There are two points in the year when I find myself
reviewing what’s happened in our church life. The first is the Annual Report I concoct
for the Parochial Church Meeting in April, and the second comes around this
time of year, close to the anniversary of my induction as Rector back in 2009.
After the sermon during Mass, the churchwardens come forward with their
ceremonial staves and with them, and before them, I rehearse my ordination
vows. We’ve done this every year since I arrived (I think) and the
churchwardens have changed and my hair is thinner and greyer. This occasion I
added the prayer I devised for my induction service, an over-the-top but
nevertheless valid and sincere petition for my preservation from hardness of
heart and coldness of soul, sloth and rage ‘and all the malice of the Enemy’,
as well as asking the prayers of the saints, including blessed Catherine my
great patron, for Swanvale Halt church and its people.
The progress we make all seems so painfully slow. In
practical terms, we refurbished the church rather dramatically (as you will
remember) and we are now just about paying our way each year thanks mainly to
more creative use of our facilities. But numerically the congregation has risen
a bit and then declined a bit and we are now not far from where we were when I
started. And spiritually? There are a handful of people who I think ‘get’ what
I’ve been talking about for eight years, the focus on the transformative power
of the Sacraments, the slow and deep motion of the Spirit in the life of
prayer, the intercession of the saints (probably the element of Catholic
spirituality which Anglicans find it hardest to come to terms with). They ‘get’
it either because it was what they always felt and my clear stance has given
them permission to run with it, or because there’s been something, some spark,
that’s caught their imaginations: but it’s very rare and very small and very
slow. There is nothing of the drama of those old-time Anglo-Catholic priests
who swept into their parishes and changed everything. Perhaps I should have
done that at once: perhaps I’ve succumbed too far to the negative side of the
genius of ‘gentle Anglicanism’, that it remains comfortable and complacent and
never moves.
My challenge is how I approach the future. I still feel as
though there is work for me to do here, but I can’t shield myself from the
consideration that someone else might be able to do better. Swanvale Halt is
terribly congenial, and there is a lot to be said for trust, continuity and
digging in for the long haul: unless it turns out that it’s me that’s the
blockage to progress.
. . . . . . . .
It’s only natural – I may have said before – that in these
posts I tend to concentrate on the difficult and rough edges of parish life. I
want to say, in case it isn’t clear, that most of the time what has come my way
over the last eight years (and a little while before, in Lamford and Goremead) has
been profoundly if undramatically good, and occasionally wonderful, and the
longer I go on the higher the proportion of wonderfulness seems to be. By the
time I retire I might be quite cheerful …
"Complacent" is not a word I'd associate with the you who emerges from these posts.
ReplyDeleteAren't congregations declining in general? (see https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/12/church-of-england-attendance-falls-below-million-first-time). In that context holding stable isn't so bad at all. Can you point to other churches where you think that the incumbent is doing better? If not, I can't see a lot of evidence that you are any sort of blockage, as opposed to a decent hard working parish priest doing his best.
ReplyDeleteYou are all very supportive! I can certainly point to bigger and more 'successful' churches although the tendency is for them to have spent decades turning themselves into that sort of church, and notoriously all the evidence is that such churches don't generally convert many people but draw them in from other congregations around them. But there are also trad-Catholic churches I know that are very vibrant and flourishing, on a more modest level. The trouble is that comparing yourself directly with the performance of others is very hard in church terms because, as we know, churches are frustratingly individual and you can transplant an incumbent into a new church who then signally fails to repeat their success in an earlier setting. All I can do is continue to challenge myself and cultivate discontent! And, after all, we will never know contentment until we get to heaven.
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