Letting Bishops set the agenda

Driving in the celebrate the 8.00am this morning, I was encouraged to hear Archbishop Barry on the BBC 'Sunday' programme state plainly and straightforwardly that he would have no problem about ordaining someone in a stable gay parnership to the episcopate. Putting what he said in context is most important, given the press headlines generated by this interview.

Such a candidate would have to be in the frame of consideration by the Province's Electoral College. It would be his duty as Archbishop to be sure the College was appraised of the candidates personal circumstances and the possible implications. If the College discerns this is the right person to called to the task, then Barry would have no problems consecrating them. However, the real point is lost on the sensation-mongers.

Here we have a church leader who is not expressing personal feelings, or baring his conscience to the public, but exercising his true office - articulating the mind of the church, expressed through the consultations and deliberations of the Electoral College. Just because he's a Bishop and a successor of the Apostles doesn't mean that he's going to pull rank and say, all of a sudden, that he will / won't serve as consecrator of a gay Bishop, because he does / doesn't agree with this, or because he's a 'successor of the Apostles' he has to dig his heels in on the part of 'tradition', and pursue a line of action outside of the consultative process. That's a strong statement indeed.

As a bishop he is going to be true to his calling, reminding the church of its tradition and its moral and spiritual duties, calling the church make up its mind, and acting accordingly. This is not 'bishop as monarch/despot' as in so much Christian history, but bishop as 'servant of God's servants'. I think this could take the church a lot further in mission to contemporary culture than many other models. It's rather a pity that many aspects of the church's constitution still presume the monarchical model. Perhaps we need several generations of alternative exemplars before the business of constitutional change becomes imperative.

Either side of the weekend the Diocese of Llandaff has welcomed the Bishops of Rockhampton (in Queensland, Australia), Milwaukee and Los Angeles, (USA) and Western Mexico, for a visit prior to the Lambeth Conference. The diocesan mission committee hosted an open meeting for them tonight after Evensong at Christchurch Radyr, attended by about thirty people. Straight after Evensong at St John's, I drove out there, and arrived just after the first speaker, and was very glad I'd made the effort.

Despite the current obsession with sexual morality, the majority present and the epsicopal speakers showed they were more concerned with mission, with Anglican adoption of Millennium Development Goals, with renewal of pastoral ministry in the churches, with issues of justice, peace and environment.

The questions we didn't get around to tackling fully, which might have taken all night, were how we stop the media and disaffected Puritans setting the agenda of concerns, not to mention what we really understand as family whenever we want the church to uphold and secure the environment in which all family life in its rich variety can flourish.

Sunday cheer

.
I may get depressed about the overall state of the church, but Sunday worship in our Parish even if it's tiring, usually lifts my spirits. I've got Chris Seaton, a ministerial student from St Michael's College Llandaff on placement with me for two terms. He started today. He's training as a minister in secular employment, supporting himself as an electrical engineer. He had fifteen years in the Merchant Navy, so he comes to ministry, with lots of life experience and a strong layman's faith still intact. It'll be great to have someone around who can see the situation through fresh eyes.

Over refreshments after the main Eucharist, I chatted to a man of retirement age who had attended the service and taken Communion. He turned out to be Orthodox, and had lived in the U.K. for most of his life (without ever losing his Greek accent). Normally, he attended St Nicholas Greek Church, just over the railway line, next to St Mary's Parish Church. But, for a change he'd decided to come to us.

He told me that he'd become acquainted with an older man - probably queuing in the shops in Canton - who was a Muslim. This man had quizzed him about Christianity, which had spurred him to acquire a Gospel text and a few other pamphlets from his church to offer the enquirer, who had been pleased to receive them, to help his exploration along. What did these two men have in common? Both spoke English with a foreign accent, had been born in another country and had settled here earlier in life. And that was sufficient for a little grass-roots interfaith dialogue to begin.

