India Oscar Kilo

Ten very productive and profoundly moving days with colleagues working in the Nandyal Diocese in Andhra Pradesh. It’s now three years since Lucy and I first visited, and it was good now to be among recognizable friends in places that now mean very much to us. Our hosts looked after us wonderfully. The four of us were profoundly struck by the warmth, dignity, hospitality and commitment to Christ of our hosts, often in circumstances that would easily drive others insane. Working results still need to be agreed and actioned, but the country was, as ever, crowded, beautiful, raw, elusive and subtle...

Right solution, wrong problem?

Please, Covenant people, tell us what you think your pet project will achieve and how. We know it’s fallout from the Windsor process, and I’ve seen the text endlessy, but still do not understand exactly what problem it will address and how. Therefore I cannot forbear to share, with my grateful thanks to Maggi Dawn, an attempt to mend a troubled relationship, nothing to do with Church. Sheila wrote to a South Carolina agony column with her relational problem

Dear John,
I hope you can help me. The other day I set off for work, leaving my husband in the house watching TV. My car stalled, and then it broke down about a mile down the road, and I had to walk back to get my husband’s help. When I got home, I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in our bedroom with the neighbour’s daughter!
I am 32, my husband is 34 and our neighbour’s daughter is 19. We have been married for 10 years. When I confronted him, he broke down and admitted they had been having an affair for the past six months. He won’t go to counselling, and I’m afraid I am a wreck and need advice urgently. Can you please help? Sincerely. Sheila.

John writes back with what is unquestionably a brilliant technical solution to what he thinks is the real problem, worthy of a high powered deisgn group:

A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking there is no debris in the fuel line. If it clear, check the vacuum pipes and hoses on the inlet manifold and also check all grounding wires. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the injectors. I hope this helps. John

Eh voilà! A perfect 10 of a solution, sincerely meant, technically flawless, but completely useless to address a relational problem! You don’t build trust by inventing a third party body to talk about people behind their backs and adjudicate. People who go to court usually end up feeling worse, sometimes even when they have won. Trust comes, in my experience as a bishop, from openness, listening skill, direct speech, compassion, accountability, stability and hope, experienced relationally in as low-key a register as possible.

It may be that the Anglican Communion needs an Anglican Covenant, but the troops are as yet unconvinced and all I seem to be hearing from its proponents, I'm very sorry to say, are rather testy responses to criticism, blaming everybody else for misunderstanding it, whilst everybody else seems to think they understand it only too well.

Meanwhile the Church Times has set its readers a question of the week about the adoption of the Covenant. Normally they get about 200 votes, split about 60/40. This week, I see it’s over 800, 86%, yes 86%, against the Covenant. That's hardly a scientific poll, but if the powers that be have any interest at all in what active Anglicans think, they ought surely want to try and work out why so many people are as yet unconvinced. Is it just a communication thing, or is it something about the proposal itself that hasn’t yet connected with everybody?

Because the Church of England has only a limited ability to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking through the non-elite faithful, it may be that habitual deference, lack of moral courage, infantilism and amateur inexperience can sail such a thing through the General Synod with less than 20% of the punters actually believing in it. The kindest thing that may end up being said was that it seemed like a good idea at the time of the Windsor report, whose child it is, but it represents a rational/legal solution to something that wasn't essentially a rational/ legal problem, and never mind because everybody has now moved on.

I very much doubt that places where they are less into deference, infantilism and amateur inexperience than England will buy the covenant wholesale on this basis. So come, on, Covenant people. Please explain to us positively how this helps build a closer and more relational communion that is not a super-denomination, and we will consider your advice very seriously. Right now, the kindest one can say is that the case appears “not proven.” yet?

Anglican Covenant: a Tool for...?

