on board politically. Instead, they centred everything back on the Scriptures and the Creeds. This method worked for them, anyway. Perhaps we should try it. Too much Ecclesiastical Heath Robinson Engineering and you'll end up with a bunch of grinning politicians and no real bishops anyway, male or female.