New directions in my priestly ministry

Introduction

I have been in my role of Dean of Studies with South West Ministry Training Course (SWMTC) for two years now: a good period to reflect on the nature of the role and its implications. From the start, recognizing the sharp contrast between this and previous roles as curate, university chaplain and parish priest, I was concerned that in a rather indefinite way I was in danger of losing my priestly ministry. For those outside the domains of theological education I should explain that a dean of studies oversees and manages the academic programmes, including student pathways, module teachers and all academic administration. The outward responsibilities are now towards Durham University, who validate the relatively new Common Awards in which most ordinands and other students are now enrolled. The transition from local validation to this central system was and continues to be somewhat burdensome. I am also involved directly in some of the formational work as a staff tutor and lecturer at residential weekend classes. SWMTC is a non-residential theological education institution (TEI) encompassing ordinands, Readers, independent students and participants on short courses. While I have licences from the Bishop of Exeter and the Bishop of Truro, I have no parish responsibilities or commitments save those that I take on myself.

I was sufficiently worried about this potential loss that I spoke to my spiritual director. He tried to suggest that I be more precise and jot down (if only mentally) what exactly priestly ministry meant – ‘like on the back of a postcard’. This essay is a somewhat worked up version of what that postcard might say (and somewhat longer). It also includes the responses made by ordinands and serving clergy when I asked the same question in a survey. I also examine this question in dialogue with two earlier articles in this publication, by David Moss and John Walker. ¹ In the background lie changes to the overall landscape as perhaps envisaged in the report Resourcing Ministerial Education, ² as well as continued wrestling with what ministry and priesthood mean for the Church of England today; further into the shadows, questions about the shape of the Church itself impact obliquely on these other issues. Discussions about finance, mission and sexuality add a final zest to an already rich mixture. Additionally, the strong texts of the past still resonate in this area: Ramsey’s The Christian Priest Today, Pritchard’s The Life and Work of a Priest and the recently reissued Priestly Spirituality by Hans Urs von Balthasar, among others. ³

In attempting to explicate not only what the risk and the loss might be, but in offering ways of mitigating these, or perhaps of conceptualizing them differently, I hope that this essay avoids charges of solipsism to become an offering to others in this sector and to those with overlapping experience. The wider cultural milieu is informed by a relentless, sometimes perhaps, narcissistic quest for self; so I hope also to place this self-exploration into a pattern of Christian thinking, in which all identity is ultimately rooted in the being of God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Resources

David Moss, former Principal of SWMTC, wrote in 2009 comparing theological courses and colleges. He began to examine what theological construal there was of residency and non-residency alike, to the extent that they might offer quite different approaches to formation, rather than one simply being a pale imitation of the other. And given this difference, what theological value might be placed on this occasional coming together in community in pursuit of vocation? The sharpness of not being residential pushes the thinking ordinand and staff member into considering the effect of the particular context on formation and thus into asking ‘how easily – and in what way – does the experience of God’s providence become reflectively and “institutionally” available to me here and now through the process of formation I am undergoing?’ ⁴

Eucharistic overtones are found both in this irregular residential gathering for study and worship, and in the way the community thus formed replays the foundational events of its Christian meaning. Moss underlines the significance of practising that telling of the story in the context of the formation process and later reflection upon this process in a written journal. This leads to what he calls ‘the challenge of a self-knowing through a plurality of settings – institutional and missional alike – where the realities of power are neither ignored nor neglected’. ⁵ The rehearsal and disturbance of this self-knowledge becomes not only a tool for formation, but (in my interpretation) a potential epistemological break between residency and non-residency: non-resident students know God in a different way and are known by God differently. The nature of that difference requires further theological analysis.

More recently, John Walker distils insights from an empirical research project designed to examine sustainable growth in parish churches and fresh expressions of Church. He sees the priest as ‘the keeper, teller and shaper’ of particular parish stories, immersed in the ‘unique back-story of their faith-community’. The priest’s role is to weave together the self with the local stories, and with the broader Christian tradition, and to ‘preside over a transforming cycle in which each person’s story is made sense of by the hermeneutic of the community and the faith’. ⁶ Church growth occurs as the individual moves through a process of self-perception, faith community and Christian tradition, and back to a rediscovered and renewed identity.

