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Synod Moderators’ Report
1 What
is the church for?
1.1 In order to get every other question in perspective we need to know what God is up to. The answer is that God’s plan is nothing less than drawing together, unifying, all things in heaven and on earth with Christ as head.
1.2 The church, the body of
Christ, is called to witness to this plan and to call people and their
human institutions to participate in it. In order to do so the church,
being the body of Christ, is called to show in its own life, the life,
death and resurrection of Jesus. It is called to point to those places in
the world’s life where the same life, death and resurrection are to be
seen. It is at those points that renewal of creation is taking place.
1.3 This ‘ministry of reconciliation’ is the task of the whole people of God. That is why we keep on emphasising the ‘priesthood of all believers.’ The United Reformed Church believes in priesthood. The priesthood is in the ‘all’. It is when believers act together that priesthood takes place.
1.4 Priesthood happens
- when people have their
hearts and minds turned towards God;
1.5 The key to this happening is
- believers meeting
together in prayer, in praise and with an open, seeking mind to listen for
what God is saying;
1.6 As the Basis of Union
has it: The Lord Jesus Christ continues his ministry in and through the
Church, the whole people of God called and committed to his service and
equipped by him for it.
2
So what are ministers for?
2.1 Ministers are called to
participate in this total ministry and to give leadership to the church in
recognising it, understanding it and sharing it with the world.
2.2 Ministers were called by God before they were called by the Church. They continue to be called by God after the Church calls them into service. It is therefore a reasonable expectation that they will use their training, their skills and their discipleship to go on seeking God’s purposes for the world and keep calling the Church back to those purposes rather than the more limited ones that churches sometimes settle for.
2.3 As we were reminded in
the Patterns of Ministry Report a few years ago there is a wide variety of
understanding amongst us about the nature of Ordination. The line would
stretch from those who would claim that the only difference is one of
function, or even time available, to those who would want to assert that
there is a difference of order. (Perhaps this continuum should be a circle
rather than a straight line.) But most ministers would assert from their
own experience that there are times when there has been a sense of being
‘the other’, or ‘the catalyst’. Without this there is no prophecy.
Where there is no prophecy there is no ministry. Of course this gift is
not the exclusive property of ministers. But all ministers should have it.
2.4 Of course there are day
to day practicalities. There are expectations to fulfil and to deny. The
Wales Synod, in their study pack ‘Great Expectations’, recently
produced a list to which we would draw the attention of the whole church.
We reproduce here part of their list amended from narrative form to
something approaching aphorism, and added one or two of our own.
2.4.1 Ministers should be
able to organise and administrate, but they are not called to be managers.
2.4.2 Ministers should be
able to lead worship winsomely, but they are not entertainers.
2.4.3 Ministers should be
able pastors, but they are not therapists or counsellors.
2.4.4 Ministers should
share peoples lives, but they are not casual visitors.
2.4.5 Ministers should help
break ‘the strange silence of the Bible in the church’, but should be
able also to speak of the God who is beyond scripture.
2.4.6 Ministers should be
students of scripture, but need not be academic scholars.
2.4.7 Ministers should know
what is going on, but are not called to be sociologists or political
scientists.
2.4.8 Ministers should have
a prophetic detachment, surrendering neither to the cynicism of the world,
nor to the nostalgia of the church.
2.4.9 Ministers should be
men and women of God, yet know their way round the world, acting as
interpreters between the community and the church.
2.4.10 Ministers should
have soft hearts and hard heads, they should not have soft heads and hard
hearts.
2.4.11 Ministers should be
good team players: with their colleagues, their elders and their members.
2.4.12 Ministers are not
the private property of their congregations. They are called to care not
only for those congregations, but also to be ministers in District, Synod
and Assembly and should encourage their churches to see these
relationships as means of mutual support rather than distant
bureaucracies.
2.4.13 Ministers in the United Reformed Church are, by definition, ecumenists.
3 The
whole ministry for the whole church
3.1 Ministers then play a
key role in the life of our church. Because they do so their numbers and
their deployment is a crucial matter to us all.
