Bish Mish

Before the webinar on Monday evening, I thought the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit to the Guildford Diocese scheduled for September was merely an opportunity for him to share with his clergy his opinions about cheese (I jest: had that been the case I wouldn't have minded going). But it is not. It is a Mission. It is Welby as John Wesley come among us again. There will be a launch for clergy and selected congregation members followed by a series of local mass meetings to which churches are supposed to bring along souls they have been praying for over preceding months. They will go away, enthused, to take part in enquirers' courses run in the parishes, and at some point in 2022 His Grace will return to confirm all the new Christians this process will produce.

I have, I'm afraid, questions to ask. I am not convinced that Archbishop Welby is as down with the kids as he imagines given what he has said in the past; I have never really conceived of him as someone who communicates easily with the world beyond the Church, but perhaps this is how he pictures himself. Are we sure that this is not the good primate trying, perhaps with some desperation, to make a contribution to the Church he heads and identifying this as a way of doing so - that it is more about bolstering his sense of mission than the Church's? 

Then I recalled the Talking Jesus report which also came out in 2015 and which shocked General Synod with its research suggesting that Christians talking about their faith to non-Christians was more likely to put people off belief rather than attract them. Clearly it wasn't the whole story, but have we actually engaged with it, or have we chosen simply to ignore it? I've never heard it referred to since it was published.

Finally I wish I could reformulate in some way my discomfort at praying for people to come to faith. If I had, say, a Muslim or a pagan friend and discovered that they'd mentally identified me as someone who might convert and were praying about it - or whatever it is a pagan might do - I could well feel a bit differently about that person, no matter how much they might simply be acting in what they thought was my best interests. I do know people who I have had conversations of a spiritual nature with and it might not be completely weird to pray for those enquiries to develop into something more, but such people will have identified themselves rather than being targeted by me. 

Of course we wait to hear more. In the meantime I try to work out what I can conscientiously ask the Swanvale Halt congregation to do.