Bishop John Gladwin's address to Diocesan Synod, November 2006

Ed: only just available!

Welcome to the Diocesan Synod and thank you for agreeing to serve for the coming three years.

Over the summer weeks I and my colleagues have been praying, reflecting and setting some directions for our ministry. As a team we had to answer the questions, ‘what is our passion?’, ‘what is our aspiration?’, and ‘what are our resources?’. Each person had to think this for themselves and contribute into groups. This is what we agreed:

Our passion is Jesus – proclaiming and living out God’s love for all people

Our aspiration is to be a transforming presence in every community, open and welcoming to all and serving all.

Our resources are faithful people, prayer and worship, visionary leadership and liberating gifts.

This is what your episcopal team in this diocese is about and you must hold us to it. To you we say, ‘We want the Diocese of Chelmsford to be passionate about Jesus, to be a transforming presence in every community and to see its people, our prayer and worship and the gifts God has given to us that set us free as our fundamental resource.’

I look to this Synod and every member to share with us in this vision of what God is calling us to become.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, God has called to live as Christians in the world as it is. Not as it was 50 years ago or even 10 years ago. Living for Jesus today and looking to be a life transforming presence right across the multiple faces of human life and community in this diocese. Look at the big things that have been happening and their impact upon us – even in the last 10 years.

1. A massive change has happened in European culture with the end of the Cold War. Already in East London and elsewhere we are welcoming new citizens of the EU. In a diocese linked to Iash in Romania we have a particular interest in the contemporary movement of people and of cultures. With the new European dispensation comes the language of human rights and fundamental expectations about how people are to be treated. This is the moral language of living with difference - race, sexuality, gender, faith or none and disability – to name but some!

2. Post 9/11 and 7/7 in this diocese we live with the challenge of a world where boundaries no longer hold and where it is possible for people and small groups to pursue their agendas through violent attacks upon innocent citizens. Religion, according to Richard Dawkins, is a bad thing. It encourages violence and war. Faith in God is being questioned in new ways and provides us with a mission focused theological agenda. This is at the heart of the public debate about faith schools about religious dress and symbols.

3. In this liberal mass communications international world where high finance moves around the globe with the press of a button how are we to meet the pressing moral agendas of global warming and environmental responsibility and the demand of justice to the poor and excluded? This in the diocese facing the biggest expansion of housing and development of any in this country. Behind all of this large questions about the values of driving social and economic change.

That is why the ‘five marks of mission’ and the Bishop’s commentary on them is fundamental. Evangelism, church building and sustaining and our social and cultural responsibility are held together in one coherent Christian strategy for the church.

Think of some of the things happening closer to home that have been forcibly drawn to our attention.

1. What about the recent report comparing the experience of young people in this country with our European neighbours on the issues of lifestyle? It would be easy to dump the problem on the shoulders of young people – ours are the most violent, drunken and sexually undisciplined youth in Europe. But what of our collective responsibility? Materialism, self-interest, and a growing lack of respect for the dignity and individuality of each person – what vision have we for the human community and those most at risk? Our schools and youth strategies and becoming increasingly urgent priorities.

2. What about the Stern report on the environmental challenge? Are our parishes environmentally aware and alive? Is there good Biblical teaching and debate about the world we live in and our place in it? How are we to be with and ministering to our rural communities at this time of change?

3. If we want real theological work taking us deep into the heart of the Gospel and of Scripture how about the crisis in our prisons and in the field of law – we have two prisons in this diocese in which our people both lay and ordained minister.

I illustrate rather than give you an exhaustive analysis. My point is that if we are to be passionate about Jesus then we have to inhabit the world as it is. Our calling is to live in order that it may experience the transforming meaning of the Gospel of Jesus. I know we talk about it but we still find it difficult. Our task is not to drag people to church and judge our success by numbers turning up on Sunday morning. Our task is to take the Gospel out among the people. When we are faithful to the Gospel, God will create the community of faith. The church belongs to God not us. We do not create it, God does. God does this through the faithful witness and living of people who are passionate about Jesus.

The second thing this means is that we form our agenda holding to our priorities in mission. The five marks of mission are not about an internal outmoded ecclesiastical agenda designed to make sure we all fall out with one another. They are an agenda encouraging us to look to Jesus, to look out towards the people and the world we all inhabit and shape our ministry accordingly. I am sure the Deanery Vision work is going to be a crucial part of moving our vision outwardly to the people we are called to serve.

Yes, we do have some church business to deal with and we must do so graciously and with mutual listening and respect. We do need to think about women and the episcopate. We do need to keep along with the issues facing the Anglican Communion. On women and the episcopate there is plenty of good material to help us and I hope personally, in parishes and deaneries we can find out what this is about and begin to think how we think the church should proceed. The General Synod will be looking at ways of moving forward and wants to hear from a wide discussion across the church. We will suggest material that might help with local debate and thinking. When you have worked on it let us know what your thoughts and ideas are.

