Category: Presentations

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Forgottenheimer: Oppenheimer’s undetonated bomb, and a missed opportunity – contains spoilers

Oppenheimer. Universal Pictures,

It seems somewhat late in the day to be writing about Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Oppenheimer. In part, that is because my emotions and reflections have turned out to be just as complex as Nolan’s own narrative. I have been searching for clarity.
I will therefore get straight to the point. If you will forgive the hyperbole, in my view Nolan’s epic, despite its multi-layered narrative and wonderous cinematic creativity, is deeply disappointing. That is because it is the only film in history that we expected to bomb but in reality, lacked impact. Whilst I find myself questioning whether I should go back and rewatch the film for anything that I have missed, one of the most telling markers of good storytelling is that you are so drawn in that you cannot fail to take its themes home. Even without being particularly visceral, a good film will return to you and invade your thoughts when you are back home doing the hoovering.

Piecing together the narrative

In the case of Oppenheimer, my only thoughts were ones whereby I was trying to piece the narrative together. In order to enjoy this film you will need to understand the historical context in which it takes place. Heck, you may even find it easier to read the text from which the film was inspired, American Prometheus (Bird & Sherwin, 2021) in order to be adequately prepared. Oppenheimer was the architect of the atomic bomb, in a race against time, developing a weapon that could arguably end World War II before our enemies made their own advances. He was a theoretical physicist who displayed some uncomfortable personality traits – including, according to the film, lacing his lecturers lunchbox apple with cyanide. He was a hero one minute, but derided the next. President Trueman, for example was unimpressed whe Oppenheimer shared his concern that he felt he had blood on his hands, famously derriding Oppenheimer as a ‘cry-baby’. Oppenheimer’s reluctance to support the further development of a hydrogen bomb, as the United States hurtled towards a cold war, led some politicians to be sceptical of his support – and the easiest way to disempower him was to question his loyalty to the states by suggesting he had communist sympathies and may have leaked secrets to the Russians. This set in motion an enquiry as to whether he remained suitable to continue working for the United States Atomic Energy Commission.

Perhaps it is the way that my mind works; as I viewed the film I had to think back to my university lectures in Physical Chemistry, trying to remember the composition of the bomb, and how the nuclear material needed to be refined (illustrated by an increasing load of two sets of marbles in a two fish bowls). If this were a lecture, and I was in the audience listening, I would have been sitting there nodding politely, perhaps even smiling whilst wondering whether I was the only one not quite understanding what was being said. It was like reaching the point in a Maths lesson where you are really not following, and the teacher has no idea. This way in which the narrative of this film weaves about is a nightmare! It is filled with flash-forwards, and flashbacks, in colour and black and white, with I believe, colour representing the memories of one of Oppenheimer’s detractors, Richard Strauss. And yes, I did not realise that until I read a review from someone else. Significantly, YouTube and the internet are full of articles that break down and explain the narrative.

A crime against humanity

My primary concern is that I didn’t feel a profound sense of Oppenheimer’s moral turmoil following the bombings. We should be acutely aware of the sheer devastation caused by the uranium fission bomb (‘Little Boy,’ equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT) on Hiroshima and the plutonium implosion bomb (‘Fat Man,’ equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT) on Nagasaki. This knowledge should be seizmic in our souls.

Little Boy – US government DOD and/or DOE photograph, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Fat Boy U.S. Department of Defense, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Atomic bombing of Japan. Left picture : At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column. Six planes of the 509th Composite Group participated in this mission: one to carry the bomb (Enola Gay), one to take scientific measurements of the blast (The Great Artiste), the third to take photographs (Necessary Evil), while the others flew approximately an hour ahead to act as weather scouts (08/06/1945). Bad weather would disqualify a target as the scientists insisted on a visual delivery. The primary target was Hiroshima, the secondary was Kokura, and the tertiary was Nagasaki. George R. Caron, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The wide variation in the death toll stems from the inadequate record-keeping at the time. Estimates range from 129,000 to 226,000, complicated further by the distinction between immediate casualties and those succumbing to radiation poisoning. What I want to emphasize is that although Oppenheimer’s flashbacks touch upon this terror, it is presented fleetingly, assuming that the audience is already aware of the unimaginable scale of destruction caused by these weapons.

Photo of what became later Hiroshima Peace Memorial among the ruins of buildings in Hiroshima, in early October, 1945, photo by Shigeo Hayashi.

 

The patient’s skin is burned in a pattern corresponding to the dark portions of a kimono worn at the time of the explosion. Japan, circa 1945. Gonichi Kimura 1945 National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Siblings losing their hair. The younger brother died in 1949 and so did the elder sister in 1965 of aftereffects of atomic bomb. Kikuchi Shunkichi日本語： 菊池俊吉, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons1945.

This, in my opinion, is the major flaw in “Oppenheimer.” In fact, judging by the numerous explanatory articles and videos available online, you might find yourself needing a manual to decipher this film before delving into introspection. I may be simplifying things, especially considering the film’s title is “Oppenheimer” – centered on the individual rather than the bomb itself. Nevertheless, even when Oppenheimer’s opposition to the United States developing a hydrogen fusion bomb becomes evident, the lack of vivid description (beyond cold facts and figures) of what ground zero looks like for a ‘typical’ nuclear bomb means that the audience can’t fully grasp the gravity of the situation and the depth of Oppenheimer’s emotions. Time Magazine, citing a nuclear engineer at Berkeley University in California, underscores that a hydrogen bomb would possess a hundred to a thousand times more destructive power. [2]

A missed opportunity to tell the story to younger generations

Regrettably, this film is rated 15 in the UK instead of 12A. While I acknowledge that the themes in this film are mature and warrant parental guidance, I believe that the ages between 12 and 15 are crucial for helping young individuals contemplate actions, consequences, and the world around them. The language used is relatively mild, but there are instances of obscenities. Similarly, the intimate scenes, though mild and potentially relevant in terms of conscience and key narrative themes, come across as overly clever and, in a way, overly theatrical. This approach diminishes the gravity of these moments and, frankly, feels somewhat absurd.

For instance, in one scene, Oppenheimer’s relationship with Gene Tatlock, who is also having relations with the Communist Party USA, is depicted with them in bed. Oppenheimer’s mind seems preoccupied with theoretical physics and matters of conscience, while Gene takes control of the situation by sitting on top of him, grabbing the Bhagavad Gita from a shelf above his head, and reciting the line “Now I am become death, the destroyer of souls.” This phrase is, of course, repeated by Oppenheimer later. In another scene, Gene and Robert sit naked, facing each other, as a portrayal of the competing desires between Gene and Kitty (Oppenheimer’s wife) begins to unfold, with Gene vying for dominance in their love triangle. These scenes are not explicit or titillating; they are more commonplace, peculiar, and a sophisticated, creative effort to highlight Oppenheimer’s character flaws and how he is both the instigator and victim of his own inner turmoil. They certainly do not offer gratuitous moments through pornography. I’m not convinced that they add significantly to the script, and I believe they could be portrayed differently for a younger audience.

While I’m tempted to delve into the discussion of what content should be accessible at various age levels, my main point is that even if the film did underscore the gravity of the nuclear experimentation and the ethical dilemmas it raised, its UK age rating makes it inaccessible to those under the age of 15. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that our young people should be as well-informed about the threat of nuclear warfare as they are about the Holocaust. “Oppenheimer” represents a missed opportunity, especially with its release date on July 21, 2023, so close to Hiroshima Day on August 6th. [3]

A cult following?

While the film may not have a significant impact in certain areas, I have no doubt that it will gain a dedicated following. It’s not entirely accurate to call it a “cult following” because the film isn’t meant for mere entertainment; rather, it’s a vehicle for understanding how personality, conscience, power, authority, and consequences intersect. It delves into the connections between theory, practice, and perceived risk, as well as ethics and utilitarianism.

Oppenheimer is initially celebrated for his work at Los Alamos but later faces derision from those who question his loyalty. Strauss is motivated to undermine Oppenheimer after witnessing a conversation between Oppenheimer and Einstein, which leaves Einstein seemingly indifferent towards Strauss. This eventually leads to Oppenheimer losing his security clearance. However, Strauss’s ambitions for a senior political role are thwarted when it becomes clear that his vindictiveness, exposed for all to see, was the driving force behind this move. Consequently, Strauss fails to garner enough votes in the Senate for his appointment. This power struggle, rather than the ethics of nuclear warfare, becomes the central lens through which the story unfolds.

Ultimately, Oppenheimer is finally recognized for his achievements by John F. Kennedy. In all of this, Einstein’s earlier words to Oppenheimer, that he will be praised for his actions because they benefit those who applaud him, prove to be true. After unleashing the nuclear bomb, Oppenheimer becomes a pawn in a political game. Therefore, the film’s reluctance to help viewers step into the narrative by providing a clearer backstory is what prevents it from making a more profound impact. Regarding the bomb’s impact, longer moments of reflection, possibly with silence, showcasing the devastation and fires, could have underscored this point. Such scenes don’t have to be visceral; they simply need to be telling.

Looking for the spiritual core

For those seeking a deeper, spiritual reflection on the significance of Oppenheimer’s story, CBS News provides profound insights through a 1965 interview. Oppenheimer’s responses to the newscaster’s questions followed a somewhat expected pattern: he viewed the bomb as a necessary evil, a harsh measure taken with reluctance, aimed at preventing further suffering. He candidly admitted, “You naturally don’t think of that with ease. I do not think our consciences should be entirely easy.” However, a sense of caution pervades Oppenheimer’s responses. He appears to sidestep personal reflections and instead emphasizes the collective conscience of the era. Based on the information available to him in both 1945 and 1965, Oppenheimer seemed to believe that the use of the bombs was justifiable.

Nonetheless, I was deeply struck by the contrast between corporate and personal conscience. Regardless of the rational arguments constructed by others to justify the use of the bomb, did it still conflict with Oppenheimer’s personal conscience at the time, even if it seemed rational on the surface? Regrettably, this is a question that remains unanswered, as Oppenheimer carried it with him to the grave and beyond, leaving us with a perpetual ethical dilemma.

Curiously, just as the film inadequately references historical context, it also fails to explore the divine or our responsibility to it, except for Oppenheimer’s misquoted words from the Bhagavad Gita, which the audience is left to interpret. It’s worth noting that this Hindu epic involves its hero, Prince Arjuna, conversing with Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who is the preserver and protector of the universe in Hinduism. Arjuna is uncertain about how to handle a family conflict, and Krishna convinces him to fight. However, when Krishna reveals his true power, the world seems to burn (to borrow your phrase), and Arjuna pleads with him to stop. In this sense, Krishna to Arjuna is what nuclear research is to science—initially desiring the benefits but recoiling once realizing the destructive force unleashed. The parallels between these narratives are striking.

Oppenheimer harnesses nuclear science but is cautious about the consequences and where it might lead. However, the film unfortunately doesn’t delve further into this aspect to shed light on Oppenheimer’s awareness of his accountability to the divine. It seems that featuring Oppenheimer’s reference to one of Hinduism’s sacred texts should prompt consideration of the idea that regardless of our individual beliefs about God, there is more at play here than a limited human-centered ethical conversation.

Oppenheimer, and Physicists ‘knowing sin’

Interestingly, Oppenheimer did speak of sin relatively soon after the bombings, and so it would have been possible to begin to enter this territory. Personally, I would not be looking for the film to do more than introduce the question – because we can reflect on it in the car park later. But to close, during his 1965 CBS interview, Oppenheimer stated:

“Long ago I said once in a crude sense, in which no vulgarity and no humour could quite erase, that ‘Physicists had known sin’. I didn’t mean by that the deaths that were caused by the result of our work. We had known the sin of pride. We had turned to effect in what proved to be a major way the course of man’s history. We had the pride of thinking that we knew what was good for man, and I do think that this has left a mark of many of those of those who were responsibly engaged. This is not the natural business of a scientist.”

