Three
churches to be found in Leeds city centre illustrate three of these ‘Seven
Facts of Life’.
1.
St John’s, Briggate, is
sandwiched between a multi-storey car park and a department store. It stands
redundant, unused, unusable because of its historic interior.
It is virtually ignored by the city that has
grown up around it - only serving as a backdrop when couples who have just
married at the registry office up the hill come down to have their photographs
taken outside its porch!
3. "The Old Order Passeth"
Many parish clergy in the Church of England
would be polishing their haloes after reading the last section on ‘success’
and the gathered church.
"That’s a problem for congregational
churches," they would say. "In the Church of England the parish priest
has the cure of souls of everyone living in the geographical parish - of any
religion or none."
The Church of England’s parish system was
set up over a thousand years ago. The entire land is parcelled up into precise
geographical areas. Until the 19th century the parish boundaries were the same
for both church and civil administration; in fact the Church was the
civil administration!
In theory the local Church of England church
served (and still serves) everyone living in its area. The effect, even until
quite recently, was to give the Vicar of that parish a distinct role within the
community which was not offered to his free-church ministerial colleagues. For
the Church of England priest was the Parson - and many Anglican clergy still see
themselves in this role. Whether all the residents in their parishes do is
another matter!
For two factors now mean that the traditional
parson is on the verge of extinction:
1. The break-up of local communities.
2. The moves towards Christian unity.
And with the demise of the parson goes perhaps
the central reason for having a parish system.
We have already noticed how once upon a time
people lived their whole lives in one village. A trip to market was an
adventure. Most could not read or write and their every need had to be met from
within the village.
It was therefore quite natural for one person
(‘parson’) to function as clerk, priest, counsellor, confidant and
decision-maker for this totally integrated community.
Here was a true ‘cure of souls’ because
everything which might serve to shape an individual’s spiritual growth lay
within the confines of the village. In the middle of it was the priest, probably
working his own plot of land just like everyone else.
Only a shadow remains of this local pastoral
relationship following a tide of changes which has been flowing for at least the
last 600 years - from the growth of the bourgeoisie and the ‘urbanisation’
of the 13th century, through the division of Christendom at the Reformation and
the 18th and 19th century industrial revolution, to today’s multi-cultural,
technological, ‘secular’ but still spiritually questing society.
The all-round ‘cure of souls’ that was
envisaged when the parish system was set up can now only be sustained either a)
among people who are willing to be drawn out of the real world to live in the
substitute world of a gathered church or b) among those who are ‘trapped’ in
a geographical locality and who thus establish their ‘tribe’ on that basis.
Essentially these latter are the elderly, the infirm and parents with tiny
children, in other words all who form the dependent half of the population.
Church of England clergy, wanting to be good
ecumenists, also find that the quest for church unity drives them to see
themselves primarily as ministers to a congregation on a par with their
free-church colleagues.
The parish system may still be needed as brake
stopping the Church of England from rushing too quickly into becoming a gathered
church - with all its spurious ‘success’! But it is over-rated if it is
still linked to the now virtually defunct role of ‘parson’.
Parish boundaries and parish church both serve
as symbols of the dominance which the Church of England once had but has no
longer.
In the countryside parish boundaries still
make some degree of sense at least in terms of geography. But each parish can no
longer have its parson, for the local unit is too small. In urban and suburban
areas the boundaries are no more than arbitrary lines on a map, for the local
unit is now the town or city itself, something much bigger.
However noisily clergy and church people in
the Church of England proclaim their support for the parish system, the
pressures inside and outside their church are driving them away from it.
These pressures include:
Even where churches would claim to be going
against the trend because their priority is seeking to convert others, in
practice their motive will be seen as recruitment - and all the pressures to
operate as a ghetto church will thus be reinforced.
Almost unconsciously, in the face of a parish
system which is long past breaking point, Church of England congregations find
themselves trapped into becoming gathered churches - either by seeking that
illusory ‘success’ or by settling for being the ‘faithful few’ - or, in
a few cases, by becoming narrowly and aggressively evangelistic.
Yet the gathered church is not the only
alternative.
1. At the very same time that the Church of
England is drifting towards congregationalism, many churches with ‘congregational’
roots are, with the exception of certain fundamentalist groups, now moving quite
strongly in the opposite direction - as they become increasingly aware of the
society in which their church members live and the complex and challenging task
of expressing God’s love within it.
2. No less significant, however, - as a
pointer to where the future lies - may be a slow and silent seepage away from
regular church-going by people who are in other respects extremely positive
about their faith quest. These are people for whom the tribal conventions of the
gathered church, the Sunday morning congregational experience, do not meet their
spiritual needs.
More of these people remain within the
institution of the church than leave it, but they suffer considerable pain and
frustration while they remain. They find their nourishment, as do others who are
further back on the road to faith, in smaller and more informal gatherings of
Christian disciples - often coming from different denominational traditions.
These people are the ones who find meaning at
Taizé and Iona, in Cursillo, Focolare or at Julian group meetings.
As they come together in small faith
communities they can study and pray, care for one another, live and worship, and
be engaged with God’s world.
Here they find the richness of the empowering
and healing love of God.
In these contexts people ‘outside the tribe’
can also find their way forward on their journey of faith - but it may be some
time, if at all, before they find their way into the institutional fellowship of
the church.
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