Abstract
In the late 1940s, Arthur Smith, the Rector of South Ormsby in Lincoln Diocese, was persuaded to set up a team ministry with two other clergy. The South Ormsby experiment, comprising 15 parishes, 1100 people and 75 square miles of countryside, continued well into the 1960s and at its height had some 500 people worshipping in these tiny villages. In the late 1980s a television team producing a documentary on the Church of England revisited these parishes. Now there was but one priest presiding over the same group of parishes. It felt like an impossible task. This trend of linking country parishes has continued in almost exponential terms and now urban parishes are experiencing something similar.
This trend represents both a revolution and an enormous challenge, and Malcolm Grundy’s book responds to precisely this transformation. Grundy brings a wealth of experience to address these issues from a great variety of different ministries. He sees this shift as the ‘elephant in the room’ rarely acknowledged by dioceses. He addresses the issues with a variety of different analyses, theological and managerial. This unacknowledged elephant must be recognized and new strategies employed to respond to the issues raised. Grundy’s bibliography alone reveals the rich treasury of reading standing behind his analysis. ‘Watching over in community’ is a key phrase, which is then developed to reveal a shared identity in oversight; oversight is his synonym for episkope and is the word generally used to translate that theological term. The anthropological concept of liminality is a key term too, as he moves on to look at multi-congregational leadership. Describing different approaches, he moves away from ‘leadership from the front’ to a more consultative and communal pattern, rooted in the Lima Report’s analysis of ecclesiology and ministry. His final chapter draws together the threads, concluding with three vocational questions about congregations, ministers and denominations in this new ‘multi-world’.
The contemporary challenge posed by this transformation makes Grundy’s book part of the essential reading for any engaged in such ministry. There are, however, questions which remain. Almost all the analysis uses the terms ‘congregation’ and ‘denomination’ throughout. Neither parish nor church is a keyword. For those ministering in the Church of England this itself poses questions since there remains a commitment to a ministry to all within the community. No part of England (apart from cathedral closes and royal peculiars) stands outside a parish. Furthermore, the Church of England sees itself as a national church, a key part of the Church catholic in the land. Although there are frequent references to theology and some to ecclesiology, this worthy analysis is effectively about process and organization. The analysis might have benefited from fewer citations of numerous authors and a deeper analysis of those who remain essential to the argument. Gratitude is certainly due to Malcolm Grundy for his response to the challenge, and it may best be read alongside other analyses focused more directly on the theological challenges and their implications.