AOCM

The Parochial System and the Mission of the Church

The Rt Revd Graham Cray is the Bishop of Maidstone, and the author of the report Mission-Shaped Church.

The Church of England is changing shape before our eyes. The research carried out by the ‘Mission Shaped Church’ working party reported an extraordinary creativity in the development of ‘fresh expressions of church’: cell churches, network churches, cafe church, youth congregations, base communities and the like. The report commends these developments to the Church and sees them as highly significant for the future. But many are not parochially based, because they engage with networks, particular age groups or geographical areas which cross parish boundaries. What does this say about the future of the parochial system? The report concludes ‘It is clear to us that the parochial system remains an essential and central part of the national Church’s strategy to deliver incarnational mission. But the existing parochial system alone is no longer able to deliver its underlying mission purpose. … A mixed economy of parish churches and network churches will be necessary, in an active partnership across a wider area.’1

Bishop Mike Hill has pointed out that ‘the parochial system is a practice not a value’. The underlying value of the Church of England, as the national Church, is an incarnational commitment to live as Christ’s Church and to bear witness to Christ within each community in England. For many centuries a purely geographical approach was the obvious way in which to turn this theological value into a practice. Although it soon became necessary to supplement it with a variety of chaplaincies to the forces, hospitals, prisons and educational institutions. But British society has now changed substantially. ‘Communities are now multi-layered, comprising neighbourhoods, usually with permeable boundaries, and with a wide variety of networks ranging from the relatively local to the global. Increased mobility and electronic communications technology have changed the nature of community.’2

It is this increasing complexity of society which requires both strategic missiological thinking on a national, diocesan and deanery level, and local imaginative responses. Every priest declares their belief in ‘the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures’ and commits themselves to proclaim it ‘afresh’. They publicly commits themselves to bring ‘the grace and truth of Christ to this generation.’3 In our present context this raises questions about the appropriate form of the church. It does not in itself challenge a parochial or traditional model, but it raises the question, in every parish and deanery, about what it means to be mission shaped ‘here’.

Nor is this purely a matter of urban ministry versus rural. There are genuine geographical communities within many towns. In the diocese of Canterbury, for example, there are many villages with two entirely different ways of life existing side by side. The long term villagers and some incomers have a very strong local commitment. To many of them the parish church is a central element of village life, even though few may be active worshippers. But others have made a consumer choice to buy their house in the country, with no sense of obligation to anything local. They shop in one place, play in another, work in a third, choose a school for their children in a fourth, and so on. They form real community with the friends and colleagues they make, but entirely on a network basis. Their parish church (which they do not think of as ‘theirs’ will not reach them, unless it has special qualities which attract them more than other things.

Not only are we called to mission in this post-modern, consumer setting, but in a post-Christendom one as well.4 The Christian story is no longer at the heart of the nation.5

Mission Shaped Church points out that 40% of adults have had no significant contact with the Church during their life time, including their childhood. They are not ‘De-Churched’ but ‘non-churched’. Furthermore they are, on average, younger than those who go to church. The serious fall of in child attendance over the last 25 years clearly indicates that they will soon amount to more than 50% of the adult population. Many of them do not know the Christian story. They have no sense of obligation to the church or experience of it. So strategies based on inviting them to church are likely to be of limited success. Church must go to them. The evidence of Mission Shaped Church is that many of the ‘fresh expressions’ have emerged unplanned in the context of an evangelistic of community transformation project where non-churched people are. Often these initiatives were seen as bridges to draw new converts into existing church congregations. In practice people responded by getting on the bridge, but would not cross to the other end. Many youth congregations have come into being in this way. Whether parochially based or network based church will need to be where people are, when they can be involved. It will become much more untidy.

The parochial system is also being changed by changes in the nature of ordained and authorised ministry. Stipendiaries are increasingly thinner on the ground and have a very different role from the old days of one community with one church led by one priest. They are now team leaders of a range of local or non stipendiary ordained ministers and an increasing range of authorised lay ministers, often serving a number of churches. Although the loss of so many traditional incumbents posts is in many ways a matter of regret, it has freed us to take collaborative ministry and lay ministry with the seriousness that the Bible demands for it. It has made imaginative solutions easier to consider. In Canterbury diocese we have one benefice of two parishes and four churches (one of which is an ecumenical church plan) led by a non -stipendiary priest, who is also Area Dean and a professional theological teacher. His team consists of a half time stipendiary curate, who spends the other half of his time as chaplain to the local prison, and an OLM priest. The team is working well and the benefice doing much better than when it has one stipendiary vicar!

This sort of creative untidiness prepares us well for also having a network dimension to local mission as well. As long as each part is seen as complementary to the others we can have a ‘mixed economy’ in every sense. We can have the very traditional and the ‘fresh expression’. We can have the geographical and parochially based church and the network churches. The parochial system should not be disbanded and replaced by a free market approach. It serves well our ministry to many people now. It also has great potential for missionary growth. If 40% of adults are non-churched an equal proportion are de-churched. Perhaps half of these have not fallen out with the church. They have just slipped away. Many could be drawn back and could expect a reasonably traditional model. In addition there are more people over 65 in the UK today that under 16. This is the last generation that knows the Christian story from childhood. They can be won for Christ. But again, many would expect church to have some similarity to the church they once knew. I know stories of BCP congregations which are growing through using a cell church strategy!

Deaneries will be of increasing importance. The growing significance of networks has not abolished the significance of territory. Place is still an important factor in our sense of identity. What it has done is to make territory bigger, and consequently has made parish boundaries less relevant and very porous. It is utter folly to think that a parish boundary can somehow be defended. A deanery however, if its boundaries make sense in terms of the larger local community , can provide the basis for a mixed-economy strategy and partnership. Each Christian community taking the opportunities which it has, and welcoming the ministry of others as an important way of complementing its own incomplete ministry. This is a very Anglican way of thinking about the Church.

In addition there is great benefit in making greater use of a Minster model, to use resources in the most effective way - especially as a way of bringing town and village ministry together, and reducing the danger of clergy isolation.6

Whatever the outward form - neighbourhood or network; inherited or emerging, parochial or ‘fresh expression’ the underlying principle is the same - incarnation. But incarnation is neither just a matter of physical presence, nor of innovation for its own sake. It is about costly involvement with those for whom Christ died.

If the church in any community has become out of touch with most people then mission requires repentance and a costly re entry. The shape of the church is then determined from that place of engagement and includes the perspectives of those whom the gospel is beginning to reach. The result can be traditional or ‘fresh’. It can be parochial or network based. But no parish is exempt from the challenge to engage in the process. Only thus do we become ‘mission shaped’.

Those in training for ordained ministry are not being prepared to serve a church with a given, once for all shape, but one which is changing as they train, and will continue to change throughout their period of ordained ministry. What more exciting (and scary) time can there be to train for ordination in the Church of England?