Time, place and context

There were ten of us for the midweek Eucharist at St Catherine's this morning. Mother Frances spoke to us about the imminent formation of the new West Cardiff Ministry Area, grouping Canton Benefice with the Parishes of Glanely, Caerau with Ely and Fairwater. The existing benefices will be legally dissolved to merge into one Parish six historic parishes, in what will be, in effect, one giant Rectorial Benefice of the kind now commonplace in many rural areas of Britain. Incumbent clerics will be licensed as priests in charge, and the status of curates and NSM will be much the same, except that they may be required to work across old borders I suppose, not that it doesn't happen now when need arises. 

Mother Frances is Team Leader designate. What a job to take on when she's only been here a year and two months. It's a new role and it will involve a great deal of admin given seven church buildings and a team of seven clerics and heaven know how many lay people in voluntary or paid specialised roles to manage. I'm sure she's capable enough to do the job, but she came to us because she wanted to return to parochial life from a diocesan role which by its nature would have involved much admin. Out of the frying pan into the fire, unfortunately.

Never has there been a time when collaborative ministry his more necessary to care for people in a geographical area of about eighty thousand people, of whom less than a thousand may be committed contributing churchgoers. Far more people than those who believe enough to attend look to the church for rites of passage and support in times of crisis, let alone those who engage with church youth and educational undertaking, and this dimension tends to be quite locally based, although not exclusively. It's hard to see how a wholesale reformation of institutional structures is going to work out. 

The structures we have represent the consolidation of historically based missionary enterprises. Church planting went on from ancient times in Wales. It started with the christianizing of pagan holy sites, or with monastic settlements set up near trade routes, which later grew into towns. From Norman times the sub-division of territory into parochial areas was imposed by the state, and fragments of many historic boundaries still remain as part of Church in Wales diocesan maps. Some larger ancient territories were subdivided or merged since the reformation due to the demise of settlements in one place and emergence of new ones elsewhere. 

When urban populations expanded during the industrial revolution, new parishes were carved out of the old, and church planting went ahead at a phenomenal rate in an effort to meet the pastoral needs of the masses. In this century when the masses have turned their backs on the church, the assets of a former generation have become today's liability. Cardiff has less than half of the salaried clergy it had when I returned from Europe eighteen years ago, and a quarter to a fifth of the membership. Certainly radical measures are required when the institutional church is dying, but we have no idea of what a resurrection of the church could look like. 

Church structures and the people who serve them can be tinkered with and altered, but plans fail when circumstances change and how we've witnessed this during the pandemic! Planning is essential, but it's vital to focus around qualities and values. How can ministers and communities become more resilient and flexible, creative in response to change? What's needed to make a worshipping body sustainable if not re-grow from scratch, in the absence of resources? Where do we start while things are still falling apart? Questions I've pondered on for years. The response so much depends on time, place and context.

Biblical metaphors that relate to the propagation of the Gospel are chiefly organic and to cultivation - parables relating to fields, seeds whose form must die to flourish and be fruitful, tiny things that grow into big things, trees and bushes that need pruning. Time, place and context, i,e, environment, are all essential, and it seems to me that grand plans, however well informed and designed, may not achieve all that has been achieved by piecemeal effort, starting with individual responses. It's not about resources. "Silver and gold have I none." said St Peter when he dived straight into healing ministry soon after Pentecost. And St Francis standing in the ruined chapel of Porziuncula, hearing the Lord say to him "Francis rebuild my church!" and then picking up first of many scattered stones to add to a broken wall. The spontaneous expansion of the church in China and Africa happened through the actions of untrained laity, whether or not they've had clergy leadership or support. Growth actually slowed down when clergy were imported to head up the mission in places where it was already well under way. A church which is clerically top heavy in leadership may be doomed to extinction. I hope we don't lose sight of such lessons from scripture and missionary tradition.

Having cooked and eaten lunch, I fetched this week's organic veg bag, then walked in the park for an hour, and got back at sunset. Then, Clare and I sat and watched the last three episodes of 'Fear by the Lake', which turned out not to be about countering bio-terrorist plot, but a psychotic primary school teacher on a personal revenge mission. A bit far fetched, although the portrayal of the the response by the major incident medical emergency response team showcased medics and the gendarmerie working at fictional pace to establish city wide lockdown, deal with violent incidents and get a field hopsital up and running by the end of day two. An experimental antidote was knocked up at fictional lightning speed by a top expert in under a day. Would that real life could be fast forwarded to a happy ending like a movie.

