Diocesan News
Bishop Miller's Presidential Address to the Down & Dromore Synod
DOWN AND DROMORE DIOCESAN SYNOD
TUESDAY, 21 JUNE 2005
MOIRA PARISH HALL, MOIRA
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS BY BISHOP OF DOWN AND DROMORE
RT REVD HAROLD MILLER
Over the last months, I have had one of the greatest privileges a bishop can have: to visit the parishes of the diocese in an Episcopal Visitation. It was a remarkable experience for me, and it has been written up in a book of 434 pages which will be made available to each of the members of this new Diocesan Synod. So, may I welcome those of you who have not been members of this Synod before, offer you a free book at the outset, and invite you to join with me today in beginning to analyze what we may be learning in what may well be the fullest (and is certainly the most publicly available) visitation in our history.
At the outset, I want to say that all of this has only been made possible because, through the good offices of Ace Ventures and Worktrack, I was given the assistance of Robbie Hull, my intern for the year. Robbie?s work included the gathering and organizing of statistics, some of which were already available in the Diocesan Office, others of which had to be found, the setting up of the visitation meetings in the parishes, the writing up of the presentations, and the preparation and seeing through of the publication of the book with the report, entitled ?Build your Church, Lord?. It will, I hope, provide very interesting and useful reading for all of you and for the members of your parishes. We will ensure that each parish is given a further two free copies, and I would ask that all parishioners be allowed to see it. A very limited number of remaining copies will be on sale through The Good Book Shop at £20 a copy, and some are available today.
At the outset of today?s Presidential Address, I would also like to thank Canon Edgar Turner. On a parallel track, as the visitation was going on, Edgar was doing what only Edgar can do. He was working on a volume for the Diocese of Down and Dromore, equivalent to the volume he provided for Connor Diocese, affectionately called ?The Turner?, with accurate maps of the geographical boundaries of each of the parishes in the diocese. The full material is available in the Diocesan Office, but Edgar has also kindly provided maps for the book you will receive today, which are as up to date as they can possibly be at this point. This has been a real labour of love and detail, and I want to publicly thank Edgar, who really belongs to the Diocese of Connor, for all he has done for us here in Down and Dromore.
Today, I simply wish to alert you, in a kind of ?State of the Church? address (something I like to do every few years), to some of the key issues which arise from the Visitation. As you read ?Build your Church, Lord?, you will see many more issues and areas requiring thought, and I am hoping to invite a totally outside ?expert? to reflect on what we have discovered to a conference of Synod members, and perhaps a few others, later in the year. The issues here are so important that it would not be an exaggeration to say that the future of our church depends on how we respond to them.
I entitle my address; ?The Good News and the Bad News?. Which do you want first?...
Well, here are seven key areas in which we find both.
1. Fringe and Centre.
The first thing we discover from the statistics is that, of the 91,000 people who claimed to be Church of Ireland in the National Census of 2001, we are missing 20,000 on our parish lists. Presumably those 20,000 are so far out on the fringe that they are unknown to us. When we also realize that the Church of Ireland was the only major denomination in Northern Ireland to actually decrease in overall numbers in the 2001 census (in a population which had increased), we are beginning to paint a picture of a church which has a decreasing ?fringe?. I also pointed out to this Synod some years back that, between 1965 and 1995, baptisms in the diocese had decreased by 50% (largely, in my view, because granny, who used to say ?the we?en needs to be done? had died, and there grew up a generation which wist not that the we?en needed to be done), and that decrease has continued on an even downward trend. What this means is quite simple. People out there who used to call themselves ?Church of Ireland? either no longer consider themselves Church of Ireland, or no longer know that there is anything other than ?protestant? as a category. We have lived, for many centuries, off the idea that people, out of a kind of loyalty to the Church of Ireland will continue to be part of the institution at least by name, and we are discovering very quickly that it ain?t necessarily so.
