What is priesthood to me?
While reflecting on priesthood through writing this essay, several themes from my own life became prominent. I would like to explore these themes, and ways that they relate to priesthood in the Church of England.
Convening community
From my personal experience of churches, it is clear that there is a gap in church attendance, usually starting somewhere in mid-to-late teens, and ending in late 30s / early 40s. It seems that the teenage years, with their attendant questioning and rebellion, are a common time for people to leave the church, while the process of settling down and having a family can often lead to people coming (back) to church; perhaps when having a child baptised, or deciding to come to services with their children. Further, in my attempts to launch young adults’ work, various patterns emerge for this demographic: long working hours and work stress, especially for those without the luxury of a permanent employment contract; frequent travel to see family and keep in touch with friends, especially at weekends; unstable, frequently changing housing when renting, or punitive working hours when saving for a house deposit.
For young adults who do have a mature faith and are comfortable in a church, the above factors may still mean they attend church only two Sundays a month, and never really form close relationships with the church community. I feel that my role with Young Adults is as a convener, bringing together, and encouraging each young adult that their peers will be present. This is especially true of Sunday mornings - people are reluctant to come if they are not sure they will sit with people they know.
Many young adults I know who are practising Christians will prefer to worship at a large church in a city-centre, like KXC, All Souls, St Helen’s, HTB etc. The desire for something with large numbers of young people is understandable, and particularly for my single friends, they may pin hopes on meeting a partner through such large churches and their attendant networks. However, it does mean that local churches can be deprived of this lively and challenging generation’s voice, on issues like church reform, worship style, and whether or not to encourage more cycling in our parish by changing the roads (usually opposed by our more established and middle-aged parishioners!). Additionally, it does mean that young adults are generally familiar with one particular worship style, typically a worship band in a charismatic context, rather than having a broad familiarity with the whole range of Anglicanism that is often seen in a local parish church.
Young adults are very much an endangered demographic, and in many churches need “protected status”, dedicated ministries and focused outreach. Given that most millennials have had little or no Sunday school, and so don’t have a set of Christian fundamentals to fall back on, mission to this group needs more depth than a few talks and free lunches. At one church I have been involved in, we have seen success in Vespers, an accessible service with two long periods of silence, a poem, two pieces of peaceful music, a scripture reading and a reflection incorporating a practice from the Christian meditative tradition. By starting Compline prayer groups and book groups after this Vespers service, and occasionally combining it with e.g. the Ash Wednesday evening Holy Communion service, the Vespers community is given a bite-sized, digestible introduction to full-fat Anglican worship, and to Christian doctrine. The approach has been particularly successful with helping young adults in general to explore what church is there for.
Seeing the success of Vespers really speaks to me of the role of priest as convener, of forming a community based around where people are right now, not around what the church is currently able to offer - and then doing the gradual work of moving that community closer to Jesus Christ (although not necessarily closer to traditional forms of worship!). This is a profound balancing act between excluding people by assuming too much prior knowledge (“no, you bow your head during the benedictus, you oaf!”), and having a group that uses your building, but isn’t really exposed to, let alone challenged by, the claims of Christianity. Ann Morisy thinks that addressing the latter risk calls for
...a new role – that of community chaplain. This role can be undertaken by trained volunteers. It may be that a church has two or three community chaplains, just as happens with readers or lay preachers. The first task of a community chaplain is to call in regularly on the groups using the church centre or hall, and to do this with a view to:
• encouraging people to ‘do business with God’;
• bringing greater integration of Sunday church life with the week-day activities;
• presenting the church centre as a new way of being church, countering the idea that the church centre represents the church rationalizing its resources or wanting to generate income;
• building a sense of belonging and ‘feeling at home’ by centre users.
(Mapping the mixed economy, Ann Morisy in Future of the Parish System)
For any church which is able to be open during the week, then I think community chaplains would be a very good idea, sharing in the work of convening communities modelled by the presbyter.
Making the answers visible
Thomas Merton writes of his surprise at finding that Catholic theology contained a concept as beautiful and philosophically rigorous as aseitas: that God, who causes all other things to exist, Himself exists a se, by His very nature. If God caused Himself to exist, there would be an endless philosophical regression, but if God is by His nature One who exists, we learn something about God’s character, and we have a philosophically watertight answer to Who it was that made creation ex nihilo. (See Merton's 'Seven Storey Mountain').
Thomas Merton had not, up to that point, ever considered the church as a place that might offer answers of substance. In my experience, my generation also do not see the Church as a place where answers are found. Instead of Merton’s modernist outlook, this may now be a result of my generation’s tilt towards postmodernism - “I’m so happy for you, that you believe that Jesus rose from the dead. That’s true for you, my friend! But it’s not true for me”. But I think it is also due to unfamiliarity with the church. In my experience with my peers, the church is not seen as the normative source for how to live ethically, how to form effective communities, or how to have a balanced and fulfilling life. I know that the Christian tradition has deep, inexhaustible wisdom in these areas - but how do I expect others to know this?
As Pritchard comments,
People are increasingly suspicious of packages of truth passed on in unreconstructed ways from generation to generation. They look for the evidence of transformed lives… Ours is a ‘seeing is believing’ culture...
