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Reform editor David Lawrence talks to the URC's General Secretary It was in his early teens, says David Cornick, that reflecting on what he calls his ‘narrow range of abilities’ he decided he was best suited to one of two jobs: the ministry or teaching. If it seems a fairly sober choice for one so young, at least he managed to fulfil both ambitions - but that is to jump to a later part of the story. Brought up in Gravesend, in Kent, David could very easily have ended up as an Anglican had not his widowed mother discovered that the local congregational church suited her spiritual needs somewhat better than the local parish church. David’s enforced transfer to Old Road East Congregational Church (now St Paul’s URC) came at the age of seven and seems to have suited him. -- at the age of seven his mother remembers him returning home from a meeting full of enthusiasm, exclaiming ‘I’ve met a real missionary.’ By the time he was 15 David had become convinced that God had made the choice for him and was calling him into the ministry. The standard advice given by the church to young aspirants in those days was to go and get an arts degree, so he ended up at Oxford, studying English. The requisite degree completed he turned to theology, dividing his time between Mansfield College in Oxford and Kings College, London, his studies culminating in a PhD in the history of 19th century Presbyterianism. It was during that time that he gained his first taste of ministry as a part-time chaplain to London University, looking after a student hostel near King’s Cross and situated in the heart of the area’s red-light district. One senior colleague who visited the hostel for lunch later proudly phoned to inform David that he had been propositioned twice on the short walk back to Church House. College was followed by three years as a minister in the pleasant surroundings of Borehamwood and Radlet in south Hertfordshire but the call of education was not to be denied and in 1984 David moved to Cambridge to become chaplain to Robinson College. It was a daunting challenge, but one which he enjoyed greatly, as chaplain to the whole of a Christian community which ranged from Quaker to Greek Orthodox. From Cambridge he moved to Taunton, where he worked as Training Officer for the South Western synod – in his own words, ‘a real joy’. In 1992 David returned to Cambridge as lecturer in church history at the URC’s own Westminster College. On the retirement of Martin Cressey in 1996, he was appointed Principal, serving until 2001, when he succeeded Tony Burnham as General Secretary. When David Cornick was asked whether he was prepared to be interviewed as one of the candidates for General Secretary he was, in his own words, ‘gobsmacked’, and the sense of surprise and humility with which he accepted the appointment made a deep impression on many of those who followed the process. Principal of Westminster was a job which suited him down to the ground, combining academic, leadership and pastoral roles in a unique way. As he told Assembly last year, he was not at all sure that he was willing to leave the college for the potentially thankless post of General Secretary. Few at his service of induction can have failed to be moved by his account of an overwhelming experience of the grace and affirmation of God which came to him during an ecumenical communion service in Cambridge. He realized that he could not, in all conscience, care for students who were risking so much in worldly terms to join the ministry if he were not prepared to take risks himself. An avuncular figure, politely described as well-built, David Cornick gives the impression of someone who is more at home in a cardigan than in a suit. His relaxed appearance sometimes belies a sharpness of observation (and of wit), combined with a candour that is refreshing. A year into the job the multitude of challenges that face the church and the problems which have crossed his desk appear to have left him relatively unscathed -- though he did suggest that the question ‘how have you enjoyed you first year’ be avoided, on the grounds that the reply might be unprintable. One year on, the things he misses most are teaching, the contact with students and, most of all, daily contact with ecumenical colleagues. ‘The ecumenical thing’ is very close to the core of his faith, based on an unshakable belief that Jesus calls all his faithful followers to be one. Indeed, part of his enthusiasm for the URC is the hope that one day its experience in learning to live together and reconcile differences, such as those over infant baptism, will be of value to the wider church. The whole of his career in ministry has been spent, to a greater or lesser extent, working ecumenically - culminating in the richness of the daily ecumenical life of the Cambridge Theological Colleges Federation, through which students from Anglican, Methodist, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions share in both teaching and worship. While the job of General Secretary provides important and memorable opportunities for ecumenical contact – he recently shared in the consecration of a black Pentecostal bishop – David misses the daily closeness and worship with other traditions. ‘I’m quite surprised at how important that is for me. It feels as if you are driving a denominational bus rather than leaping aboard the ecumenical train -- and that goes against all my instincts. There are compensations. My sense of the wider ecumenical world has increased through meeting visitors here and visits abroad. I’ve become more aware of the world church but the real frustration is to realize how apart the churches here are.’ Ecumenism, he reflects ruefully, works wonderfully well at the local level, but is much more problematic when it comes to national structures. But if there have been losses, there have also been gains. The best feature of his first year has been the new people with whom he has come into contact. He has, he says, been constantly surprised by people’s willingness to serve the church in countless ways and has come to realize in a new way something of the commitment that there is across the church. At the local level he sees many churches engaging in creative ways with the changing communities in which they are set and one of his concerns is to ensure that the structures of the church do not get in their way. As General Secretary he shares what seems to be growing feeling within the church that the structures adopted in 1972 for a church which never expected to be around in 10 years time because it would have been absorbed into something greater, now need re-examination. ‘I think we need to go through a phase of listening to each other quite acutely and of trying to discover what shape the HS is calling us to be so that we can most effectively pursue God’s mission... We’re now roughly half the size we were in 1972 and I think we have to think carefully about what structures we actually want and whether the ones have are hindering or helping us.’ As to what changes in structure might come, David Cornick appears to have an open mind. Asked whether there is a future for Church House his answer is simply that it is up to Assembly to decide which pieces of work need to be done but that there is no point in Assembly calling for work without ensuring that there are properly supported staff to carry it out. He takes an equally relaxed attitude to the considerable growth in synod structures and staffing which have occurred over the past 30 years, though he believes that some time soon there needs to be ‘a friendly discussion’ over what responsibilities lie where. But the structures, he is clear, are not an end in themselves. ‘The biggest challenge facing the whole church in Britain is to maintain faithfulness and go on telling the gospel. That is what we’re here for. We’re called to be salt, called to be light, called to be tellers of the story of Jesus Christ. All the rest has to happen in order for the important things to happen, that’s what the structures are about.’ A feature of his year has been the publication of the report into the conversations between the Methodist and Anglican Churches – conversations in which the URC, to the dismay of some, was not invited to participate. Some have concluded, as a result, that the URC is no longer regarded as an ecumenical pioneer. David Cornick has mixed feelings, believing that we should not underplay the fact that the URC has achieved three unions, holding together a diversity of opinion and of church polity that others thought impossible. Some people, he believes, still see the URC as a beacon of hope, representing on a small scale what many hope to see one day achieved on a larger stage. At the same time he finds it understandable if others sometimes find it difficult to pin down the URC. Designed to be a catalyst for and a part of a larger union that never happened, the URC has never been quite sure of its own identity as either ‘united’ or ‘Reformed’. Potential partners, he believes, are perplexed sometimes at the lack of clear statements of the kind of church we are. In any case, he feels that the moves to reconcile the Church of England and the Methodists should be warmly welcomed as an opportunity to ‘heal the memories’ of past hurts between the two. The memories in our case, going back to the much earlier break-up of a united Protestant church in England in the 17th century, are quite different and will require a different conversation. In any case, he does not feel excluded: ‘I sense a great deal of graciousness from our Methodist and Anglican colleagues and a genuine sensitivity about where we are. I don’t think they have the slightest desire to leave us behind in any moves they make and I hope we will continue in conversation with them either together or separately.’ In the end it is the people he is meeting who give David Cornick hope -- people and the commitment he sees in them: ‘A commitment to faithfulness to Jesus Christ, to carrying on telling the Christian story and letting the Christian action happen.’ And if the URC is not quite sure of its own identity or set in its ways, then that too he sees as not an entirely bad thing. Referring to a word that so often provides a ‘get-out’ in URC documents and resolutions he observes: ‘We sometimes laughingly say that we’ve enthroned the little word “normally” in the URC, but that’s no bad thing because the Holy Spirit is not given to normality but to the unusual and the challenging. . It’s not going to be easy because the nature of our society is changing and what people expect from church is changing but I see all kinds of places where people are trying to meet that kind of challenge.’
David Cornick is the General Secretary of the URC
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