If that is the bad news, what is the corollary in good news. Well, in my view it is this: Our churches, in very many parts of the diocese, are in good heart. There is, in many places, a much greater level of commitment in those who are worshipping, and there is an increased emphasis on evangelism. I have seen this tangibly on the visitation. We are beginning (and I mean beginning) to recognise that all of us need to be involved in the ministry of evangelism. Out of our 79 parishes, if my calculations are correct, 69 had tried some form of Alpha or Christianity Explored course or equivalent, and great blessing had been found in pursuing these means of catechizing. Something had been set in place. But that is not enough. I ask every parish in the diocese to have in place a course for discipling every year, and to expect the Lord to bring into our churches those who have grown cold, been distances, or in some cases, have never had anything to do with the Christian faith. If so few have been baptised as infants, then the baptismal tanks and rivers should be in use on a weekly basis in a diocese like ours, bringing people afresh to the Christian faith.
I also observe churches intentionally creating a fringe: bridges into the community. This happens in a whole variety of ways, and is vitally important for growth. We cannot expect people who do not go to church simply to appear in the pews. Bishop John Finney once observed that we already know most of the people who will come to faith in our churches over the newt few years. They are there on the fringe, and that fringe needs to be ever widening. The most powerful and growing churches have palpable faith and vibrant worship at the core, and a fuzzy fringe around the edge.
2. Children and Sunday School
The most frightening statistic in the visitation is quite simply and starkly this: We have lost a quarter of our Sunday Schools in the diocese in the last ten years. I have no idea what the statistics are in other churches, but I do know that there is a real collapse of Sunday Schools in England at the present time, and, if we continue as we are, we are on the way to a similar scenario. What is more fascinating, however, is that not many churches mentioned this as a major issue. There are probably a variety of reasons why this is the case: First of all, congregations do not see what is going on in Sunday School, so there is only a gradual awareness of the problem. Secondly, our first response to the problem is denial. The slide is slow enough at first for us to pretend that it isn?t happening. And thirdly, we have lulled ourselves into the false belief that, even if every other age group deserts us, the old people and the children would still come.
I know that this area is also one of real concern for the Church of Ireland Board of Education in Northern Ireland, who have recently provided a very useful leaflet on Children?s Ministry, launched at this year?s General Synod. It is entitled: Children?s Ministry in the Church of Ireland: A New Vision. Let me put it in a sentence which I have often used in this diocese. If we fail to pass on the faith to the next generation, we have failed in everything. We have only one Church of Ireland School in the diocese, and have depended largely on Sunday Schools as our means of transmitting the faith to children. If we do not deal with this area quickly and well, we will find many of our children with no real faith-training in the home, very little in school, and very little in the church. All of us know the power of passing on the faith at the earliest possible stage of children?s lives and the dangers of not doing so.
On the Good News side, there is, however, something to offer. Several parishes have totally revamped their Sunday Schools, calling them by more appropriate names, and catching the imagination of both leaders and children. Other parishes have taken seriously Summer and Easter (or weekday) Children?s clubs (and I cannot over-emphasise the importance of every parish engaging with children?s work especially in August each year). Yet others have developed stranded all-age services as an alternative to the traditional service on a Sunday morning. I think it is true to say that all such churches are experiencing overall growth. And it is also important to remind older people that this is not exactly a new idea. I remember being brought up on what was called ?ten-fifteen? in my childhood years in the 1950?s! What was news to me as much as the level of decline of Sunday Schools, as I went around on the visitation, was that quite a few parishes have also experienced an increase in the level of commitment to uniformed organizations, which appear to be increasing again in popularity.
Whether new models of Sunday School, uniformed organizations or children?s clubs, there is always one key common factor: committed leadership. Where that is in place there is growth, where it is not, there will surely only be decline.
3. Young people and Confirmation.
This year, I have confirmed around 400 people, most of whom were in their teenage years. I have to say that (from the point of view of a bishop, who is always in danger of having the wool pulled over his eyes as the star of the show!); there is overall a sense of reverence and engagement in the teenagers, so long as they are not too young. Confirming too young seems to me to be a major mistake. But the most common thing I heard said in the visitation, even in front of the young people themselves is this: ?Isn?t it terrible how we lose young people after confirmation?. Well, if we keep saying it often enough, and it will happen more and more. Because of the seriousness of this issue, which has trundled on for decades, I have asked Andrew Brannigan, our Youth Development Officer, to conduct a survey in the diocese on Confirmation. He will speak with every rector, and I have asked him to report on the whole question of confirmation training, the effect of the age of confirmation, the reasons for so many young people leaving after confirmation, and the difference made where here is youth work already in place for older teenagers. One of the greatest sadnesses I have is that there are situations where young people who are committed Christian believers choose to go to other churches to be discipled simply because there is no meaningful youth ministry in their parish.
