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Resources: Awards and presentation ceremonies

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Awards Ceremony 2008 – Tina Beattie’s Address

Awards Ceremony 2007 - Tim Gorringe's Address

Awards Ceremony 2006 - Graham Cook's Address

Awards Ceremony 2005 - Howard Mellor's Address

Presentation Service October 2005

Awards Ceremony 9 October 2004 - Address and Sermon

Awards Presentation Ceremony, Salisbury Methodist Church, October 18th 2003

Revd Dr Susan Durber's Address

Revd Dr Susan Durber at the Awards CeremonyI am a minister of the United Reformed Church. My mother is a sidesperson at her Parish Church in the depths of Surrey. They've recently received a new Vicar, a woman - my mother tells me that everyone agrees that she's the best vicar they've ever had. And - she was trained at STETS! Of course comparisons between vicars, ministers, priests and their predecessors are odious. There's the story about the minister who was leaving and at the church door at his final service a church member told him that he was sorry he was going - and that the next minister would certainly not be as good as him. The minister demurred humbly as you would - but the church member insisted that he would be right. But how can you be so sure? - asked the minister, hoping for some absolutely rock solid compliment. And the church member said, 'Well, you see, every minister who's come has been worse than the one before - and your successor will likely be no different.' But, that said, my mother's new Vicar, trained at STETS only a few years ago - is the best one they've ever had. So there's something to live up to!

But I want to tell you some more about my mother - and my father - as a way into what I want to say to you this morning. My mother is a very intelligent and perceptive person. In different circumstances she could have had a great career and gone far in the world. But she left school at 14 - as did my father. They were not unusual at all for their generation, among working class families. My mother was a bright school child, and there was a possibility of a scholarship to study further, but it was decided in the family that she wouldn't go on with school and so she started work at 14 as an assistant in the International Stores. My father went to a village school near the great estate where his grandfather, with whom he lived, was the butler. He was a bright boy and captain of the school cricket team. There was simply no chance or thought of him studying further and so, some friends of the family in the big house -the famous Campbell brothers it turns out - fixed him up with an apprenticeship at Fords in Dagenham. He hated it and left pretty soon to join a travelling circus and fairground. He was still only 14. Again, there was nothing thought particularly astonishing then about a boy of 14 striking out on his own in the world. It was what you did if you came from where he did in English culture and society. At 14 years old my parents - and no doubt in my family all the generations before them - had finished with formal or even informal education. So I grew up in a household with few books, and with the suspicion that education was something rather toffee-nosed and not for us. I now have a daughter of my own who is - 14. She has just begun her GCSEs - and it feels almost as though she is at the beginning of education, and that it certainly has a long way to go yet. In the middle there's me - who stayed on at school for A levels, who went to Oxford University and even did a PhD at Manchester University, which makes me able to wear this ridiculous gown - which I always think is like John Calvin meets Santa Claus. But what a huge change there has been in the opportunities and expectations we have about education in even two generations. My family's story is certainly not unusual. I thank God almost daily that I was born when I was, and that it was possible for a girl from a working class background to get a good education and to have the world opened up before her. I believed as a child that books were almost magical things, I loved the smell of libraries almost as much as I love the holy stillness of churches - and I always believed and still do that the chance to learn is one of the greatest gifts we have. And it's something I long to see opened up for everyone. When I go to vote on polling day, I always think of those who won the right to vote which I can now enjoy - from the Chartists to the Suffragettes. I can't conceive of not taking up the opportunity to vote - it feels like a responsibility, a holy obligation if you like, to cast my vote because it's important and because it's been won at some cost. And I feel something of the same thing about education - that it's a precious and holy thing, to be treasured, appreciated and pursued wholeheartedly for all your days.

Now I imagine that with an essay deadline looming over you, or writing an assignment in the watches of the night, or when you're struggling to get to grips with a really tricky question - education may feel more like a burden or a bane than a great and holy blessing! And I am full of admiration for those of you who have pursued learning alongside a full working life and/or a full family life. I really do think you are amazing! There will be a huge sense of relief and satisfaction today that you have achieved so much in doing and even completing this course mixed up with all that you live with and work with day by day. And I hope you really enjoy that sense of achievement and accomplishment. Even the most enthusiastic scholar feels a sense of relief when a piece of work is done and can be set aside. But I do hope that what you have gained at STETS is also a proper sense that learning is something for the whole of life, and that it is to be valued for ever. The course is not simply a hurdle you've had to overcome, but a step on the learning curve which will go on. I hope you have gained here a sense that learning is a holy task, an exciting task, and something to be continued for all your life. If not, then we'd better think about what we're doing here!