Regrettably, from my perspective, while “Oppenheimer” possessed considerable beauty, creativity, and an unmatched level of sophistication within its intricate and multilayered narrative, it failed to make the impact it should have. It may not be a total disaster, but it certainly fell short of expectations. “Oppenheimer” runs the risk of fading into obscurity and becoming “Forgottendheimer” because it places too little emphasis on the crucial ethical question of whether it is morally justifiable to use nuclear weapons and the complex personalities and dynamics that are involved in making such a decision.

[1] Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Wikipedia
[2] https://time.com/4954082/hydrogen-bomb-atomic-bomb/
[3] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/08/06/japan/hiroshima-attomic-bombing-78th-anniversary/
[4] (26) From the archives: Robert Oppenheimer in 1965 on if the bomb was necessary – YouTube 2:15

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Recognising the prophetic question and thinking about the five P’s

Recognising the prophetic question

(An edited version of this article featured in the New Places for New People blog for the Methodist Church of Great Britain).

When you see the prophetic it stands out like glitter reflecting the light. Scene here – glitter remains spilt outside Messy Church (biodegradable of course)

 

Methodism is full of meetings. I don’t mind that, just so long as our meetings are grounded in prayer, have purpose, and we are making progress. Many of us who chair meetings or who take an active part are able to identify when we are not at our best. We all know of meetings where the minutes have served more as a reminder of what we promised to do months ago but have forgotten. Alternatively, we will know of meetings where the focus seems to be on keeping the show (of ‘church’) on the road by shoring up what is barely working, rather than being honest about what needs to change.

Have you heard of the five P’s? I am not sure where I first heard them. There are most likely variations but I remember the phrase, ‘Prayerful Preparation Prevents Poor Performance’. Herein the notion of ‘performance’ (a word that does not come naturally) needs to be coaxed within our understanding of discipleship, and how if we want to grow the church, we need to start by making disciples. In NPNP settings, where we have clear intent, where our focus is on growth and sustainability, a prayerful approach to preparation comes naturally. In a smaller setting, if people are not coordinating well and working as a team, things fall apart quickly. The same is true of established settings, apart from it can be easy for us to be lulled into a false sense of security because ‘we have always been here’.

There is a phrase I want to add to the five P’s. It feels clumsy, but I think it is invaluable – Prayerful Preparation – that is open to the prophetic – Prevents Poor Performance. Perhaps a wordsmith can come up with something more succinct. This addition comes from my experience in a church meeting where, aside from the well warranted need for us to maintain our building, one of our members asked the question, ‘How much money are we spending on people rather than buildings’? Before you, the reader, recoil because our buildings need maintenance, and we often find ourselves in a non-negotiable position, I would ask you to suspend judgement and hear me out. This was an important question – a prophetic question born out of holy disquiet, and it needed unpacking. What is the underlying concern here? How, if aired, might it help the community focus on its sense of call? In our context we still opted to carry out this work but we intend to spend more on people – a layworker in fact, part-funded through a bequest.

Those of us who chair meetings, and those of us who are key leaders in churches and NPNP ministries have a responsibility to draw out the prophetic voice. That is a challenging task because biblically it would seem that prophets are always at risk of having rocks slung in their direction. Hence sometimes, even though the prophetic question will not change a particular outcome (damp issues have to be dealt with), it can help shape a community. It can also call people back to a sense of accountability to each other, working together. That for me, is the difference between administration, which we all need, and solid Christian leadership. May the Lord be with us all, and may we not quench the Holy Spirit as we encounter the prophetic. Wherever we are.

 

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We Believe: Churches Together in Whittlesey and District. This is what we stand for.

The statement below reflects Churches Together in Whittlesey and District’s ongoing understanding of how God is calling local Christians and churches to support each other in partnership. It is the culmination of a year’s reflection, as our shared values have surfaced through prayer, conversation, and action. (I write as one of the local ministers who is part of this group, with a sense of gratitude as our jouurney has unfolded).

The desire for churches to work together has renewed following the Covid-19 pandemic, as leaders have recognised that we can understand the needs of our community more by conferring with each other, and in certain areas we can have a far greater impact by working together and supporting each other, than working alone. We are One Body with congregations meeting in different times places, to accomodate different needs. My earlier article, ‘Churches Together, What’s the Point?’ highlighted that whilst there is considerable warrant on us striving towads gathering for shared worship, an alternative starting point – and arguably the more fruitful route in helping people discover the joy of journeying together – rests in shared mission. Whereas encouraging congregants to ditch all their morning services to gather in one place for worship is a challenge, sharing in mission, with opporutunities in different times and different places, may be more achivable. It also is highly relational; we then join for a joint service not because there is an ecclesiological edict to do so, but because we are connected to our friends in other churches and enjoy fellowship together. (I should say that we have had some success in joint worship, but the trust of my argument remains).

We Believe is not intended as a credal statement. It is a creed of sorts, fashioned around Jesus’ prayer for the disciples that they should be One, supporting each other through the hardship that is to come once Jesus is taken from them, and as they face persecution in the future. Its starting point is therefore about how we value each other, and how we relate well to each other, irrespective of the differences we share. We Believe, in my view, determinedly emphasises our common faith in Christ. It asserts boldly some key theological drivers.

If the Good Samaritan was good not just because he was caring enough to tend to the wounded man, but because he had the capacity to love the person that he had most likely been conditioned from birth to hate, then how much more should we be obliged to support our fellow Christians? Should not the love of God blow apart our differences?

God has called us as Christians (rooted in and living out our discipleship as part of a local church), to mission. There will be times when by working in partnership we can achieve more than if we work alone. To resist this is to work contrary to God’s purposes.

Whilst we regret the conflict that has existed, and remains (sadly in some areas) between Christians of different denominations, we celebrate the richness of our traditions, and with that our diversity. God would have us listen and learn from one another. Whilst we might yearn for increased unity, we recognise that diversity is a part of life, and for the sake of peace, and the Gospel, we must learn to live with contrasting convictions, and where we disagree, to disagree well. Our conflict must never obscure our shared belief in Jesus as Lord, and the mighty truth of the death and resurrection of Christ. (This, I must confess, is part of my Methodist identity, having surfaced as part of our ongoing discussions around human sexuality).

There is no place for self-interest and self-preservation in the life of the Church, as if we promote the life of our own church first and disengage in our support of others. There is no room for the fear that members from one church will leave for another down the road who is more appealing. The core task, for us all, is to discern and meet need. Our focus should not be so much on doing the work of the church, but on doing the work of the Kingdom, from which the Church, and local churches are birthed. We are not called to serve so much in our church, but in God’s Church, and it is God who has domain over what this looks like locally. Focus on building the church and we will be dead in the water. Focus on making disciples, and affirming constantly that we want them to find a spiritual home, a church, where they can be loved, love others, and fulfill their potential, and God’s blessing will come our way, irrespective of where they go. If your church has a reputation for nurturing people, it will grow. And we all have the capacity to nurture. What one person loves in worship style and approach will be different from another. (I won’t reveal my preferences but there are some churches that will uplift me, and leaders who I know I can always turn to, but by the same token, I know that there are churches that will not sustain me for where I am in my life right now. That is a good thing, not a bad thing. It is all part of the mix.

And finally, at this moment in our history, and whilst affirming the importance of conscience and freedom of religious belief and expression, as churches, working together, we need to assert ourselves in the fight against discrimination in all its forms. In this present hour, our concern continues for racial justice within the Church, and for the Church’s voice in affirming the dignity and human rights which should be afforded to those who are part of the LGBTQI+ community. In this respect, to remain silent would be to perpetuate, in some contexts, the untruth that the church is die-hard traditional, unconcerned, uncaring, and out of touch with reality. In respect of LGBTQI+ issues, whilst many within and outside the Church will appreciate that our debates will be multilayered, emotional, and complex, the more urgent message for us to relate is that as God’s people, we have compassion and we are clear about what we do stand for where human rights are concerned.

Below is the statement ‘We Believe’, agreed by Churches Together in Whittlesey and District.

We Believe

We believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that He died for us, and that God raised Him from the grave by the power of the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit is at work in us.

We believe that Jesus’ desire for us that we would support each other, in remaining faithful to God and to each other, through the joys and sorrows of life. We are disciples travelling along the same road.

We believe that God has a mission to save the World from sin, death, and all that enslaves us, and that as Christians and local churches, we have our part in that mission.

We believe that by supporting each other in our discipleship, and the work of our churches, we can do more than if we were to walk alone. To this end, we assert that to work in isolation, where the possibility of partnership exists, is contrary to God’s will.

We believe that diversity is a part of life, and that inclusivity is an act. We embrace the diversity and richness offered by our individual traditions. We have much to learn from each other. Whilst our Churches may differ in certain areas of doctrine and practice, God calls us to live with contrary convictions, and where we disagree, to disagree well, in such a way that does not undermine the gospel.

We believe that God calls us to build the Kingdom, rather than to focus on building our local churches, but that in working for the Kingdom, our local churches will flourish.

We believe in One Church, which is God’s Church, of which we all share a part. We celebrate moments where this unity becomes visible.

Churches Together in Whittlesey in District affirms the Churches Together in Britain and Ireland’s focus on racial justice, the fight against discrimination in all its forms, and in particular whilst respecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom of belief for all people, stresses the dignity that should be afforded to those who are LGBTQI+, and affirms their human rights.

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Why I have faith in the Methodist Church’s ‘God For All’ Strategy… Speaking the truth about how the Church has a track-record of change and is prepared to retain its spiritual integrity and confront reality.

I find it relatively easy to forgive people who are sceptical of the Methodist Church, even when they are close to the point of undermining it. After all, the Church belongs to God, and not to us, and whilst congregations rise and fall, the work of God continues. God is big enough to handle the complaint, and we are big enough to listen, even if we become wound-up. Curiously, I find that this distrust of the Church is more apparent in those who are activists and pioneers in the life of the Church. This, I suspect, is for two reasons. Please therefore indulge me in what will be a long introduction to why I have faith in the Methodist Church, and in God for All . (You can, by the way, take my faith in Jesus as read). And also, please do not read this as my questioning our investment in pioneering, innovation and even enabling people who we know will agitate. I write also as a pioneer coach, or at least, someone who does my bit to help bridge the link between the experience of leaders on the margins, and the institution at the center.

First, as a leader I am well aware that there can be genuine problems with how the institution of the church feels at odds with immediate needs on the ground, and of how some our or policies and procedures can feel archaic and non-sensical. This is sometimes a fair point. The issue is not however that the policies are necessarily wrong. it is that they are framed with an approach and in a language that seems overly legalistic and archaic. If for example, I invite a group of Christians who are gathering as a congregation to see themselves as a church, I will often get a good response. However, if I were to suggest that they need a steward, a treasurer, a property secretary, a pastoral secretary, and a safeguarding officer (and the list could go on), they may well look at me in horror (apart from agreeing that safeguarding was the most important thing). However, if I say, ‘That’s an impressive jar of money that people have given so far – do you think someone should start a bank account’, or ‘It’s great to see so many people here, do we have anyone who can keep track of who people are and how we can contact them?’ the result, I guarantee you will be different. Sadly, we overlook all too easily that many of our regulations have been formed, by our reflecting on experience – and sometimes bad experience – in the white-hot hear of mission. Thus you might think that a requirement of fourteen days notice for a church council meeting to take place is unwieldy, until you find yourself in a new church that has become insular, cliquey, and planning things behind everyone’s backs. Or until you find a leader who because they have not considered safeguarding, ends up compromising themselves or wholly unprotected if something goes wrong.

