I read this when it came out and I wasn't too impressed. The author, I felt, drew too many conclusions from a small group (13) of subjects - mind you, she is by no means the only researcher to have done that! She spent a lot of time identifying the Welsh "Strong Woman"; this could have been useful but I felt it was something of an overplayed stereotype and that she had come to the study with certain presuppositions which she was eager to prove. In a later lecture, which I attended, she expanded this to Afro-Caribbean women. Having lived in West Africa for five years I felt that the comparison was not unhelpful. (That lecture, by the way, is the only time I've had any personal contact with Manon).
If your comment was referring to me, yes I have read it. I also have some experience (MA rather than PhD) in doing sociological/theological research and pulling together the text. So I do know that it isn't easy!
I have an MSc in 'Crisis Management', my professional purpose for many decades - but I'd be hard pressed to put a 20,000 word dissertation/thesis together focussed on the woes of the CinW and Dioc. of Bangor particularly.
Perhaps Outsider if you had focused on what it is that + are supposed to be doing instead of authoring and iconography, this whole debacle would not be quite so woefully sad..But then she did beat you once so why have a second fight you might loose….
@AdClerum - I have a feeling that in years to come there’ll be many a case study or thesis written on the Bangor fiascos, despite the inevitable destruction of primary source documentary evidence which may well have already happened, for all I know. At least good old Andy and the Temu Pope have secured their places in history, though not, I suspect, in the ways they intended.
That's assuming anyone gives a flying fig about the Cult in Wales or any particular Diocese "in years to come". Frankly I'd be amazed to see it survive until 2035.
@Exodus: You may well be right, but all kinds of researchers are as much interested in the failures of the past as the successes, sometimes more so. Consequently, I have little doubt that there will be interest in the Bangor fiascos in the future, a matter entirely separate from whether or not the CiW survives.
Nor had I, because I'm a fairly recent arrival in Wales and not a Welsh speaker. Anyway, Menna is female and, from her biography, is very distinguished.
WHAMAB: Ancient Briton could have serious hoot from opening a Bloggers' competition to suggest a title for her next tome: 'My Guide to Becoming a Bishop ... Backs You Must Stab' could be one. 'The Art of Pulpit Joke Cracking ... Ignore the Yawns!' Perhaps even: 'GOD. My Part in His Downfall' by Manon C. James.
@Rhigyfarch, oh she does not, she hates English, has been positively discriminating against English and has publicly stated as much. I wasn’t there but I’m sure someone on here will have been when she addressed a room with that statement.
@Rhigyfarch: Arrogant she might be, but she's not ignorant. She knows jolly well that to earn a few quid from writing there's a 1,000 greater chance of making a bob or two by writing to the English-speaking market than to the small handful of Welsh-reading cronies who'll buy her 'thoughts'. The global publishing industry works to the principle: Publish in English first: If it sells, then maybe- just maybe - invest your own profits in translating into Welsh, or Mongolian or whatever. Even in English, I have to wonder how many copies were sold? Certainly not on the Sunday Times Best Seller's List and notably not even a mention in any Church parish-pump news-letter that can be found.
How many books have you written and published, Fab? And how many have you sold? She's not even been consecrated yet, and already many of you are lining up to take a shot at her. That looks more like jealousy than constructive critique. If she reads this blog, I trust she can brush aside much of the negativity. I imagine she learned years ago that no matter what you do, you will never please everyone.
See https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/21-september/books-arts/book-reviews/women-identity-and-religion-in-wales-theology-poetry-story-by-manon-ceridwen-james
Outsider, You are morally evasive and an apologist for the indefensible, possessed of a remarkable capacity to circumvent the substance of an argument while repeatedly contriving to stand on the wrong side of it, one can’t help but conclude, to satisfy your own enormous hubris. More troubling still is your dogmatic failing to appreciate that the institution run as it is and inadequate individual’s elevation within (such as the aforementioned) pry copyn you so readily defend, do such harm as to become a legacy for the world beyond the vale of Clwyd to lament. Beyond your narrow (ahem) circle, the reputation of the CinW is increasingly and disastrously defined by the judgement of a rather less indulgent world. Seniority within such an institution confers not merely status, but responsibility and accountability. History has rarely been especially charitable to those whom, when confronted with institutional failure, especially with such seniority, chose evasion, rationalisation or complicity over candour and principle. Rather than being remembered for the 1450th anniversary, there is little reason to suppose that future scrutiny will prove any more forgiving with whom responsibility lies….