On the Board of Studies, we've had various discussions about Accredited Prior Learning. It's important, of course that anyone's prior learning is taken into account as their particular path on the spiral is worked out. It's a good thing that nobody thinks you arrive here as a kind of blank slate. But in all those discussions, one part of me always wants to ask why anyone would ever want to be excused from a module or cut down on the learning they engage in - because I suppose I feel hungry for any learning and would be disappointed if someone denied me a course because of what I've done before! Of course I know that no-one wants to waste time going over old ground, but there's a sense in which no learning is ever old ground, because you can go always back to the same place and see it with new eyes. It may be that my hunger for education comes from my own background, from the sense that I so easily might not have had the opportunities I did. I remember being very worried that my parents would think I should leave school at 16 or that university would be out of the question. And I am very grateful to them that they did encourage me to enter a world they had never been in themselves. And the fact that I have been given so many opportunities, far more than any generation before me, and certainly far more than any generation of working class women, that makes me feel intensely the need not to waste it and to go on reading, thinking, learning for the rest of my days.

But I do believe that there are other, less personal, and perhaps more important, reasons why I believe that learning is so important. And these have come to me not through the accidents of my own background, but through what I have been given of the Christian faith. Perhaps it seems less clear now in the church than it once did - that to be a learner is a part of what it means to follow Christ. The very words 'disciple' and 'pupil' and 'learner' are almost synonyms in the New Testament. We are all, if you like, students in the Kingdom of God. In the Middle Ages it was evident that learning was something which was deeply connected to the life of faith. The religious communities and the universities were all places where the church was learning. There was no sense then of any kind of secular learning. Now, of course, most education takes place in a secular context and the faithful have become marginalised. It is perhaps strange too that as the religious have been pushed to the edges of our learning institutions, so we have pushed learning to the edge of our churches and even our own lives of faith. We live in times when the church has become markedly anti-intellectual, when faith has become for heart rather than head, and when learning in the church is often thought to be something you only do for a specific purpose, like preparing for ministry. I think the truth is that learning is central to the Christian faith and should be part of our life with God in Christ, for all our days. Jesus was called by the first disciples 'rabbi' or 'teacher' and he in turn called them disciples, learners in the Kingdom of God. Jesus gave us teaching - in parables, in sayings, in his living, dying and rising. And he called us to make disciples, learners, of all nations. Education and learning are at the heart of the Christian vocation. To be a religious person is, almost by definition in the traditions which we have inherited, to be someone committed to the search for knowledge and wisdom and understanding. How very sad it is when these things are no longer given the central place in our discipleship that they truly merit.

In the Reformed tradition, we have made much of the importance of having a 'learned ministry'. In the times when Nonconformists in England were excluded from our great universities, my forebears established and ran dissenting academies which were often very fine centres of learning and devotion. They produced ministers who were indeed learned, but also wise in the deepest sense. Often with remarkably few resources they were intent on making not only educated ministers, but also an educated church. Learning mattered to them and they certainly could not take it for granted. They knew that learning was part of discipleship.

As you go into ministry, I hope that you will want to be truly learned ministers. And I don't mean that you should in any sense parade your learning or preach sermons with footnotes or try to impress congregations or colleagues with how much you know or how clever you are. But I do hope that you will continue to be learners in the Kingdom of God, who know that though you might have scored high marks in the STETS course, you still have many more modules to do in the whole course which is your human life and your discipleship of Jesus.

I remember vividly that in my first pastorate someone said to me after the service one Sunday. 'We can understand your sermons - not like these theologians'. I was stung to the core, because I really rather fancied myself as a theologian. But I learned to take what was said as a true compliment. Indeed I learned a great deal in that first pastorate, and every day since - some of it from books, some of it from wise people, some of it on my knees, some of it on tired feet, some of it sitting in the libraries I have always loved. And I have sometimes thought that we need to be credited not only for our prior learning, but for willingness and openness to go on learning - to be not only a leader in the church, but also a follower of Christ, to be not only a teacher of the Gospel, but always, every day we have, to be learners in the Kingdom of God.

I warmly congratulate all of you on your achievements at STETS - not only the formal results, but all the ways in which you have grown and learnt. I wish you every blessing in the parishes, churches and situations you will serve - and I pray that wherever you go you will be, if not the best vicar they've ever had, then the best minister you can be. Peace be with you all.

Awards/Study Day Lecture 2003

'People, priests and presbyters - the ministry of the Church'
Revd Dr Susan Durber's talk at the STETS Autumn Term Study Day, October 18th 2003

The Christian essayist Phyllis Theroux once began an article with this story. Years before, she had taken a Civil service entrance exam that contained some questions designed to sort out the people who had 'Messiah complexes' or who were more than a bit off beam. The questions were easy to spot. But the one she remembered years later was the question, 'Do you think you are a special agent of God?'. She remembered that she had paused over this question, thought about all the government benefits which hung upon her answer and then wrote, 'No'. She liked to think that under the same circumstances many sensible, but devout Christians would have lied too. We all know what the questionnaire was trying to get at, but we also know that if we belong to the company of God's people, then we are indeed 'special agents of God'. And I mean all of us.