The second reason why people may be sceptical is because – and this is my one and only objection to Fresh Expressions, as someone who is still an Advocate for the movement – we have baked-in to the call for people to develop new forms of church and mission the argument that the inherited church has failed. In other words, we are asking and releasing people to do new work – which, however we measure it, has been hugely successful, but then we ask them in the same breath to trust the inherited Church, the wider body that is in decline, to manage what is fragile and new. Unsurprisingly, people have reservations and Fresh Expressions becomes the victim of its own rhetoric. What people forget of course is that whilst the inherited Church has struggled to adapt, all of this new work has been funded through the generosity and time of people in the wider Church, who have given greatly. Arguably, if we were to measure the level of giving towards mission, we would find that inherited congregations have sacrificed a great deal. Rather than calling for ministers (for example) to serve them tea and biscuits until they die, they have accepted that whilst they miss their minister, and even need their minister, their minister needs to go where they are needed the most. Of course, I am not suggesting that this is always the case, but in what is approaching now twenty years of experience, I have seen a significant shift.

So having addressed two reasons why some innovators and pioneers might be sceptical of the Methodist Church, allow me to share why I have confidence in God For All. In the main, it is a judgement built on my experience on what the Church has got right, and it begins with Our Calling (now 20 years old, reaffirmed in 2018), something that remains a versatile tool for church reflection. It gave way to a process of change that I have lived through. Whilst the Church may be slow to react in certain instances, no one can question the Methodist Church’s ability to ask difficult questions, have the integrity to follow them through, and implement difficult decisions. We might not like the decisions I grant you, but please don’t present the image of a sloth like church that is unable to cross the road in time to avoid oncoming traffic.

Following Our Calling came the Conference Reports:

Where are we heading? (2003)
Priorities for the Methodist Church (2004) – here we identified how, among other issues, people struggled with the capacity to speak of God, and to evangelise.
Team Focus (2005), resulting in the restructuring of the Connexional Team.
Reshaping for Mission (2006) which encouraged circuits to merge for mission.
Fruitful Field (2011 onwards), representing a wholesale change in our understanding of ‘formation’ wherein previously we had focused a disproportional level of resourcing on ordination training, a the expense of other formational needs among lay people.

Methodism’s Hidden Harvest (2016) began to highlight some of the benefits of the Church’s partnership with Fresh Expressions, concluding,

31% of circuits have a fresh expression
37,000 people worship regularly in a Methodist Fresh Expression
24,000 of those attending have no prior experience of church
59% of fresh expressions are lay-led

You can read the report here:

3307-fx-research-report-methodism-s-hidden-harvestDownload


Following this trend and after a period where the Church, nationally, set out with its Reimagine agenda (a shift that included that was much broader than fresh expressions, encouraging circuits and churches to reflect on their mission and develop new work, the Methodist Church then began a lengthy, grass roots consultation which led to God For All, the conference paper for which is available via the link below:

conf-2020-4-evangelism-and-growthDownload

The thing that excites me about God for All as a progression of this is how:

• It has arisen from the wholesale consultation across the wider church, thanks to the early work of the Evangelism and Growth teams.
• The Methodist Church has ‘put its money where its mouth is’. £22.7 million pounds over five years, including £1 million on encouraging personal evangelism, £6.6million for New Places for New People (new work), £8.6 million for working on the margins, in comparison to basic staffing costs of £2.7 million.
• It is a strategy for growth that can be owned fully by the Methodist people and comes from the heart of the church. (I say this having experienced how Fresh Expressions rejuvenated the church, but was not as owned by the Methodist Church, at its grassroots, as much as it could be). This I feel is something that has emerged from the heart of the Methodist Church, of which Methodists can rightly be proud. Of course, I use the term ‘ownership’ and ‘pride’ in the best possible way. Ownership is not about us holding on to, and refusing to share something that is precious to us, it is about churches surviving because the self-govern, self-finance, and self-propagate, albeit in the context of Methodist subsidiarity. (And to that drawing from my ‘what’s healthy in mission perspective’ I would include self-theologising, in the sense that there is ample room within God for All for local churches to discern the shape of their mission. It is not one-size fits all approach.
• It holds the church to account, asks, ‘And so What?’ and suggests a way forward. I believe that the structural changes are much like a new wineskin that God is for us. Now this is in place we need to grow a crop for the new wine. I view God For All as encouraging the variety and blend of people and resources that we need. Another important feature is that I think Methodism is ahead of the curve here in terms of mission. Whilst I can see synods in other denominations are being excited about the stories and good practice that are surfacing from Church at the Margins and/or pioneering contexts, God For All seems to be a much more coherent approach, where different variations in missional work are being woven together in one garment, and no longer is one act of mission taken as more valuable, or given more profile because it is more shiny than another. We need both The Methodist Way of Life, and Everyone an Evangelist for example. Without wanting to sound dismissive, beware any local church that thinks it can deflect difficult questions about their lack of growth – some of my own included (we can all do it) – by over-emphasising (as they fade into oblivion) the importance of spiritual growth alone. Considerable work has also been clearly done on how the different facets of God For All feed into each other. Until this point, I have for example seen dioceses in the Church of England develop say a 2020 vision to reach equity of fresh expressions versus inherited church staff and projects, but God for all seems to go deeper, broader.
• It focuses on us encouraging adaptive (hard) rather than technical (easier) change. I am minded that in their report on Reshaping for Mission, the Strategy Research Team concluded (in my own words) that we were good on the ‘reshaping’, but poor on the ‘mission’ part. I see God For All as being something that can address this.
• God for All faces up to the need for evangelism and growth, and refuses to dodge the fundamental issues by overemphasizing the importance of our ‘spiritual growth’ whilst ignoring our need to make new disciples.
• The foundational tenets of centering our lives on God, prioritising evangelism, and developing transformational leadership (TL) resonates with me. I am excited by how centering our lives on God will be driven by The Methodist Way of Life. From my perspective, this is a resource that needs to be pushed at circuit level, rather than appearing as an option. Doubtless the pandemic has had a significant impact on the different means by which the message, and the commitment cards can be distributed. From my experience, this is an urgent area of review and we may need some even sharper directives from the connexion to accelerate this.
• Linked to Transformational Leadership, if this is taken seriously (and it is a technical phrase that should not be banded about unless you mean what it implies) I find the concept of ‘individualised consideration’ as key, as well as helping teams discover their collective identity and the power that they do have. There is a strong links for pastors here in helping individuals connect their sense of self to a project and then to others within a group. Additionally, I think that the focus within TL on helping people think for themselves is empowering, as is an openness towards what is unexpected or remarkable. I can think of projects that have started in one direction but have had benefits in another. I am not sure whether we have focused as much as we could on how we understand ‘leadership’ in the church – perhaps an area of further work.

• The remaining elements excite me because:
… they arise from our having reflected on our Methodist tradition and have theological depth. They are so clearly anchored people cannot refer to tradition as a way of resisting change. Church on the Margins for example, is exactly what John Wesley did.
…they show a sophistication of thinking – the very fact that leaders are recognised separately from pioneers, evangelists or leaders is telling.
…The focus on Digital Mission simply says to me that the Church is aware and alert to new mission fields, and engaging with this.

So there you have it. That is why I believe in God for All. Above all, and retuning to my opening comments about why people may be sceptical of the Church, we would do well to remember that we are called to follow Jesus, but to follow Jesus is to be part of the Church; the two go hand-in hand within the Missio Dei, Sure, we can talk about how ‘church’ can exist in different forms, and how churches can organise their own affairs (there is a surprising degree of latitude in our current policies, membership aside) but to lose faith in the Church, and its capacity to, just occasionally get things right, is really to lose faith in Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.

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Our future online – Peterborough Methodist Circuit Livestream Team Paper (and a work in progress).

This paper stems from the first meeting of the Circuit Livestream Team (involving Matt Forsyth, Dale Sherriff, and myself –this initial meeting could have included more people but we also felt the need to meet quickly). In this meeting we recognised four priorities.

  1. We need to look at how we support Dale and Grace in delivering their livestream worship, so that the process is less intensive and that we can release Grace to focus more on enabling youth.
  2. We need to encourage more people to create content in the form of readings, sermons, prayers etc. Sue Moore has been extremely helpful in this and coordinates who will assist week to week.
  3. We need to outline how we see the place of online worship as part of how we operate as a circuit, complementing what is offered in local churches. The case for this has been stated and restated. However, there is always a need to reassure people that we are aware of the strengths and challenges of online worship, and that no one feels disenfranchised.
  4. In terms of developing online worship, we have come a long way and have asked people to assist in particular ways as our needs have surfaced. We are now at the point where we can step back, look at who does what, and to formalise these roles. This will help us affirm people, give us increased confidence to work together in raising the profile of what we are offering as a circuit, focus on how we enable discipleship (and where possible local church attendance) through our online presence.

    It would have been easier(!) to simply look at our needs in terms of overseeing online worship. However, from the outset it was clear that we needed to look at online worship from a much broader perspective. As a circuit we need to understand how online worship links with local church attendance, how we celebrate our successes, we need to identify where the tensions and areas of concern are, and then look at how these might be addressed by people who are appointed to different roles.

    These roles are:
    Circuit Social Media Administrators
    Circuit Livestream Worship Leaders
    Circuit Worship Content Creator
    Circuit Online Pastoral Leaders

Online worship refers to worship that is either presented live, or pre-recorded worship that contains live elements (such as the ability for people to comment and offer prayers real time). It includes platforms such as Facebook Live, YouTube Events, and Zoom.

Increased engagement through online worship

In resorting to online worship as an additional means of engaging with people during the covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown, the circuit discovered that we were able to reach parts of the Church that have previously been difficult to reach people:

• who are housebound through illness or infirmity.
• who cannot attend church easily because they care for family members.
• who work shift patterns that include or make Sunday mornings difficult.
• who have simply found it difficult to engage with church because they have had challenging experiences in the past.
• who have recently experienced a challenging life experience that has disrupted their church attendance such as a bereavement or moving from one location to another.

The evidence for this is measurable and irrefutable. Most poignantly, there are people who now engage in online worship regularly where previously, year on year, we may have questioned in pastoral meetings why they were a member of a Methodist Church and yet ‘we never see them’.

Acknowledging those who cannot connect online

It is obvious that the Church must accommodate people who are not able to engage online. This can happen for various reasons:

• Access to the internet can be poor in some areas (although this is increasingly rare).
• Some people lack the equipment to engage online.
• Some people lack the skills/confidence to engage online.
• For some people, online worship does not appeal because of its style or format.
• Some simply lack the inclination to learn something new.

This said, our experience would suggest, albeit anecdotally, that as the pandemic unfolded and the impact of shielding and social distancing increased, we witnessed an increase in late adopters who had begun to engage with online platforms such as Zoom, driven by the desire for their own families to retain contact. This has then increased people’s confidence to engage and even contribute to worship online. Meanwhile, as a circuit we continue to champion paper resources, such as The Vine, and all those church leaders to ensure its distribution.

Is online worship a threat to the ‘tradition’ of the Church?

The short answer to this is, ‘No’. There is or has been, without question, an underlying unease among some people about the level of profile we give to online worship, whether we are undervaluing gathering physically. The natural fear is that this will undermine people’s willingness to attend local church services. However, the evidence to date is that despite the provision of online worship, people are even more keen to see each other in person.

In respect of a threat to ‘tradition’ (a word which can be helpful because what makes something ‘traditional’ is often subjective), livestream worship can admittedly feel less traditional because of the lack of high-quality resources that include hymns, organ, choir singing etc. However, this is changing.

An additional observation is that online worship frequently transcends the geographical boundaries which often, in part, defined local church attendance. Thus, we might define Circuit Worship as worship for those who live within the circuit. However, online worship often incorporates people from across the circuit and beyond. A range of factors might be in play here; the time of the worship, a sense of connection with Peterborough, an affinity towards any given leader (which also happens in local churches), lead people to engage in livestream worship. Equally, there will be members of the circuit who engage with a former minister who is engaged with online worship elsewhere.

Our focus is to ensure that online worship complements what is happening in local churches, encourages local church attendance, gives us a platform to emphasise the best of our Methodist Tradition, and develops a relationship with local churches that is mutually beneficial.

A Theology of Online Worship

Commenting on an emerging theology of online worship may feel a little abstract here, but people often find it helpful to relate their experience to the scriptures, events, and parables that we read in the Bible. Ultimately it helps us understand and make sense of what God is doing. A deeper reflection on this is well beyond the scope of this paper (which began by asking what needs to be in place to support online worship – and then took a step back to ask honest questions about where the benefits and challenges of this might lie). However, the following areas might be helpful.

