Parochial Vision

Parochial Vision
The Future of the English Parish
Nick Spencer

The basic logic of this book is that if it has four legs, sharp teeth and a tail, it's probably a dinosaur. This is an unfortunate argument that spoils an otherwise excelent description of the English Parish since Christianity first arrived on these shores.

Nick Spencer is an enthusiast for the "minster model" and he derives from his study of English church history a wide variety of reasons why this model is both desirable and inevitable. I actually have a lot of sympathy for his arguments and think he makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that he picks one possible solution from a raft of possiblities. There may well be minsters in the future of the English Church, but I'm not convinced it will be quite as dominant as he suggests.

So I say yes to his analysis that we are now in a mission environment akin to the post-Augustinian period. I also agree that the existing parish model is unsustainable since it is built on the assumption that every church should have it's own full-time minister. I also have a great deal of sympathy for his argument that ministerial specialisation and greater team work would be a good idea, but...

I'm not sure that churches are going to sign up to a plan which gives certain churches greater symbolic status, neither am I convinced that this is the only way of supporting small churches. My biggest issue is that there is copious evidence that team ministries and LEPs have not delivered the goods over the years and I am not convinced he gives suficient grounds for for saying that the minster model will be any more succesful.

The issue with team ministries (and LEPs) is that they generate an extra layer of administration, and often bring together ministers who are culturally inclined to work against each other. Unless you are prepared to put a great deal of effort into building relationships and creating a common vision and strategy (as we have in WVEP) they often fall apart or become administrative mission killers. (See Bob Jackson for more on this...)

I was intrigues by Nick Spencer's description of a report by Leslie Paul in 1964 entitled The Deployment and Payment of the Clergy. It seems to me that Paul envisioned an approach to team ministry that was more collegiate and lay-focussed than the half-hearted system we enentually got - such is life. I'd like to get hold of this report at some point.

My issue with Nick Spencer is that he leaps from some fairly good evidence about change in English Christianity to the Minster Model without considering other options. As the Church in England moves into a mixed economy approach I suspect this may be a mistake.

We looked at the Minster Model in Watling Valley back in 2001, alongside twining, closures and network. The big issue with the Minster Model was that very few people actually wanted to try it. It made no sense to members of our churches that they would effectively give up their own status and became satelites of another church. This wasn't just asking turkeys to vote for Christmas, it was asking them to see themselves as second class turkeys. Nick Spencer will undoubtedly take issue with the way I word this, but it's how people felt and feelings are crucial when it comes to strategic planning with churches.

In the end we borrowed the concept of the collegiate team without creating a Minster Church. We now have a multi-functional, collaborative, integrated team which functions accross five churches, and this works because we also picked up the concept of network - which enabled us to gain the advantages of the Minster without the oppostion and bad feeling it would have produced.

At the end of the day, I would say that Parochial Vision is worth reading, particulalry if you don't have time or energy to work through some of the more accademic books about English parish history, and I think he makes some valid observations about the future development of the church in Britain, but if it has four legs, sharp teeth and a tail... it might be a quadraped.