I am slightly bemused when I am told some big signature project is perfectly safe because it won’t make any critical difference. If not, why bother? Is there anything worth doing instead that might make a difference? But a new General Synod is about to sign the C of E up to the Anglican Covenant, pretty much on auto-pilot, some say as much out of fear of giving offence as positive endorsement for its suposed virtues. Everyone else can then back-pedal, ignore it, even, depending on where they stand in the culture wars,

• because they fear it will spank TEC
  
  or
  
  
• because they fear it won’t,
  

The Covenant then joins a select number of other magnificenti in the lumber room, like the Kikuyu declaration, and life carries on. But, inquiring minds will wonder, what kind of a tool is it? What for? Whose benefit? How?

There’s a scale for assessing tools, that runs from Swiss Army Knife to Turkey Turners.

The Swiss Army knife may seem ungainly and complex, but it’s an instrument of many uses, that has proved its worth during nights out on a thousand bare mountains. Whilst any one of its 39-odd functions could be better performed by a dedicated tool, the whole instrument brings together massive functionality in one place that’s accessible, effective and easily portable.
If tempted to see the Covenant as a Swiss Army Knife, ask yourself “what extra functionalities does it provide? What does evidence indicate about demand for these to be tackled? How accessible? Is it effective enough to be worth the candle and, actually, what is the candle?”

The Turkey Turner is a dual pronged instrument you stick in a Turkey’s rear end to turn it when it’s well and truly done. Not only is it ungainly, and far less effective than kitchen roll to manhandle a sixteen pound carcass, but if you make holes in a turkey’s skin out run the juices that make it tasty. Turkey Turners are admirably well-intentioned but essentially useless.
If tempted to see the Covenant as a Turkey Turner, ask yourself “How negative are its negatives, actually. Have I overestimated its impact? Would there be any argument for having one in the kitchen drawer just in case a turkey ever needs turning?”

Whichever way the various decision making processes go, it would be good to feel people had at least voted for something they believed in, not simply something they were too nice to ask searching questions about, and with which they couldn’t be bothered to object...

You Decide!

Online Surveys & Market Research

On getting shot once

Twenty years ago Sir John Harvey Jones, the industrialist, used to go around troubleshooting businesses facing significant unpalateable change. He tried to understand their operations and scope ways forward which would both preserve the bloodline of the business and ensure its future. As scared managers explained exactly why their businesses could never change, Sir John used to enourage them to dive in by reminding them, with a cheery twinkle in his eye “You can only get shot once.”

As Churches struggle to follow God faithfully, rock to his people, but also river of the spirit, they need to distinguish core gospel imperatives from auld habits. Thus we trundle round increasingly sharp bends, close to the edge of high cliffs.

In which context I was recently reminded of the way in which some friends in Sweden see the whole C of E way of handling, for example, women’s ordination. Some think it an elegant and characteristically English way of keeping as many opponents as possible on board. Meanwhile others think we are maniacs who have somehow invented a way of making “getting shot” (assuming that’s what it is for those who lose the argument) take thrty years. The same dynamic operates for church reordering, changing hymnbooks, etc.

I wonder... Nobody does gradualism like the English — horray! but when you are turning a turtle is it actually kind to the poor beast to turn it one foot at a time? Both methods have their advantages, no doubt. Such as?

True Fasting: fruit and effects

If all we think and do for God is provisional, how can we discern the spirits? A theologically based poiont of view cannot be validated merely because it uses God-talk and Scripture, appeals to conventional understanding from former ages, or is passionately and sincerely held. Apartheid endorsements from the eighties were all those things, but still wrong, indeed evil.

The mistake the wrong sort of Pharisee made, and St Paul’s opponents in Galatia, was to suppose Faith is some checklist thing that could be read off in advance. All we can ultimately test a proposition by are its fruit and its effects. The real tests of our most insistent Scripturally founded theological convictions are

1. Fruit — what fruit does a proposition bear in the lives of those who espouse it, and how is it good news for everyone concerned, and how does it fit into God’s purposes for the peace and salvation of all?
   