• The feeding of the 5,000 (All of the gospels). The reason for Jesus’ presence here was to heal the sick. God did a miracle in meeting the need for nourishment, yes, but someone offered the little they could (the five loaves and the two fish), and it made all the difference. Everyone in their own way, has offered what they can to contribute to online worship.
• Paul Preaching to the Philosophers on Mars Hill (Acts 17). Paul occupies the public space of the day, engages with Greek philosophers, and relates the story about Jesus (starting with his pointing to a statue of ‘The Unknown God’. Although online worship can become insular (Facebook groups for example can become like an echo-chamber of chatter from like-minded people), our approach has been to try and be as open as possible. Online gives us huge potential to reach out to new people. Linked to this, we are very much following the footsteps of Jesus into Gentile territory. Online worship provides a less threatening way of inviting people to think about faith.
• Valley of Dry Bones – ‘Can these bones live?’ in Ezekiel 37. ‘I will open your graves and bring you up from them.’ Arguably this is one of the most powerful illustrations, in that we know of people whose faith has been rekindled because of online worship.
• Early Christians worship in their homes (Acts 2) – as well as worshipping in the temple. They then gravitate to gather in larger homes or buildings – in this sense worship was always in ‘third’ or ‘borrowed’ spaces. Without question, both online and paper resources have recentred Christian spirituality around the home.
• The Good Shepherd. Pastorally we are capitalising on the greater reach that online worship affords and can provide additional support to those who are unwell, or housebound by increasing their sense of community.

Can online worship be ‘church’?

One of the early concerns about online worship was the extent to which we could call this ‘church’ or ‘church online’, since the word church (‘ekklesia’ in the Greek) means ‘assembly’, and broadly speaking, Christian tradition understands that ‘church’ takes place whenever people gather together physically. In one sense, there are aspects of church that cannot be offered online.

• Holy Communion (even if the Methodist Church permitted communion to be shared ‘online’) would be a pale imitation of what people would experience in church.
• The lack of corporate responses and singing is a challenge (even though zoom provides opportunities for choirs to sing, this is not the same as everyone in church singing).
• Fellowship cannot take place in quite the same way. People who worship online cannot shake hands or embrace as they might do face-to-face (although increasingly one suspects that physical contact will still be limited in the future).

This said, it is too easy to ignore aspects of our Christian history where people have retained their Christian faith whilst longing for but unable to gather in worship. The clearest examples of this are Paul, imprisoned whilst He wrote Philippians, Philemon, and Colossians (two years in Caesarea, three years in Rome, before his execution). Meanwhile, an elderly John the Evangelist was banished to the Island of Patmos for two years because his preaching Christ was undermining the way of life in Ephesus. This said, both Paul (and one suspects that John) communicate with other church leaders by letter – and, more than this, their writings gave encouragement and direction.

Whilst we should, without question, encourage people to attend their local churches, we would be unwise to dismiss the different forms of fellowship that can exist online – when in effect, the coronavirus has led us to live a form of exile and, we suspect, will continue to shape how we are able to interact in the future. Curiously, a group of people meeting online can develop a sense of community and even sharing, especially in story and prayers, that we may struggle to achieve in church. People can interact at any time during an online service whereas unless this is called for by a leader of worship, this is unlikely to happen in local congregations. Online worship allows people to leave and re-join acts of worship less conspicuously.

The cost of online worship financially

To date the circuit has relied on the equipment that people own themselves, rather than purchasing large pieces of IT equipment. Presently, the superintendent is supported through the provision of additional equipment (so far, a limited amount of additional lighting, a microphone, a green screen, and a breadth of extension leads). Those who lead livestream services (rather than those who contribute to aspects of the service – sermons, readings etc), have been supplied with minimal lighting.

In addition to this, most people use their own computer equipment, and we are grateful for this. However, in some circumstances, especially if a service is compiled, recorded, and then broadcast later, more powerful equipment is required. It is important that we acknowledge this generosity of giving all round as people press into use old resources and/or invest in their own personal equipment.

The cost of online worship, spiritually

There are some dynamics around livestream worship that are not present, or are present to a much lesser degree, compared to worship that is face to face.

Livestream worship:
• Whilst being as simple as pressing the ‘Go Live’ button on Facebook, becomes much more complex when we are wanting to include different contributors, images, and music. Closed Zoom worship requires a good grasp of the screen sharing facility (and provides mixed results). Meanwhile, Circuit Worship is managed using (free) production software such as OBS, streamed to a single hub (Castr) and then relayed back to Facebook Live and YouTube. This gives the best mix of quality and accessibility but relies on the person leading worship having to learn new skills.
• This then means that the person leading worship is also taking responsibility for managing the stream. Whilst there are people able to phone and feedback on any problems, ‘We can’t hear you/you sound like a Dalek!’, livestream worship in its current format lacks the equivalent of a steward or assistant in the room. Elements of this can feel high pressured, especially in the event of technical problems, but we are learning also how gracious and faithful the congregation is in terms of being willing to wait until any difficulties are resolved.
• Whilst the Holy Spirit is most certainly at work there is a sense in which livestream worship leaves the person leading worship having to generate their own energy from an environment which can at first feel sterile and lacks face-to-face interactions. A good analogy is that of it feeling like one is playing in a sport’s competition but lacking the interaction of the crowd (in for example singing and smiles) which feeds back into the mix.
• In addition, we should also acknowledge that it is not only those who lead livestream worship, but also anyone who creates video content (prayers, readings, reflections) have pushed against their own self-conscious feelings (no one likes hearing themselves or seeing themselves on camera), and no doubt multiple attempts at recording to try and communicate as effectively as they can.

In short, this means that Livestream Worship may well demand more of its leaders than face-to-face worship with local congregations, where church happens ‘around us’.

Some brief observations: Recorded Worship and Live Worship

It is worth exploring this issue. One suggestion as we look to the future (in which livestream worship will feature on the plan alongside local church worship), is that we alleviate pressure by having people record worship beforehand and broadcast it later. There are some challenges with this.

• First, compiling and recording a service for worship (as is the case with Dale and Grace), is more resource intensive and time consuming than livestream. Combining several video scenes into one requires a powerful pc (an hour of video can take for example four hours to encode). In addition, it can take four hours for say YouTube to upload and convert it ready for broadcast.

• Second, our successes so far rest in how people are able to interact live with the person leading worship, or in the case of a video that is premiering having been uploaded, the leader(s) who remain in the background to encourage prayers. It is possible for one person to be leading whilst another assists those who respond with prayer requests, but pre-recorded worship has its limitations in that the leader(s) cannot adjust how much time they spend on one aspect of worship over another, should this be needed. A good analogy is the difference between taking to a Powerpoint presentation, where one can spend more time on one slide than another if the congregation needs it, or even jump slides to focus on what is important, or turn off the presentation all-together – compared to speaking to a video of a Powerpoint presentation and being limited by time.
 
Thinking about four roles

Bearing all this in mind(!), apart from underlining that online worship will always complement local church services, and more than that the two can be of mutual benefit to each other, it is clear that we need to formalise some roles to safeguard what is already happening. In some senses these roles are not new, but they lead us to question what more we can do to improve our online outreach as a circuit. These roles are:

Circuit Livestream Worship Producer (as previously identified and appointed by the circuit)
Then…
Circuit Social Media Administrators
Circuit Livestream Worship Leaders
Circuit Worship Content Creator
Circuit Online Pastoral Leaders

These roles are outlined in greater detail below:
 
Circuit Social Media Administrators

From the outset we had asked people to assist on Facebook as ‘administrators’ and YouTube as ‘managers’. A Social Media Administrator has ‘access all areas’ across all circuit sites and platforms. In effect, Simon Stewart has taken the lead in this, with other livestream presenters being able to assist when they are not presenting.
Admins work in partnership with Circuit Livestream Worship Leaders, the Circuit Livestream Worship Producer (previously defined), the Circuit Social Media Enabler (previously defined) and the Superintendent. This forms a core group that has oversight of all online circuit material.

The role of an administrator is as follows:
• To manage ‘static’ content on the platforms that they help administer. This includes being able to change the look and content of the sites, and to post material on behalf of the circuit. They are free to take the initiative in sharing reminders and promoting resources that are in-line with the aims of the circuit, as they see fit.
• To encourage more people from within the circuit to contribute to creating content for livestream worship, or lead livestream worship per se.
• Admins monitor the feed of multiple sites (currently three) at the same time, bearing in mind the Safeguarding and best practice requirements of the Methodist Church.
• Admins work in direct partnership with Livestream Worship Leaders to determine the nuances of where the risks lie in livestream worship, in terms of understanding the capacity for people to disrupt (which is different on different platforms). Admins then put in place measures to mitigate against any disruption.
• Admins assist in the management of copyright. Whilst we have copyright covered, in some instances we still need to report what music we use, and when. Background music is an area of concern where we need to apply for individual licenses each time we use a track (or we need to establish a clearer pattern of what tracks we use and when).
• Admins have the ability (and are trusted to) block comments on YouTube and Facebook as and when necessary, to restrict access, and even to shut-down a broadcast as a last resort.
• To assist the person leading worship by posting readings etc, and collating prayers as they surface, allowing the person leading to sum up.
• To feedback any problems to the presenter during worship, often via phone or text, in the event of a problem that they cannot see themselves.
• To ‘hold’ folks together if a livestream must be restarted, by remaining as presence – assuring people until things are resolved or redirecting people for example from Facebook to YouTube.
• Given the responsibilities that this covers, an admin needs to be both IT literate, recruited (as usual) through Safer Recruiting with the Circuit as the Responsible Body, trained in Safeguarding, and DBS cleared.
• Ideally, we are looking for a team of Admins and develop a plan for who is on duty during morning prayers and Sunday Services.
• Admins assist the Circuit Livestream Worship Producer and the Circuit Social Media Enabler in feeding back on the level of engagement in online worship.
 
Circuit Livestream Worship Leader

• Is qualified (or under supervision and training) as a Worship Leader or a Local Preacher.
• Takes responsibility for leading an act of worship that is Livestreamed.
• Both manages the livestream – and leads the worship.
• Receives submission in the form of prayers, reflections, sermons and collates these.
• May present live using OBS, but similarly may convert an act of worship to video, and upload this, or schedule and upload.
• Engages ‘live’ with people during online worship.

Circuit Livestream Pastoral Leader
• Is present when a Livestream is broadcast, monitoring comments.
• Actively acknowledges participants prayers, and thoughts.
• Signposts people to other means of support.
• Looks to help people grow in their discipleship.
• Encourages people to make a link with a local church.
• Identifies, and passes on pastoral concerns to ministers.

Circuit Worship Content Creator
• Need not be qualified as a worship leader
• Uses their creative or production skills (writing, photography, interviewing, video editing) to create content for online worship.
• Identifies content elsewhere which may be useful to the circuit – eg material produced by other charities, highlighting specific Methodist foci during the year, thereby helping the Livestream Worship Leaders plan ahead.
• May help manage the online storage of resource material (songs etc.)
• There could be scope for such a person to assist in copyright administration.

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Methodism’s Hidden Harvest: The story of the first fifteen years of Methodist involvement in fresh expressions.

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For Starters in Peterborough: Seven helpful insights when starting something new, and a reminder that the Church belongs to God.

Question. If you combine a group of church leaders from across the denominations, all of whom are experienced in mission and fresh expressions, and the desire to encourage new work in any form, what do you get? In Peterborough, one response has been For Starters, a series of events (well we have had two now), intended to encourage anyone who feels called to start – something. Anything in fact, from a toddler group, to a drop-in for pensioners, to a new form of church. For Starters reaches out to anybody; you do not have to be in a leadership role or even see yourself as a leader. The only requirement is that you have a sense that God is calling you to follow Jesus in mission. This is empowering stuff; never mind your insecurities; just be honest about what God is saying to you.