If that is the bad news, what is the good news. Well, first of all, I deeply believe that our commitment as a diocese to having a full-time Youth Development Officer is paying dividends. Let me give you some examples. I was humbled to be in St Ignatuis, Carryduff, to commission a tem of 15 young people, who are going off with Tearfund this summer to work in India. In another week or two I will commission 18 young people going to Albany to lead children?s camps. Both of these teams could have been larger, but their numbers were limited. And that is only the tip of the team iceberg: there are many other more local teams going to different parts of the world. At the end of this month I will do the usual ?bishop?s barbeque? for around 500 people from this diocese at Summer Madness. The week after that, I will have the joy of inspiring hundreds of young people who will take to the streets around Belfast to serve the Community in Streetreach, and offshoot of Summer Madness. The Streetreach project was given a special award by the Belfast City Council last year, and we congratulate Neville Willerton, a Church Army Officer in our own diocese for his superb work.
One of the questions we need to ask is this: If all these young people are so interested in the Gospel and living it out, why are they not wanting to be in some of our churches? Another Church Army Officer, George Lings, said the unsayable recently in an article in The Church of England Newspaper: ?When we ask why they are not there, very often the answer is because we are there!? (A frightening thought, but we cannot avoid thinking about it).
4. Sunday and Weekday Worship.
Being totally accurate will take a few weeks, but, with calculator in hand, I observe the following: Overall, we have lost about 5% of our worshipping congregations in the last ten years. We now have 15,800 people in church in an average week in the diocese. The largest decline has been in main Sunday morning worship. If I were to give you other salient figures they would be as follows:
? 59% of our worshippers are over the age of 45 (ever wondered why you felt so young when you went to church!?).
? 58.4% of our congregations are female.
I think you will find that these figures are very similar to the overall picture in all the churches in England, as seen in the statistics provided by Peter Brierley of Christian Research. I am hoping that it may be possible to have a similar survey of all the churches on the island of Ireland sometime in the next few years, so that we will have a fuller picture and negotiations are taking place with Christian Research as to how this might best be progressed.
That?s the bad news. The good news is as follows: Our overall level of attendance would be percentage-wise much higher than on our sister-island of Britain. 15.800 is a lot of people if they are fired up to serve the Lord with all their hearts and souls and minds and strength! Secondly, although there is decline in main morning worship, there are two, perhaps surprising, areas of increase. These are:
a) Early Communions, which have increased by more than 40% in the last ten years, and
b) Weekday Services, which have increased by more than 45% in the last two years alone. The latter parallels the English experience and it may well be the case, with Sunday working and shopping and leisure ? or even with a real 7-day a week commitment by believers, that weekday worship should be developed even more: midweek communions, saints days and holy days, midweek Advent and Lent services, services of intercession and healing, prayer and meditation, teaching services, etc. From my own experience of the visitation, I heard so often also of the increase of the number of people (sometimes quite large increases) in Bible Study groups, home groups and prayer groups, that I truly believe we are seeing a heightened level of commitment in our key people.
5. Leadership and models of church
Whatever template or model of Church growth you may hear about, one factor always comes out as key in growing churches: Leadership. I want to begin this section of my address by doing something which I do all too rarely: I want to thank the clergy of the Diocese of Down and Dromore for the dedicated ministry they offer week after week, month after month, year after year, to the people of God in our parishes. You and I know well that this is often at great cost to themselves and to their families. And I also want to express my thanks in particular to clergy spouses for the support and encouragement they give. The ordained ministry is, in my view, a key and vital gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church of Christ, and must never be undervalued, sidelined or taken lightly. That is a challenge to those of us who exercise the privilege of ordained ministry as well as to the whole church.