   
2. Effects — does it confront injustice, enrich the poor, set the prisoners free, minister healing, and turn the world upside down?
   

Activity that is literally fruitless, or even worse, bears bad fruit — anger, clamour, wrath, rivalry, emulations, factions — will probably serve nothing but itself.

So, contemplating the future of the Anglican communion with someone who wrote to me about it from overseas, I can see a positive future, if we have the courage to go for it. It came to me this morning, like a slap across the face, in the passage Maggi Dawn’s Lent book gives for today from Isaiah 58:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up speedily;
your righteousness shall go before you;
the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry, and he will say, “Here I am.”
If you take away the yoke from your midst,
the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
if you pour yourself out for the hungry
and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
then shall your light rise in the darkness
and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the LORD will guide you continually
and satisfy your desire in scorched places
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Two ways to win an argument...

Some people have been asking me what I think the way forward might be on serious non credal issues arising from cultural diversity.
Somewhat in haste, it strikes me there are two well-worn but very different paths the Church could take to handle them:

1. From the outside in.
   Pressure groups enforce their perceptions and will by political means — alliances, smokescreens, salvoes, outmanoevring others, Big Position Statements, threats and throwing wobblies, ignoring and belittling the others, doing down the opposition until it’s as though they didn’t exist.
   
   
2. From the inside out.
   Hearts and minds stuff. Begin with a serious pragmatic realism and clarity about the people concerned. Apply the Gospel = (Benedictine hat going on) radical mutual accountability at every level, about the means and notives as well as ends, combined with a commitment to excellence of execution within an overall aim of fostering discipleship

One is fun, but... But what do I know?

’tis the reason for the season

Wacky families? All of us? Weirder than this (Right h/t Brent Diggs) — plucked out of the blogosphere in random fashion? back in May Brent posted a Short Conversation with God. Here’s a snippet...

God: (sigh) Yeah. Good help is hard to find.

Me: Help?…Oh right, christians. I know what you mean. They can be kind of weird; kind of freaky. Scary even.

God: They had a rough childhood, you know. Always getting beat on and fed to the lions and such. But they never stopped feeding the hungry or taking care of the poor in those early years, they made me really proud.

Me: What happened?

God: You know how kids are. They get to a certain age and they start thinking they don’t need you anymore. That they’ve got it all figured out. Of course, I’m supposed to keep providing the blessings: the sun, the rain, cheap labor in the third world. Other than that they just want me to not bother them while they sit in their rooms and talk to their friends about me.

Me: So basically, you’ve got teenagers?

God: Yeah.

Me: Sorry.

God: I know. I forgive you.

Me? I’m just enjoying the kids playing with the rats upstairs, to Janis Joplin, now Steph is home... We’re not wacky...

Anglican Schism — Righteous Salami

Ages before the words had quite today’s meaning, they used to say in Yorkshire, “The whole world’s queer save thee and me, and I’ve been wondering about thee recently...” People in every Church have said it, from the Great Papal Schism (1378-1417) to the Marcel Lefebvre movement, or the salami slicing of the Kirk since the Great Disruption of 1843. It happens. Always the righteous minority walk away, claiming that everyone else has constructively dismissed them.

Actually this behaviour transcends religion. The extreme Right Swinton Circle does it. “It’s not the party I joined,” wailed old Labourites in flat caps through the 90’s. And, of course, they were right. Things change, and righteous remnant attitudes lie crouching at all our doors, awaiting their day.

For fun, Bosco Peters has started up his own Real Anglican Communion. Salami slice your way to True Orthodoxy with Mickey Mouse, and you are actually heading towards vanishing point. Bosco’s pulling our legs, but the guy who got consecrated in Kalispell Montana as Pope Pius XIII is deadly serious about being the “true Catholic Church,” following the liberal defection of the other billion odd Roman Catholics in the world. It’s hard to tell where Mickey taking shades into reality. The whole process of rancorous straining at gnats and swallowing camels seems to Bonsai people’s self awareness, as various ecclesiastical costumiers ring up the dollars, to illustrate the grandiose websites.