There was a telling mini-story line in which a group of a dozen or so asylum seekers escaped from their lock-down at a reception centre and presented themselves for duty at the gendarmerie field hospital, as each of them had been doctors or nurses in their home countries. A neat piece of movie fiction advocacy to champion the cause of asylum seekers to work and be useful in their place of refuge. It's a hot potato political issue across Europe and beyond. 

It was a good watch and less difficult to get the gist of what was going on (with or without the subtitles) because the past ten months have exposed us all to the vocabulary of medical statistics in a way without precedent. Not so much a feel-good movie, but one perhaps to make us feel less bad. We'll get to where we wish we were, eventually.

An unforeseen ending to ministry

The sky was overcast again when woke up at first light. I couldn't get back to sleep as I usually do. Instead of dozing, I lay awake, the impact of last night's conversation with Rufus slowly dawning on me. To all intents and purposes, after fifty years of public ministry, officiating at church services as a stipendiary cleric for forty years and then as a volunteer for ten came to an end on March 8th in Ibiza. No matter how fit and well I may be and able to fill in when others need to be absent, I'm now classed as elderly and vulnerable. As long as the covid-19 crisis lasts, I'll be out of action. 

Unless there's a global roll-out of means to prevent and cure this virus, I don't see an end to this for several years to come, years in which the public face of the church will change radically. The more churches have to close and ministries contract, the less need there'll be for aged clerics to plug gaps. Like the rest of the faithful, it'll be a matter for us of finding ways and places where we can meet for common prayer and worship.

Strangely, I don't yet feel sad about it. I'll miss preaching however more than presiding. I'm comfortable enough inhabiting the priestly role. It nurtured my years of full time ministry, but now I'm more blessed by being on the receiving end, responding rather than leading, meditating rather than voicing the prayer of the people.

As I've got older I've relaxed and feel I'm more myself in preaching the Word. Who knows if it'll be possible in future ever again? Will there be an audience for anything more than a brief homily, so that people aren't detained for too long in church? Will every future homily need to be no longer than the BBC's 'Thought for the Day'? (3mins) or at best 'A point of view'? or 'The Archers' much maligned monologues? (13mins) 

Much has been made of the reduction in people's attention span in the era of high speed electronic communications, well before we had covid-19 to make us anxious about the length of time we can risk spending in public gatherings with others not of our household. This doesn't take into account the immersive experience of theatre performances, story-telling or opera, which are able to retain the attention of an audience for a much longer time. Re-launching these activities safely is a hot topic currently given concern about preservation of artistic culture.

Traditional forms of liturgy are also a performing art, calling for a social environment of worship and fellowship. The church would lose its ability to preach and teach the Gospel in depth without them. A radical re-think of the way we do everything in public worship is necessary, but we need to be mindful of what we risk losing in the act of reform.

Karl Rahner half a century ago said of the life of faith; "In the days ahead you will either be a mystic or nothing at all." Christian mysticism, it seems to me relies on the depth of relationship with nature, immersion in the story which scripture tells, the tradition of prayer and worship, and the experience of love in community. All point to the Beyond in our midst, the ground of our being. There's nothing abstract about it, our relationships with God and with each other are inseparable.

When I was at St Mike's I remember a fellow student who was have real trouble getting to grips with a rational analytical attitude to scripture. He wasn't an ideological fundamentalist, but found it hard to reconcile such cool intellectual rigour with his spiritual life. "How can I pray?" I remember him saying, "If I am obliged to think like this all the time." We weren't doing much holistic thinking back in those days, but he did find his way out of the maze eventually, helped by engaging with the mystical writings of Christian saints. They weren't always easy to understand, but got you pointed heavenwards, and that was all that mattered.

Lausanne explored

Overcast, but no rain today, so I took the stopping train from Territet to Lausanne for a photo outing. I have little recollection of going right through the Old Town on the north side of the station on my previous visits, as these centred around visiting Christchurch, the fine Victorian Anglican church on the south side of the station, and walking from there down to Ouchy and the lake.

Lausanne is built on a succession of steep hills rising up from Lac Leman. On the summit of one is the 12th century Cathedral and just below it, the original university buildings on one side and the museum on another. The university, founded in 1537 and very much a fruit of the reforming work of Pierre Viret, who is to Lausanne what Calvin is to Geneva, and Farel to Neuchatel. It has fourteen and a half thousand students, and its new campuses have spread out across the coastal plain outside the city as far as Ecublens.

The Cathedral is a 12th century masterpiece, whose nave resembles that of Geneva's, but Lausanne's chancel ends in an apse with ambulatory. The reformation stripped the building of ornament and oratories, save one small one with an ancient stone altar in an east facing niche of the south transept, more of an historic artefact than a place of devotion. The stark uncluttered simplicity of the building displays the sheer beauty of its medieval architecture. 