It is a commonplace of the church today that everyone has a ministry. But we haven't really thought this through. Otherwise, I think, the Moderator would come to every baptism as to ordinations - or perhaps in other contexts all baptisms would take place in a cathedral. When we talk about ministry we often only really think about the clergy - when we know that all of us in the church are 'special agents' - only with not so much liturgy to celebrate it or prayers to encourage it.

But we have some strange ways of speaking sometimes in the Church. We speak of the ministry of the Church, meaning the whole Church - and we want to include everyone in that. And then we speak about individual set apart people called ministers (or priests or vicars or what you will) - as though they are the people (and by implication the only people) who carry out the ministry of the church. So sometimes we end up saying what sounds like an absurdity, that all the people in the church are ministers - while at the same time we spend a good deal of money, time and effort training a few people to be ministers. It makes George Orwell's double-speak look straightforward by comparison. Yet, hidden within this conundrum lie some important truths about the church and its servants. We find to our dismay perhaps that the language we use about the church doesn't quite work - that we set off on one language game and find that we have allowed some things to be unsaid or denied. So we try another way of speaking, but that also proves an unsatisfactory road. So, today I want to spend some time trying to untangle the mess and see what happens.

First of all, I want to start with some of the places where we feel the knots, where there is real dissatisfaction and worry that we haven't got it right. Being a minister myself, and many of you being set on that path or one like it - I'll start there. There seems to be - in the air somehow - a sense of unease about what it means to be a minister these days - or a priest - or any kind of (what we call in the trade) presbyteral minister. Amidst the endless debates about what ministers are for, how to deploy us, how to train us, how we are to be understood, ministers themselves can be left feeling that the ground beneath our feet is turning to sand or even slime. Ministers are not much respected in our wider culture anymore - we're portrayed largely as bungling fools on TV and film or naïve relics of a past age - and all the revelations and the scandals about child abuse have damaged the ministry very deeply indeed across all our denominations. There are some exceptions to this, but I only have to speak with my largely non-churchgoing family and their friends to see how it is. But closer to home, there are those in the church who raise questions about what ministers are for, and whether we do much good at all. The pages of statistics about church decline do not convince you that churches with ministers do any better than churches without them. As I sit through meetings at all levels of the church about the resources we're ploughing into ministers and whether it's effective and all that - I often feel that the kindest thing I could do is to fall on my sword and resign. And at an even deeper level there are those within the church who suspect that ordination, ministers and all that is a kind of post-Constantinian function of the church as a hierarchy in which some have special powers and authority and ceremonies - and that we'd be better off without all this. Some argue that having set apart clergy at all simply means that the rest of the Church is disabled and that other people are denied their ministry. Some of my feminist friends have refused to seek ordination in the church, believing that to do so would be to buy in to a system which is deeply and fundamentally flawed in favour of patriarchs, but not prophets. I remember one such friend telling me that the only good reason for ministers and priests to wear clerical collars is that the ordained are dangerous - so we ought to be able to see them coming! Of course she said it with half a smile and admits that there are many faithful servants of Christ among the ordained, but you get the point. So there's a crisis about ministry, and a feeling that having ministers at all, or perhaps the kind of ministers we've sometimes grown, has taken away the ministry of the Church from all the people - and left it in the hands only of a few. So we're left with a situation in which we still have ministers, but ministers who are losing status in the world, who feel increasingly guilty about how dangerous they might be, how they might be disabling the whole Church rather than serving it, and wondering what they ought to be doing. Guilt and a lack of purpose are, of course, never good places from which to do any sort of work, least of all the work of the Church.

