The thorny issue of pastoral visiting

… or, understanding why pastoral visiting is an issue of such contention.

In the letters section of the past two issues of Reform (the United Reformed Church’s national magazine), pastoral visiting by ministers (or lack thereof) has once again become the subject of attention.  Ever since I was at ‘Minister School’ it was an issue: what pattern of pastoral ministry should one adopt? How should we decide who to visit? And what if we’re called to the Ministry of Word and Sacraments, but have no gifting in, or flair for it?

The weight given to pastoral visiting of congregations by ministers seems peculiar to our tradition/denomination.  I am a member of several forums for clergy/church leaders, and very rarely do I ever see posts from participants of other denominations concerning pastoral visiting.  I do not wish to downgrade its importance  – it is one of our particular treasures – but I do think there is a distinction to be made between pastoral care (which is the responsibility of the congregation as a whole) and spiritual development (which requires more expertise).  I would like to suggest that understanding their subtle differences requires exploring their rootedness, both in Reformed Theology and the age of modernity.

A Biblical perspective on the issue might involve turning to 1 Corinthians 12 (Paul’s description of the Body of Christ).  The Reformed understanding of Church locates the fully formed Body within the local congregation, requiring it to take on the care and wellbeing of every member: a commendable thing.  But as Paul also reminds us in Ephesians 4, not everyone is called to be a pastor; and as members of the priesthood of all believers, caring should be a communal effort, not the sole preserve of an individual whose job title is actually to proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments.

However, it must also be understood that Reformed Theology has emerged within Modernity, an age during which religion was considered a private pastime and spiritual development an intensely personal activity. I therefore have some sympathy with those reluctant to invite anyone other than a Minister, trained in theology and with the weight of perceived authority resting on his or her shoulders, into their personal space.

As the age of modernity passes, the concept of spiritual development founded in conversation between an individual and perceived expert is also passing. Universal education, international travel and technological developments have given individuals easy access to a plethora of materials aiding personal growth.  How this is impacting on society is an issue for another day; but suffice to say it has a huge effect on how younger people view spirituality.

For most people home remains a personal domain, a place where one might explore spirituality, but certainly not engage in conversation about it.  I am far more likely to explore such ideas over coffee or within the context of a toddler group.  I would like to suggest that the pattern of pastoral visiting  appropriate when I first trained for ministry twenty years ago is no longer so.  Instead I suggest we heed the wise words of a minister who wrote in a letter to Reform magazine (Dec/Jan 2019):

Once again, it appears favourable to re-advocate old and currently impossible models [of pastoral visiting]. But those models have sadly put us where we are today. We must share the care of our existing fellowships whilst seeking varied ways to engage with our changing society to ensure an effective witness of God’s love for the future.

what’s really going on when sacred and secular collide?

Last week a Remembrance sermon preached in Hinckley, Leicestershire, went viral.  Some have condemned it as a tirade, entirely inappropriate for such an occasion, while others see it as a faithful representation of what Jesus taught.  The social media response has ranged from outright disgust to full agreement.

Such a variety of responses demonstrates the nation’s lack of common agreement on what is appropriate when secular meets sacred in the public realm.  I would suggest this is representative of a far bigger issue facing, not just those of us engaged in Christian mission and ministry, but every aspect of society.

There can be no denying that the political and social influence of the institutional church in Great Britain is waining.  The modern age and its quest for certainty and scientific truth has given way to a new era, as yet unnamed and undefined. This post-postmodern paradigm, characterised by constant technological, social, political and economic change, has created a milieu of ideas that render old certainties null and void, not least in the field of religion.  Churches in the inherited model faithfully maintain a set of traditions, doctrines and practices shaped for a modern age,  while generations of spiritual seekers explore ideas of faith and belief almost entirely outside these parameters.

The result is an ever increasing gap between what the church offers and public perception of what the church is there for.  A good example of this is how Great Britain as a nation deals with grief.

Public displays of grief as a signifier of a change in religious perspectives

It is now more than twenty years since public grief over Princess Diana’s death spilled out onto the square in front of Kensington Palace in the form of flowers, candles and soft toys.  What might be remembered as mass hysteria highlighted an issue that the church had already slowly been coming to terms with: that the spiritual thirst of a huge swathe of the British population is not being quenched in any way by organised religion.