Why I was not bored

I must confess (after a decade of living by the rule of Fresh Expressions – six of which were spent in research) that nothing turns me off more than hearing glib examples of new things that are happening, without any acknowledgment as to the challenges that people face when starting new work. There is almost something dishonest going on when this happens. For Starters got the balance right. The presentations were energised but honest and this, in turn, encouraged people to say things that they might not have had the confidence to share elsewhere. I heard real-life frustration from people who longed to see their church grow but despaired of the fact that whilst newcomers might value fellowship, they recoiled at the idea of being invited to something that felt religious. (We still have much to in helping break unhelpful stereotypes of what church looks like and feels like). I heard questions from local leaders about how they could encourage local development when one or two staunch church members belonged to the ‘not over my dead body’ brigade. These are the very people that we need to equip and support in our churches, and one of the things that For Starters is doing is helping build confidence by setting local people next to experienced leaders who can listen and guide.

For Starters also appeals because it offers new insights that I had not heard before, or if I had heard them they were put forward in a way that gave them real weight. Thus, I thought that it might be helpful to share my own reflections. I found seven new insights to consider when starting something new.

1. People are not so much afraid of change: they are afraid of loss.

Ed Olsworth-Peter (Adviser for Fresh Expressions of Church and Young Adults, Ely Diocese) offered guidance to how church leaders might help the PCC – or in our case, church councils – understand why we need to invest in fresh expressions. Ed began by pointing out that people are not so much afraid of change, but of loss. The danger is that as new work is proposed and begins to flourish, other members of the church start to feel threatened, as if investment in one thing will mean the active neglect of what they have been doing. Ed talked about the need for a ‘blended economy’. This seems like Rowan William’s ‘mixed economy’, or my own idea of a ‘mixed ecology’. Irrespective, the principle is similar. Rather than working in opposition, what is inherited and what is emerging can only flourish if they support each other.

The key to heading off resistance may be for leaders (specifically those who chari meetings) to point out that we all want the same thing, that we are all committed to the Church, irrespective of when it happens and what it looks like. God calls us to build his Kingdom, rather than our own empires. And lest we think that fresh expressions only have one way of doing things, there is considerable breadth in what this looks like. Projects can incorporate the traditional, the sacramental, or patterns living that draw from monastic disciplines. They can be for everyone, or aimed at one group of people – older or younger – especially if they are intended to address a specific need.

2. If the numbers attending your ‘life’ services (especially baptisms) are not resulting in increased church attendance, then you need to be honest about how you are inviting people, and whether what you are offering is suitable.

OK, I admit. This is not new. Fresh expressions are here to stay, and are very much alive and kicking. However, there are times when it is patently obvious that the familiar ways of working are not….well, working. What did strike me as new, and perhaps often overlooked, is the scale at which our outreach as a church can become disconnected with church attendance. Sid Bridges (Holy Trinity, Orton Waterville) shared about the growth of Refresh, which effectively, looks like a blend of Messy Play, Messy Church and a Worship Service. Prior to this, Phil’s church was conducting eighty infant baptisms a year, and preparing 10-20 children from the local school…but guess what…the uptake in terms of new families coming to church was poor. This looks like family fun and fellowship that is wholly ecclesial in nature. It is not just a toddler group with a prayer at the end. The most revealing thing that was said? Kids are disappointed if they cannot go.

3. Fresh expressions are contributing towards the costs of ministry.

One other observation from Refresh (and the same could be said of some of our own fresh expressions) is that the concept of taking up an offering or inviting people to contribute to the costs of ministry, is beginning to become embedded within local projects. Some of those who attend Refresh are opting to give towards the work of the Church. The question for Phil has been whether money given to the church by those who attend the project should be ring-fenced and reinvested into Refresh, or whether it should go towards the broader costs of Parish ministry. At present, what people give contributes to the whole.

4. God is already speaking through those who are not yet part of the church: be attentive. Listen and act on what they say.

Helen Crofts (Circuit Mission Enabler, Peterborough Methodist Circuit of Churches) gave examples of the importance of what Fresh Expressions would refer to as ‘360 degree listening’ when thinking about how to discern the way forward. Listen to God. Listen to the Church. Listen to yourself. Ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Walk and pray. Get to know people. Most of all, be attentive to the voices of those who are not yet part of the Church. The bit that had me on the edge of my seat were the examples of how some of our everyday encounters and conversations that might appear random, turn out to be the seed that starts something new. Helen gave one example of a Messy Play that started when an older member of a local community noted that there was ‘nothing for children in the holidays.’ Think also about what is already happening, and how this could develop. If parents are reluctant to leave each other after dropping their children off at a club, and hang around chatting, you probably have the basis for something else, perhaps for the whole family. What might become of your coffee-morning, or your small group that is exploring faith?

5. Can you picture the faces of those people who you will invite to something new? If not, you may have a problem…

Charlie Nobbs (Pioneer and New Initiatives Trainer, Peterborough Diocese) spoke about knowing who we are going to invite to new events. Can we picture their faces? For me, this was a powerful question. So often we just put up a poster and expect people to arrive. Or we expect others to invite people on our behalf. If there was ever a time when we could rely on this, those days are now long-gone. I took from this that if we cannot picture the people who we are intending to invite, then we may be a step too far ahead in our mission. Much of our experience and the research evidence that I have seen to date, suggests that people come to faith through the relationships that they have with other Christians. And with relationships come trust. And with trust comes the willingness to be honest about matters of faith.

6. We might not like engaging with people through social media, but social media is here to stay, and we need to learn how to use it.

Yes, like it (no pun intended), or loath it, social media is here to stay. Despite the scepticism people might have about what friendship means on social media, platforms such as Facebook are proving incredibly useful in terms of building community. In fact, as I reflect on our own practice here in Peterborough, Facebook is becoming far more effective than local websites on advertising what is happening in the life of our churches. One other feature is that social media allows us to take pictures and show what life is like beyond those big wooden doors that people cannot see through. Whilst there are churches who have replaced wood with glass, this remains a valid point. And before I forget, another key factor is that you do not have to be a member of Facebook to view a Facebook page online. I see a link here with how John Wesley, the founder of Methodism found open-air preaching unpalatable – detestable even. He did not like doing it, but he felt compelled to do it because there was no other workable solution. Sometimes you must move outside of the church and meet people where they are. Social media looks like the digital equivalent.

7. Churches propose alterations to their buildings. A minority of local people – many of whom do not attend the church – object. Nonetheless, we need to make changes so that our churches are fit for purpose.

Richard Ormston (Archdeacon of Northampton) shared a wonderful example of how someone, deeply perturbed by the proposal to incorporate a working toilet into a rural church, asked the question, ‘What on earth are they going to use if for?’ Enough said. Seriously though, Richard’s support chimed with our own experience within the Northampton District, and the ‘Property for Mission’ approach within our own circuit. The basic message is that whilst churches need to preserve some of their historic features, the requirement to be fit for purpose in a missional sense is equally important. With some creative thinking, it will be possible to do both. Thus, beware the person who suggests that we cannot do ‘this and that’ because our building is listed. Probably, this comes from a general resistance to change rather than the reality. After all, many of our Anglican churches did not start out with pews in them. You could always, as Vyv Wainright (Anglican Reader and Surveyor based in Oakhampton) has done, train to be a conservation officer and play people at their own game. Whilst an MA in the subject might be a heavy commitment(!), it is surprising how much misinformation is out there about what people can or cannot do to our buildings. In some scenarios, all we need to do is to introduce the possibility that some changes are possible, and that those who oversee the preservation of our buildings are very much on-side when it comes to finding solutions (and I dare say funding) to enable the church to live in a missionally authentic way. After all, nothing is more damaging to the preservation of a church building than underuse.

In conclusion

Vyv’s presentation, on his Little Angels Toddler Group, served as a reminder that new does not necessarily mean having to engineer something that has never been done before. It does, however, mean taking mission and pastoral care seriously, and being attentive to the opportunities arise. (This very much echo’s Helen’s observations). What really moved me about Vyv’s presentation were the pastoral encounters that surfaced in Little Angels, and how the church was exercising a deeply significant ministry in helping people navigate through some of the most difficult periods in their lives.

The change in the demographics of who attended Little Angels (from what we might have seen twenty years ago) was no surprise, with Dads, grandparents, and single Mums bringing their children. But the story of how this community became aware of those who were struggling – a Mum who developed breast cancer, and another young boy (whose family was known to the group) who died from cancer – these stories reminded me of how we as the church have a role, an obligation, to provide space where people can meet and ministry can happen. When I think about some of the arguments I have witnessed about toddler groups and pre-schools (not within my own circuit I am pleased to say) – of how they might leave mess, or occupy the building when others could be using it, I am reminded starkly that we, the church must remember that our purpose is not to protect our personal fiefdom but to do allow God to do His thing. The church does not belong to us, it belongs to God.

Almighty God, Your Kingdom Come, Your will be Done…

Just show us more of what we need to do for starters.

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Reflecting on Fresh Expressions and Pioneer Ministry: URC Eastern Synod Learning Community. Case Study Three: Manging Competing Values in Fresh Expressions and the wider Church. Full Text. Rev Dr Langley Mackrell-Hey

 

This is the third case study, originally written as a contribution to the URC Eastern Synod Learning Community which met recently in Peterborough. The community provides support to those engaged in pioneer ministry and fresh expressions of church, and includes members of the Methodist Church.

This final case study draws from Quinn & Rohrbaugh’s Competing Values Framework. This is a well-established tool for understanding how effective organisations need to balance stability and control, with flexibility and change. Quinn & Rohrbaugh’s work is grounded in their understanding of four previously established models of organisational culture and has been used to explore and improve the dynamics that are at work across a range of organisations in (among others) education, healthcare, not-for-profit charities, and businesses.  In my view, it is particularly useful to the Methodist Church and other denominations as we hold in tension the need to sustain what we have, whilst rethinking how we engage with new people and fulfil God’s mission beyond our church walls. More than this, the Competing Values Framework provides a means by which we can appreciate ‘difference’ in the church, and how, whilst we might have a different set of gifts and a different outlook when we compare ourselves to others, the Church needs pioneers, and pioneers need the Church. Finally, the Competing Values Framework helps practitioners – particularly those who are charged with oversight – appreciate people’s strengths, understand how each individual might contribute to any given from of mission, discern when they will be of greatest use as a project develops, understand how they are likely to become frustrated (and the consequences of this if they withdraw), and recognise how conflict might become a constructive rather than a destructive force.

The simplest way to explain this is to present my simplified adaptation of the framework, and then to outline how this has developed: Slide17

(http://changingminds.org/explanations/culture/competing_values.htm)

The framework is based on two competing tensions in any organisation; a horizontal tension in which pastoring what we have, sustaining our existing work, and remain unified, is held in balance with the need for the local church to look outwards, reflect on good practice, adapt what works elsewhere, and innovate. The second tension, depicted vertically, relates to how power and authority are mediated. Here, the tendency for decision-making to be centred around the core leadership of the church (to maintain stability and control) is balanced with the need for leaders to delegate and invite others to take this initiative (allowing flexibility and discretion). Consequently, it is possible to view the Church as containing four groups of people. These have arbitrary labels of administrator, counsellor, inventor, and marketeer. Alternatively, you could view the church as comprising people who control, collaborate, create, or tend to translate what has worked well elsewhere into their own context. Of course, people are much more complex – but a good number of my own local church stewards have found this model helpful. I am sure we all know of people who, whilst they have a range of gifts, would see themselves as occupying one segment, or perhaps bordering two.

