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I Remember

Nativity of John the Baptist : 24 June 2012

Looking back on the 1970’s, that distressing decade of bell-bottom trousers and the Bee Gees, I seem to have spent most of it in what I would call institutions of Anglican incarceration. Three years at College House, Christchurch, recently de-registered as a theological college, but still having a Chaplain, an Anglican Priest as the Principal, daily Chapel Services, and a small band of theologs being shepherded through their undergraduate days until being sent on to St Johns. I became an ordinand of the diocese of Christchurch at the end of that time, and although I went flatting for the next two years, one of them was with Fr Peter Williams, then curate of Holy Trinity, Avonside, and now only just retired from being Vicar of St Michaels, Christchurch, and then with three other ex-College House students, two of whom later became Anglican clergy. Then followed three years at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, in West Yorkshire, the most intense experience of community life that has ever come my way.

So it was that in 1979 I was ordained a Deacon, and in 1980 a Priest, in Peterborough Cathedral, while serving my title as curate of St Mary’s, Northampton. The pre-ordination retreats began at Ecton house, situated in a Northamptonshire village. High summer can bring thundery showers in Britain, and I remember running across a ploughed field to reach the Saxon Church in the next village of Earls Barton, and being caught out in the open and soaked to the skin.

The second half of the retreat was at the Episcopal Palace in Peterborough, a grand ancient mansion that was used by the BBC a few years later as its location to film the Barchester Chronicles in. The Bishop, Douglas Feaver was a gruff, shy, opinionated man, with a fierce attachment to the Book of Common Prayer (we were ordained using that rite), and little small talk. Being trapped at the dining table with him was hard work. We played croquet on the Episcopal front lawn to relieve the tension, and one of our number had thoughtfully concealed a gin bottle in the box of mallets. After a pep talk by the Bishop in his private Chapel we were led straight across to the Cathedral to be ordained. I can remember looking up at the sea of hands coming down on my head and shoulders when I was ordained a priest. Afterwards, on the Cathedral front lawn I proudly put on my new biretta, and looked across to see the Bishop glaring with disapproval at me.

After serving my apprenticeship in the diocese of Peterborough for three years I returned to New Zealand in 1982. I have been here ever since, and have served in three different dioceses and five parishes, one rural, two suburban, and two inner city ones. Here are some of my reflections after thirty-two years of ministry.

We live in a time of role confusion for clergy. A secularised society doesn’t know what it is that they do. And an uncertain Church that is hungry for results that will turn around its wavering fortunes often makes contradictory and heavy demands on them. One way of coping with this lack of clarity about what is that they are supposed to be doing is for clergy to fall back on roles that society clearly understands and honours, and that are allied to their natural gifts. So we have priests who have majored in being entrepreneurial fundraisers, or community development workers, or administrators extraordinaire, or building project managers, or counsellors and therapists. The list is extensive.

That is all right up to a point; particularly for those who have chosen specialist ministries where that is what they do most of the time. But if parish priests lean too heavily on these sorts of roles they risk becoming superficial and shallow in what they have to offer. A quietly spoken schoolteacher in my Wellington parish used to call me to order on this subject. "You are our spiritual leader," she would often remind me. That is the most helpful thing anyone has had to say to me on this subject over the past 10 years. I am supposed to be here to offer the things of God to the people of God. The best service I can render to anyone is to put him or her in touch with the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am supposed to be trafficking in the world of Christian spiritual realities, and I had better be in touch with that world if I am to be of used to anybody.

I want to be fair about this. In my time I have been a mental health activist, a social justice activist, (in fact the Church employed to me to do that), and I have founded and been the co-ordinator of a neighbourhood association. They were all good things to do, avocations as it were within a more important vocation, but I would be uncomfortable if they were at the leading edge of my ministry. I am on my guard now against hiding behind those sorts of roles, and neglecting the main responsibility to be a spiritual leader who is there to inspire.

Just in case you think I am being too super spiritual let me affirm the Church’s requirements these days for parish clergy be reasonably business like, and to show some minimal competence in running their parishes. A parish is in effect a small business - it has to work financially.

Anglican parishes operate within a system of checks and balances, so Vicars need to know how to run meetings, and the value of honouring the democratic spirit in which important decisions are supposed to be made. There is also the reality that parishes are made up of people who sometimes have conflicting and unrealistic expectations; and they can turn contrary and unreasonable, particularly when difficult decisions have to be made out of which some are bound to be disappointed. So Vicars are called upon from time to time to settle church fights, and to be involved in conflict resolution. If they find it difficult to live with conflict then they may find this a difficult calling, because building and maintaining community often involves these kind of challenging scenarios. Not every Vicar has all of these skills, and where they don’t they need to have the self-knowledge and the humility to call on the expertise and the help of lay people who do. And in all of this they need to never let go of the central reality that they are there to be that parish’s spiritual leader and pastor, and not just its manager and administrator.

A piece of good advice my father gave was the importance of never boring people in public. It is a privilege to have a captive audience every Sunday morning, one that few communicators have in the modern world, and clergy should never forget that. They owe it to their people to be clear, lucid, and interesting in their preaching, offering depth and thought provoking wisdom in a simplicity that gets to the heart of the matter. If we are complicated and obscure in what we have to say it usually means that we don’t understand what it is that we are trying to get across. Words have a power to enchant, to inform, to illuminate, to provoke and to inspire. Parish priests need to be wordsmiths who can make the Word made flesh come alive in words. And it is about more than just having a good script in front of you. It is also about learning how to build a sense of connection with your audience, which is in turn based on having a sense of pastoral connection with them. When that kind of energy is established with a congregation it is an exhilarating feeling.

If style and technique matters, so also does content. It helps if priests read the odd book, and reasonably challenging ones at that. If priests don’t have a research and development side of their ministry they will run out of things to say from the pulpit.

This personal resourcing and renewing is more important than ever now because in recent times the theological formation of new clergy has been drastically curtailed. St Johns Auckland has always had a pretty up and down existence. Just right now it is very much in the doldrums. The majority of our clergy are in any case now trained in part time local training programmes. Increasingly clergy will have to find refreshing wells to drink from on their own.

Finally let me record my gratitude for receiving this vocation from God, and of being sustained in it through the past 32 years. It has been and is a rich, varied, interesting and rewarding life.