The there's another and related problem. You might want to correct the problem I've already named by emphasising that ministry belongs not just to a few ordained people in the Church, but to all the baptised, the whole community of the church. You could say that we have indeed got ourselves into a mess where we think that 'going into the church' equals being ordained - and that we have got to reclaim ministry for all God's people. This is in fact what many people have sought to do in the life of the contemporary church. Different churches have different ways of putting it, but they all have much in common. In some communities the phrase 'every member ministry' is the key. In some there is much talk of 'the ministry of the whole people of God'. In my own tradition this phrase has become something of a mantra and a device to settle any debate. In some meetings you can play a game counting the number of times the phrase is used - and spot the ways you can claim the last word in a debate by invoking 'the ministry of the whole people of God'. And why not - it's an excellent rallying cry. And indeed it is, IF what we mean by it is that every Christian is part of the ministry of the whole Church. But, I think we have a problem with it if it is used as another stick to beat ministers with or, much more importantly, if it is used to imply that the important thing about being a Christian is that everyone can be in however small a way, a little minister. There's an old black and white film of which I'm very fond - set in Scotland - it's called simply The Little Minister. It's a grand film - any film with Katherine Hepburn has to be wonderful - though I'm afraid she doesn't get to play the part of the minister. But the title of the film leads me to the problem that emerges sometimes with 'the ministry of the whole people of God' - that what we do is value people in the church for what they can do that looks like a little bit of ministry. So we draw people into leading the prayers sometimes, or doing some visiting, or taking the minutes - and we think we are enabling them to take part in the ministry of the whole people of God. When in fact what we are doing is turning them into little ministers - and ignoring their much wider vocation in the life of the world. So, at the same time as we devalue ministers we also diminish the lives of everyone else in the church by valuing them only in terms of little ministerial-like tasks. We tell people, rather patronisingly sometimes - that they have a ministry too, but it turns out to be something like flower arranging or producing the notice-sheet (important though those are) - when actually the ministry of the whole people of God means something much more theologically significant.

So what does 'the ministry of the whole people of God' mean at it's very best? And what does being a 'minister' or priest mean at its very best? I'll begin with the whole people of God. In many ways I would prefer to use the more traditional phrase 'the priesthood of all believers' - because here I think we are more easily led to the part of the truth about all this. This phrase has of course often been misunderstood to mean that none of us ever need a priest to get access to God and that each individual believer can be, as it were, their own priest. This phrase can be used as an anti-clerical mantra just as well as any other. The first thing to say is that anyone who thinks they never ever need another human being to help them find God is either very arrogant or very naïve. I do not believe that we can only find God through the ordained - God forbid! But I also know that there are times in all our lives when we can only stand before God with someone beside us - whether they are ordained or not. The second thing to say is that the priesthood of all believers is rooted in the corporate reality of the church. The Church is a priestly community, with a mission to offer the world to God and God to the world. This is how it is in 1 Peter where the church is described as a 'royal priesthood, a holy nation' - not that there are or need to be individual priests (though I think we do all need individuals to be priests for us at times) - but that the church as a community has a priestly vocation in the world. This was brought home to me on a recent visit to the Evangelical Church in the Pfalz region of Germany - a united Lutheran and Reformed Church. Church attendance has declined rapidly there and the churches, listening to their communities, have heard and understood that the people there see the church as what they call a vicarious community - the small number of worshippers in the local church are understood to be praying and believing vicariously, on behalf of, the whole society, the village or the town. The people look to the church to believe for them - to be a priestly community. So the church itself has come to understand something particular by the 'priesthood of all believers'. But I think they have rediscovered something that is deeply rooted in the Bible, in the experience of the early church and also in the experience of the people of Israel. I do believe that the ministry of the whole people of God is to be - as a whole people - servants to the world. So, for example, the church has a calling to pray for the world, to offer it to God, to be a priest for the world. The people of God in the church have a calling, a ministry, to reflect on the life of the world and to think about it in the light of what we have learned of God in Christ. The church has a ministry, as a community, to serve the world and also to speak with a prophetic voice when there is a need. This is quite different from thinking of all the people in the church being individually little ministers, but it is to see the church having a priestly role in relation to the world as a corporate community. We have tended to think of the priest being the ordained person and the congregation being the Church - but perhaps it makes much more sense to think of the whole Church being the priest and the world being the congregation. And of course there are times in all our lives when we may be part of the priesthood and part of the world. No-one is exclusively one or the other. But this corporate view is, I think, much closer to the biblical witness than what we often envisage and invoke when we speak about 'the ministry of the whole people of God'.

Who then are minister, priests, presbyters? They are those who serve the church in its mission as a priestly community for the world. In order to be what we are called to be within the Church we need those who will open God's word for us, who will help us to pray, who will care for us and listen to us and be beside us as we grow in faith. Ministers, presbyters, priests - the ordained ministers of the church are those in whom the church has discerned particular gifts and graces, whom the church has trained and prepared, and to whom the church looks for leadership and pastoral care. They should not do on their own what the whole church is called to do, but the tasks they are charged with are important and holy tasks. The church does not need everyone to do these tasks - indeed it's ludicrous to imagine that. But, for the church to be ordered well, and to fulfil its mission, it's good to have some people who are set apart by prayer for these particular tasks and perhaps even more, for a particular life.

