I've been at a day for pioneer ordinands at Lambeth Palace today - not that i'm one - and that was a quote from Rowan Williams. He gave a short reflection - and here are my notes from it. They're a bit random, but hopefully they make sense.
RW's moment of discovery was that chuch is something that happens, it is an event, and that a lot of confusions about church are based on the misnomer that church is institutional rather than an event. The event of death and resurection of Jesus created ripples, people have a profound experience of Christ and one another. Ecclesia as a gathering, people gather and church happens…
How do we create space for the two (FE and inherited models) without a sense of rivalry? Key is brokering the relationship is key to the bishop’s role. ‘Church Happens’.
One of the general ideas about ministry is that the ordained minister is there to experess the focus of the church, not to do all the jobs, not to be a professional Christian or a misigod. But a person who holds the focus by providing the sacraments and the teaching from the word. This is where Fresh Expressions challenge and adjust this, you cannot take a tidy sacrament word balance within communities, therefore there is a special challenge for Fresh Expressions. How do you create that gospel shaped focus without the focus of Eucharist and Word? How does this carry over into Fresh Expressions of church, how does it feel to hold the focus when the structures aren’t obviously there?
This underlines the importance of keeping the structures going - there is not a competition going on between the traditional and the Fresh Expressions. We need the nourishment of one another, but how are we going to be fed by one another?
Second interesting question? Keeping the liaison going? How do we share the common problems, common resources, common goals. There is a lot of priestly subconscious, it’s not all bad but it doesn’t do the job for those people outside of those cultures? How do we keep one another going, how do we support each other and be supported by others outside of the Fresh Expressions context. Learning from one another.
Accountability, that is not to be overdone and getting it right is a tightrope. Sometimes OPM’s don’t respond well to supervision and the absence of the accountability means that we all suffer. How do you devise the right kind of structures for OPM’s?
To live the life of a ordained minister requires character and patient formation. To keep looking even when you can’t see the way forward, it is because of that all the other things matter…
Church is running to catch-up. But we will never catch up
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