3.2 The ministers of the
United Reformed Church are the product of the whole church. Their call is
tested by the processes of the whole church. They are trained with the
resources of the whole church. They are sustained by the contributions of
the whole church. Yet there are parts of the whole church which receive
very little of this ministry.
3.3 At a recent meeting
between the Ministries Committee and the Moderators to look at the whole
question of deployment it became clear that there is huge gap between the
number of posts we have available for stipendiary ministers and the number
of ministers there are to fill those posts. If we added together the
current and potential vacancies there would be approximately 150 more
posts than there are ministers. It was agreed that all Synods should be
working to a notional 10% vacancy rate to allow for movement between
pastorates. But the present overall vacancy rate is nearer 22.5%. If all
the vacancies were to be filled tomorrow it would mean that nearly one
quarter of the stipendiary ministers would have to move, and of course the
number of vacancies would remain the same. It has also become clear that
with the present level of giving we cannot afford any more ministers than
we have now.
3.4 It would appear that
the only answer is that we will have to have fewer posts. The whole church
needs to be aware of this situation and be conscious of how painful this
is going to be. It will mean a dramatic lowering of expectation about the
levels of ordained ministry the churches can have. In the United Reformed
Church decisions about deployment are usually independent of the levels of
M&M contributions. We rejoice in this as it allows ministry to be
called to places which District Councils have identified as mission
priorities. Given that we are going to have fewer posts, these decisions
are going to become more difficult.
3.5 Over recent years we have discovered together the value of non-stipendiary ministers to the whole church. Without their call, their training and their service both in the churches and in the total life of the community the crisis we have outlined above would be even more serious. We take this opportunity affirm these men and women in their ministries and to share our prayer that yet more will hear this call.
3.6 We remind ourselves and
the whole church that non-stipendiary ministers where never intended
simply to fill the gaps laps left by the shortage of stipendiary
ministers. The grouping of churches does give more opportunity for the
original vision to be fulfilled of stipendiary and non-stipendiary
ministers working in collegiality with each other and with existing and
developing lay ministries.
4 Some
difficult questions
4.1 Some pastorates are
already well aware of the consequences of this situation. They have been
waiting two, three or in some cases more than four years for a minister to
be called and accepted. Not unnaturally they ask with some passion why it
is that other pastorates seem hardly to wait at all. The difference is not
always in terms of missionary potential. In the meantime they go on
contributing towards the cost of a ministry which they feel they do not
receive and begin to ask why.
4.2 How do we create fewer
posts? The answer would seem to be either by grouping churches or
amalgamating them, and sometimes by making the hard choice to close
churches. What criteria should be used in this process? Numbers of
members? Ability to pay? Mission potential? How is that to be judged? We
know of no church that is without mission potential. We do know of
churches which do not live up to it. We also know of areas of immense
missionary potential, desperately calling for church planting and for
ministerial leadership.
4.3 We are aware of a
number of other questions being raised:
4.3.1 Some are asking if
the call system is limiting strategic thinking and action. Are there some
cases in which Districts should place stipendiary as well as non
stipendiary ministers? Others ask if the time has come when the call
should not be to the local pastorate but to the District and the District
allocate roles within its bounds?
4.3.2 Others ask if a
system of termed appointment, with review, would enable us to be more
strategic in our use of the ministry?
4.3.3 How do we use the
ministers we have in such a way that their gifts, talents and skills are
available to all the churches? Many of the Synods and Districts are using
some of their deployment figure to make appointments such as Training
Officers, Development Officers, Mission Enablers etc. In this way all the
churches are served. But what is the balance to be struck between this
type of appointment and local ministry?
