Category: Uncategorized

We’re just back from a few days in Donegal – and very good it was. Wonderful, bright and clear weather – completely uncharacteristic of Donegal.

I’ve been thinking about this exchange ever since. The butcher in Dunfanaghy was cutting up the lamb for us. ‘How would you like it?’ he asked. Because we were on holiday, the answer was, ‘However it comes’. ‘I’m doing middling decent chunks,’ he replied.

Fantastic! It’s the answer to almost everything.

How should I read the Bible? MDC’s
How should I prioritise my working day? MDC’s
etc, etc.

And then another treat. As we left, Alison said, ‘See you later’ and he replied, ‘See you later’ The emigration links between West Donegal and Lowland Scotland remain as strong as ever.

The Sunday Times last week published one of those pieces on secularisation which seem to me to go round in circles. Essentially the argument is as follows. Secularisation is an irresistible force. Because of secularisation, all churches are going down the tubes. Because the churches are going down the tubes, secularisation is an irresistible force.

To their credit, they gave me space for a response today And BBC Scotland are doing an interview tomorrow morning.

My version of the argument goes as follows.

I like living in a secular society. It is preferable to either a confessional or a theocratic state. It requires a respectful but non-deferential relationship between church and state.

Some churches are going down the tubes – mainly those which are based on patterns of traditional membership rather than active discipleship.

Secular society suits small churches like the SEC because there are more people for us to talk to. We are working hard at the new patterns of church life – we intend to survive and thrive in the secular society.

Much has been made this Easter – as every Easter – of the rolling away of the stone as symbolising our hopes for resurrection and renewal of the church.

I’ve been doing a bit of it myself. Regular readers will remember my suggestion that we tend to ‘overdose on friendliness and accessibility’. Nobody would ever suggest that the church should strive to be unfriendly. But I think it risks making us bland in an age where post-modern people seek spirituality, mystery and a cutting edge. At our Chrism Mass on Thursday, I suggested to our clergy that we need to practise disbelonging if we are to be effective leaders. Nobody would suggest that clergy should not strive to be warm and compassionate pastors who are close to their people. But we also need space from which it is possible to challenge the church to mission.

I was quietly reading the Irish Times today while enjoying a pint of the black stuff in Arnold’s Hotel. It was good to find that Irish church leaders are beginning to stake out the kind of debate which I yearn to see in Scotland.

I am sure that there are many brave voices in the Irish Catholic Church. But the one that I hear is Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin. He said that the Catholic Church ‘has to be restructured and de-structured to allow it to witness to the sense of meaning and purpose that Jesus brings to the lives of believers’

My friend, Archbishop Michael Jackson, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, said that the church ‘has become over anxious about its orthodoxy (correct teaching) as opposed to its orthopraxy (correct doing) in the face of those who be their best for God and to do their best for their neighbour within their strengths and their limitations’

Their is a common agenda here. I’ve done my bit in the past for a post-nationalist Ireland. I do my bit at present for a post-colonial Anglican Communion. We need to move towards a post-institutional church.

Sermon from the Cathedral this morning

This is a time of year when I feel nostalgic about parish ministry. All right – I know that if I was doing it again my nostalgia would be short-lived. But there was a rhythm to it, particularly in Holy Week. You knew where you were going and how you were going to get there – just so long as you didn’t have anything else planned.

My Good Friday started in the BBC in Edinburgh

First of all there was Thought for the Day for BBC Scotland. Then a Radio 4 Act of Worship – complete with the usual panics about transmission which seem to go with live radio.

Anyway, here is the Thought for the Day. I was aware that Nelson Mandela was far from well at that point. So I wrote a a second Thought for the Day and we adapted and used it as the reflection in the middle of the Act of Worship.

I was glad to be home. And glad to have the Chrism Mass come round again. It’s my nineth – since it was one of the very first things after I came here. It reminds me …. that, having lost the ‘priest and people’ ministry that I had before, the heart of ministry for me is in the extraordinary nature of the bishop-priest relationship. It’s not always an easy relationship because it contains within it the internal tensions of the pastor/manager roles. But I think that before most things my job is to help clergy to have fulfilling and creative ministry.

We don’t do feet washing – I wish we did and an e mail from Rachel Mash in South Africa reminded me that pink basins are obligatoire for this. But we do washing and anointing and we bind ourselves again to the ministry to which we are called.

I’ve been much preoccupied this last year in thinking about how the priest can over-belong with his or her people. That sounds silly – but there has to be some space for leadership, challenge and all of that. I’m also ever more taken with St Benedict who reminds me that the abbot should strive to be loved and not feared – and tells us to ‘incline the ear of your heart’

You can read about it here

The Enthronement of Archbishop Justin was on Thursday – but I am still in London. Two days more of Anglican Communion Standing Committee to do and home on Tuesday evening.