Differences in perceptions of how people can appropriately grieve are huge. In the past decade there have been many news stories of arguments between families and cemetery authorities over what constitutes a dignified symbol of mourning. I would like to suggest that the reason for this is a lack of joint understanding about what is sacred and what is profane. Where once families would have placed crosses and angels on headstones – symbols of their confidence in the departed’s passing to a better place – it is now not uncommon to see symbols of their life here on earth: teddies, windmills, and even football shirts.

In the case of Princess Diana, informal outpourings of grief over her death gave way to a formal act of mourning.  A televised state funeral took place, with all the pomp and ceremony the Palace and Church of England could muster. But Elton John sang at the service and Diana’s brother took the opportunity to pillory the Royal Family. In the meantime books of condolence were set up around in town halls around the country so that the population in its entirety – religious or not – could pay tribute.

Since then a curious practice of combining the sacred and profane at moments of public grief has become normalised in England.  Across the country roadside shrines have been springing up where fatalities have occurred – a noticeable one being over the M5 after a terrible accident near Taunton in 2011. There is currently one just north of Cullompton which has as its centrepiece a huge cross.

Increasingly human rites of passage are celebrated outside the context of  the church, and placed either in the hands of the state or the mourners themselves.   Civil celebrants now regularly take funerals, and weddings in hotels now outnumber church weddings.  During a recent preschool visit to my local parish church, one parent said of the font: “Well I don’t suppose it’s really needed anymore.”

From religion to spirituality: what is really going on?

For many decades sociologists have described the process of decline of the institutional church as ‘secularisation’, claiming that the decline in church attendance is evidence of a waining interest in faith and religion.  However, in recent years this assumption has been challenged.  It has been suggested that, while traditional church practice is declining, new ways of exploring faith and expressing spirituality are on the rise.

In 2012 Religion and Change in Modern Britain, the culmination of the government funded Religion and Society Programme, was published.  In its introduction, Linda Woodhead, the co-editor of the book, questions the validity of the secularisation debate. She suggests that assumptions made by scholars about the faith of the British population, and the questions they have been trying to answer regarding religion, have been the wrong ones. Rather than counting people who are engaged with organised religion, Woodhead suggests that sociologists should be seeking to understand  how political, social and economic developments impact on religious thought and vice versa, examining how changes in religious practice reflect and relate to other aspects of life and exploring the extent to which belief underpins or holds back social change.

Woodhead uses the example of healthcare to demonstrate the changing role of the British church, both formally and informally.  During the pre-modern and early modern period there was a clear link between faith and healing.  Public health and social care was provided by practitioners such a midwives and deacons on behalf of the church.  Throughout the modern period the influence of science increased, reducing the perceived value of faith-based care provision and casting doubt on its efficacy.

The ultimate expression of this was the formation of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom in 1948, and those who worked outside the parameters of scientific endeavour were increasingly ostracised, with their knowledge and expertise called into question.  Woodhead argues that, while the Labour government was furnishing the British population with hopes of a socialist utopia, religiosity, perceived as being in decline due to the loss of power in the traditional church, was transforming.  From the 1960s onwards, within Christianity, a new form of evangelicalism took hold, with the likes of Billy Graham playing to stadia of tens of thousands.  Seemingly by contrast, but also symbolic of the privatisation of religion, interest in New Age and neo-Pagan spiritualities was on the rise.

Often connected with both evangelicalism and alternative spiritualities is a focus on personal healing, salvation and human growth.  Since around 1990 there has been a huge increase in the influence of holistic approaches to healing, many of which are founded in Eastern religious belief rather than Western science.  In Cullompton, for example, as well as the Natural Health Care Centre which exists totally apart from the National Health Service, is the Culm Valley Integrated Health Centre.  The vision of a local GP who also happens to be a practising Christian, it combines both NHS services and complimentary therapies on one site.

Woodhead argues that:

religion returns to healthcare under the market regime – but in a new form… It is not simply a case of religion taking up where it left off before the NHS, because it is significantly changed under the new conditions under which it arises… This is no ‘folk religion’. It is a form of religion which is as inseparable from advanced consumer capitalism, popular culture and the media as the Church of England is from the nation state. (pp21-22)

So where is God in all this?