At the Tredegarville School Eucharist in the afternoon, churchwarden Jane made us smile. Since we've been worshipping in the school, Jane has started reading lessons regularly. In times past it had been only occasionally. As is often the case, the problem she has is not with reading as such - she's an avid reader - but reading confidently out loud. It's an acquired skill and needs lots of encouragement.

For the duration of my sick leave, Jane asked if she could have the Sunday readings in advance, both to print out for the others, and to practice. She ended up taking the leaflet into work - she's a baker and confectioner at Sainsburys - to ask advice on awkward pronunciations from one of her workmates, a Minister's wife. This led to her practising the readings in front of her colleagues during the tea-break to everyone's enjoyment. Now they're encouraging her to carry on practising at work. Who would have thought it?

Ah - the ways of the Spirit!

Meetings that matter - God on Mondays

.
Having run 'God on Mondays' successfully for the past eighteen months in partnership with a clerical colleague, I honestly wondered how I might continue to sustain something worth attending, now that I am working on my own. When we started, Jenny organised others from St James' to provide refreshments. This looked as if it might stop when we moved pastoral operations into the school, but it didn't. Julie, one of the school mums, a regular participant since the beginning, baptized at the 'God on Mondays' service this time last year, offered to help organise refreshments, and has ended up taking charge of it. She enjoys doing it and that just gives me so much pleasure.

But, how to continue without the worship becoming literally a one man band? For me one of the best things about 'God on Mondays' was working with a female colleague. The complementary partnership of a man and a woman offering worship and teaching is just a great way of breaking the institutionalised mould of expectations - and it goes down well with people.

I put my problem to the teaching staff by posing the question of sustainability. If far too much depended on me, then it might fail if I got sick. Could anybody help? The answer wasn't long in coming. Kelly, one of the class teachers, responsible for Computers in the school curriculum, and thus someone I'd already got to know as Governor interested in these matters, offered her help. She's an evangelical Christian, actively involved in her own church community, and therefore not a newcomer to leading worship.

After an initial conversation and a planning session for the term, we re-started 'God on Mondays' this afternoon, with Kelly leading worship and me telling the story of the Road to Emmaus, and playing the guitar, as usual. It all went very well, and quite surprisingly to me, Kelly admitted her nervousness afterwards, despite her being a confident class teacher, at home with the kids. Well, I guess that was quite a new role for her. Such courage to be prepared to have a go at it.

It was a most encouraging new beginning, and not only for this reason.

Among those attending 'God on Mondays' today was the familiar face of a woman I had seen before, and mentioned in a previous posting, standing beneath the underpass by City Hall, quietly simply proclaiming the essential Gospel message to passers by. In recent weeks, she's also come into St John's to pray, after her sessions in the subway. Last Monday she was in school, collecting a grandchild. This week she and the grandchild joined us for 'God on Mondays' It was delightful, seeing her piece together the fact that I was the guy riding through the underpass on the bike who smiled at her; the same who was there in St John's dressed up and going through these rituals that 'Church' people do; The same man behind a guitar in the school with the kids. Small world.

Across all the different 'cultural' paths we devise for ourselves, meetings happen between people who treasure the same essential things in life, things which unite us, no matter how different our origins, our interests, our struggle to make life meaningful. At the end of the day these are meetings that matter, to thank God for at the end of the day.

Different kinds of ground-breaking

.
Palm Sunday arrived early for us today at Tredegarville School, where Fr Roy Doxsey, Chris and I shared in an end of term Eucharist with distribution of palm branches in the school hall. Roy had already been up to St Teilo's Church Comprehensive school to do an assembly there, in the rush hour traffic, and dashed back to Adamsdown, joining us ten minutes behind schedule. It's a good three miles journey either way, and the driving is very stressful. Unfortunately, a sense of duty isn't always good for the health.

For Chris, this was her last service with us in the Parish, before moving on to Radyr. She was clearly moved by the children's cheery singing and shouting Hosannas. I'm sorry to see her go, and won't enjoy working solo as an ordained pastor in our setting. Being on the 'edge of the centre' is one thing, but being on the edge of the church is rather different. And that's what it feels like when your colleagues are all somewhere else ploughing their own furrows, too busy to down tools and catch up on life, or make plans together.