@Outsider. Answer: Five actually (four factual and one a children's book) All in English. One now in 3rd re-print; the TV rights to a second formed a 3x part documentary produced by German television, third not so commercially successful (still profitable) but it was directed at a very specific readership and the fourth according to latest sales audits looking like it too will go to re-print. The children's book which began as a fun-exercise for my young godson but sold well beyond expectations inspired me to spend happy hours putting together its sequel. And book-writing isn't even my profession or main source of income. Does that answer you curiosity?
That's genuinely impressive. So why characterise Manon as arrogant or cast doubt on the success of her book? Anyone as familiar with the publishing process as you are knows the commitment and perseverance it demands. Manon has built quite a substantial profile within the Province, published widely, and done so alongside her other professional work. Writing is not her main vocation, which makes her achievements all the more noteworthy. Much like yours.
If she was doing the work of a priest properly and fully she wouldn't have time to spare for writing anything other than sermons"Her other professional work"? Don't make me laugh. To quote a previous Archdeacon of yore, she's got foot and mouth disease.
Rumour - but until confirmed, rumour only - but it seems the Welsh Owain Glyndwr spirit of the Welsh in burning down Bangor Cathedral has returned. An arsonist's attack in full view of fast-fleeing overseas tourists and presumably cathedral stewards on the Altar (destroying its frontal and damaging its wooden structure) on Wednesday afternoon. Police arrest (apparently) etc.
Reminiscent perhaps of Sion ap-Rhys hoisting his rainbow Gays/Queers etc. banner above the Cathedral on his newly purchased flag-pole and then God, whacked down a storm which blew not only the flag, but ultra-expensive flagpole down to the ground!
Now - if true - (and odd that the Cathedral hasn't report this attack on its website) matey with the alcohol-problem also has a problem with ..... well read above folks!
Well, that's really put Rowan Williams in his place then, hasn't it? Writing books about Dostoyevsky etc when he was supposed to be an archbishop! "Don't make.me laugh", you say. Indeed. Howitzer
What is wrong with these people? Archbishop Cranmer writing the Prayer Book. Bishop William Morgan translating the Bible into Welsh. Archbishop Ramsey writing such drivel as The Christian Priest. And Archbishop Rowan on as you say Dostoyevsky, arguably the best book written on the great Russian writer, but that doesn’t matter. All of these people should have been in the business of being bishops. Writing books! Dear dear oh dear.
“The Dean of Bangor Cathedral and Ministry Area Leader of Bro Deiniol“ has just been advertised. Dual role for both managing a Cathedral and Ministry Area. Then again for a Cathedral church that only gets 20 odd on a Sunday there isn’t much for “the Dean” to do. Former Student
@ Former Student: Yes. By viewing the occasional Bangor Cathedral -U-Tube morning service pew-count I can well believe that the congregant base is a pathetic 20 odd which says little for the current Dean's 'revival' programme.
But wasn't it in quite recent years that a former Archdeacon of Bangor, now Bishop of Guildford (?) with the sign-off of his Bishop Andy John, shut down the City's three parish churches, St Mary's, St. David's and St Peter's (along with the University Chaplaincy) because their congregant base had fallen below 35 per Sunday Eucharist???!!! 'No longer financially viable' etc.
Loss of the choir by the madness of the current Bangor archdeacon David Parry of course has contributed to this dreadful decline, but so too the abandonment of a once strong Afro-Caribb. congregant base and despite the hard work and energies of new University chaplain, Rev Nado, not a single student of Bangor's 11,500 student population now worships there.
Which begs the question: where does the buck stop for this collapse of a once well attended (even two years ago) cathedral. It has to be its Dean and her inabilities as a Parish priest ... and far less as a 'dean'. God forbid the ruin when she takes on an entire 'diocese'. The church needs 'clergy' not 'Compliance Officers'.
There is an irony in Bangor Cathedral now apparently scraping together twenty-odd worshippers on a Sunday. This, remember, is the same ecclesiastical establishment that considered congregations of around 35 insufficient to justify the continued existence of the city’s parish churches. Apparently 35 in a parish is terminal decline, while twenty in a Cathedral is “revival”. The present Dean (is she still there)? cannot be blamed for creating Bangor’s problems, she inherited them. But let us not rewrite history. She arrived amid considerable fanfare as the person who was going to reverse the decline and restore honour and dignity, the great hope, the fresh start, the much-needed revival.
So judge the revival by its fruits.
