Branding

For some perverse reason the diocese always arranges the institution of new incumbents on my customary day off of Thursday, so on a Thursday evening recently I made my way to Hornington for the formal welcome for the incoming rector there. Hornington is one of those churches recently designated a 'minster' despite the ambiguities of that term: it now means whatever the authorities in a diocese want it to mean, it seems. Maybe it can be best summed up as 'this is a church we trust to take on extra responsibilities'. 

As I found my way inside through the throngs I was greeted by the usual group of welcomers, most of whom I know by face if not by name, and later on was plied with sweetmeats at the compulsory bunfight after the ceremony - and they were all wearing tabards emblazoned with the legend 'Team Hornington Minster'. I was put in mind, I'm afraid, not so much of a community of disparate souls committed to a common search for an encounter with God, but a corporate entertainment venue, or a conference centre. Although tabards are usually found at music festivals and the like (I am informed). At entertainment venues and conference centres, too, they would normally be worn by attractive young people rather than older folk trying not to look awkward. If I was a layperson and I came randomly to check out a church where this was the practice, I'd never go back again. 

Now I know what's going on here. It isn't just about identifying people who are acting in an official capacity: in the first place, there are indeed circumstances where you might want to do that (our congregation members at Swanvale Halt who take entry money from visitors to the Spring Fair wear hi-vis jackets to do so), and in the second, there's no need to do so in this instance, as it's obvious what someone giving you a service leaflet or offering you a sandwich is there to do. It's more about trying to foster a sense of corporate identity in a new venture which brings together four separate and distinct places of worship within one structure (in theory, the 'minster' is the whole parish, not just the old parish church in the town). 

At Swanvale Halt we had our own version of this once; a cross, so the rector in the early 1970s claimed, ‘inspired by the ancient symbol of St John the Evangelist, a chalice and a serpent. Containing within itself the monogram S J E … it also suggests the Church spiralling outwards, growing to meet the needs of the growing population of the parish'. All that needed a bit of imagination to see: have a go yourself, I've added it at the top of this post, I have always referred to it as the 'Nuremberg Rally Cross', but even it didn't appear anywhere but on stationery and a couple of bits of decoration. Nobody had to erase their personality by wearing it, nor was it 'gazed upon or carried about'. I still don't like it and am glad it disappeared in the time of my predecessor-but-three. 

And such corporate identity is not the new self we find in Christ, which gathers up and transfigures our natural (and fallen) selves and turns them into something that reflects not the ideology of an organisation, but the nature of Christ. I mentioned this to Fr Donald at Lamford: 'I always think of the disciples as a group of people all with their own divergent personalities', he agreed, joining me in harrumphing, a comfort coming from the incumbent of a considerably larger church than mine. But maybe we are the unusual ones now: maybe laypeople think this is normal, which is a little bit tragic.