4.4 What happens when
pastorates become desperate? We know of more than one situation in which
the church/pastorate has waited so long that they are in the process of
taking the situation into their own hands and either are in the process of
appointing, or are asking their District if they can move towards
appointing, a person to lead them who has previously been designated as
unsuitable for the ministry of the United Reformed Church. The churches in
these situations, sometimes on their own initiative, seek to appoint one
of these people not with the title of minister but some other title which
nevertheless gives them the position of pastoral charge of that
congregation. Such moves make these churches even more independent in
policy and practice. The foot is saying to the hand ‘I do not need
you’.
4.5 This leads us to ask
how flexible can we be in these matters? At what point does a church cease
to be a United Reformed Church? Who decides and on what basis? We presume
the answer is that the District Council decides. They will make their
judgement on the basis of ‘For the sake of faith and fellowship it shall
be for the church to decide where differences of conviction hurt our unity
and peace.’ We suspect that each District Council would have to make its
own judgement as to when, and by what measure, the unity and peace of the
church had been hurt. We do wonder if all District Councils, or even
Synods, are objective enough, or strong enough to make such a judgement.
5
Positive outcomes (with some more questions)
5.1 What has not diminished
in any way is the felt need for leadership in our churches. This taken
along with the shortage of ministers, and a new consciousness of the
leadership skills of lay people is resulting in a large number of
experiments in new models of lay ministry. These include Local Church
Leaders in some Synods with carefully considered and approved means of
selection, training and commissioning within the guidelines laid down by
General Assembly.
5.2 There has been a
resurgence in the recognition of the important part that Lay Preachers and
Worship Leaders are playing in our churches week in and week out. We have
been greatly encouraged by the number of people who have been willing to
take training for this through the TLS Course. We want to say important
this course has been to the life of our church and how pleased we have
been to receive assurances that it will continue in some similar form. A
number of Synods have also begun fresh ‘Starting to Lead Worship’
Courses.
5.3 Many churches and pastorates have also been appointing workers to specific tasks such as Family Workers, Youth Workers, Mission Outreach Workers, Social Workers, Pastoral Assistants etc.. Some of these are professional appointments and others are voluntary workers. The numbers are considerable, running into hundreds. This development is admirable in many ways. But it is not without some questions. Many, if not most are appointed without any reference to any body outside the local pastorate. Some of these people are going to have as much influence on a local church as would a Minister yet with none of the processes for selection, training, appointment and accountability.
5.4 Many, if not all, of
the Synods, are finding ways of encouraging more and more lay people to
take some form of general training so that they become more aware of the
faith that is in them, more sensitive to scripture, more able to speak of
their Lord, his promises and his demands.
5.5 Gradually more real
ecumenical strategic planning is taking place. It makes more sense for our
churches to work closely with their ecumenical neighbours within their own
community than it does to try and work with another United Reformed Church
ten or more miles away. It also makes more sense for churches of different
denominations to share ministry within the one community. This means that
there is a need for the United Reformed Church and our ecumenical partners
to devise easier ways than we have at present for appointing and paying
ministers in such situations. It is currently difficult because of the
ecumenical failure to arrive at any mutual recognition of ministry.
6 In
conclusion
6.1 We are aware that this
report raises some awkward and difficult issues. We have not flinched from
raising them. Having made a bit of an icon of our structures and systems
for so long, now is the time, we believe, for the whole church to engage
in discussion about these matters so that the Moderators are not left to
deal with them in a piecemeal manner.
7
Personalia
7.1 This year has seen some
changes in our number. David Jenkins has been replaced by Peter Poulter
who is already so at home among us it is as if he has always been there.
For several months we have also had John Arthur as the General Secretary
of the Congregational Union of Scotland sitting with us. He has made us
aware of the subtle changes that our new union will bring to us all. At
the time of writing that union is an eagerly awaited future event. John,
of course, is to be the Moderator of the Synod of Scotland.
7.2 This Assembly will see Keith Forecast’s
retirement. With him will go a huge degree of experience in the life of
our church, a detailed knowledge of ministers and pastorates, a pastoral
sensitivity and an administrative gift which will be hard to replace. We
will also miss his boisterous sense of humour. We look forward to
welcoming Peter Brain as our new colleague.
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