The survey referred to earlier consisted of two parts: a request sent to clergy by a diocesan officer asking them to email me with a response to the question: ‘What does priestly ministry mean to you? in about 20–40 words … I would suggest a quick answer based on gut response.’ A similar question was posed to SWMTC ordinands at a residential weekend, asking them to write their responses on a card in a similar number of words. This was a small and relatively informal piece of research: 18 responses from clergy, 19 responses from ordinands. It nevertheless provides a snapshot of concepts, thinking, impressions and feelings at a particular moment. All attributions and identity markers have been removed; clergy have given permission for their words to be included, and no record was made to link particular ordinands with particular words. All participants were aware that this enquiry might result in an academic paper.

Following a simple version of grounded theory, ⁷ analysis of responses to the ‘back of a postcard’ exercise by clergy and ordinands suggests a movement between two poles of being and doing. At the ‘being’ end, there were comments such as ‘Priestly ministry is to be a representative of Jesus in public’, ‘Being human, being spiritual / being humble, being confident …’ and ‘Being the person God has called me to be in relation with the people he has placed me among …’; at the ‘doing’ end, comments included: ‘I see my role as minister as Leader, Exemplar, Enabler and Pastor’, ‘celebrating communion, blessing God’s children and absolving penitents’, ‘He/she is Preacher, Leader, Pastor, Encourager’.

In most replies there was something of both poles, perhaps best summed up in these words:

My gut reaction to your question is that my ministry as a Rector is to run the place, do my mission action plan and work with the PCC etc.; my priestly ministry is about ‘being present and making present’.

Discussion

A key question arises from each of the resources I have described above. In reverse order, and from the informal survey initially: what is now my ‘doing’ in relation to a continued ‘being’? The clergy described seem to be in the process of working out the link between two aspects of priestly ministry, moving backwards and forwards between two poles in a creative process of discovery. In part, this reflects the dynamic of the Ordinal to which in some form all will have subscribed: ‘to lead God’s people in the offering of praise … to set the example of the Good Shepherd always before them as the pattern of their calling’. ⁸ So if my feeling is that I have lost something, this has much more to do with action, since I know that cerebrally I have lost none of the legal status of priesthood (I am still subject to Canon Law, Clergy Discipline and Guidelines on Clergy Conduct), and theologically I would still subscribe to some kind of irreversible change at ordination. Having moved then from the normal compass of parish life (and from university chaplaincy which can be quite similar), the task is just the same as other clergy, but in a different context: immersing myself in this dynamic intersection of the abstract and the concrete, of the ontological and the methodological.

Walker’s article emphasizes the weaving together of personal, parish and overarching Christian stories as a significant component of sustainable growth. If my parish now abides principally in the students and staff of SWMTC, what is its narrative as a community of practice, of learning, of prayer, of coming together and drawing apart? ⁹ What is its unique back-story?

Moss’s analysis of residence and non-residence is primarily concerned with student experience and formation. For staff teaching on courses who have little parish responsibility, there may be important parallels: uprooted from the parish system, I am non-resident too. So within the trope of residence/non-residence as both a geographical and imaginary space, how do I know differently? This is not about knowing different things, but a suggestion that the epistemological break between residence and non-residence is sufficiently acute that the process of knowing is different – and if so, how would that be described? And given that this discussion is about priestly ministry in the context of formation, it would be right to render this focus more sharply (it is tempting to say focus down, but it might well be a greater focus) by asking: How do I know God differently or how is God’s gracious availability to me different in these circumstances?