David Peel, formerly principal of Northern College in Manchester, has recently published a book called Ministry for Mission. He argues there that all this confusion about ministry and ministers arises because we have confused ministry and vocation. He believes that all Christians have a vocation, something they are called to be and do. The church should be there to support, encourage and nurture the vocation of each of the baptised as they seek to live it out in the world. But the mistake we have made is to think that each Christian has a little 'ministry' - and so we give people little jobs in the church, while forgetting their much more significant vocation which should be lived out immersed in the life of the world. He argues that not all church members are ministers, but all have a vocation. This means that ministers within the church have a particular role to play which should be given it's due honour. And it also means that the ministers of the church and the church community as a whole should respect and encourage the vocation of every member - and even positively avoid bogging them down in pseudo-ministerial tasks. The whole Church is there to represent Christ to the world - and the ministers are there to serve the Church so that it can be what it is called to be - a sign and foretaste of God's reign of justice and peace.

It's time for a concrete example. In one of my own congregations, one of the Elders is a fast track civil servant. He's working now preparing new legislation on disability. He is very good at his work and he brings to it the commitments, the values and the passion of his Christian faith. You only have to talk to him for a few moments to see that. He is a very faithful church member - he leads the prayers sometimes on Sunday, he runs our Traidcraft stall and chairs the Worship Group. But, I can see that our role as his church community is not to persuade him to do more and more for us, and take more of those church jobs - but instead it is to encourage him and support him in his vocation in the world, to be a brilliant and effective civil servant. So, I've visited him in his work place. We pray for him at a lunchtime service which he can't attend because he's at work. And some of us take him out for a drink sometimes and enjoy his company. He's a particularly clear example, but there are many others in the congregation about whom I could tell you similar things. Their voices are heard, their skills are used in the congregation - but above all, the congregation supports them in their work and wider life - and includes their experience in the corporate mission of the church community to the world.

To go back to David Peel's book for a moment - he includes an excursus on an important passage from Ephesians 4:11-12. It's a passage that has had an important history of interpretation - it's been carved in stone on theological college walls, served as the text for many an induction, and been quoted many times. I remember hearing long ago about the time when George Caird preached on the shortest text ever - a single comma - and it was this passage.

In the Authorised Version these verses read thus:

'And he gave some, apostles; and some prophets; and some, evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.'

In this version the text bears the interpretation it had through centuries of Christian history - that God has given us several different ministries - and some particular people for the work of ministry. But, the New English Bible translates it in a different way - and most crucially without one of the commas - so that the second verse reads,

'.. to equip God's people for work in his service..'

or - to equip God's people for the work of ministry. On this translation - perfecting has become equipping - and - the work of ministry belongs to all God's people. So, as you can imagine, it's become a kind of proof text for the modern understanding of the 'ministry of the whole people of God'. George Caird and those who worked on the NEB made the case that the comma should be left out, because the work of ministry belongs to everyone and not only to some. But in more recent times still, the older rendering of these verses has re-emerged and the comma has made something of a comeback - not least in the commentary recently published by the Chair of our Board of Studies, John Muddimann. Of course, proof texting is never a good way of reading the Bible, but the ambiguity of this verse should at least remind us that the ways we have become used to thinking so recently need testing and questioning. If anything becomes too much used as a kind of slogan in the church it needs to be dusted off and looked at pretty hard. It may be that it does seem right after all to say that, though all Christians have a part to play within the ministry of the church to the world, it is simply nonsense to say that all Christians are ministers. Those who are ministers within the church have a particular and important role to play - it's not by any means the only or even the most important role - but it is a distinctive one and if people are to do it well they need to know what it is, be encouraged and supported in it, and not have their particular vocation undermined. Similarly those whose vocation is not to be a minister, but to be any number of other things need to have their callings supported and sustained by the Church so that they can be a part of the church's priestly role in the world. What I hope I've tried to show is that the confusion we get into with our language is not helpful to us - that it may be important to talk about the ministry of the whole people of God, but not to let that mean simply that every Christian is a minister. Every Christian has a calling, but not all are called to take on 'ministerial' tasks within the church. The church needs, and Christ calls, particular people to be ministers - and if they live their vocation well then the corporate ministry of the whole Church is sustained and encouraged along with the vocation of each individual member of the church.