I am less convinced that Synodical work is the way to get us thinking through the issues that are causing concern in the Anglican Communion. We must consider carefully what to do. Past attempts to enable us to talk about the sexuality issues would indicate that people are not rushing out to meetings for this subject. I wonder whether we need a diocesan group advising us in the whole field of human sexuality and relationships.

But we do need to ask, as we engage in these tasks, what message is coming across to the world out there? Is the welcoming face of Jesus coming through our conversation? Does this work speak of a love that might transform the communities in which our congregations and churches live and minister?

We live with the danger not just of the media making fun of us – which they can sometimes do – but of us telling a story out of touch with the movement of life in our world today.

Michael Burleigh, a very eminent historian, has recently produced a book called ‘Earthly Powers’ – on religion and politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War. This is what he says about the work of the Church of England in the Victorian era:

“When attempts were made to involve working-class people actively, notably through the Church of England Working Men’s Society, this was largely a tool of the High Church ritualists battle with the Low Church Evangelical Party in the rival Church Association. In other words, internal Church faction fighting took precedence, a pattern that has been endlessly repeated with other ‘issues’, most of monumental irrelevance to all but insistent minorities.” (P372)

It is in the character of the Church of England, claiming to belong to the universal church of God in Christ, that its life embraces a great diversity of experience and of understanding. That is because, like the Bible, the church is held together by Jesus Christ. In the pages of Scripture we find things that seem to be complete opposites. That means we can all run to the text and find parts that give comfort to our views. The joy of the Bible and the joy of the church is that we are all held together in the mystery of the life and redemptive love of Jesus Christ. No Jesus, no Gospel of Jesus and you have no Bible and no church. I often find that it is the parts of the Bible I find most difficult and the experience of others in the church I find most troublesome that have the most to teach me. But for that to happen it requires us to listen carefully to one another and seek the face of Jesus in what is offered.

We must bring that diversity and difference, rooted as it is in a shared love of Jesus, to bear on the central mission agendas of our time. Let me say one more thing to this. All serious philosophy and theology post 1945 – done always in response to the terror of the holocaust – is about difference and diversity and our living face to face with people who are other than us. It does not lead to a liberal consensus but to persistent conversation. If we in the church cannot live well with difference and express the universality of Christ through it that spells not only disaster for the church as we know it but for our world hanging as, I believe it does, on the edge of the abyss. Our faithfulness to what God has created in us through Jesus Christ is at the heart of our faithful witness today.

I am very glad as a small step in our desire to be faithful in this conversation that Canon Andrew Knowles has, with my support, begun working with a very diverse group of people as a theological resource group for me and for us all. That group will work in confidence but may offer us things from time to time both in substance and in style.

If you share with me and my colleagues passion about Jesus and a contemporary desire to enable the church to be a transformative presence in all our communities, what about our resources?

Faithful people. God has been amazingly generous to us. Think in the narrow terms of church ministry – over 500 ordained people, similar numbers of Readers, Pastoral assistants, Lay Evangelists, trained children’s workers, growing number’s of ministers to young people. That is before we talk of Church wardens, PCC members, the multitude of people involved in our voluntary organisations – the MU and so on. That is an army! How do we liberate these precious gifts? I look forward to the completion of the Deanery Vision work and how this work might help give direction in all of this.

Let me suggest things that we do need to address.

1. Deepen spirituality

2. A learning church with serious education in the faith

3. Training and support for people taking on roles of ministry

If we all commit ourselves with a passion for Jesus to improve and strengthen the quality of our ministry – I mean all of us – from the parishes to the Bishops – how can we improve our ministry – be more focussed, more contemporary, more professional seeking excellence in all things. Doing less and doing it better?

What of our material gifts?

I shall be disappointed, in three years time, if we have not radically reduced the budget deficit and what we are presented with today gives us a good structure and beginning. I shall be disappointed if more of what God has given to us is not going on innovative new work in the face of the new challenges facing us at all levels. I shall be disappointed if we have not strengthened the resolve of our people and those who will join with us in the years to come to ensure that the resources are there for the priorities to which God leads us. I shall be disappointed if we do not have some new examples of how to transform the burden of our buildings into opportunity for service in our communities.

This Synod is entrusted with these responsibilities as together we serve the Gospel of Jesus in our time.

Let me finish in this way. We – and notice the word – are mostly middle aged and upward, male, almost exclusively white. That means we will be conservative, backward looking and unrepresentative of the people we serve?

In 1958, a hitherto unknown white, single and elderly male was elected Pope John XX111. He proved to be radical, forward looking and utterly in touch with the emerging world at the end of the 1950’s and he brought hope to multitudes. I think God always calls the wrong people for the task. If our hearts are alive with the message of Jesus and we have been captured by the hope of God’s Kingdom let us without fear and in faith do what we can to make Jesus known in our time and to help the church in this diocese be a transforming presence wherever people are in whatever condition of life we find them to be.

As the Apostle urges the Ephesian Christians so may he encourage us:-

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in all”.

May God help all of us to hear and receive His Word.

John
Bishop of Chelmsford