We're all customers now!

So, I’m starting to get to the heart of what this blog was meant to be about. I’ve had my meeting with The Boss and survived; more later on that perhaps, though perhaps the details are best held back, even on an anonymous blog.

Thirty years ago, someone in my position would perhaps face the personal questions of continued faith, physical energy and capacity for work. Now we must also face the fact that the Church of today in which we work is in so many ways not the Church it once was; not the Church into which I was ordained, not a Church I recognise. I’ve heard a number of people say that lately, and it’s true for me too. The changes have been considerable and far reaching. Without enumerating all of them, there are several issues that particularly affect me at the moment:

It’s a busy church
People are rushing about all over the place, devising schemes and programmes for mission and ministry and driving themselves onwards to do more, be involved in more, cover more ground, raise their profile. Why? I suspect much of it is either to compensate for something missing at the heart of the whole operation (what are we doing it for?) or in order to try to ensure the survival of the human institution, instead of paying attention to the divine origin and inspiration. I’m sorry, but twenty, thirty years ago we were not rushing around doing all this stuff. And I think we were the better for it.

It’s a lay person’s church
There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s been long overdue in the Anglican church. But I note that there is an increasing suspicion of clergy now that did not exist when I was ordained. What do clergy do all week? Why do we pay them? What do we get out of this? Dave Walker’s cartoon is a good one, but lying behind it are some serious issues. Many lay leaders, either elected or self-appointed, are elderly white males of a certain type and background; retired captains of industry who, it would appear, want to continue the roles they exercised in business or commerce on the much smaller stage of the parish church. This is definitely an increasing trend. They bring with them old ideas of management, performance, leadership, discredited in their former workplaces by more modern management techniques, which is why their companies were happy to give them a golden handshake and say goodbye. Now they find themselves in conflict with the newer theories and practice in Christian ministry. Last year I was taken to one side by one such senior lay person in one of our churches and taken to task for my “laziness”, “poor performance” and “lack of leadership”, and told home truths as he saw them as to where I was failing. This has happened to me twice in the past ten years. In the previous twenty five years it never happened. Our curate has had two similar experiences in just three years.

Clergy are so often set up to fail. We are told that traditionally the life of the priest is a balance between “being” and “doing”. We have no clear job specifications, so we are never sure what it is that we are supposed to do when we’re “doing”. New responsibilities are tacked on the end with the expectation that we will do them without complaint because we are “committed”. We are given new methodologies and rationales, such as “local lay-led ministry”, for which neither we nor the recipients have been trained or prepared. We are expected to work without a structured weekly or monthly pattern, never sure what constitutes work at all, feeling guilty about time off and holidays.

It’s a performance-related target-driven Church
Increasingly we want to see results. And they need to be quantifiable, tangible results; more people in church, falling average age of congregation, new groups starting up, higher levels of giving, etc. Much talk of mission is really about survival, growth is about shoring up a failing organization. We compete with a whole variety of leisure activities, children’s activities, shopping, sports, the dispersed extended family, the need for grandparents to support working parents, and yet we still expect to see growth where it really counts, between 9.30 and 12.30 on a Sunday morning.

It’s a consumer’s Church
Everyone wants what they want, when they want it. They want a church created in their own image, meeting their needs, conforming to their views. There is no concept of the Church as the sum of all the parts, including those who have differences with one another.

We have people who complain about liturgy, because it’s the same as the last time they came, or people who say they are “bored with communion” (honestly! I kid you not), and why can’t we have something different. This is in a benefice with nine, yes nine, different versions of the eucharist in use, four different lay-led service formats, and numerous occasions when something new and one-off is offered, or when no particular form at all is used! And then there is the whole business of Family Services: the good, the bad and the rubbish. There is no concept of the repeated action in order to get deeper into things; everything is judged on how they feel on leaving the building; the drive to be “relevant” and “welcoming” is relentless, completely disregarding the poor souls who have just come in on spec and hope to spend some quiet time in personal devotions – they must be included, and may well be asked an embarrassing series of questions about themselves, their lives and their level of commitment and involvement long before they are ready to answer. The bottom line is that people pay more and more to support ministry with their hard earned cash. They expect to something back for their money, to have a right to question, to complain if it’s not up to the standard they expect, and to see results. The old models of ministry simply do not address such a situation. No wonder everyone is getting upset.

I’m glad there are good, conscientious young clergy like Howard Jameson around. I wish them well, and admire much of what they do and the way that they do it. I can see some echoes of a younger me in some of it. I hope they manage to maintain their energy, their optimism and their commitment. Then there are other crusty old sods like me. Go to Father Heron’s Blog for example. I still believe that there is a Church of the future emerging from all the difficulties of the present time, and I wish it well. I’m just not sure it has a place for people like me in it. At least I now have the go-ahead to prepare an exit strategy.