In debates about ministry and priesthood and all those believers, there are some other blind alleys waiting for hapless Christians. I expect some of you have had debates about whether you have a functional or an ontological view of ministry or priesthood - and to caricature the difference it's to ask whether ordination is something which gives you a different function or task within the church (which you could in theory put down) or whether it changes your very being (which will now forever be different). I heard recently that there was an informal telephone poll conducted among the leaving students at an Anglican theological college - they asked one another to say honestly whether they really thought they had been changed by ordination. Apparently it came out about half and half. On the one hand, I think that sounds pretty ludicrous. But equally I think it's ludicrous to suggest that, if we pray for God to do something, that something doesn't happen. Both those who say that ordination is about function and those who say it is about being have important things to say to us. For my part, I think the distinction collapses, because I think that if you are doing something radically different with your life (like living as a minister or a priest) then you are bound to be somehow different. I don't see it as anything magical, but simply a consequence of doing certain things and acting in certain ways. If you promise to lead a holy life, and the grace of God helps you to do it, then that means that you are somehow different. That's not to say you are holier than anyone else, but you will be holier than you were before. Those who urge us that being a minister is about doing certain tasks within the church and not entering a new or higher order of being - are telling us something important - that the church should never be seen as a hierarchy of holiness in which we have an elite or a higher caste. But also, those who urge us to believe that being a minister or a priest makes a difference to you at the roots of your being may offer important re-assurance to those sensing a disillusionment with ordained ministry, that this is a significant task, demanding a great deal and offering something important to the life of the church in its mission to the world. I believe that the Church needs ministers who have both a true humility about what they do and are, and a proper sense that the work they do and the lives they lead are channels through which God blesses the Church.

Some of you will know the work of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. He was a Jesuit priest who wrote some of the most sublime words in the English language. But Hopkins found that his vocation as a poet was deeply frowned upon by the church. He was forbidden to work freely and was isolated by his friends. He was made to teach - something he found stressful and unrewarding. The church has not always been good at recognising the calling of God or the vocations of its people and that example is a peculiarly clear and poignant one. But I sense that the church is sometimes tempted not to recognise or to affirm all sorts of vocations - but to push people in other directions. Often we encourage people in far too much a churchy direction - forgetting that many of the most precious vocations are those which will be lived in the great world. A further irony of our church life now is that in some places, from very well intentioned reasons, we are failing to recognise the importance and value of the ministries which God has offered to the church. I know, for example, that there are some ministers who see it as their role to do themselves out of a job, believing that a mature church community does not need a minister. I think that is a false view - and I do believe that God asks minister and priests to fulfil their particular vocations so that the very different and various vocations of others may be supported by prayer, teaching and pastoral care. Ministers do not need to work themselves out of a job, but to do an important job well.

For myself, I serve as minister to two very different congregations in Oxford. Both are filled with very gifted and wonderful people whom I love dearly. They look to me, not to be the church for them, but to lead them in being part of the corporate ministry of the whole Church - and to encourage and empower them in their different vocations and lives. Those two congregations have a ministry to the communities in which they are set. And I am the minister - the servant of the servants of God. I pray often that God will help me to do it more faithfully in obediance to the call.

Presentation of Awards Day 20th October 2001

'Ministry and Theological Confidence'
Talk by Revd Canon Vernon White, Director of STETS.

My main point is straight forward. If the Christian minister is to have a distinctive role in this strange 21st century world then he/she will need theological confidence. The reason is the current social context in which we find ourselves. It is a situation in which the odds may well seem stacked up against us: a situation in which confidence is easily sapped, and our role easily reduced. So - first something about this situation we're in and the odds which seem to be stacked against us. Then more about ministerial roles and theological confidence.

The General Situation: A Brief Portrait of Contemporary Society

The issue for the Churches is not simply secularism (sociologists seem unsure whether we really are a secular society). It is a pervasive scepticism about any authoritative explanations or overarching world-views. In their place we prefer to be pluralist, privatized, individualist, fragmented, dominated by quest for sensation, experience: we prefer to make consumer-choice to satisfy ourselves in every area of life, including moral values and religious belief. Commitments and beliefs tend to be individual and temporary. Belonging to institutions is not popular, definitely not cool.

It's possible to overstate this and detect some sea-changes. When particular events make us realize just how dis-integrated we are as a society, there are signs of wanting to turn back and re-instate more cohesion, more common values. For example, the renewed popularity for church-based schools has followed events like the murder of Merseyside toddler Jamie Bulger, or more recently the Nigerian boy Damiola. But the general thrust of private consumerism and private choice is still huge, and like a supertanker will take a long time to stop, let alone turn round. One anecdotal example. I recently spent time with 5th/6th formers in a comprehensive school not far from here. In a couple of hours of grilling I encountered all this: scepticism about common religious beliefs because they preferred to pick their own selected beliefs either from science or new-age philosophies; scepticism about common moral beliefs because they preferred the authority of their own feelings; scepticism about the institution of the church and the community life of the church because it seemed irrelevant to any experience they wanted and which they could choose. Another example. A confirmation candidate I was preparing some while ago refused ever to pray the Lord's Prayer. Why? Simply because it is a common prayer, which felt imposed by the church, rather than her own chosen prayer (lively discussion ensued in the confirmation class!). Beneath this culture of private choice and self-created meaning there are profound and long-term reasons. The authority of universal reason and morality and revealed religion have all been eroded. This has happened for both intellectual reasons and social reasons. Because of greater social mobility, cohesive communities no longer exist to sustain common values and beliefs and practices - so the process of dis-integration is self-reinforcing. It all adds up to a cold climate for a church where believing often only comes from first belonging…. (and one outcome of current events may be to deepen cynicism about religious belonging even more).