Cue Dr Ephraim Radner — a deeply grounded and spiritually aware Conservative theologian from Wycliffe College, Toronto. He’s posted his Advent thoughts, What I have learned these past five years, and I commend them to the house as a supremely wise, humble and hopeful resource to everyone on all sides, a blast of human and spiritual reality for us all:

The last few years of struggle within the Episcopal Church (TEC) and within the Anglican Communion have taken their toll on many persons and congregations, and on our common life in a larger way. Every day brings some new report on the impending or already achieved “break-up” of Anglicanism and on the spectacle of “global schism”, even while Anglican leaders insist that this hasn’t happened yet. Many congregations in the United States, and some in Canada, have left their denominations for other forms of Anglican relationship. Even more congregations, including many that have left TEC, have been torn by conflict or bled by tension and malaise, and TEC’s membership has shown a steady and alarming drop in the past three or four years. Declarations affirming something “new” about to begin or demanding something “old” be restored are issued from various groups, and the project of developing “adequate structures” or even canons for this or that ministry, mission, and witness is seen by many as a necessity, even if understood in contradictory ways.

How does one navigate this time as an Anglican Christian? I have a number of friends and colleagues who have decided simply that it is not possible to do so. For various reasons, they have left Anglicanism altogether – becoming Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox (less common), non-denominational evangelical Christians (often) or finally (most frequently) “church drop-outs” altogether. A common theme among these persons has been a sense of exhaustion and spiritual depletion, even as they have discerned elements of doctrine and ecclesial life that they believe, in different ways, are best embodied in other Christian traditions. The ache of inner ailment has stirred up a theological ferment whose outcome has opened up the press for a new direction altogether....

More importantly than the substance of the issue in question, however, I have had to face quite simply the fact that my own views, however carefully constructed and believed in, are not the measure of the church’s life or of anybody else’s. They cannot displace, in time, a whole range of other imperatives to action, relationship, reflection and counsel, witness, and prayer. And once I allow them to do this, I have given way, not to God’s sovereign power and love, but to my own self-regard. I might well ask, “why do the wicked prosper?” and find God staying my heart (cf. Psalm 37); I might remember Paul’s exhortation not to insist on one’s own ways (1 cor. 13:5; Rom. 15:1f.), not for the sake of giving up convictions or of compromise, but simply to give oneself over to God the just judge (1 Pet.2:23); I might also, finally and even better, plead, “I am a worm and no man, have mercy on me” (Ps. 22:6, 19).

In a world of inceasing individualism and single issue fanaticism, the gentleman is right, and his point, of course, cuts all ways. He draws attention to eleven particular action learning points:

1. You can’t always get what you want, even if you are right
2. Parishes are mixed, and require building up by non-conflictive teaching, not transformation into battlegrounds
3. So is the whole Communion, and it has the same need
4. Legal complexity cuts both ways
5. The impact of global culture on Christian life needs to be understood carefully and accurately
6. We cannot avoid repeating the mistakes of the past
7. There is no magic bullet solution, to be brought about by cataclysmic change
8. No one person or group is in a position to bring about such a solution
9. There is no credit in failing to defend the integrity of adversaries, or remaining silent in the face of indefensible behaviour by allies
10. Spiritual Malice remains Spiritual Malice, to be avoided at all costs
11. Israel, wait on the Lord
    What I seek to do – through God’s mercy and grace — is to retain the faith, hope, and love that will permit constancy in testimony, perseverance in learning, willingness in encounter, and the wisdom through such persistence to persuade in trust and service. The great gifts of Anglicanism have always turned in this direction – for we were ever sinful, were we not? — so that our mission has triumphed over our internal tensions...

