Tuesday & Wednesday of last week I was invited to lead a workshop "Changing Countryside Changing Church" for Exeter Diocese's clergy conference. It was in Cornwall on the Lizard peninsula.
The workshop produced some interesting insights about the role of church and clergy in a very changed countryside.
The church role was:-
- Relationship building
- · Community cohesion
- · Worship God
- · Proclaim gospel
- · Recovery of medieval attitude of multifunctional building
- · Work with children
- · Pastoral care
- · Celebrate festivals
- · Hope bearers
- · Stable presence
- · Agent for change
- · Generous listening
- · Work/engage with the community
- · Saltiness
- · Is there a prior question – What sort of community will/should the gospel produce in this place?
The clergy role was:-
- · Enabler/encourager of others
- · Back stop
- · discipler
- · Expectation to be do-er remains and should be challenged
- · More Pauline – he exercised a remote oversight by letter
- · Spiritual oversight
- · Mini bishops
- · Valuing each church
- · Out of church buildings
- · Nourish people of God
- · Identifying new ways of being church
- · Occasional offices
- · Visible presence, being there
- · Interpreting God’s perspective for whole community
The list for the role of clergy is a formidable one and reflects something of the transition from the old way of doing things. Visible presence, occasional offices, Nourish people of God could all sit with a 1950s role. The move to Mini-bishop, Encourager/enabler of others, Interpreter of God’s perspective for whole community may cause tension. It will certainly will certainly require personal spiritual resources and highlights the need for clergy to be people of reflection, study and prayer.
But for me the main joy was going for a glorious walk on the coastal path in the Cornish sunshine, so here are some more photos of that!
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