Bringing these questions together might suggest that interrogating the back-story of SWMTC illuminates (at least in part) how the knowing is different; and it is only at that stage that any answer can be made in the translation into doing or action. The phrase ‘non-residential community’ not only appears as a contradiction in terms but more importantly premises community on a default of residence. Just as ‘community’ is a slippery concept, so (as Moss points out) residence in theological colleges is a very mixed economy. ¹⁰ If instead the notion of a dispersed community is employed, value is given both to the communal aspects and to its dispersion. So SWMTC ordinands, who are well established in their own parishes, are uprooted for very short periods of evening classes and slightly longer residential weekends, and then returned just as promptly to their origins. At its best, this sharp oscillation results in a theological critique of both local and universal – the particular and the abstract, the contextual and the acontextual brought together in juxtaposition, allowing the possibility of shifting the theology of both. Here is the unique back-story of the Course, with the flavour in SWMTC’s case of the history, culture and geography of the deep South West. Here also is the rub: this theological disturbance is likely not only to make life uncomfortable for students, but also for their parishes and dioceses. The ground on which to pitch the tent, put up the shelters, create the abiding home is no longer stable.

Granted that the same uprooting occurs for students of residential colleges, from a well-established parish base to the more bracing environment of College; yet the temptation for most is always to settle, and whatever the terrain to risk pitching the tent. The strangeness of College life can then be viewed from this safe space, without the forced oscillation imposed by non-resident formation.

A similar sense of uprooting or ‘degrounding’ (to use Judith Butler’s word) permeates my own experience, with a resultant sense of loss. ¹¹ It has led me to question and examine my own story of vocation, and more especially to seek meaning for these present feelings. It has reopened a process of self-reflection which a more settled existence might close down – the ‘profound hiatus in the narrative of [my] own life’ may be a necessary precursor to a dynamic of more becoming. ¹² If our dispersed students are open to a different way of knowing, then so am I as a non-resident educator. And more: given the essentially mimetic quality of education for ministry, it could be said to be essential that I am engaged in the same struggles. Writing about communities of practice, Wenger illustrates the value of this kind of reciprocity:

educational processes based (like apprenticeships) on actual participation are effective in fostering learning not just because they are better pedagogical ideas, but more fundamentally because they are “epistemologically correct”, so to speak. There is a match between knowing and learning, between the nature of competence and the process by which it is acquired, shared and extended. ¹³

For the students, the knowing differently is the ability to step outside the confines of their immediate environment at the same time as being deeply rooted in it: a bifocal and reciprocal theological exploration. Their apprehension of God in this, or God’s apprehension of them, might follow the same pattern, so that the universal is always translated to the particular, and the particular is always understood in dialogue with the universal.

For the ‘dispersed’ educator, the knowing differently is either (or both) a walk into the lightness and freedom of greater self-realization with God, or into the darker paths of uncertainty. God’s availability to me here, or my availability to God, is shorn of the assumptions and accretions which have been developed in a previous home or in a former existence. Instead of the domesticated architecture of the familiar, the wide open spaces for imagination and creativity both prompt response, and terrify by their generosity.

Rowan Williams, in a lecture celebrating and analysing Ramsey’s The Christian Priest Today, writes of the Church as ‘a climate or a landscape’ which it is our task to inhabit, rather than to construct or organize. ¹⁴ Christ called some to be apostles, to be witnesses in the community of Christ’s presence and to make connections with other such communities. This emphasis on the dialectic of apostle and community avoids the trap of ‘me and my ministry’: the paradox is that the freedom of the journey may run counter to the possibility of a mutual exchange of stories, in which I am both responsible and supported.

Images of exile, desert and wilderness might be appropriate hooks on which to develop further thinking, combining (for most people) a level of physical and existential discomfort. While I might respond with the psalmist: ‘How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?’ (Ps. 137.4), these are also those especially ‘thin’ places where both the divine and the demonic seem closer. An additional aim, therefore, is the discernment to separate out these two inspirational drivers. Mother Mary Clare (of the Sisters of the Love of God in Oxford) offers another take on the image of weaver, at the same time as anchoring this exploration into God’s own freedom:

We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness; we must first accept that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven; it is therefore no good trying to patch. We must rather set up the loom on which coming generations may weave a new cloth according to the pattern God provides. ¹⁵

Coming almost full circle and back to the clergy moving between poles of being and doing, the challenge then becomes a translation of this imperative of provisionality into the daily pattern of working life. Given the fluidity and insecurity of theological education in the Church of England at present, that may be the only rational response.