Clergy wellbeing - The best medicine
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/5-october/news/uk/clergy-burdened-by-unrealistic-job-specs-c-of-e-told
It strikes me that reading a summary on clergy wellbeing much of the obvious is missed in the Church Times analysis (October 5th 2018). The problem is the lens in which this issue is being looked at is the usual liberal-progressive end of things.
This is the unspeakable truth of the Church of England, the thing you are not meant to say, namely that a particular school of thought should have a health warning against it.
Modernism will make you ill. (Or to be more accurate 'Post-Modernism'.)
I am using Modernism here because I cannot really think of any other label. I firmly believe that the medicine is an ancient future, a reclaiming of the best of the Tradition with a capital 'T'. Try it, its fun. Yes, remember reverends that word 'fun' just like Jesus said about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. 'Fun' is something that has eluded so many of my colleagues. They are trapped in a Pelagian Christianity that drains joy.
This is the unspeakable truth of the Church of England, the thing you are not meant to say, namely that a particular school of thought should have a health warning against it.
Modernism will make you ill. (Or to be more accurate 'Post-Modernism'.)
I am using Modernism here because I cannot really think of any other label. I firmly believe that the medicine is an ancient future, a reclaiming of the best of the Tradition with a capital 'T'. Try it, its fun. Yes, remember reverends that word 'fun' just like Jesus said about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. 'Fun' is something that has eluded so many of my colleagues. They are trapped in a Pelagian Christianity that drains joy.
Some people will baulk at this but I have to say that rejecting Modernism is wonderfully liberating and I have kept to this in my inner life with a steely eye.
This similar mindset or cosmology gives a skip in my step and a renewed wonder for everything. I joke that I am a 'post-liberal' but the truth is that brought up by my War generation grandparents I was never a liberal in the first place.
Not, that I am some old fuddy-duddy, most of my parishioners probably think I'm effortlessly 'right on' and modern. My dirty secret is that I am zealously Traditionalist and have bypassed John Lennon, the 1960s, Flower Power, right-on Christianity, identity politics, and most of all the litany of agonising agonisers who want to save the world and believe they and everybody bar middle aged men like me are 'oppressed'.
Oh, how I see many colleagues gather around this narrative with heads titled and that beguiling fake Anglican angst look that they teach at theological college to make you seem sympathetic when, in fact, you are exhausted.
I can totally sympathise with C S Lewis who told his students that he did not just study Medievalism.. he inhabited it.
This similar mindset or cosmology gives a skip in my step and a renewed wonder for everything. I joke that I am a 'post-liberal' but the truth is that brought up by my War generation grandparents I was never a liberal in the first place.
Not, that I am some old fuddy-duddy, most of my parishioners probably think I'm effortlessly 'right on' and modern. My dirty secret is that I am zealously Traditionalist and have bypassed John Lennon, the 1960s, Flower Power, right-on Christianity, identity politics, and most of all the litany of agonising agonisers who want to save the world and believe they and everybody bar middle aged men like me are 'oppressed'.
Oh, how I see many colleagues gather around this narrative with heads titled and that beguiling fake Anglican angst look that they teach at theological college to make you seem sympathetic when, in fact, you are exhausted.
So put Rudolf Bultmann in the bin along with all the other demythologisers and then start moving those clergy job descriptions and mission statements to that most useful of drawers, File 13.
Most of the paperwork is nonsense anyway stuff to keep the baby boomer revolutionaries higher up the food chain (along with their army of HR consultants and lawyers) busy. Because, busy is crucial to Modernism. Busy is part of an existential truth to them, like holiness was to the Levitical priests. Busy justified life in the 21st Century. And thank God. Yes, thank God the CofE is not as well funded as the NHS or the Department of Education who grind most of its wonderful professionals into their desks with streams and streams of endless paperwork, policies, pathway mission statements, bla bla bla. The truth is that we have it easy. Teachers and nurses have lost more bureaucrats breathing down their backs than us. When my son was born the midwife filled in 35 pages of paper! Why I asked her? In case I sued her or the hospital. I said I would sue her if she didn't put that crap down and hold my wife's hand.
Most of the paperwork is nonsense anyway stuff to keep the baby boomer revolutionaries higher up the food chain (along with their army of HR consultants and lawyers) busy. Because, busy is crucial to Modernism. Busy is part of an existential truth to them, like holiness was to the Levitical priests. Busy justified life in the 21st Century. And thank God. Yes, thank God the CofE is not as well funded as the NHS or the Department of Education who grind most of its wonderful professionals into their desks with streams and streams of endless paperwork, policies, pathway mission statements, bla bla bla. The truth is that we have it easy. Teachers and nurses have lost more bureaucrats breathing down their backs than us. When my son was born the midwife filled in 35 pages of paper! Why I asked her? In case I sued her or the hospital. I said I would sue her if she didn't put that crap down and hold my wife's hand.