The Issue this Raises for Christian Ministry

The specific issue this raises for the Church's ministers is this. It's best focussed in an analysis made in a North American context 20 years ago which is showing no sign of being past its sell-by date (& which I would still like to see as a set text for all ordinands!). It is a study in moral theory called 'After Virtue' [1]. It pointed out that in a fragmented, consumerist, experiential culture, only certain kinds of roles are likely to be popular: i.e. those which satisfy peoples own chosen needs and ends, without troubling them too much with wider common purposes of society or ultimate meanings in life. Three examples of these characters are:

  1. the 'aesthete': which might be better understood as the entertainer (e.g. a media or sports personality)
  2. the therapist/counsellor
  3. the manager

These all flourish because each in their own way carry out their activity successfully without needing society to have common values or beliefs They can do what they do effectively without needing to raise questions about the ultimate meaning of life for us all. Instead they concentrate on particular and limited ways of satisfying individual customers according to their own preferences. Thus, if we caricature them (and please do not take offence: these are deliberately one-sided caricatures just to make a point clear!): the entertainer provides and consumes pleasured without needing his/ her audience to share ultimate values - all we have to do is enjoy their performance. The counsellor/therapist helps people to fulfill their own individual ideals of self-fulfillment or happiness more than trying to relate them to some external set of common values. The manager succeeds by the efficiency with which he/she can achieve the limited ends of his/her particular enterprise, regardless of wider social purposes or ultimate values: the manager of a tobacco advertising business or a charity agency alike can establish a successful role in society, qua manager.

But it is different for a minister of religion. In these terms we will find it hard to win popularity - because we do not just have to do with satisfying immediate and individually chosen wants and chosen needs. Instead, we try to minister a Gospel about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life for all. No wonder we do not easily 'succeed' in this sort of culture. No wonder it's easy to feel marginalized or discouraged.

The Ministry We Don't Need

There are three responses which are natural, understandable, but inadequate.

  1. One response in this sort of world is to give up and simply adopt the roles which succeed. It's tempting. It's tempting to turn ourselves simply into being charismatic entertainers offering good experience, therapists offering personal counselling, effective managers of our parishes - and quietly drop the awkwardness of ministering the conviction about a universal God who does not just minister to individual wants and needs but relates us to much wider spiritual, moral, social, truths and demands. Please don't misunderstand me: the church may need good entertainers, therapists, managers in its ministry: but it doesn't need its ministry to be reduced to those roles.
  2. Another response is the sectarian one: to gather like-minded believers out of this difficult world in order to generate a powerful, self-contained, community of faith which can within its own boundaries sustain common beliefs and values. The trouble with this is obvious: it has to police its boundaries so carefully that it doesn't really engage with the world at all. But we must, because it is God's world…
  3. Another way is to limp on, trying to maintain faith and engage faithfully with the world - but with confidence sapped. In this state we suffer an often unacknowledged but corrosive sense of doubt in the face of the world's pluralities and complexities. We are no longer able to see or feel the resilience of our theological convictions. We doubt both their relevance and truth. Loss of theological confidence, in this sense, is a spiritual not just intellectual malaise. It creeps up gradually, long after training has finished. It is widespread.

The Ministry We Need

That is why - over against all these responses - I'm suggesting that what we most need is renewed theological confidence: a kind of theological conviction which isn't overwhelmed into either giving in, opting out, or just being demoralized. It is a confidence which need not feel fundamentally threatened by the modern/post-modern world of consumer satisfaction because it is a different kind of being and thinking - generating a distinctive role and character. And because it's a different kind of thing, it can also be of real service to this world.

What Does Theological Confidence Mean?

