The Revd Dr Andrew Atherstone, Welby’s biographer, says Church growth is the ”˜golden thread’ that ties all the reforms together. Welby, he says, wants people to see that decline is ”˜not inevitable’. In Africa and China churches are booming. ”˜Globally, church growth is normal,’ he says. Welby, he suggests, is ”˜very optimistic about turning the Church of England around’.
Yet Atherstone admits that Welby’s tendency to focus on numbers ”˜makes some in the C of E nervous’. One Church observer says the reason clergy are panicky about the reforms is that they seem ”˜very bottom line ”” if you can’t get more punters in then you’ve failed’.
Atherstone suggests Welby wants the Church to be more entrepreneurial. The change to dioceses’ funding is intended to encourage that. Instead of the old model of one vicar looking after his medieval parish, the idea is to fund projects that no one has yet tried. Welby, says Atherstone, thinks the Church is too ”˜safety-conscious’, smothering start-ups in paperwork.
Critics, on the other hand, say the reforms are merely depressing the workforce. Talented young clergy are ”˜in despair’, they say ”” head office doesn’t seem to grasp what their ministry is really about.
Read it all from the Spectator.
[blockquote] “A new mood has taken hold of Lambeth Palace. Officials call it urgency; critics say it is panic. The Church of England, the thinking goes, is about to shrink rapidly, even vanish in some areas, unless urgent action is taken.” [/blockquote]
Okay. Those in Lambeth Palace who are across the detailed numbers will know how accurate this is. But regardless of whether CofE is going to “vanish in some areas”, it is clear to any observer that the CofE has been steadily shrinking for many years, and its trajectory remains downward.
I don’t think Justin Welby will succeed in changing that: He and his bishops have missed the fundamental point that the growing Anglican churches around the world are also the churches that are strong on doctrine. The contrast with the CofE’s approach to doctrine couldn’t be more stark.
But equally, many of ++Welby’s critics within CofE also have their heads in the sand: The CofE is shrinking and even more urgently, it is running out of money. When you have 12,000 listed heritage buildings, and the parishioners who maintain them (by voluntary work and by their tithes) are vanishing, then the drain becomes enormous.
[blockquote] “The other is to give business-school training to bishops and deans and, more controversially, to identify a ‘talent pool’ of future leaders — in the official language, people ‘with exceptional strategic leadership potential for Gospel, Kingdom and Church impact’.” [/blockquote]
This is all rather strange to this pew-dweller in the diocese of Sydney. The primary expectation that we place on our bishops and deans is to give pastoral care to those at the sharp end, i.e. the clergy, and to give leadership on contentious issues.
And we don’t really have a “talent pool”. Decisions are made when vacancies arise, and a person who was never identified early on in their career as a great prospect may in fact be the one who shows the qualities years later to be called as a bishop.
This also shows the major strategic mistake made by the bishops of the Church of England, in throwing their weight behind women bishops. The reality of the CofE’s new polity is that those who cannot accept the ministry of women bishops are no longer wanted in the church, regardless of what cooing noises are made to avoid any unpleasantness.
It is expected and hoped that complementarians will die out in the CofE in a generation or two.
Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! The complementarians (i.e. those who believe that the scriptures teach that only men should lead congregations and be bishops) bring the very qualities that the CofE so desperately needs right now. They grow their congregations, and they plant new churches. Their congregations give generously, particularly to commissioning new candidates for the ministry. Yet these are the people that the CofE doesn’t want.
The Church of England doesn’t need business school training for its leaders. Rather, what it needs is for those leaders to do some serious soul-searching, to face the truth that they need to repent from some of the attitudes and beliefs that they hold most dear.