The benefits of the framework are that first, people understand why they perhaps feel that they do not fit in the inherited Church but nevertheless have a vital role. In general, those who are diagonally opposite tend to become frustrated with each other. The counsellor or collaborator who is mindful of safeguarding the ‘clan’ will be nervous about the pace of change that the marketer demands. Administrators (or those whose natural gift is to control and regulate) will be frustrated by the inventor or entrepreneur who thinks up ten ideas before breakfast. Second, the model emphasises how despite our differences, we need each other. Organisations are not so much strengthened by the excess of people they have in one quadrant, as disadvantaged by where they lack expertise. Thus, even though a ‘family’ church might be dominated by those who fit the ‘Counsellor’ (or ‘Clan’) model, involving a wealth of people who are personal, nurturing, participative, loyal, open, and trusting, they will be ultimately disadvantaged if they lack ‘administrators’ who can bring structure, policy, a sense of dependability and permanence, or ‘inventors’ who are entrepreneurial, innovative, and celebrate freedom and uniqueness. Furthermore, the framework leads us to reflect on what can go wrong if one segment dominates; too much bureaucracy can stifle rather than enable development; too much emphasis on the clan leads to sectarianism; too much of a focus on innovation drains resources and can lead to missed opportunities (if they are not followed up properly); too much marketeering leads to a focus on ‘achieving’ rather than ‘becoming’, and being hoodwinked into believing that all we need do to encourage growth is to clone (and be better at) what another ‘successful’ church is doing elsewhere.

Ian Bell, the VentureFX and Pioneer Pathways co-ordinator for the Methodist Church has repeatedly drawn from the insights of Gerald Arbuckle, a Roman Catholic anthropologist who argues that dissent within leadership (in the form of proposing alternatives) is crucial in refounding churches in response to local need. Arbuckle writes:

We require radically different and, as yet, unimagined ways of relating the Good News to the pastoral challenges of the world…we need pastorally creative quantum leaps in our thinking, structures and action. Thus prophetic people, or ‘apostolic quantum leap’ persons are needed within the Church to critique, or dissent from, the pastorally and ineffective pastoral wisdom of the present. Without these people the Church simply cannot fulfil its mission. (Gerald A. Arbuckle, Refounding the Church : Dissent for Leadership (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993). 22.

In my own research, as I surveyed a range of fresh expressions and looked at how they were overseen, it became clear that local churches (and crucially church councils) comprised more people who would fit the left-hand side of the quadrant than the right, with people who were more inventive or marketeering, being fewer in number. Thus, as I reflect on where the Methodist Church and Church of England stand on pioneering at the moment, I sense a move to rebalance the church so that those with pioneering gifts are included. Fresh Expressions and pioneer ministry, therefore, is not an optional addition; it is vital to the future of the Church.

Thinking theologically about the model

One difficulty with the Competing Values Framework that it (obviously) lacks a scriptural or broader theological base. Attempts to relate the Jesus movement and what follows with this model are fraught with difficulty. Whilst Jesus has a clear aim and models good practice, we know little about the disciples’ giftings, and how they related to each other. Whilst James and John see themselves as superior, Peter can be petulant and over-commit, and Judas is a self-interested thief, we simply do not have enough detail to reflect on how they relate to each other and analyse it against the framework.

Strikingly however, two aspects of Quinn & Rohrbaugh’s work do resonate with the tensions that become apparent as the early Church grows. One crucial issue discussed at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15) is what Jewish-Christians should expect of Gentiles who want to join them. Essentially, this represents a horizontal tension over the extent to which synagogue leaders should hold to their traditional Jewish roots whilst welcoming newcomers. The Jerusalem Council concludes by stating, “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God.” Gentile believers were urged to abstain from sexual immorality, food that has been offered to idols, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. These might not seem like significant concessions today, but back then they were major issues of religious identity and culture. The Church, of course, has since evolved. There is now a diversity of theological belief and expression. However, I think that we would be wise to reflect the Jerusalem ruling when we think about how we reach out to the ‘Gentiles’ of today – to those with no or very limited prior experience of ‘church’. How do we not make life difficult for them? What is immovable? What is, ultimately, dispensable? Acts 15:5 is a stinging reminder that a small but skilled conservative group of people can have a disproportionally significant impact overall, imposing their expectations on others in ways that have the potential to undermine church growth. (I should acknowledge that whilst I talk in this way, my inclusivity reflex is reacting to the concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’. However, it is right to note that there are those who unless we change, will struggle to make our church their home.)

Aspects of Quinn and Rahrbaugh’s analysis are also helpful when reflecting on the model of leadership that emerges. Whilst Peter takes the lead and together with John becomes the spokesperson for the apostles (most notably before the Sanhedrin), the developing pattern seems to be one of conciliarity, where the apostles confer with each other before pronouncing judgement. This becomes particularly clear in Acts 15, where whilst Peter opens the debate, Paul and Barnabas share, and James concludes in support of Peter’s initial thoughts. Leadership in the early church might be said to exist in a ‘high accountability, light touch’ mode as Philip in Samaria, Paul in Damascus, and Peter in Lydia operate itinerantly but remember their commitment to the whole. This puts the apostles at the higher end of the vertical axis. The opposite of this would be a low accountability, heavy shepherding model of leadership, where leaders have less freedom to adapt their model of mission, and must ask for permission to act.

I am tempted to argue that a low accountability, heavy shepherding model of leadership exists only in Jesus day, as the disciples listen to Him, and replicate his practice. However, I am mindful of how, at times, even Jesus adopts a lighter touch when delegating his authority and sending out the disciples on mission in pairs (Luke 10:1). Also, whilst the apostles seem to operate in high accountability, light touch mode, and speak with an authority which is underpinned by the miraculous, we cannot discern how they relate to and nurture established Jewish leaders, and new gentile believers. I also discern a difference between speaking with authority and challenging certain behaviours on the one hand, but nevertheless allowing local leaders to put this in practice themselves, on the other. The apostle Paul is strong on principle, to the point of using satire to great effect (1 Corinthians 4:8-13; 2 Corinthians 11:16—12:10). However, he writes because he cannot be there in person. He must delegate. On balance, therefore, my conviction is that indeed, ‘high accountability, light touch’ is the dominant mode of leadership in the emerging church.

My own experience has been that the opposite – low accountability, close-control leadership – can do more harm than good. In the worst-case scenario, it places too greater emphasis on a central, charismatic figure, discourages people from dissenting and speaking their mind, and if the leader is not willing to delegate, deskills people. As I write this, I am mindful that there are moments when John Wesley, the founder of Methodism appears to be highly autocratic. He and his brother Charles laid the template for Methodism with its innovative mix of societies, classes, underpinned by preachers who gathered to review the scope of their mission. Whilst he spoke with authority, and closed societies that were underperforming, he was nevertheless forced to delegate. Without this, the movement could not possibly grow.

The important question for Methodist presbyters today – and I would suggest leaders of other denominations irrespective of whether they are ordained – is how we should oversee fresh expressions? What is the role of a minister in a fresh expression? How do we properly authorise and commission fresh expressions’ leaders? What aspects of ‘church’ must we insist take place – not because we want to impose ‘church’, but because we want to enable it from ground zero? How much do we do ourselves (if anything) and how much should we delegate? How much freedom should a fresh expression be given to make its own decisions, and what needs to be referred to the (Jerusalem) church council? How do fresh expressions connect with the wider church and vice-versa?

Thinking about where we stand

Quinn and Rohrbaugh’s work suggests that the best managers are those who can move between the different roles. Rather than seeing their diagonal opposite as their nemesis, they recognise their potential. If you are a pioneer, there is no room to hide in your favoured quadrant and claim that anyone who does not see life as you do is a loon. If you stay among your own kind, you will simply not get anywhere. Sure, life will seem harmonious but deep down you are likely to become frustrated that you are not making any progress. Instead, a good pioneer and a good overseer will have the capacity to mix with people from the other quadrants.

As a Methodist Minister, I am in the unenviable position (which I believe is shared by URC ministers) of being, effectively, both the Chief Executive and Chair of trustees for my local churches. Rarely would this happen in business – the individual who is tasked with overseeing development and encouraging new ideas is the same person who chairs the discussion. Whilst there is provision for ministers to hand over chairing the meeting to someone else, this has not been the inherited tradition. What follows is a sensitive balance as ministers suggest new ideas and allow others to test their viability, responding positively when their idea is reworked or a complete alternative is suggested. Frequently, the discussion seems more natural when someone else other than the minister presents. To put it succinctly, I long for an entrepreneur or pioneer to speak up. The difficulty is that in order to do this they need to be at the same meeting, and getting them there can be a challenge. Some, by nature, feel uncomfortable in a command and control setting. Administration and meetings are simply a turn-off for some people. Even so, the ministerial task is to enable a discussion to take place and to help people who appear to have competing values see the strengths in each other.

Crucially, the antidote to this conflict is to help churches see that whilst they comprise people who are different in personality and giftings, what unites them is a shared common goal: to grow the church. Unfortunately, this may not be the case. As John Wesley points out in his 2nd sermon of 44, ‘The Almost Christian’, some people exhibit a form of godliness whereby outwardly they appear to be in right relationship with Christ, but inwardly they have not experienced the love of God. This results in their lacking the drive to love their neighbour. Conversely, Wesley states that Altogether Christians are born of God, are confident that they are saved, have a faith which ‘purifies the heart’ and seeks to glorify God. Implicitly, Altogether Christians yearn for others to experience the transformative power of Christ. Whilst Wesley’s thinking is a challenge to all of us – which of us can ever say we have arrived? – I am minded that for some people church is more about community fellowship than faith; it is about starting with charitable works rather than starting with the gospel, which invariably leads to charitable works. For some, evangelism is almost a taboo word because we are nervous about forcing our faith on others (whilst this would be bad evangelism it does not excuse us from finding sensitive ways of presenting the gospel), because we do not believe wholeheartedly in the transformative power of the local church and the fact that we have something priceless to offer, or because (I am afraid to say) that despite generations of commitment to our local church, we are more ‘Almost’ than ‘Altogether’ Christians. Perhaps the first task for ministers then, is to ask churches, ‘Why are we here in the first place?’

How we create is what we create

Originally this framework was used to explain what was happening at one of our suburban churches in Peterborough. One concern – which seems to be a cry that often arises from local churches who incorporate fresh expressions is, ‘When are we going to see them come to church on a Sunday?’ I still have to pinch myself at times, not quite believing that after over ten years of advocating for fresh expressions, I am still having to remind people that this need not be the case. For some newcomers, the requirement to attend Church on a Sunday is a hindrance, particularly if their family situation is complex. However, despite the voice of concern or opposition (which we often hear disproportionately because we are sensitive to upsetting others), there are times when we need to assert ourselves, and model what we consider to be an appropriate response. We must – and here it comes – inhabit a different part of the quadrant than we are used to. The VentureFX definition of a pioneer (stated on the Fresh Expressions Website) states:

VentureFX pioneers begin with communities of young adults. As they explore what it means to be disciples of Jesus there, new and relevant form of Christian community are beginning to emerge. They are based on pursuing a radical and authentic lifestyle rooted in the teaching of Jesus, but marked by a re-imagination of what church might need to look like for them. (https://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/pioneerministry)

That has certainly been our experience. As Jeff Degraff (who has published some inspiriting YouTube videos on the Competing Values Framework) puts it, ‘How we create is what we create’. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45veR-Se-rI)

Southside For All began life as a midweek after-school club. As the wider church celebrated this work, a minority asked, ‘When are we going to see these people come to Church on a Sunday?’ In response, rather than retreating to the left-hand side of the quadrant and trying to engineer this, two of our staff stood in the upper right quadrant, and asked, ‘What does it mean to be church in this place?’ Southside For All originated from the observation that at the end of the sessions, the parents and carers did not want to leave. They valued each other’s fellowship and appreciated contact with the minister, mission enabler and volunteers. As the leaders reflected on the growing sense of community they reasoned that it would be better for them to capitalise on the relationships and networks that were already present, rather than to disrupt this by expecting people to withdraw from this and migrate to worshipping on a Sunday morning. This process has not only been about asserting a new direction as leaders. It has been about giving confidence to others who are pioneering or entrepreneurial but lack the confidence to speak up.