  1. First it means greater knowledge and understanding of the whole theological tradition. And yes, this is partly an intellectual endeavour. Why not? We are called to love God with our mind, and not be ashamed of that, in spite of a woeful tradition of anti-intellectualism in English culture. It's not that knowledge in itself confers holiness, or should be paraded to impress - God forbid! But it does mean that the effort to acquire this knowledge equips the minister to act and speak within this changing world with greater personal integrity. In other words, gaining this knowledge and understanding is a matter of character of the minister, not his or her cleverness. It does not mean we will always be drawing explicitly on all this knowledge. But if it is there it will have its effect. Even our simplest responses will carry more authority if they have arisen out of the character of someone who has allowed themselves to be stretched in their learning. I remember a remarkable talk by former Archbishop Donald Coggan: it dropped few names, cited no complex arguments, claimed no new answers to intractable problems, but it did carry the unspoken authority of one who had gone as deeply and broadly as he could within the rich tradition of Christian theology. This is not just an intellectual exercise. It means spiritual involvement, the orientation of our whole person as we seek to understand the stories and truths of our faith. I hope that goes without saying - so I hope you pray about your essays and sermons, as well as think about them. Nonetheless, I hope you think about them too!
  2. Specifically, we need to know this tradition well enough to know that the tradition has always been dynamic, not static. We need to know it well enough to know that it always has been able to incorporate change and challenge (without ceasing to be true to itself).. In other words, theological confidence does not necessarily mean dogmatism. It does not mean confidence in a tradition of belief which is entirely static and unbudgeable. The confidence lies in knowing how it can cope with change and challenge. Some simple examples. If we know that the Gospel tradition itself long ago incorporated an image of God as a woman - the woman who found a lost coin - then we won't find the foundations of our faith shaken when female imagery of God is again in the 21st century. If we know that the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the very touchstone of Catholic orthodoxy, incorporates a clear statement 'God does not exist' (to express the mystery of God's being which does not exist in the same sense that we exist), then we won't be shaken or defensive when we engage with our intellectually sophisticated church members who pick up similar statements from contemporary theology. (And there are many more such members than we might realize…).
  3. A third meaning of theological confidence is simply the belief that the Christian theological tradition as a whole is truthful. The theological tradition 'as a whole' means the pivotal events of Jesus Christ, uniquely conveyed through the Bible, interpreted through the whole range of theological traditions from early father through to feminist & liberation theology. It is this as a whole which is truthful. It mediates truths about God, about ourselves, about ultimate meanings and purposes of life itself. If we quarry and mine this huge rich resource generously and inclusively, rather than selecting out bits which suit, then we are in touch with something true (not just a private construction of truth). This does not mean we experience no doubt. I know of no real faith without some real doubt. But these personal moments of doubt can be better held within a general confidence that the tradition as a whole is truthful, than within the belief that truth is determined privately by our own constructions.
  4. Finally, theological confidence means realizing that this theological tradition already relates to the truths of experience, not just the abstract truths of the mind. It already carries the authority of collective experience, so doesn't always have to bow to individual present experience. Too often the study of theology is set over against experience, as if they are two different things. They are not. When you read the foundational biblical texts themselves and commentaries on them, when you read Augustine or Barth or Mary Grey wrestling with them, you are not reading ideas pulled down from the sky, you are reading reflection on real and vast experience. You are reading a cumulative reflection on experience ranging from the desert life of nomadic tribes, through to 20th century war, urban deprivation, and ordinary routine life. Just one example. It was Karl Barth's experience as a pastor of an ordinary Swiss congregation and his perceptions of the Kaiser's war policy that led to his thunderous interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans and the developing Dogmatics - which then helped the confessing Church resist fascism. It's not all built in ivory towers, any more than the Biblical texts themselves. Theology as a whole arises out of massive authoritative cumulative experience - and so it should itself have some authority over any individual experience we have or encounter. Do you agree? Ask yourself this test question. If you feel of a biblical story or widely held theological truth 'it doesn't speak to my experience', what is your first reaction? Is it only 'then I must reinterpret my theology'? Or are you also willing to consider the opposite: 'perhaps my experience needs re-interpreting'?. Put another way, theological confidence is holding the Church to belief in truths which can shape the experience of the world and the world's agenda - rather than letting the world's experience always reshape the church and its agenda…

The Distinctive Role of Christian Ministers

Such theological confidence is one crucial way to renew the distinctive role of the minister of religion. It shows how we are not just managers of parishes, counsellors of individuals, or entertainers of our congregations. It holds us to a role which always goes beyond those sub-roles. It is confidence in relating ourselves and others to a much wider story - to the ultimate purposes of life, revealed in Christ and mediated truthfully throughout this huge, rich, wonderful, dynamic theological tradition of thought and experience. It is this which should give a prophetic edge, even if we do not have a prophetic personality. It is this which should give us a distinctive role in relation to church and world - remembering always that we're working in this way with and for laity for a corporate theological confidence of the church as a whole.

A Postscript

Just one qualification to end with. Although I've described a cold climate for the institutional church and its ministers, I don't think we need be pessimistic about all possibilities for religion in society. Recent research into what U.K. historians are studying and teaching showed religious history to be the most popular. So - as the report put it - 'if God is worried about being written out of history He can relax'. Moreover, because current history agendas reflect present concerns and set new agendas, God needn't worry about the future either: She can relax about that too! Or back to those sceptical schoolchildren: although they were unpersuaded by the authority of the church, they were still interested in the idea of God. In short: Christian ministry doesn't just need a dogged sort of theological confidence: it needs a realistic optimism too. And there is every reason to believe it can have it…

© Vernon P White, October 2001

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (Duckworth, 181/1985)

 

 

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