Today we joined the congregation at St Martin in the Fields – beginning a Palm Sunday procession in Trafalgar Square with palms and donkey. It was freezing cold but good – particularly to hear Archbishop Thabo leading prayers outside South Africa House. It was a good morning – a remarkable and youthful congregation in a wonderful building.

It brought back all sorts of memories for me – of the ‘plunge’ in the Urban Ministry Project in 1975 when we were put out on the streets of London with £1 for 48 hours. It was unwise then and would be madness today. The other memory was of a placement in the Social Service Unit which was their ministry to the homeless. I learnt not very much about the homeless. But the late Norman Ingram Smith taught me how to preach without a script. I met a number of people who remembered him. People are always listing ‘useful things for ministry’. I would rate that skill as fundamental – along with touch typing.

And then we moved on to Evensong at Westminster Abbey and a tour with the Dean. I took a look at the phenomenon of hundreds of young-ish people turning up for Choral Evensong. The photo is of Bishop James Tengatenga of Southern Malawi at the memorial plaque for David Livingstone.

I stood today in the community of Anglican Primates – we were in a circle around St Augustine’s Chair when Archbishop Justin was seated. It’s an extraordinary moment, I watched. I held my breath. I said my prayers for him,

As I watched, I saw what I have seen at other moments and experienced myself. As the weight of office descended, you could see the burden of it. People do shrink. I think about difficult meetings, hard decisions, lonely travel …. But they grow as well. In his sermon, Archbishop Justin talked about how to acknowledge the authority of God brings courage, I believe that. And I believe in the grace of ordination – that somehow we become what it is that we are called to be and need to be to fulfil whatever our calling may be.

And with the eye of my heart, I saw all of that, And I think he did as well

This is Mirella whom I was glad to meet today. You don’t need to know this – but she is my brother’s step-daughter. More important, she is an apprentice in the stone masons’ yard here at Canterbury Cathedral.

Mirella is completely passionate about what she does. I could have listened to her all day. First of all, she loves the building and the remarkable community of people who serve it. Then she began to talk about what it is like to work on the stone work. You take out a piece of stone which has been there for hundreds of years and you can see the mason’s mark of the person who carved it. And when you carve the replacement, it all has to be done by hand tools and by eye – so that it is perfect but not exact. Sounds like sermons in stone to me …

In return, I introduced Mirella to my much more ephemeral world. The person who took this slightly strange photo was the media person for The Episcopal Church, The lady inside the door of the coffee shop was the Primate of the Church of Norway. None of us is here for hundreds of years and we may not leave much of a mark ….

It’s been a very Benedictine day here at Canterbury. The Anthem in Archbishop Justin Welby’s Enthronement Service included that wonderful phrase from the Rule of St Benedict – ‘incline the ear of your heart’. The speaker at the dinner this evening was the Abbot from the Benedictine Community from which Pope Gregory sent Augustine to Canterbury, I’ve been thinking about my friends in Holy Cross Monastery in Ireland where I go on retreat – grateful for how much they have taught me about the Benedictine way

I happened to do a Thought for the Day for BBC Northern Ireland this morning and this is what I said:

This is an important day for the Anglican Communion across the world as Archbishop Justin Welby is seated in St Augustine’s Chair in Canterbury as the 105th Archbishop. He will be the focus of the hopes and the prayers of many.

Those of us who practise the strange arts of leadership in the church – described by some as a task like herding cats – have a particularly sharp understanding of the task ahead of him. He has to help the Church of England to find an answer to its difficulties about the consecration of women bishops. He will help it to be both a pilgrim, missionary body and the historic national and established church. He will have a significant national profile as a faith leader. He will be a ‘first among equals’ leader among Anglican Primates – the leaders of the 38 Anglican Provinces – helping the Anglican Communion to be a global body which expresses communion without centralised authority.

Justin Welby has slender shoulders for such a task. But he has a big and prayerful heart – both for mission and for reconciliation across the Anglican Communion. And he also has the sort of ascerbic toughness which he needs to have to exercise leadership in difficult times.

My reflections on leadership more and more lead me back to the Rule of St Benedict – and Canterbury Cathedral was originally a Benedictine Foundation. The Rule embodies 15 centuries of distilled wisdom about living in community. I pay particular attention to what St Benedict says about the Abbott – who he says should ‘aim to be loved and not feared’. Clearly Benedict is concerned that the abbot should manage to balance truth and love. ‘Even in his corrections, let him act with prudence and not go to extremes, lest, while he aimeth to remove the rust too thoroughly, the vessel be broken.’

This world sees too much violence, too much directive use of authority, too much use of economic power to gain political advantage. The question here is whether faith communities and their leadership can embody and model for others a compassionate and listening use of authority. Not weakness or soft compliance. But an authority which is so firmly rooted in a true spirituality and holiness that it can afford to care deeply about people and relationships and about human need, suffering and the demands of justice.