Creative contributors or passive recipients?

Since yesterday, I've been reflecting about the condition of parishes in times of interregnum. They go into a kind of suspended animation, with all development initiative suppressed until there is a new incumbent in place, as if lay people can't be trusted to do the right thing without a 'king in the castle', so to speak. I can see that conditions may not be so healthy everywhere, that lack of priestly pastoral leadership might lead to conflict, or strategic decisions no new cleric would find it possible to live with. 

Those of us who share in  maintaining this static condition aren't allowed to change anything or permit changes to be made once an incumbent has gone. It's not the only choice church leaders could make, and it's not always a healthy choice. The idea of having people, ordained or lay, who could accompany a parish pastorally ad interim offering 'light touch' guidance in response to development of new ideas seems not to be explored, or if it happens, it happens off the official radar. Expecting keen lay folk to be patient for a long period puts them at risk of becoming 'patients' - passive recipients of what ecclesiastical professionals hand down for consumption whose creativity has been stifled. Is that good enough?

Back in the 1920s British Anglican theologian and missionary cleric Roland Allen who'd worked in China and in East Africa observed that the rate of the spontaneous expansion of the church, once the Gospel had been received by ordinary people, diminished noticeably once leadership was entrusted to trained professionals, whether expatriate missionaries or local indigenous people. His prophetic insight stimulated debate about the need for non-stipendiary and locally ordained ministries half a century before these were finally approved and adopted by the professional leaders of Anglicanism.

Sure we need our trained professionals, but do they have to be so much in tight control of everything? I'd never thought of that until I was introduced to Allen's writing back in the seventies. Interestingly, after his spell of overseas mission he became a CofE incumbent, but gave it up to earn his keep as an international free-lance expert teacher and writer on mission. I suspect after his experience of mission, he couldn't get used to having so much status, power or control over parishioners. What's it got to do with the Gospel? After all, the pastor like Christ is meant to be 'among you, as one who serves'.