As for what the future holds, one of the advantages of the framework is that it reminds us of how projects need different phases of management. If we want to start a work quickly we need a blend of innovators and marketers, but to gain stability we need people who can administrate and pastor long-term. One hope is that by standing in the red quadrant, our leaders will encourage others of like-mind to step forward who can continue to move the project forward as the newly emerging church begins to question how it develops further. Meanwhile, we hope that having grown in confidence, those who volunteer (and have links with the Sunday morning congregation) will discover their role in providing stability through planning, and creating a sense of family. I remember how when the magician Paul Daniels used to finish his act, he used to say, ‘And that’s magic.’ I think that we as mission practitioners, need to do much the same in reminding people just how far they have travelled; what our initial thoughts and feelings were; how God overcame them; where we are now; where we think we might be headed in the future; and say, ‘And that’s mission!’ Our end goal is to try and ensure that the next time we engage in something new, we are more open to what God can do, and harbour less anxiety than we did the first-time round.

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Reflecting on Fresh Expressions and Pioneer Ministry: URC Eastern Synod Learning Community. Introduction and Case Study Two: Challenging the narrative of closure. Full Text. Rev Dr Langley Mackrell-Hey

 

One of the things that I hope to be able to offer people is some simple tools for tackling practical issues as we go about our daily ministry. (My background is in Practical Theology). In my view, all theology should be practical, in the sense that it has to be of practical use in forming us as disciples. Whilst I do not wish to deny the importance of abstract intellectual reflection, I am not convinced that questioning how many angels can dance on the head of a needle is altogether helpful whilst, in our local churches, there is some of other dispute going on between the space that the toddler group is taking up, a power struggle between rival groups who want use of the kitchen, or a need for urgent conversation about how responsibilities are shared in the life of the Church and what its mission focus should be. My point is that Practical Theology responds to these kinds of challenging practical situations. There is no question that our response needs to be grounded in rigorous academic reflection. However, my experience has been that we often need to find simple ways of unpacking what are often complex issues. What is more, they need to begin as we go about our everyday ministry. We need tools that work for us as we think about how a meeting went when driving home in the car; or popping out to the supermarket for a pint of milk. This is the reality: we reflect on the go, often exploring deeper as we set aside time for supervision or go on retreat.

Richard Osmer in his Practical Theology, An Introduction (Eerdmans, 2008) offers a simple framework that I have adapted in my own ministry. Osmer writes with congregational leaders in mind, and suggests that practitioners would benefit from asking four questions:

  1. What is going on? (The descriptive-empirical task)
  2. Why is it going on? (The interpretative task)
  3. What ought to be going on? (The normative task)
  4. How might we respond? (The pragmatic task)

Whilst I find these categories helpful, I find that I naturally reflect on them in a slightly different order; I first ask, ‘What just happened?’ and cannot help myself turn immediately to, ‘What should have happened’, before asking the ‘Why?’ question:

Slide6Osmer’s method is a gift in the way that it is simple to remember and provides a framework where more and more depth can be added. Crucially, it forces us from being in a place of discontent to questioning how we are going to respond. I must confess that all-to-often I have met Individuals and groups in the life of the Church (pioneers included) who have become a talking shop for everything that is wrong in the Church, but do not seem able to find a way through this and move on. This is just as sobering for you as a pioneer, as it is for me, as a superintendent. For me, this means that if the processes of the Church are unhelpful for pioneers, or are inhibiting mission, I have a responsibility to find a way of enabling change to happen. That is my job!

Reflecting on local church closure in general

I have not been a minister for that long – about fifteen years, but in that time, I have become concerned at the ease at which Methodist Churches have closed. Two closed on my patch in my first appointment; one in my second. When I began here in Peterborough I inherited the remnant of two closed churches. I remember that when my first church closed, at Branston Booths in Lincolnshire, we worked incredibly hard to try and work with the community to find a way forward; knocking door to door; providing children’s activities on a Sunday Afternoon; focusing on Special Sunday services; but alas the Church closed. On the one hand, many people who live in local communities feel a sense of connection with their church. When the possible of closure is muted, there is, invariably, a degree of protest. However, generating the kind of interest that will sustain future presence can be difficult.

Osmer’s framework is useful here. ‘What is going on?’ is clear – and it is not ideal. To add a further layer of challenge, whilst the Methodist Church states clearly that the closure of any local church does not signal the withdrawal of the wider Methodist Church, this is how many local people take it; however illogical this may seem. There is an issue that deserves proper reflection here. When I first entered the ministry, I was of the mindset that Methodism was burdened by a high proportion of small rural churches that drew a disproportional level of resource from larger churches. An element of this thinking remains today – and I witnessed it whilst attending one of two annual superintendent’s conferences. I suspect that one concern is that planning preachers across multiple churches is difficult. Another might be that small churches could be holding comparatively large reserves, although this is counteracted by the fact that under charity law, churches must have an obvious reason for retaining excess finance. Even so, I still continue to be surprised by the ability of smaller churches to have a disproportionately high impact in their local communities.

‘What ought to be happening?’ is that even though a church might struggle to offer regular worship, it can still be a place of Christian presence. As I reflected on the location and space that was offered by some of our churches, it seemed incongruous to accept that because the worshipping congregation had dwindled, closure was the only option. Whilst the church would always need to cover its running costs and maintain its property, surely, at least in some cases, there would be a way of retaining the building as a retreat centre, or meeting venue, whilst opening the premises for community use. Could the church partner with any other agencies, who could take out a long-term lease on part of the building? So long as income from the rental of a church contributes towards fulfilling the purposes of the Methodist Church, this would seem justified.

Why is this happening? Churches find themselves in difficulty for three several reasons, and they often occur in combination. First, the roof falls in (or the church faces some or other property concern), and they lack the finance, or the resourcefulness to repair it. I do not mean this to sound detrimental. Raising large sums of money requires a confidence and boldness that often comes with experience. Grant applications require time, effort, and the conviction that what we have is worth saving, in the sense that people need to have the faith that renewal is indeed possible. Second, as the membership of the Church becomes frailer, more and more people are unable to attend unless others can transport them – and of course, when this cannot happen, attendance dwindles. Also, as the people dwindle in number the responsibility that they hold, and feel, exhausts them. I know of one instance when a superintendent insisted that a church close because they could see that all of the responsibility (and burden) was shifting on to one (younger) person. Third, the Church does not have enough members; churches can exist until they have less than six members – and which point the wider circuit is obliged to assist by sending leaders to increase church council membership. If, after a period of two years, the situation remains the same, the circuit can insist that they become a class of another church. Herein, the trusteeship for the building rests with the larger church.

This is the theory. However, my research suggests however that this intervention by the circuit to support struggling churches by importing leaders was being implemented either poorly, or not at all. Instead, the narrative was one of closing early rather than seeing the process through and handing the building over to the circuit who would invariably sell. Curiously, this is not always in the best interests of the circuit, because in doing so, a portion of the sale proceeds goes towards the wider Church. In my view, this happens because conversations about the future of the Church happen far too late in the day, at the point at which people feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and cannot see any other option. They are also forced by a narrow understanding of Church – one that has not been broadened by an understanding of Fresh Expressions or pioneer ministry. Although the concept of Fresh Expressions have been around for over a decade, in reality, many of our faithful Church attendees have only ever lived with one form of church, and so undoing this – helping people to see that ‘church’ need not meet on a Sunday, and can exist in a different form, is a serious challenge. Despite all our efforts here in Peterborough, we still encounter the question, ‘When are we going to see people [who attend fresh expressions] come to Church on a Sunday?’

 ‘What are you going to do about it?’

Eighteen months ago, one of our churches was facing the prospect of closure. If what happened then had happened ten years ago, I suspect that the church would have closed. Crucially, two key leaders (who lived in the village) had both served for twenty-five years. They had given their all and throughout this period had taken on just about every role in the life of the church, serving as Church secretary, treasurer, property steward….you name it, they did it. (I note here the difference between the ideal of Methodism’s rule that no-one should serve in the same capacity for six years, and how this is often unworkable for small chapels). Both signalled to Gareth, their minister that they could no longer continue. They did so with some regret, feeling that they had no other option, and mindful that in their absence the church would struggle to find people to fill key roles, and to function. The Sunday congregation had dwindled from twelve to around six people. Sadly, some had died. Others had moved into residential care. Thus, the model of worship that we were operating was not sustainable. My role was to support Gareth and bring in other leaders from across the circuit, as we discerned the way forward.

I remember that meeting well. I think that the difference instance was that although we were prepared to talk about the subject of closure, we were reluctant to allow this to happen. This would have been easy; it would have been a case of letting nature take its course, and gently giving its members the option of either filling their offices – which they could not do – or accepting the inevitable. However, in our view, the church was ideally placed in the community and offered a set of premises that were not available elsewhere. We recognised that there was potential for the church to remain a focal point in the village and that there was a need for re-engagement. In response, the local church handed trusteeship of its building back over to the circuit (who reassumed, therefore, responsibility for property and finance). The circuit supported Gareth and Helen as they sought to explore re-engaging with the local community. To allow for this change of emphasis, we reduced Sunday worship services down to twice a month, with one service being a holy communion, and the other being a cafe-style worship service (which had previously been warmly received). They are, in effect, a ‘class’ of the circuit, rather than another local Methodist Church.

We are now at the point where – from nothing – we have developed several activities. Messy Play started in July 2014 and since then has taken place during school holidays. It is Bible based, incorporates crafts around a theme, a story time (often making use of video resources), singing, prayer, and games. Numbers average twenty-five children and twelve adults plus helpers. We estimate that 80-90% of those who attend have no previous experience of Church. A Facebook page (which went live in October 2016) has been great for keeping in touch and notifying people of events. Sewing Bees began two years ago – a quilting group which meets monthly now attracts two people from the existing congregation, ten people from across our other churches and two others from the village. (The original idea was proposed by one of our local preachers). Parents and Carers coffee stop started at the end of 2016. It is held twice a month but is moving to weekly from May.  The drop-in comprises six to seven adults, plus a similar number of toddlers. Two of the adults have links with the Church of England, but the remainder, again, have non-church backgrounds. In addition, the church hosts Quiet Mornings three times a year.

It would be tempting to focus on the mechanics of how Helen and Gareth went about re-engaging with the local community – and perhaps this is for another time. However, I believe that the most important move, considering Fresh Expressions, was to take seriously the question of how we could challenge the narrative of closure by allowing a dwindling congregation to remain, whilst exploring other opportunities. To suggest that we have arrived would be dishonest. Whilst we are forming Christian community, and Messy Play is a fresh expression, there remains a degree of separation between the Sunday morning congregation, and those who attend these different events. However, whilst the offering from the Sunday Worship has diminished (and might be a cause for concern), this has been offset by income through lettings. The transfer of trusteeship from the church to the circuit has been helpful, but it places responsibility on others (who may be equally pressured) to ‘hold’ the church for a period. Despite this, although the road ahead might be long, this ‘church’ is currently operating as a hub of mission, where Christian faith and Christian values are being shared. Our intention is to continue to invest in the relationships that we have developed, to expand our Christian worship to enable faith-commitment, to encourage Methodist membership as and when the time is right. Crucially, this is what would be required to form a new church, but in the meantime, we simply thank God for his blessing.

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Reflecting on Fresh Expressions and Pioneer Ministry: URC Eastern Synod Learning Community. Intro and Case Study One: Bringing Order Out Of Chaos When Discussing Contentious Issues. Full Text. Rev Dr Langley Mackrell-Hey

This week the Peterborough Circuit were privileged to host a meeting of the URC Eastern Synod Learning Community, with our mission enabler, Helen Crofts, and I, sharing insights from our experience of Fresh Expressions and Pioneer work. The aim of the community is to provide a forum – a community of practice – in which people can reflect and learn together. During the day, Helen shared the stories of three contrasting fresh expressions of church. I followed each with some reflections of my own about how our experiences resonate with the missional and theological emphases that are driving a paradigm shift in how established Churches are approaching church planting and community development. This is the first instalment. I want to offer something distinctive. In my view, whilst there are many inspiring accounts about fresh expressions that are strong on vision and example, very little is written about ‘process’. I find myself questioning what relationships and authorities (formal or otherwise) have been navigated in order for something to succeed; what conversations have taken place; how those conversations have been managed.