More recently what has helped me is to grasp that the Church in the West and particularly in Britain is experiencing a powerful secular deluge and there is little we can do except let it wash over us.
Have faith.
It will be okay in the end.
Have faith.
It will be okay in the end.
"All will be well.. all manner of things will be well." - Julian of Norwich
God is in charge - how could it not be alright? But, in the meanwhile, expect a downturn. This is a period of Exile and from time to time civilisations do this. It may last 70 years or 700 years. The main thing is to keep the kernel of Christianity alive. This will be the key to seeding its future. This is not a dereliction of duty and indeed, when you begin to look at like this it takes a mountain of pressure off. A good number of evangelicals and charismatics are beginning to come around to this as well helped by Rod Dreher's American best seller 'The Benedict Option' (2017). Evangelicals are right to push for revival but revival will come in own God's time and much of it begins with a re-evangelisation of the Church. I think of this as a time of research. That research, the introspection will be a real gift to the future Church.
I live by ocean, a seaside parish, and the parallel with what I am saying is the power of the sea. We cannot stop the ocean or the tide. Instead I have learnt to use it to give direction. Like surfers and sailors we do well to acknowledge the power of sea and not think we can play around with it. The sea cannot be reformed. Eventually though the tide does change. History is the same.
I read a poem once comparing the preacher and priest. It went something like this.
The priest says his mass in an empty church
around a billion saints
warm his soul
The preacher thumps his pulpit
empty pews and the quiet church
torment his desolation.
A good place to begin with is your own household. Did not Paul recommend this to Timothy? Stop being a workaholic and think of your first and most important congregation as the family home. (I appreciate if you are single then you may have to readjust this - perhaps think along the lines of monasticism. Are you a happy hermit?) How much investment are you, the local church and the diocese putting into that structure? Often clergy children are taken for granted or worst, seen as the noisy kids who interrupt worship. Massive budgets will go to 'reaching out' to children with all sorts of Fresh Expressions. There is an army of specialists and advisors ready to provide Powerpoints on 'youth work' - meanwhile the clergy kids are left on the sidelines. There's a thought.
And, we could say the same for clergy spouses, who have little authority unlike their counterparts in say Eastern Orthodoxy or married deacons wives in Roman Catholicism. The priority of the parish church should be getting the clergy home right. This is the local church model Christian family. Get this right and much else naturally flows from it. Indeed, the stipend is provided so that the clergy have the time to be free from the constraints of work. To be available, to able to wander up and down town centres and just chat to people, perhaps even - God forbid.. pray with them or talk about the things of God. How available are you?
And, we could say the same for clergy spouses, who have little authority unlike their counterparts in say Eastern Orthodoxy or married deacons wives in Roman Catholicism. The priority of the parish church should be getting the clergy home right. This is the local church model Christian family. Get this right and much else naturally flows from it. Indeed, the stipend is provided so that the clergy have the time to be free from the constraints of work. To be available, to able to wander up and down town centres and just chat to people, perhaps even - God forbid.. pray with them or talk about the things of God. How available are you?
Well, I could write more, but I have get ready for the Eucharist and then lots of cups of tea, perhaps a wander down the high street.
PS
My mother lived and worked in the Barbican and one of her fond memories of the late 1970s is popping into St Paul's Cathedral during her lunch break. Sometimes she would sneak her packed lunch and sit in a pew and munch away. It was unkept, dusty and the stone work dark from centuries of smog. Yet, she said it was a wonderful place to be. Now of course, its been heritaged to death. It's an expensive multimedia "experience" with an army of hundreds of busybees ready to tell you anything but rarely the things of the carpenter of Nazareth. Makes you think!?
My mother lived and worked in the Barbican and one of her fond memories of the late 1970s is popping into St Paul's Cathedral during her lunch break. Sometimes she would sneak her packed lunch and sit in a pew and munch away. It was unkept, dusty and the stone work dark from centuries of smog. Yet, she said it was a wonderful place to be. Now of course, its been heritaged to death. It's an expensive multimedia "experience" with an army of hundreds of busybees ready to tell you anything but rarely the things of the carpenter of Nazareth. Makes you think!?
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