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Desperate Measures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

Pete Broadbent
Pete Broadbent
Affiliation:
Bishop of Willesden 1
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I want to suggest that, for possibly the first time since the Second World War, we have a genuine opportunity for the Church of England to reform its mission and pastoral coverage, and its institutions, for good and for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Our changing culture is the main context for this reform, but it is being made possible by two external drivers—the financial meltdown which is currently taking place at national and diocesan level, and the decline in clergy numbers which has forced the Church at last to embrace the new patterns of ministerial priesthood and lay leadership proposed by John Tiller in 1983. It is clear to me that the Church of England as an institution only embraces change when it is forced to do so. It would be perfectly possible to ignore our changing cultural situation and to die quietly in a corner, were it not for our lack of money and priests. I am upbeat about this, because I do not believe that the forces of reaction and darkness will prevail this time. But I am worried that the framework of ecclesiastical law will delay and attempt to prevent the changes that are needed—and to this concern I will return.

Type
Articles
Information
Ecclesiastical Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 31 , July 2002 , pp. 389 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2002

References

1 This paper was delivered at the Ecclesiastical Law Society Day Conference on 9 March 2002.Google Scholar

2 See inter alia Williams, Rowan, Lost Icons (T & T Clark);Google ScholarMcCloughry, Roy, Living in the Presence of the Future (IVP);Google ScholarGibbs, Eddie and Coffey, Ian, Church Next (IVP);Google ScholarMoynagh, Michael, Changing World, Changing Church (Monarch);Google ScholarDrane, John, The McDonaldization of the Church (DLT).Google Scholar

3 Cf. The distinction between the pastoral church and the mission church made by Warren, Robert in Building Missionary Congregations (BOM).Google Scholar

4 The Diocese of London is one of the few dioceses in the country where membership is consistently on the increase—our mission context is such that we need clergy who will be able themselves to engage with a multicultural, pluralist, postmodernism-driven context, and train and enable laity to do so too. Many clergy are unable to lead churches in this kind of context, and will need retraining!Google Scholar

5 Shapes of the Church to Come is a House of Bishops paper currently before the Archbishops' Council.Google Scholar

6 It is interesting that nothing in clause 1 or clause 2 of the Measure has a whiff of mission about it—the phraseology is entirely about ‘review’ of ‘arrangements for pastoral supervision’ and ‘provision for the cure of souls’. The next 89 clauses then provide a suicide note for death by a thousand obfuscations!Google Scholar

7 R v The Bishop of Stafford, ex parte Owen (2000) 6 Ecc LJ 83, CA, and the subsequent appeal to the European Parliament underline this. For the full text of the judgments given in the Court of Appeal see Hill, M, Ecclesiastical Law (Second edition, Oxford, 2001) at pages 723–739.Google Scholar