Brief thoughts about the impact of Fresh Expressions.

Perhaps one of the most impactful aspects of Fresh Expressions is that the movement, and the projects that it has spawned, are still with us. They have not died out. Fresh Expressions are not a fad. In their own way, I think that there is case to be made that this rediscovery of the need for mission, community development and church growth to be appropriate to context, is having a greater impact than some of the more historic models of church planting that have had significant momentum (and remain respected today). The uptake of Fresh Expressions; the ecumenical spread of the movement; the way in which it has given and continues to give warrant for new initiatives; is arguably greater than, for example, the legacy left by the House Church or Cell Church movements in the UK. (Graham Horsley, the Methodist Connexional Fresh Expressions Missioner spoke in depth about this at the ReImagine Church Conference).  Whilst I fully acknowledge that there remains a valid question about the extent to which fresh expressions are ecclesial in character, the argument that Fresh Expressions has catalysed an unprecedented rise in the number of new fellowship and mission ventures is difficult to refute. When one of our near neighbours, the Diocese of Leicester, states its intent to match their 320 inherited churches with 320 fresh expressions by 2030 (employing three Pioneer Development Workers, and aiming to recruit 620 pioneers), the scale of investment becomes too great to dismiss. Ely Diocese shares a similar vision of becoming a ‘50:50 blended economy’ by 2025. Although I would want to stress that there are, of course, a host of other denominations investing in fresh expressions, the significance of this particular move, and the subsequent drive to develop ecclesial fresh expressions within parishes, is a clear signal that things are now becoming serious. At the same time, I am concerned about how the need to justify expenditure may influence what is expected of them.

Church as Functional and Relational

One observation, made by the Church Army in Strand 3b (in a section commenting on the joint Anglican-Methodist Report, Fresh Expressions in the Mission of the Church), is that the established Church risks overemphasising the importance of what might be termed ‘practice’; issues such as legal identity, how and where the sacraments are shared, and how ecclesial process and discipline is observed. Often this is done at the expense of valuing and measuring more relational aspects of church; attention to how the Holy Spirit is leading, relationship building, discerning needs, facilitating fellowship, encouraging discipleship.

In my view, one of the key questions raised by our experience of fresh expressions is, ‘What makes church, Church?’ Essentially, when people question why adherents to fresh expressions might not attend on a Sunday, or why a community meets in a library, they are asking questions about the nature of church, and are invariably doing so from the standpoint that their (inherited) practice is the norm. The same is true, when proponents of the wider Church, standing in its inherited tradition, assume that their view of the Church is right, and fail to recognise that some of the insights from fresh expressions contexts may well be prophetic. Often, the crucial issue is how the functional is balanced and woven into the relational.

Case Study One: Crowland Methodist Church  

Around eighteen months ago, Crowland Methodist Church reached a decisive point; as the congregation surveyed the building, considered the long-term costs of remaining open, and looked at its internal resource, it became concerned about its future viability. There was no question that the Church would cease to meet, but there were questions about whether a move to different premises – a downsizing in space to more modern facilities, accompanied by an upscaling of mission – might be the best option. We explored this to the point of visiting some smaller premises that were owned by the Salvation Army and were now vacant, with myself as the superintendent liaising with Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes to explore the legal possibilities of selling and relocating. There was of course, no avoiding the fact that we needed a ‘meeting’ to decide.

Using De Bono’s method to manage challenging conversations

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Helen and I worked together and led a discussion using De Bono’s method. I have written about this before; one of the advantages of De Bono’s approach is that it invites everyone to share a view on every aspect of an issue; the facts are agreed upon; everyone shares how they feel emotionally (and it is acknowledged that these feelings do not have to be logical); everyone is expected to share their thoughts on the benefits, then the drawbacks, then the opportunities, before sifting through all the material, discussing further and moving towards making a decision. For those who are nervous about adapting secular practice for sacred context, I found it helpful to at least reflect on the theological links here. I am reminded of how the Apostle Paul reminds us that we are to act as one body – the Body of Christ – and that we, therefore, depend on each other in all that we do (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). Thus, in discussion, we need to hear from every part of the body, because each experiences the same situation from a different perspective. De Bono’s framework helped us find a way of unpacking and issue thoroughly, whilst encouraging this. For the process to work, any given organisation is clear about its purpose and objectives. As we shared, it became clear that whatever decision we made, the Church wanted to retain its relationship with the local community – and one of the strengths of the church was the uniqueness of the building and how it served as a home for community groups – and its core purpose in making disciples….

 

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At the same time, the Church was transparent with both the wider community and the local Anglican Abbey about our situation. This did two things. First, it generated questions about how the Methodist Church might work in partnership with the Church of England. Second, it made the wider community aware that whilst we did not want to move premises, this was the only viable option unless something changed.

In the end, the Methodist Church opted to remain in the building and redouble its efforts. I feel that this was a decision based on holiness and a willing to accept the risk that efforts to appeal to the local community and fundraise would pay-off. Here, there was a tacit acceptance that fundraising and faith could go together. There was also a distinct sense that this nervousness about the future had held them back in their mission. Discussions with our Anglican neighbours gave rise to MAP, a Methodist-Anglican Partnership whose focus is on supporting each other in mission. The traction for ecumenical partnership in Crowland begins from this point, rather than to unite two congregations into one. This said, joint worship (held twice a quarter) is proving enriching. I have observed this elsewhere when our understanding of how we ‘do’ ecumenism seems to rest on uniting for worship rather than for mission. It seems to me that often, for deep cultural reasons, we have struggled with the former but always do better at the latter. This question, about how to develop a form of ecumenical working that enables local people to focus their efforts in the right area, with a level of autonomy that is workable, has been a sizeable piece of behind-the-scenes work. Meanwhile, the community has seen our plight and responded to requests for funding, as church leaders look to maintain and adapt the building for future use.

Lay and ordained working in partnership

Crowland Methodist Church is not the same place. On the one hand, I am convinced that this is due to the partnership that exists between lay and ordained. There have been times when Helen and I have both been present to focus on a single issue and support each other, rather than operating like lone-rangers. I know that the same is true for my colleague Gareth as well. This is not only true of Helen, but also of Nicky, our Children;s and Youth Outreach Worker. There is something about this fusion of lay and ordained that adds a credibility to anything that is put forward. (Remember how Jesus sent the disciples out on mission in twos!) Also, in doing this I sense that we are addressing a potential weakness in the model of itinerant presbyteral ministry that we have inherited. One advantage is that whilst it is easy for a congregation to view the challenge and vision that a minister brings as idealistic and unworkable when this is supported by properly commissioned lay leadership, there is less room for manoeuvre. Another advantage is that properly authorised lay ministry can offer a measure of continuity that the current model of Methodist stationing cannot achieve. This is a crucial point given that ministers are appointed (or re-invited) every five years, and in my view, the uncertainties around this process can undermine church development.

Methodism has always been a grass-roots movement. The very structure of our church, with our system of local preachers appointed to Churches, as well as the fact that our presbyters often have pastoral charge of multiple churches, demands it. I note from conversations with some of you that this question, of how you find a sustainable model of ministry as you shift from single to multiple pastorate ministries, may be a crucial one. The Methodist circuit system certainly has its strengths. At the same time, I should be honest and stress that I suspect in some places, the circuit model is being stretched to its limits. This becomes particularly acute as I reflect on how multiple pastorates potentially weaken the personal and pastoral relationship which exists between presbyters and their churches, on how presbyters are forced to discern where to focus their energies (and accept that operating across the church by simply being ‘present’ is not workable). I have, in the past, adopted a policy of ‘active neglect’ in my own ministry, accepting that some things that I would like to do can simply not be done, and that it is better to acknowledge this, and focus on what you can do, rather than exhaust yourself trying to do everything, and not really doing anything well. It is a difficult task, and I know from previous experience in support groups that many presbyters struggle with the line in the ordination service, ‘let no one suffer as a result of your neglect.’ I think that there are still times where I practice active neglect, but as I have journeyed in my own ministry, particularly as a superintendent, I note that I now practice what would term ‘active delegation’, where ‘delegation’ means handing the entire responsibility for a piece of work over to one or two properly commissioned individuals. At Crowland, and across our circuit, this has meant taking delegation seriously, as Helen, our Mission Enabler, and Nicky, our Children’s and Youth Outreach Worker take sole responsibility for developing new work. For me, lay ministry is not second class to ordained ministry; we are all Christians, and we are all committed for life. Ordained ministers are not necessarily better than lay ministers; it is simply that they have complimentary roles. In fact, often, lay ministry brings with it specialisms that ordained people do not have.

The ‘Emerging Church’ in Crowland

Crowland Methodist Church is changing. This whole experience has given rise to a toddler group, a messy church, a youth group, an Explorer group (a fresh expression of Church – with ecclesial intent – that meets in the library) and renewed engagement with the community. Significantly, Explorers has led people to discover faith and resulted in confirmations. It also incorporates an offering as part of its worship and is contributing towards the costs of ministry. I grant you that what it gives is small in comparison to our larger and more established churches, but I think that the principle is fantastic. One of the valid concerns of the inherited Church is how fresh expressions are often dependent on the wider church for funding. There is also something important happening here in terms of how the step of taking an offering and taking charge of what you do with the finance, is empowering.

As for the theological themes that resonate, I think that much of the conversation about the purpose of the Church links to Acts Chapter 2, and considerable reflection on, ‘What do they do that we don’t do?’ and ‘What do we do that they don’t do?’ (This is one of the helpful exercises offered by Mission Shaped Ministry which I have used, on multiple occasions elsewhere, to help congregations question what constitutes ‘church’). There is also a deep focus on ‘becoming’ church rather than ‘being’ church. Our perspective on all of this is not that we have arrived, but that God is doing His work among us. To speak of being a church is to suggest that we have arrived, whereas we should be striving constantly to become the people and the presence that God wants us to be. Secondly, I believe that the Church (and those who committed themselves to this conversation) have managed to discern the way ahead because they have been open to the Holy Spirit, and offered themselves in sacrifice (Romans 12:2). This may seem to be somewhat of a random reference to scripture but it is, in fact, one of the key passages used during annual Methodist covenant services. The congregation at Crowland were prepared to go to the brink to do God’s work; they put the mission of the church, and their relationship with the community above personal preference, and ironically ended up remaining in a building, rather than moving. Perhaps ironically, one reservation was whether in staying in the same location we were being radical enough. The same of course might not be true for another congregation elsewhere, but it is the principle of mission and relationship having the ascendency over all else, that counts. Finally, I see a resonance between the story of what is happening at Crowland, and that of Jesus’ willingness to engage with the Samaritan Woman at the well (John 4), since much of our work has required a change in mindset, and a boldness, to discern the need the needs of different groups of people.

My final reflection originates not only from my experiences at Crowland but my reflections more generally about the nature of presbyteral ministry in the Methodist Church. I think that Methodism is at a point where its understanding of the nature of presbyteral ministry faces considerable challenge. If we continue to define our understanding of presbyteral ministry in relation to the sacrament, preaching, and pastoral care, we will have to accept that elements of this, which were being undertaken by presbyters, may well be taken on by the laity. We are seeing this evidenced already through the increase in lay pastor roles, the criteria by which dispensations are granted for lay presidency at holy communion being expanded to include missional need (as well as deprivation), and ministers having pastoral charge of more congregations (although we need to monitor the extent to which this is the case). Conversely, if presbyteral ministry is considered in more functional terms (as outlined in the received but not adopted by Conference document The Nature of Oversight), presbyteral ministry is more likely to shift towards one of leadership, management, and governance, where presbyters have an increasingly crucial role in enabling, rather than doing-it-all, whilst inhabiting a rule of life which still includes preaching and celebrating the sacraments.

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