I spent Tuesday in a day’s personal growth, learning and reflection with senior Christian leaders in Buckinghamshire, Baptist, Methodist, Savation Army, United Reformed, Roman Catholic. As we shared openly together what God has been showing us, very much in the spirit of Dr Radner, a tremendous sense emerged of the importance for our common life of integrating the ways God sees us, and the ways the world sees us, and the ways we see each other and ourselves. Ditto at yesterday’s wonderful Diocesan senior staff meeting. We only get one Advent this year, during which we pray

O wisdom that proceeds from the mouth of the most high, reaching powerfully from end to end, sweetly (elegantly, smoothly, gently) ordering everything: Come teach us the way of good judgment.

Let’s not waste it this year...

US Virus — Global Sneeze

As a different world order unfolds, I was intrigued at Lambeth by the way US dissidents have been driving heavy contention in the Anglican Communion — not only content, but style. 30 years ago, it is said, the then TEC Presiding Bishop realised the domestic argument over women’s ordination was a gone coon, but worked to boost the primates’ process to build reinforcements from the rest of the world to relieve the fort back home in the end. That is exactly the modus operandi we have been observing consistently since the mid nineties over gay issues. An open-source, non-Imperialistic, loosely structured organization is terrifyingly vulnerable to entryism and manipulation. Et voilà!

Pinocchio can swear blind that there ain’t no strings on him, perhaps he actually believes it, but, oh boy, just look at the length of his nose. The style, as much as anything else, is the real give-away. To triangulate this observation beyond the Anglican world, I noticed a comment by Brian MacLaren about US Evangelicals and the neocon Religious Right, and how they made exactly the nexus that the Barna Group has observed to be so disastrous for the image of US Evangelicals among Mosaics, even those in Evangelical Churches:

A lot of us feel that we’ve watched large sectors of our Christian community in the U.S. engage in several decades of divisive, ineffective, and downright counterproductive political engagement. At best, many attempts at engagement have been superficial, simplistic, and subject to binary thinking where one or two wedge issues easily distinguish the “good guys” from the bad. At worst, we’ve watched too many of our fellow Christians slip into a “culture war” mindset where neighbors became enemies to be defeated and silenced, not loved as we love ourselves. In addition, we’ve watched too many members of our faith communities be manipulated by cynical politicians who knew what tune to play to get people of faith marching obediently in their parade.

A Church for the Churchless?

Discussion starter for 10 — an intriguing conversation recorded by Dan Porter walking his dog in the park with a Roman Catholic priest who suggested:

Something I hear a lot from young people today is that they hate organized religion.
I suggest that they might want to become Episcopalians

View from Stewards’ enclosure

A rollicking good evening with the Stewards, a team of 50 young people from around the world. They have looked after us here incredibly cheerfully and capably. Four of them, from the Indian Ocean, England, South Africa and USA gave us the benfit of their particular wisdom. With great poise and precision, they outlined some observations and hopes for the Church and the world. They saw themselves as the Church of now, not the future, and were keen to live for Christ and change the world.

For all the frustrations of staying awake through the long hours and herding episcopal cats all day, they were powerfully made aware of what a glorious global fellowship the Anglican communion actually is. Even if it is what Tolkein called “a quest on the edge of a knife” it was onvious to them that this one body functions on the basis of freedom and love, not compulsion. Bishops talked, a lot, in hundreds of languages, not because they had to, but because they were invested in each other’s lives and calling, and disciples of Christ.

Penny, hoping to be ordained, looked on her time stewarding this event as good practice for being a particpant in 30 years time. Someone who had done 2 conferences this way was in the room. Will it be here to be part of? That is obviously up to God. The Kingdom is far, far more significant to God than the institutional Anglican Communion in itself. Who can say what our lives will be? But this has been an unforgettable experience for us all, and a world without the capacity to gather such a diverse spectrum from 130 nations in unity, in Christ, on the basis of love not imperialism and compulsion, would be a far poorer place.