A Gothic south porch has been 're-purposed', by closing it off as an entrance, glazing it, and introducing cushions for the porch stone benches and some simple soft furnishings, to make it a meeting room or prayer group space. There were three organs, one in the west end gallery over the entrance porch, the other two at either end of the nave. 

Many of the streets of the Old Town are paved with cobbles and pedestrianised. There's a modest strip of a park dedicated in honour of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a huge plaza in front of the University main building which hosts an open air market. By the time I'd climbed up this far it was winding up for the day, but I was amazed at how many stalls there were selling cheese.

The Swiss Coop hosts a five storey department store with a food supermarket in the basement, and restaurant with balcony at the top. It gives a great view of the very varied city-scape. Several bridges span the steep valley between hills. Everywhere is interestingly built over making best possible use of urban housing space in times past. The modern Metro system has its underground terminus up in the Old Town. One line descends to Ouchy, the other reaches out to the University campuses. One of the high arched road bridges has beneath it a bridge carrying a Metro line out from underground on its way west. There's lots to see. It's an interesting place, and I look forward to a further visit when we return here in August.

Curiosity led me to take the westbound Metro for its half hour journey to its other terminus in the main line train station at Renans, which hosts a couple of branch lines into the Jura to the north, as well as the Metro. The station is currently being upgraded, and several areas are cordoned off and shrouded with plastic. The range of my Carte Journalière extended as far as Renans, which meant I was able to use a main line train regional, to take me right back to Territet. This meant using the station subway to reach a far platform. Normally no problem, but the subway entrance from the platform was one of the fenced off zones, and there was no signage to say how to reach its other entrance on the station forecourt. No signage to say there was a subway at all. Locals know all this but visitors, birds of passage like me? Normally the Swiss are superb on signage. I suspect this was a problem caused by thoughtless building contractors.

I reached Territet at half past four, went into Church House, collected a shopping bag, then returned to Montreux on the 201 bus that stops just outside every ten minutes. This way I was just in time to get some food items I missed out on yesterday, before the Metro Centre shut - five on Saturdays. I've been caught out before.

This evening's BBC Four double episode of Engrenages/Spiral was a brilliant as ever. Events unfold at a pace with several stories developing and intersecting concurrently. It's beautifully edited and engages attention well. I thought the tenth episode would be the last, but apparently not. Two more to come, when I'm back home again.

Operatic perspective on Tudor times

A quiet day's pottering at home, writing a sermon, followed by an evening outing to the Millenium Centre for the WNO's performance of Donizetti's opera 'Anna Bolena', the Italian spin on the tale of Henry VIII and Ann Boleyn, the first part of a series of three Donizetti operas around the English Tudors. Unusually, the auditorium was less than full, perhaps because of critics' lament about the stage design and costume. It was certainly a minimalist presentation on a black set with dark colours so that the lighting emphasised mainly faces and hands. 

The costumes were a de-historicised allusion to the period, almost Wagnerian in abstraction, nothing attractive or likeable. Enrico, with his long mane and garb looked as if he'd been parachuted in from the ring cycle. He projected nastiness so effectively that at curtain call he raised an appreciative theatrical 'boo' as well as applause from the audience. The music, the singing and stagecraft of the performers, not to mention the energetic antics of the conductor, made the performance powerful and moving, provided you could be philosophical about the mise en scene. A great night out.

Donizetti's liberetto portrays an evil, ruthless, scheming king in a less than subtle way. Taking into account what a nasty piece of work the author of the Anglican break with Rome was, there seemed to me an element of Italian Papal aggression towards the English in the spin given to the story told. How did that go down when it was first performed in London two hundred years ago? I wondered. Mind you, if the story had been set in an a non-historical continental land, fictitious or real, with characters named to suit, this probably wouldn't have drawn my attention.

It's impossible to feel pride about the origins of  Anglicanism in reformation conflict. It's something of a miracle of divine grace that so much good fruit came from inauspicious origins over centuries since. 

Talking of which, the Church in Wales Governing Body voted in favour of ordaining women to the episcopate yesterday. It will grieve many adherents to a traditional understanding of ministry and church structures but at least it's reformation without blood letting. More reform is needed to make the church and its message more credible to the contemporary world - the way episcopacy and authority are exercised, the way decisions are made and followed through. Old ways and institutions can't last much longer due to decline financial support that goes with loss of members. Can the church lose size without totally losing substance and significance? It's not really in our hands. It's up to God.