Just in from the sort of Deanery Synod meeting that makes you wish you'd never heard of the Church of England, still less been ordained in it...We spent 2 hours circling various painful issues to do with pastoral reorganisation, finance and the like, and I emerged feeling that we are, as a body, complacent, self centred, parochial....
Oddly, I found myself sitting with Fr Spikey, from the Forward in Faith parish up the road...with whom I get on splendidly, once we have got over the little fact that he cannot recognise my orders, and he felt like a real ally, in that he was someone who was hugely concerned for Gospel principles and shared my distress at the way the people of God were behaving.
Anyway, by the time I emerged from the meeting, I was wondering why on earth anyone ever bothered with the church at all, so it was both consoling and disquieting (if such a pair of contradictions is possible) to visit the weary pilgrim blog and be posted on to Ryan Bolger's blog, where he develops the core assumption that "if you are trying to make Christ known to your community, I shouldn't start from here". Lots of good stuff. Go read, please....then we can discuss later, when I've recovered from the C of E.
5 comments:
It can't have been that bad a deanery synod, seeing that you were home and posting by 9.05 pm! For every minute after 10.00 pm you spend at DS, you're allowed to put your head in a meat grinder for an hour (infinitely preferable!)
But I WASNT
It didnt' end till 9.40....and there was alot of hassle about the "guillotine" that was applied to achieve this. Sadly, it was applied to discussion rather than discussers.
Think I maybe need to look at my computer's body clock..
I believe a healthy portion of our spiritual struggle as ordained clergy is coming to terms with working for a church that is so very, very flawed.
(because, after all the American church isn't self-centered or parochial).
Tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Also, this is why I took up knitting in meetings when I can get away with it.
Just to reassure you the the grass on this side isn't any greener! Still if we didn't have the system to struggle against what would we do with all that time we save..........mmmmmmmmm.
sympathies, kathryn, but you know: there really IS nowhere else to follow Christ. that's to say, if we opt out of the c of e to start our own show, we're betraying him, and whatever we're left with is going to be just as bad or (probably) worse. Wait till you're rural dean - that's even worse!
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