Many of you have expressed concern on the visitation about what you perceive to be the lack of ordained ministers available to fill vacancies. This is, in fact, a half-truth. In this diocese, we have only three vacant parishes at the moment ? a very low level of vacancies. Generally our difficulty is not in finding rectors, but in finding new curates. At this point in the diocese, I reckon there are 25 slots for curates, and 40% are unfilled. I have asked before, and I will ask again that you who are leaders among the people of God in this diocese, will take responsibility to seek out people, and especially young people who have both a passion for God and gifts of ministry. Especially we need to seek our pioneer ministers who will be able to work with different models of church in the 21st Century, and to be church planters in new places, developing communities, and among those who are ?gap ages and groups? in our profile. Adrian McCartney, who leads up Wells in Moneyreagh, has often used the picture of the parish system as being like Swiss Cheese (ie full of holes). These holes need to be plugged?now!
If I might add one other point at this stage. I am deeply concerned that, having developed a system to allow clergy sabbaticals in the diocese, these are hardly ever being taken up. I do hope that parishes will co-operate with me in ensuring ongoing training and sabbatical leave for clergy, and in encouraging the clergy to make use of sabbaticals. Otherwise, we will simply have worn-out leaders of the flock, who are living off the proverbial camel?s hump.
6. Buildings and Community
One thing which struck me very forcibly on the visitation was the quality of most of the buildings in the diocese. We are privileged to be able to meet in one of those buildings here in Moira today ? which is better than any hotel! The standard is excellent, and during the year, the Plans Committee of the Diocesan Council reported that they had plans before them for more than £10m worth of buildings. Just down the road, in Dollingstown and Lurgan, the local people will have noticed two Church of Ireland buildings being demolished ? one to be replace by the new St Saviour?s Church in Dollingstown and the other by the Jethro Centre in Lurgan. This truly is good news.
One of the factors I noted in particular about our buildings was how important they are in and for the community. We care for some of the most historic buildings in the area, which are places of pilgrimage and tourism; we keep in place Church Halls in locations where the post office, the local shop and the school have gone, and where there is no other place for the community to meet; we are developing new and imaginative forms of community care and service in places of need.
Just a month ago I had the pleasure of being in Liverpool with a group of Church leaders called The North-West Triangle (leaders from Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast, with similar cities and needs). We were told how the North-West Assembly based in Liverpool had done a calculation of the financial value of benefits to the society of churches and other religious groups in that area of 7m people. This was an objective survey, and came up with this among other statements:
The survey ?Faith in England?s Northwest: The Contribution made by
faith communities to civil society in the region? identified that there were
45,667 faith volunteers in the Northwest contribution 8.1 million volunteer
hours per annum?
And that the contribution generates between £60.6 million and 64.6 million per annum.
I have to confess that I wish government in Northern Ireland would take the churches as seriously as the faith communities were taken in that region. Sometimes we feel when we look for support with community projects that there are so many hoops to go through it simply is not worth it, or would require a vast amount of professional expertise on our part for an uncertain outcome. Up to now we have often read reports (such as the 2004 Draft Implementation Plan for Neighbourhood Renewal in Belfast from the Department for Social Development) which charts every possible area where it is reckoned renewal is needed in the communities concerned - economic renewal, community renewal, physical renewal, social renewal, but does not feel it is its remit to mention spiritual renewal. Thankfully, I believe the DSD is beginning to take note of the importance of the churches and what they have to offer in our society, there is a real recognition of the amount of volunteer work done through them not least among young people, through the churches and of the reliability and sustainability which the churches can provide for projects. I especially want to see help given to the churches in the deprived parts of inner city East Belfast and in particular in the wards of Ballymacarrett, Island, Mount and Woodstock, which are the worst areas of deprivation in the East of the city. The churches, and not least the Church of Ireland, are very much part of the landscape in Northern Ireland, and government would do well to work with the churches as much as possible.
7. Communion and Division.
Last February we were privileged to have one of the most important meetings in the history of the Anglican Communion take place here in the Diocese of Down and Dromore. When I was in Albany last week, the word ?Dromantine? was on many lips. I was actually on holiday at the time, and I imagine, for many of us, the meeting simply came and went, but it was nevertheless, one of great importance for Anglicanism as the Primates responded to the Windsor Report. That report was, of course, chaired by our own Primate, Archbishop Robin Eames, and each of the provinces of the Anglican Communion is in the process of reflecting on it.