(Pritchard The Life and Work of a Priest, p. 135)
To show people these “transformed lives” requires environments where Christians can be seen as Christians. If, as I think Pritchard is driving at, converted individuals trying to follow Christ are the most effective apologetics tools that we have, then church needs to create spaces where these imperfect yet spirit-filled living answers can be present and honest, with those who have little experience of church.
I have done several stints of work-related travel abroad. Each time, I had some concerns about the trip, which involved visiting a new or difficult client. In two cases, I found out during the flight that my colleague and flying-buddy was a Christian, having known them at the company for many years. In another case, I travelled alone, but the manager who received me at the other end was, it transpired, also a Christian. Our work culture, which can feel like it is policing statements made in the public arena, may not give us an outlet in which to express our faith, let alone to unpack it - and I am sure many people feel this about their work contexts. Yet after even a few days of conversation with these colleagues, I found out about the inspiring life choices they had made, driven by their faith.
Church, then, has a job to create spaces where the twain will meet. This is fast becoming deeply counter-cultural, in a world where I can choose to use social media to only communicate with groups that are very similar to myself. In practice, I think some of these spaces come from nurture groups, remembering especially of Steven Croft’s account of the structured adult nurture groups he set up in Ovenden, as well as Transforming Presence’s vision that “Every benefice should have a place of nurture”. This includes a church Alpha course or similar, but also whatever ongoing nurture courses and practices come after it. Another source of these spaces is creative open-ended worship spaces, like Vespers (discussed in Convening community above).
Living openly with pain
My wife has chronic pain, and so I do know first hand how it can slowly dent people’s spirits and corrode relationships and confidence. Sadly, my wife and I both know people who have left the church due to chronic pain, either because of anger with God, or because they and their church community were fatigued from ongoing prayers for healing which had not produced the hoped-for outcome. My wife and I certainly feel blessed that we have had the spiritual resources available to keep trudging along The Way during times of difficulty; a prayer house with prayer-hut and morning/evening prayer; compline; the rosary; the examen.
Yet for many Christians, a lot of these traditions will be unfamiliar. There is an irony here, as Christianity’s emblem, the cross, and its key episodes, the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, powerfully communicate that God suffered and died for His people. As Cole-Turner and Waters put so well,
The aim of the Christian life is not the avoidance of pain but the faithful following of One who enters into the pain of those who suffer.
(Pastoral Genetics: Theology and Care at the Beginning of Life, Ronald Cole-Turner and Brent Waters. Quoted in Christian ethics: a Jewish perspective, Ronald M. Green, found in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics, ed. Robin Gill)
In a world where the miraculous progress of medicine has shielded us from many of the outward signs of pain and mortality, this message on suffering in the Christian life can feel stark. Yet sometimes starkness is necessary.
I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but have recently reactivated all my accounts to keep communicating with people in the age of social distancing. But the experience of some close friends, who struggle with envy when confronted with the rose-tinted, ideally proportioned narratives of others’ lives, reminds me of the great struggle such platforms cause for many people. I am told that this forms part of what Charles Taylor calls the 'social imaginary', which is playing an increasingly significant role in secular life. (I'd love to read some Taylor when I have time!) I do feel the church is called to counter the damaging effects of humble-bragging, falsely modest, perfectly curated holiday snaps by embracing the reality of pain in the world, and being prepared to sit in it (See http://lifefaker.com/ for a wonderful critique of idealised Instagram photos). Maybe this is why I am concerned when I see church social media accounts that so closely mimic their secular counterparts.
There is something of Nouwen’s Three Movements here, from loneliness to solitude, from hostility to hospitality, and from illusion to prayer (see his book 'Reaching Out'). The first movement forces us to truly accept ourselves, and not to use community as a way to leech off others, feeding on their approval and criticising their failures. The second movement encourages genuine, open hospitality aimed at the restoration of the guest. The third movement insists that prayer is reality - prayer is not about escaping to some pie-in-the-sky world, where I can pretend that all the evils that I encounter do not exist; prayer is about sitting with the world, in all its hopelessness and pain, and sitting with God as well, knowing that all will be transformed.
It is harder to see a practical application of this point for the priesthood. However, it does seem to me that priesthood shouldn’t be about hiding one’s personal pain - it can be unhidden without being placed on others as a burden. Some of the largest church attendances I have ever seen have been a funeral in the aftermath of a local stabbing or a tragic accident, or a prayer vigil at a time of great tension and confusion. I think wisdom about ensuring these places are truly “unmasked” is important, and that unmasking in general is very helpful for a priest to model. I have certainly learned a lot from the measured, controlled yet honest vulnerability of a previous incumbent. It certainly makes a refreshing contrast with the “fake it to make it” mentality that is tempting when trying to advance one’s career. (Thanks to Will Van Der Hart for this memorable and illuminating phrase, and also for his rejection of the idea of “being the best version of yourself”, rather than being and accepting yourself as you are. As the Principal of Ridley puts it - "Don't ever tell your congregations to be the best possible versions of themselves. Tell them to conform themselves to the image of the Son of God!")
The next and final blog in this series attempts to sum up all the ground that we have covered and offers some final thoughts. Thanks for getting this far!
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