Reporting to the Boss (by Roger)
At the end of September, the Archbishop of Canterbury paid a flying visit to Luton. At his meeting with the clergy, a number of us were asked to give reports on our different ministries. Since the report I had to give was about the parish here, I thought you ought to know what was said about you. It went as follows:
Archbishop's Report.
Your Grace, I feel I should preface what follows with a brief disclaimer. Although I have been put up as the token Parish Priest for the Deanery, what follows does not claim to be in any way representative. It is simply an account of how one parish has tried to respond to what it has seen as the three main challenges facing it.
The first challenge is that posed by the tidal wave of secularism which, after quietly gathering strength over the past two hundred years, has now broken and is racing up the beach. We've tried to respond to that challenge by seeking a gospel that is credible - one that draws together the insights of faith and the insights of science and scholarship. We've also tried to present that gospel in a way that is intelligible, developing, under the guidance of our Regeneration Group, forms of worship and ways of speech that are accessible to those unversed in traditional religious language and unschooled in the ways of the church.
The second challenge is that posed by the change in the nature of community. Whereas formerly people were rooted in their local community, they are now rooted in a virtual community whose boundaries are defined by the common agenda set by the media they watch and read. It is a change that has given people wider horizons, but it is a change that has come at a price. The price is that the lonely and vulnerable can no longer take for granted the level of neighbourly support that they would once have enjoyed. We have tried to respond to the first of these changes by enlarging our own pastoral horizons. A Care Committee ensures that a minimum of 10% of our income now goes to those in need outside the parish at home or abroad. We have tried to respond to the second by creating an oasis of real community where people can find human love and fellowship and a Father's care and by reaching out through a network of 75 Way Wardens to provide something of that neighbourly care that is no longer built into the system.
The third challenge is that posed by a change of ethos. Fulfilment is now sought not by forgetting self but by attentiveness to self. We have tried to respond to this change by challenging its validity in our preaching and our teaching. We have also done what we can to strengthen our defences against it by developing those disciplines that direct our focus away from ourselves and on to what God wants and what the world needs. We have instituted the practice of beginning each year with a week-end Parish Retreat. We have sought to encourage prayer and Bible Study. Above all, we have centred our worship on Communion with its emphasis on the way of selflessness and the goal to which it leads.
Your Grace, being a parish priest has been a wonderful job. I would not have changed it for the world. But it is getting steadily harder. At times the predicament of the church reminds me uncomfortably of the time when, as a kid, I watched the Lancashire Textile industry twisting and turning to escape that inexorable march of those market forces that eventually brought about its extinction. In such moments, however, I have to hand a ready consolation. I think to myself, "Yes, being a parish priest is getting harder. But, cheer up. It could be much worse. You could be an archbishop."