Prophetic management for the Church in Wales

The Business Directory defines best management practice as follows: ‘Methods or techniques found to be the most effective and practical means in achieving an objective while making the optimum use of the firm’s resources’.

‘Objective’ and ‘resources’ are key managerial words. If the objective is either irrelevant or plain wrong, and if, as a result of this, human gifts are neglected, or deployed in an unimaginative way, there is nothing substantial to manage. As a result, the organisation behaves like an old garment which has been patched with unshrunk cloth.  (Mark 2:21) It comes apart at the seams and the people it is meant to serve suffer the consequences.

Herein lies the problem which the Church in Wales is currently facing. What is its underlying objective? What does the Church mean to itself? What holds it together? (These questions carry a health warning, since answering them fully may take some time and create a major distraction from the current somewhat ad hoc management agenda) What would the Church like to mean for those who come to its doors, both in a literal sense and through how such people see the Church living out its collective life?

None of this is to deny some of the well intended initiatives being implemented within the Church in Wales’s management agenda (grants for church related projects and for new ministry area initiatives, along with renewed public affirmation of lay ministry being two of the most significant) but there is nevertheless the feeling that we are still primarily a clerically managed organisation. Some of my previous blogs on the Church in Wales will remind readers of why a clerically managed Church which is trying to behave like an organisation is not proving popular. So when it comes to best management practice we have a problem as an organisation which is unclear about both its method and its objective. As such, it is a problem about being Church.

The first thing which needs to be faced in this respect is that, on the whole, people who might think of coming to church, possibly for the first time, are not looking to join an organisation, even if they are not sure of quite what it is they are looking for. When their uncertainty is met with a corresponding uncertainty within the Church itself, they sense that the Church is drifting. And they would not be alone in sensing this. The Church is drifting, not only in a material sense but, more importantly, in the sense of its own specific corporate calling. The Church is corporate (and not a corporation) insofar as it is the corpus of Jesus Christ alive in his Spirit.

Early on in his public ministry, Jesus preached a sermon in which he announced his calling and, in so doing, reminded his hearers of theirs. (Luke 4:16-19). He was also reminding them of God’s promise and purpose for them as God’s people. Predictably, they found this so disturbing that they drove him out of town. However, his words were not meant to inflame, at least not in a destructive sense. They were a reminder of what the Church is intended to be, aflame with love for all God’s people. So his words merit being briefly and broadly re-figured and applied to the life of the Church here in Wales:

Jesus is telling his congregation, and all of us, that we are his. So we can read as follows:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon you. Rise to meet it and be worthy of it because in and with me, you have been anointed to bring good news to the poor. You have been given the grace to be more than yourselves by speaking and living for those you exist to serve, and to succour them in their times of need – whatever the circumstances and whatever it takes. This should  be your primary concern, even if it costs you your status, your stipend or your personal reputation. Any considerations which get in the way of announcing the good news to the poor should be dismissed as irrelevant, if not damaging.

You have been sent in my abiding Spirit to release the captive. Captives include all those whose gifts are ignored (because you either fear or do not value them) or who are excluded or marginalised on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, or of any other consideration. The proclaiming of the good news begins with proclaiming it to each other, as you ensure that none of these practices of mind and heart find a place in your midst. You proclaim the good news first by living it.

You are also to bring recovery of sight to the blind, as you let the oppressed go free. Recovery of sight begins with recovering your own sight. It means seeing yourselves as God sees you, not as you imagine yourselves to be. You are therefore called to be ‘transparent’ to God, in what you say and do, both individually and as the corpus of Christ. The one informs the other. When you become transparent to God, you will become transparent to his truth and righteousness.  Only then will you be able to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, of his loving kindness and mercy, at a time when many people feel very far from him. Such transparency takes courage.