Yesterday began with the opening verses of Isaiah, the set first reading at Matins. God is revolted by the sacrifices his people offer, sees their festivals as futile, and turns his ears from their persistent prayer. He pleads with them instead to ‘learn to do good, pursue justice, support the oppressed, champion the orphans, and plead the widow’s cause’.
The day ended at a consultation event for the diocese’s developing new strategy. Although almost the first PowerPoint slide reminded us that one of the three strands of its long existing strategy is ‘joyful service of the community’, every one of the ‘emerging themes’ of the new strategy focussed on the life of the church. There was no hint that ‘kingdom seeking’, justice promoting or marginalised supporting was to feature in our future.
The work being done, we were told, is undergirded by a Theological Reference Group, but the Diocesan Secretary declined an invitation to name a theological insight which informed the process or these themes.
‘Raising the spiritual temperature’ has been much referenced in diocesan communication, and was there as both one of three new objectives and then again as one of the five ways to make this objectives happen. Someone asked what this actually meant, and was told that the Bishop has written three papers about it and a young communications officer present was working on how this might be summarised accessibly. Things used not to be done like that.
So we got on with the set task anyway. We had post-it notes to affix to laminated posters of the five emerging themes, unsure of what some of them meant (‘a church in reach’?), uniformed about the actions the ‘lever groups’ (seriously?) were considering recommending, and unable to query whether they were actually the themes which capture the directions in which we should go.
But things took a turn this morning when I went back into the dedicated section of the diocesan website where I had previously found the first of the Bishop’s papers, and now found all three, laid out across sixteen pages. It is actually almost the only thing there with actual content about anything other than the process of developing the strategy.
The Bishop’s papers do not advocate the sort of shift towards a more cult-like enthusiasm which the slogan might make people fear. They actually set out a vast range of the sorts of things (‘a miscellany of many regular tropes and themes’) about Christian spirituality which I have been taught for sixty years, which I have taught for forty (very often with exactly the same illustrations and references the Bishop uses), and some of which I have sought to practise.
Early in the first paper, he acknowledges the kingdom grows in hidden and unexpected ways. He says he ‘treasures those who witness through service’. In the second, he says growth ‘is not just about size – it is about health, attitude and outlook’. In both the second and third, he references the Five Marks of Mission (only the first two of which are about the life of the church, while the last three are about service of neighbour, community and world). He even situated the pursuit of Carbon Zero in the last of these.
While I continue to be puzzled and even troubled by the narrowness of the emerging themes with which we were presented, and about by the educational design of the evening, it would be hopeful if the proposals which do emerge grow from these steers.
I also wonder of the reassurance will apply more widely. I even hope that the yet to be released Seeking God: Seeking Growth material, which the Bishop mentions and of which I recently spent eighteen months in Grimsby fruitlessly asking to see drafts, might also turn out to be well pitched. Perhaps even like the sort of Mission Action Planning tool which the diocesan Mission and Training Development Forum was sharing with the diocese when I was a member of that team at end of the last century.
So I’m almost nostalgic for Robert Warren’s Missionary Congregation approach which we promoted then – a church both ‘distinctive’ (something not totally unlike ‘raising the spiritual temperature’?) and ‘engaged’ (not allowing inevitable concerns for church flourishing to distract us from being deeply involved in the concerns of a place). What if a new diocesan strategy turned out to be about renewing faithfulness – giving thanks for the dedicated right approach through the unpropitious time of the last couple of generations and encouraging a recommitment to them in this present time?
The view is one which those climbing to the belfry in Grimsby Minster see.
