After another episode of horror in France it seems bathetic
to turn again to the minor machinations of the Church of England, but that was
the last news I had. Wednesday was one of those days when I went straight from
one thing to another, two of which were Deanery-related events, Chapter over
lunch and Synod in the evening. The Deaneries, if you don’t know, form the
middle range of the Church’s organisation, groupings of parishes which are
themselves subdivisions of an Archdeaconry two or three of which make up a
bishop’s diocese. We tell ourselves Deaneries are terribly important but a lot
of the time they flap around a bit in search of a clear role. This week Chapter
was etiolated indeed with only six of us there (it was quite fun actually) and
Synod was barely better supported, fewer than twenty people from across quite a significant chunk of territory.
We had been charged with bringing to the meeting an example
of ‘best practice’ from our parishes. I and our Deanery Synod rep, Hannah, were
geared up to speak about our Mission Planning process, for want of anything
better, because we thought we’d gone about that moderately well. As the various
attendants around the room took their turns what we were increasingly getting
was not a single example of ‘best practice’ doing a particular thing but a
series of descriptions of wonderful things this or that parish had done to
evangelise. Strangely attention passed over Hannah and myself completely, and
in a sotto voce consultation we
agreed we weren’t especially displeased to be omitted.
The trouble with ‘sharing’ what you’ve done in a particular
place is that context is so important in what churches do; this or that event
may work well in a particular place and not elsewhere, and without more detail
as to why a church chose a course of action and how it assessed what it did
this kind of thing is almost useless. As we saw, it also degenerates into the
usual self-congratulatory middle-class Surreyness. And finally, I couldn’t help
thinking, why aren’t all these wonderful initiatives filling our churches with
folk? If it’s all this great, why isn’t it better?
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