Bath and Wells Diocesan SynodPresidential Address 22 July 2019

Millfield School, Concert Hall

Our understanding of the Church is that as ekklesia we ‘called out’ by God to be a worshipping community, a sign of hope to the world and a means of saving grace through word and action. We need therefore continually to be asking how our life, our priorities and our structures either help or hinder that work and calling. We are now at the point in our diocesan life where we are seeking to ensure that going forward there is a clear understanding and priority that our ministry deployment is intentionally missional – in line with our strategic priority to place mission and evangelism at the heart of everything we do. We need therefore to develop a deeper understanding of what we mean when we say that, and be able to articulate it in a way that makes sense to ourselves and to those who we seek to minister to.

It is important however to recognise that we already have policies for deploying ministry across the diocese. By saying that the deployment of ministry is something we need to give more attention to, I am not implying that ministry deployment is currently in any way arbitrary. We are richly blessed in this diocese with the ministries which we receive and which in different ways we all have a role in offering to others.

The themes of Setting Gods People Free which we will hear more about this evening will help us to see where and how lay and ordained vocations might better support and enable each other in the work of the gospel.

I am reminded too of St Paul’s words to the Corinthians, coming shortly before the passage we heard earlier: ‘There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’ (1 Corinthians 12: 4 -7). And it is this thinking that was at the heart of the service of Celebration of Lay Ministries which was held on Saturday where the rich diversity of lay ministries was celebrated. As a Diocese we are also particularly well-served by our colleagues in the Old Deanery who work so hard to support and enable these various gifts and ministries to be used for the glory of God.

Over the last few years we all know that there have been considerable changes and developments in the ministry and mission of the Church and it is clear that ‘the landscape’ in which we seek to minister and to share the good news of Christ continues to change.

For this reason, at its last meeting, the Bishop’s Council agreed to the formation of a working group to help us develop a deployment strategy for both lay and ordained ministry. This group hopes to report back to Bishop’s Council with some initial findings and principles in the first part of 2020. This is no small undertaking as the work of the group will require a consideration of a number of key theological questions, which will include:

What do we believe God is calling us to be as ‘Church’? How do we understand our mission?

What does it mean to put mission and evangelism at the heart of all we do?

What resources do we believe we need in order to fulfil our vision to be God’s people living and telling the story of Jesus?

How do we understand the ministry of all God’s people, lay and ordained, working collaboratively together?

The working group will need to consult widely, including important conversations with the National Church through the Ministry Division and also with our ecumenical partners. It will need to draw upon the data and statistics which we already produce and be prepared to ask some fundamental and hard questions. It will need to consider the varied contexts we have within the diocese which include Magnificat parishes, rural churches and the ministry offered by our larger urban churches. It will need to take account of chaplaincies, pioneering opportunities, church planting initiatives and the work we do with children and young people, not least within our Church Schools.

The group will need to ‘listen in’ to similar conversations that are taking place in other dioceses in order to get a wider perspective of what the Spirit may be saying to the Church at this time.

Discussions on deployment are already built into our strategic priorities which include the aligning of all our resources, including our ministry resources, towards mission. This area of work was highlighted in the six Aligning Resources for Mission conversations that took place across the archdeaconries last week.

In those meetings Archdeacon Adrian spoke about: ‘the right people, in the right places, doing the right things at the right time.’ This summed up what this needs to be about, and Charlie Peer will be referring to this again later this evening. And our Deanery and Archdeaconry Mission and Pastoral Groups are already engaged in this task, through the work being done in producing deanery and archdeaconry plans.

It is important that this work has a forward-looking agenda and takes full account of our strategic priority to identify, develop and release the gifts of all God’s people, as baptised disciples of Christ. It is envisaged that the working group will help us to develop principles and models to help us shape our future deployment of ministry. These principles will need to be realistic and take account of both financial implications and the work which is currently being undertaken in the discernment and development of vocations of various forms.

This is why I am taking the earliest opportunity that I have to draw Synod’s attention to the work of this group, as I believe this is one of the most important strands that we need to grasp and progress if we are to make further progress in our vision to make the love of Christ known in the communities which we seek to serve.

The membership of this group is still being finalised, but I ask you as members of Synod to support this work with your prayers and encouragement and I know that you will look forward to being updated on progress as this work gets underway.

In speaking about the need for a clearer understanding of ministry deployment I recognize that this is something that affects all of us across the diocese. For whilst the number of people offering for lay and ordained ministries has risen dramatically over the last few years, so too have the number and length of vacancies. The number of vacancies over the last few years has averaged between 12 and 24, (between 7% and 14%) but that figure is now considerably higher. That is why when we are thinking about our own deployment priorities and principles we need also to take account of other factors, including projected clergy and Reader numbers and emerging forms of other pioneering and lay ministries.

So as we look to the future it is clear that the Church’s ministry will continue to need to change and adapt if it is to be ‘faithful in bringing the grace and truth of Christ to this generation’.

That is why we need to give careful thought and prayer to all that we do. And like St Paul writing to Timothy we need to pray that the Lord will be with us and that he will give us strength, so that through our lives and our words that the message of the gospel may be fully proclaimed and so that many more people might come to hear and know the love of God.

Rt Revd Peter Hancock July 2019