The congregation has apparently shrunk further. Long-standing worshippers speak of being alienated rather than embraced. The choir has gone. A once noticeable Afro-Caribbean congregation has largely disappeared. And somehow a Cathedral planted in the middle of a university city can look upon 11,500 students and apparently persuade virtually none of them to worship there. That is quite an achievement, although perhaps not the one advertised. There comes a point when “inherited difficulties” ceases to be an adequate explanation. Nobody expected the new Dean to perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes, but attracting rather more people than would comfortably fit into a minibus hardly seems an unreasonable expectation of somebody heralded as Bangor Cathedral’s great revivalist. This is where the Church’s modern obsession with management becomes almost comic. It can restructure, reorganise, devise strategies, appoint officers, write policies and produce enough compliance paperwork to deforest Snowdonia — yet seems increasingly baffled by the elementary business of getting people into church and keeping them there. The clergy who built great congregations generally understood something rather unfashionable: know your people, visit them, love them, preach something worth hearing and make them feel that their church belongs to them too. Bangor increasingly resembles an institution that has forgotten that lesson. The Church does not need people who can manage decline while giving it an impressive name. It needs priests. If twenty-odd people constitute Bangor’s much-heralded “revival”, one hesitates to imagine what failure would look like.
Even by employing your wasted hour of 'counting heads' for an hour of U-Tube watching of a Bangor 11 am service to challenge the facts - as some people count sheep before nodding off - the point is missed. The majority of Bangor cathedral 'congregants', s0, 30 or 40, are not from the Bro Deiniol ministry area but drive in, hedge-hopping over their own declining local churches and parishes. Even then with perhaps a 10-15 miles drive-in radius, the statistics are abysmal.
Counter this with the known fact that umpteen 'regulars' of yore have now opted to worship in St Asaph, the Afro communion in Bangor appears to have gone 'Baptist' and the RC Church in the city has picked up a number of the student population's discontents. Research should be done on the ground and not from watching an hour of 'U-Tube' and then drawing conclusions.
I can't comment on Bangor, except to agree that the congregation seemed very small for a "main" cathedral service. However I didn't spend an hour watching the video, a couple of minutes sufficed!
Bravo @Regular, well said. The very basics of priest craft, in whatever tradition, seem to have been forgotten and utterly devalued to the point at which not even trying any longer seems to be acceptable. But relational things form the heart of the Gospel, built the church universal and are what transforms lives today.
@Fr Duddleswell, Quite so, perhaps the most uncomfortable point is that we have allowed the language of strategy, restructuring and ‘new ways of being Church’ to obscure a much simpler failure. Too often the Church has ceased to do the ordinary things by which it once earned a place in people’s lives. Priestcraft is not principally administration, institutional management or the cultivation of an ecclesiastical profile. It is about presence; knowing your people, being seen in the community, visiting the sick, accompanying the bereaved, noticing the lonely and being there long before somebody needs a baptism, wedding or funeral.
The relational nature of Christianity is not some nostalgic attachment to a bygone parochial model. It is intrinsic to the Gospel. Christ encountered people personally. The early Church grew through relationships, hospitality, witness and communities in which people were actually known to one another. That remains how lives are changed.
What concerns me most is not that clergy sometimes fall short, inevitably they do, but that the expectation itself appears to have been progressively lowered. When absence can be dressed up as a different model of ministry, and declining engagement explained almost entirely by forces outside the Church, accountability conveniently disappears.
An institution cannot continually lament that people no longer come through its doors whilst displaying remarkably little curiosity about why. If the Church wishes to remain relevant to people’s lives, it first has to be present in them. That is not innovation. It is the job.
"Perhaps the most uncomfortable point is that we have allowed the language of strategy, restructuring and ‘new ways of being Church’ to obscure a much simpler failure." Codswallop. "WE" haven't allowed anything of the sort. "WE" weren't given a choice. Whenever "WE" complained about the queered theology nonsense being foisted upon us by the likes of His --Darkness, his coven of menopausal feminazis and his golf caddie Capon, "WE" were described as subversives and told in no uncertain terms that we were no longer welcome in our own Church.
@Exodus, you make a fair point, history will have to distinguish between those who saw the disaster unfolding and said so, and those who found the disaster remarkably useful for their own advancement.