Actually, today (as it happens) and as we gather, the Anglican Communion Council is meeting in Nottingham, and the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Anglican Church in Canada are being asked to explain their position to the ACC on the questions of the ordination of Gene Robinson and the provision of forms of blessing for same-sex unions.
This may seem to lie outside the remit of the Episcopal visitation which I undertook over the last months, but it does actually impact in different ways:
First of all, one of the constantly recurring themes in the meetings was the value of worldwide links with other parts of the communion. We have been greatly blessed as a diocese especially with our relationship to Albany (one of the conservative Anglo-Catholic dioceses in ECUSA), and in our link with several diocese in Southern Sudan, but particularly the Diocese of Maridi. That is only the tip of the iceberg. The tsunami in Asia brought us in close contact with the church in Bangkok, through the relief organized by Cecil McSpadden and CMSI through Banbridge parish in particular. Many parishes have links with East Africa or South America, and almost all of these links are with provinces which are finding the present situation in the Anglican Communion very difficult indeed.
Secondly, the only major area of worldwide concern mentioned to me on several occasions was this issue of the approach of our church to homosexual practice. It is a great blessing that this diocese last year committed itself to the position of the Lambeth Bishops in Resolution 1.10, and that we did so in a unified and non-contentions way. This, to put it at its simplest, is the norm of Anglican teaching on the matter. It is both caring and pastoral as well as biblical and moral. The primates when they met in 2003 affirmed this and the other relevant resolutions on the subject:
?as having moral force and commanding the respect of the Communion
as its present position on these issues.?
This diocese did nothing other than affirm and place itself in line with Lambeth teaching. And yet I still find that people are unclear, and would invite all the members of the Diocesan Synod to acquaint themselves with Lambeth 1.10. (If you don?t have it, look it up in Google!)
These issues will continue to run, not only in the church, but in the province, as the government seems determined to introduce a form of civil partnerships into Northern Ireland, beginning, so far as I can see, in December. These will mimic marriage for same-sex couples, and were, as I understand it, not the way forward desired by the churches in Northern Ireland in their responses to the Consultation document. One of our difficulties, of course, is our lack of an Assembly which can speak for the province, but I would wish to register by own concern about the direction which is being imposed on our province.
Build your church, Lord.
And so to us gathered here in synod today- one third clergy, two thirds the elected representatives of their parishes. We have been entrusted with a task of governance. Our role is vitally important. We will debate issues, agree spending, provide accountability, even to bishops!, elect committees, councils and members of General Synod (and that really needs to be taken very seriously indeed), speak on behalf of the diocese, and create an atmosphere and environment in which the church will thrive or decline. We need to truly believe that the church is Christ?s alone. He is Lord, and that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. And the mission of Christ must be ever more central in all we do as a Church. That is why we are here. Our synods, councils, committees and administration must be driven by our vision of Christ and his purposes for the world.
Thanks
I wish to thank, not in any formal way, but sincerely, all those who have assisted in the smooth running of the diocese (and the bishop!) over the past year. Particularly, I thank my secretaries, Margaret Wilson in the afternoon and Mary Coles in the morning, who are both superb. I thank also Neill Wilson, our Diocesan Secretary and David Cromie, our Diocesan Accountant, and the whole staff of the Diocesan Office. Also those who are in particular roles in the diocese: Charlie Leeke, our Reconciliation Development Officer, whom I plan to make a canon of Dromore Cathedral from 5 July, Charlie will be reporting later in the Synod on the responses to the Hard Gospel from the parishes, and the Diocesan Council has asked him to remain in that role until at least January 2006 and Andrew Brannigan our Youth Development Officer. One of the areas agreed in the visitation was the importance of the diocese providing resources and expertise in the areas we cannot all do for our own parishes individually. These are the people who do that for us, and I for one am very grateful not only for their work, but for their wholehearted commitment to the diocese and, more importantly to the Kingdom of God.
*The report of Bishop Miller's visitation of the Diocese of Down and Dromore during the year 2004-05, entilted Build Your Church, Lord, can be purchased through The Good Book Shop, Belfast, priced £20