Ordination is for life, not just for Petertide

As the new Archbishop-designate of Canterbury prepares for her ministry, Justin Pottinger considers the role of the bishop.

As Anglicans await the enthronement of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, many are asking what sort of Church we will be during Bishop Sarah’s tenure. How will she deal with the internal tribalism of the Church of England which is threatening to tear itself apart over issues in human sexuality and the role of women? What will her response be to the divided communion, and recent moves by GAFCON? Will she continue with the centralizing agenda and arguments for economy of size which have prevailed in recent years? And what about wider society with fewer people in England having any interest in the established Church? What were the priorities of those involved in the nomination process; what guided their priorities? On one level, her appointment in itself is a great stride forward for the role of women in the Church and in the nation: another glass ceiling broken. Undoubtedly, the Church of England stands at a pivotal moment both in its internal politics and in its relevance to the wider world.

So, what would a successful outcome look like for the Church of England in, say, the next ten years? Of course, the new Archbishop will have a significant role, but it is not all down to her. It is a communal effort to face the huge challenges we’re living through. At an institutional level, there will have to be significant changes – the strain on resources at present are just too great to bear. What will guide the necessary changes? Will they be driven by fiscal priorities, or perhaps internal political ones?

At its root, like so many Churches in Western Europe, the key thing is to reconnect with the lives of the people. This is the heart of revival, of mission, that diaconal ministry in which the Church is able to understand and be alongside people, and live out something of the love of God. Offering something counter-cultural, and attractive; breaking down the accrued misconceptions and reclaiming service as the core of our work.

Bishop Sarah could look to business models such as those of James Timpson for a guide in re-enchanting the Church with this culture for renewal. But she could also look to the ordinal, the text that established her relationship with the baptized at her consecration. The ordinal doesn’t see our leaders as those who have been removed, moved up the hierarchy, or as quasi- monarchs. Instead, the text draws on a much richer seam, enriching not just leadership but our sense of who we are as a Church.

Within the Anglican Communion, the Church of England has historically enjoyed a privileged position. As the Communion wrestles with its identity, the Church of England has wholeheartedly embraced the International Anglican Liturgical Consultation’s advice to reclaim the significance of our common baptism. The tension between what the ordinal says about bishops, the relationship that they inhabit with the Church, and our lived experience is clear to see. There is much that we cannot control about the future of the Church of England, but our shared culture and who we are as a community is something that we can address, and we can look to our bishops to lead us in that.

The ordinal speaks of the bishops in historic succession alongside a renewed understanding of the significance of baptism for the Church. While bishops remain a key indication of apostolicity and catholicity for the Church, they are not to be viewed in isolation or to be prized above mutual recognition. For the ordinal, the bishop is one who is in among their people, building trust, sharing ministry. This is not something that the Church of England is going to be able to inhabit overnight. However, in ten years’ time, if our shared culture is turning in this direction, then there will be much to celebrate.

An ordination is not a passing out parade, graduation or initiation into an exclusive club. It is a celebration of a new relationship that is concerned primarily with how that relationship will be lived out in the future. Just as the wedding liturgy shapes a marriage, the ordination speaks of a lifelong way of being. More than that, the ordinal articulates a way of being Church, an integrated community gathered by Christ in the Holy Spirit, paradigmatically so in the celebration of the Eucharist, formed in common discipleship and mutual recognition.

This is the Church in mission, a community of healing whose leaders are charged to help recover the lost. In marked contrast to the fishing metaphor, a historically informed understanding of the shepherding metaphor makes a virtue of person-centred approaches, which require listening and the building of trust, with an absence of coercive control. The shepherd’s only tools are their ears, their trusted voice, and their crook to help reach across divides that might otherwise be unbridgeable.

This is what I discovered when my PhD studies coincided with my lived experience in the Church of England, now brought together and explored in more depth in The Bishop and the Baptized. The book looks at the ordinal in the light of previous Church of England ordinals, those of the British Isles and that of the Episcopal Church of the United States of America to demonstrate the emphasis on both the Church as the baptized and on the shepherd metaphor for its leaders. Biblical and historical exegesis then shed crucial light on what being a shepherd in the Church of God might look like before reflecting this back on the current institutions of the Church of England.

We can do this differently.

-

Revd Dr Justin Pottinger is currently Chaplain of Lancing College. His PhD thesis explored episcopal ministry through the ordinal and Rule of St Benedict.

His book The Bishop and the Baptized: Anglican episcopal ministry through the lens of the ordinal is out this month and available to order here, with 20% off all orders before the end of November.

Image credit: James Coleman at Unsplash.com