Woodhead’s observations and call for her peers to question their own underlying assumptions holds merit.  Analysis which moves from simply counting patterns of human activity to considering the impact on religiosity of myriad social, political and economic influences and trends, and its impact on them, has to be a good thing.

However, I do find the perspectives of Woodhead et al lacking in one thing: a focus on God – or should I say, revelation?  When Woodhead suggests that belief in the NHS has replaced belief in God I think she is mistaken.  The NHS might be one thing to believe in. But if her initial premise is correct, and there is much more to faith and belief than attendance at church, should she not consider that there might be a revelatory force driving it?

I started going to church as a young adult in the days when Peter Mandelson said, “We don’t do God.”  I have trained and ministered against a backdrop which I always assumed was hostile to faith, and was afraid to bring it up in conversation (“Never talk about sex, politics of religion”).  I believed the white (predominantly male) middle class minority who controlled the media when they said that people had no time for, or interest in, religion anymore.

But my experience of people, both in Manchester where I previously worked and now in Devon is very different.  Whether it be in prisons, toddler groups, art exhibitions or Mind, Body Spirit fairs, I find there is a yearning for conversation about God, faith, belief and the universe (although they might well not have the language to articulate it); a conversation between two equals, where we can explore together what it means to have faith.  Unfortunately it is very rarely assumed by those I encounter that such a conversation would ever take place in a church.

I would like to suggest that the secularisation of certain spheres in the public realm has given a false picture of the levels of faith in this nation.  It has assumed that a population which no longer attends church no longer believes.  And while it might be that what people believe falls outside the realms of traditional doctrine, that does not necessarily make it untrue.

And so we return to the Remembrance Sunday sermon preached in Hinckley, Leicestershire. The comments made in response to the publication of the full text are pretty much polarised.  This may not be convenient for those researching levels of religiosity in Great Britain, but they certainly do demonstrate one thing: people care enough to respond – meaning they have some sense of the spiritual significance of Remembrance Sunday.

Whether genuine levels of interest in faith and God in the complicated milieu that is twenty-first century British life will ever be truly fathomed remains to be seen. It is certainly my hope that they will.

a vision and a challenge for the future

.. or, the call to break open the jars containing our Christian treasures and share them with others.

When I was exploring a possible move to Cullompton I visited a number of local groups and individuals to test whether it was the right decision.  One meeting I had was with two female clergy members who ministered in the area.

After a time of conversation we prayed together. One of the clergywomen shared with me a vision she had seen about a piece of clay.  The clay began shaped as a jar, but gradually the person moulding it pressed it outwards and outwards until it became a very different shape.

“I think it means your ministry is going to challenge the shape of the church,” she told me, “And challenge the churches in this area. But it is being shaped by God and will be an answer to prayer.”

I have never forgotten what that clergywoman said, and have reflected on it often.

The image of treasure in clay jars is one used by the Apostle Paul in a letter to church members in Corinth (2 Corinthians 4.1-12).  He is explaining how difficult it is to be the church in a world that does not understand  it or its message.

For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

From what Paul writes it is clear that the Corinthians are struggling.  They are being threatened and persecuted, and their way of life is at risk.  The gift of their faith is like treasure in clay jars, safe and contained, a precious commodity to sustain them during these very difficult times.

But in my colleague’s modern day vision the clay was very different, reshaped so that any treasure contained in it would be on show for all to see and spilling out for anyone to take.  For me it was, and is, a powerful image and a very real challenge.  It says to me that the time has come to break the mould and allow the treasure of our faith to glisten and gleam for all to see, on offer for anyone who wants to take it.

The Reformed Tradition has many treasures. Some are fundamentals for any church faithful in its call to love God and walk with Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.  But there are things which make us unique, the particular treasures which shine: our relationship to scripture; our commitment to unity, justice, equality and inclusivity; our belief in living out the call to be one body of equal parts in a particular way, centred in the community where we live.

Perhaps now is the time to break the jars containing our particular treasures, or at least to make a radical remould of them. It’s a scary thought, relinquishing that which has kept us feeling safe and secure for so many generations. But Jesus challenged the rich to give away everything they owned in order to follow him.  Maybe the time has come for us to do that too.

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This is the first in a series of blogs and articles related to how we might share our treasures. The first article is ‘What’s really going on when sacred and secular collide?’