The Church of England faces a problem, one which hinders its mission to the world and ability to nurture
the faithful from within. Following the riots of 2011 it was commonly agreed
that England was in desperate need of spiritual leadership, but a lack of
central support for the nurture of prospective vocations to the priesthood and attacks
upon its ordering and theology from within appear to hinder the established church’s
ability to respond.
On the 25th of January 2013 Neil Patterson
wrote in the Church Times about his concerns regarding the state of ministry in
the Church. This is clearly an area that the Church of England needs to look at
with all haste. For decades there seems to have been a chronic lack of funding
and clarity about what the Church requires in the training of its prospective ordained
ministers. Whilst many millions of pounds have been found for the repair of
buildings (many of which attract very small congregations), a tiny percentage
of this figure appears to have been made available for the seeking out of individuals
who have a calling to be ordained and their training towards ordination, which
is fit for the Church of England. Over the past couple of years, Forward in
Faith have engaged in an advanced advertising and function campaign to try and
‘recruit’ new ordinands and in many ways their outlay has brought huge
dividends in the numbers of those now entering training via their encouragement.
It seems there are lessons here that the wider church would do well to learn
from and learn fast.
But fundamentally, the entrenched problems surrounding
the ordained ministry seem to lie more in a devaluing of the ordained orders
themselves from a most central level and in a reluctance of central bodies and
training institutions to properly address issues of ecclesiology and
priesthood, instead overly favouring task and function centred training approaches:
things which are surely more suited to the early stages of development in the
parish. Once the theory and theology is learnt in the college or course
setting, then the ordinand has the essential grounding to put this theory into
practice in a practical way in the world, as it were. Be this as it may,
currently the Church seems content with trying to do this in reverse, which
makes little sense.
As David Heyward rightly points out in his article on
Lay Ministry in the New Testament, however, “The Church of England is
an ʹepiscopalʹ Church. It embraces what is known as the ʹthree‐foldʹ order
of ministry, consisting of what are now known as bishops, priests and deacons.
Like the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church, it sees this pattern of ministry already
emerging in New Testament times and its authority descending from the
apostles.’ Just to remind ourselves; the English word ‘priest’ derives from the
Greek word, presbuteros, which is
commonly rendered in bible English as ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ (Acts 15:6, 23). The
bible says little about their duties, except that they functioned in a priestly
capacity, preaching (1 Tim 5:17) and administering the sacraments (Jas. 5:
13-15). As Heyward makes clear, this is basic Anglican ecclesiological belief
and teaching.
Despite this being the case, in recent years I have
encountered many ordinands, curates and more experienced priests who seem to have
apparently done very little preparation on the nature of an Anglican ecclesiology
or the way the Spirit may operate as much through the tradition and institution
of the Church as through individual revelation. Worse still, too many priests seem
to develop an unhealthy resentment of the Church institution and its orders
following ordination; especially any notion of authority associated with it. Multi-denominational
training institutions, who work tirelessly in their endeavours to train huge
numbers of people from multiple backgrounds of tradition, are often forced to
opt for the lowest common denominator for the sake of practical ease and
uniformity, and this no doubt has significantly contributed to this process. Nevertheless,
such resentment also seems to be rooted in a 21st Century
individualism: an individualism that includes an unhealthy fear of others
exercising any kind of authority over ‘us’, because ‘I’ am the only individual
I can trust to rightly discern the Spirit’s promptings.
Of course, authority undertaken in the wrong way, can
be disastrous for us as individuals and for the Church, but in the Church that Christ
ordained and commissioned in the New Testament (e.g.Mt.16:18, 28:18-20; 2 Cor. 5:15-20; 1 Pet. 2:9-10; 1 Tim.
4:14) and through our claim to Apostolic succession (1 Tim. 4:14;
5:22) we hold continuity with and a grounding in a different kind of authority.
This is an authority that Christ requires us to exercise for the good of His people,
His Church militant and His world in order that His Kingdom values of the
Church triumphant may slowly break through. Such authority is rooted in His love
and His grace and encountered through prayer, sacramental offerings and good
works (the auspices of the Church).
Added to this, it seems that sometimes a reluctance to
teach an Anglican ecclesiological position is born out of a fear that it will
undermine the development of lay ministry that is so valuable to the Church on
so many levels. This is unfounded, however, since on the contrary, a clear and
healthy understanding of ordained ministry, church order and Anglican
ecclesiology is so routed in the collaborative and empowerment of the Church
body, that it serves to give lay ministry its basis, support and focus.
In the everyday, I encounter people of very differing
traditions and backgrounds. All have very different understandings of the Church
and the Ministry. In many ways this is a healthy thing for a broad Anglican
understanding of the Church. Conversely, whilst a periphery voice expressing the
kind of theology that refutes the very structures on which the Church of
England is built may well be helpful in keeping the Church in check, it cannot
be a wholesome thing if that theology begins being prominently championed from
within and is embodied through certain central departmental approaches and
training.
It is no surprise, then, that so many dedicated Church
of England laypersons appear to share in this confused view of church orders,
when the ordained minsters who are called to serve and nurture them in the
faith and traditions of the Church of England are themselves encouraged in a
theology that appears in so many ways contrary to it. In the Ordinal, those
about to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders within the Church of England are
required to declare that they will ‘faithfully minister the doctrine and
sacraments of Christ as the Church of England has received them, so that the
people committed to (their) charge may be defended against error and flourish
in the faith’. Then they later agree that they will ‘accept and minister the
discipline of this Church, and respect authority duly exercised within it’. It is worrying when these
promises often appear so very contrary to some of the theological and ecclesiological
understandings one encounters from within. Is it any wonder then that clergy numbers in the
Church of England look set to further diminish over the next few years as
retirements far out way new vocations? Patterson is right to voice concern over
the chronic lack of funding towards vocations and training that is clearly one contributory element to this.
But is it any wonder that many people who feel a calling to serve Christ do not
pursue the route to ordination further when many of those already exercising
that ministry exhibit such a lack of confidence and understanding of its place,
purpose and grounding within the tradition and ‘doctrine of Christ as the
Church of England has received it’?
The Revd Fr R.T. Parker-McGee 2013
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