Anyway, I got back to St John's well before the midday Eucharist, as I had an appointment with Danny McGee, the site foreman for the southern churchyard work, to bury the bits and pieces of bone which had been carefully sifted out of the earth moved and set aside for re-burial. Apparently in one corner of the area excavated for the path, a concentration of disconnected bones had been unearthed, probably buried there last time work was done to create an entrance to the Old Library cellar. At that time headstones were all placed in a unnatural straight line in from of the boundary fence, and concreted in.

A small plastic sachet was unearthed with notes on it giving the reference numbers of the plots from which the bones had been gathered. This was re-buried in the metre square pit the men had dug to re-house the bones - about 15 kilos worth in all. This time they were re-buried in the middle of a bed containing shrubs, with a mark incised on the nearby path to record the spot. I said some appropriate prayers of thanksgiving and committal over them before the hole was filled in. It was really good to see that this small team of construction workers were conscientious about doing this, as a duty to our Cardiffian forebears. One sometimes gets the impression that very little is sacred any more, especially when you come into church to find one of the city centre's 'street people' puffing away at a cigarette in a side chapel.

Tonight I joined a small working group assembled by Fr Peter Collins, administrator of the Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of St David, is preparing for a major development funding appeal, to enable their strategically sited building to be able to play a fuller role in the life of both the city and the Archdiocese of Cardiff. The Cathedral's congregation is growing significantly, not least because of the number of new foreign nationals, among the students and workers of the city. The Cathedral Council has started exploring how it may be possible to make more of the responses of the prime site building, right next to the new SDII development.

What I was able to share with them was some of the experience I've accumulated in the past three years of doing city centre mission, and learning about how much all our churches need to do in order to get the recognition they deserve and play a full part in shaping the future of the city. If was comforting to hear other people echoing my discoveries from their own experience ... at least we know what we have to work at together. Not least learning how to dialogue with people who belong to the foreign culture of local government and civil service.

Yesterday lunchtime I attended a ground breaking ceremony to inaugurate formally the construction work for the new city library on the site of the old Marriott hotel car park. My friend Denzil John, Pastor of Tabernacl Baptist church was there with his organist and a couple of deacons. I often find myself in this kind of 'social?' event the only cleric among the politicians and executive 'suits', so it was good to be able to share the moment with a colleague. I may be the lone Anglican in the city, centre, but I am consoled by having fine ecumenical colleagues.

To be a public witness

.
There's a demure youngish middle-aged woman of afro-Caribbean origin, I'd say from her accent, who stands a few hours at a time, several days a week in the Boulevard de Nantes subway close to the City Hall. She simply stands there saying clearly, simply without ranting "God is alive. Jesus saves." Nothing more, hour after hour.

It's her personal act of witness to her faith, week in week out, all weathers. No banners, no tracts, no conversation. When she first started, she spoke quite shyly and quietly, with obvious sincerity and humility. As her confidence has increased, her voice has become stronger, but it remains unforced. This is not 'argument weak, shout louder' territory. Her action may be deemed eccentric, yet it's touchingly beautiful.

I always smile at her, but I never manage to catch her eye. It could be a cultural thing. Some African and Caribbean women don't look a man in the eye. It's not because they are necessarily shy or consider themselves inferior, it's more like a gesture of respect for someone to glance at them and then look away, especially a priest. It was something I found quite disconcerting when I first encountered it in the black community where I served as a young pastor. Fortunately, a colleague explained this to me, which was a reassurance.

It'd be inappropriate for me to interrupt her, or to comment aloud, though doubtless some passers by may well do. She must, by now, know many of the regulars who go back and fore. She's not doing it to be appreciated, nor to confront. She's declaring what gives her life meaning and purpose in the most simple and direct way, in season and out of season, whether it meaks sense or not.

Quietly, shyly, she's encouraging me to be myself too.