For years, inconvenient voices have been sidelined while failure has been rewarded with preferment, titles and promotion. The institution shrinks, congregations disappear and credibility evaporates, yet somehow the architects and beneficiaries of the decline continue to prosper. This is what makes the whole thing so grotesque. Accountability appears to be reserved for those who challenge the system, bring skills and experience from without the institution and are dismissed, have individuality’s and uniqueness, rather than those who have demonstrably failed within it. History will judge this ridiculous period, and I suspect it will be savage. The great question will not be how the Church declined, but how so many managed to build careers from the ruins while silencing those who warned them what was happening.
Sod history, history has done this before. "Beware false prophets". Rather than beware them, they were allowed in, like the worm at the centre of an apple, and allowed to prosper, breed and destroy everything from within. The Arch maggot is Barry Morgan and Satan's imp still wields his influence from Llys Ego.
One of the priests I admired most was the Passionist Priest, Fr Austin Smith of Toxteth, Liverpool. What do you do all day, Austin, I asked him once. I hang about, he said. That hanging about, so that you are visible, talking about the weather with people, getting to know them has completely gone. Priesthood is in the end relational. And those who have bought in to the management culture are in my experience no good at it anyway.
Jackanory, Jackanory......
ReplyDeleteI read this when it came out and I wasn't too impressed. The author, I felt, drew too many conclusions from a small group (13) of subjects - mind you, she is by no means the only researcher to have done that! She spent a lot of time identifying the Welsh "Strong Woman"; this could have been useful but I felt it was something of an overplayed stereotype and that she had come to the study with certain presuppositions which she was eager to prove. In a later lecture, which I attended, she expanded this to Afro-Caribbean women. Having lived in West Africa for five years I felt that the comparison was not unhelpful. (That lecture, by the way, is the only time I've had any personal contact with Manon).
ReplyDeleteI'm an author myself, so know what it takes to pull together a theological text. I'm guessing you've not read it, just here to mock?
ReplyDeleteOutsider
If your comment was referring to me, yes I have read it. I also have some experience (MA rather than PhD) in doing sociological/theological research and pulling together the text. So I do know that it isn't easy!
DeleteI have an MSc in 'Crisis Management', my professional purpose for many decades - but I'd be hard pressed to put a 20,000 word dissertation/thesis together focussed on the woes of the CinW and Dioc. of Bangor particularly.
DeletePerhaps Outsider if you had focused on what it is that + are supposed to be doing instead of authoring and iconography, this whole debacle would not be quite so woefully sad..But then she did beat you once so why have a second fight you might loose….
Delete@AdClerum - I have a feeling that in years to come there’ll be many a case study or thesis written on the Bangor fiascos, despite the inevitable destruction of primary source documentary evidence which may well have already happened, for all I know. At least good old Andy and the Temu Pope have secured their places in history, though not, I suspect, in the ways they intended.
Delete'But then she did beat you once'? Think you have the wrong theologian.
DeleteOutsider
That's assuming anyone gives a flying fig about the Cult in Wales or any particular Diocese "in years to come".
DeleteFrankly I'd be amazed to see it survive until 2035.
@Exodus: You may well be right, but all kinds of researchers are as much interested in the failures of the past as the successes, sometimes more so. Consequently, I have little doubt that there will be interest in the Bangor fiascos in the future, a matter entirely separate from whether or not the CiW survives.
DeleteUseful for the next pandemic and panic buying of toilet paper.
ReplyDeleteBewildered
It s actually a very good book. A fine analysis of the poet Menna Elfyn.
ReplyDeleteWho?
DeleteNever heard of him!
Bewildered
Sometimes its good to keep our ignorance to ourselves
DeleteNor had I, because I'm a fairly recent arrival in Wales and not a Welsh speaker. Anyway, Menna is female and, from her biography, is very distinguished.
DeleteNot to mention the inability to distinguish ignorance from sarcasm.
DeleteBewildered
Perhaps, if it is a such good book, Manon should stick to writing, rather than leading people?
DeleteWhamab
WHAMAB: Ancient Briton could have serious hoot from opening a Bloggers' competition to suggest a title for her next tome: 'My Guide to Becoming a Bishop ... Backs You Must Stab' could be one. 'The Art of Pulpit Joke Cracking ... Ignore the Yawns!' Perhaps even: 'GOD. My Part in His Downfall' by Manon C. James.
DeleteLeading people?
DeleteWhat a novel notion.
"Why, God, am I the only one here?"
DeleteBook Title Competition for Manon's next Tome:; 'The Great Jehovah: An Autobiography by Me' [In Welsh of course].
DeleteY Parchedicaf Narcissus, Esgob Hunan-fudd a Nawddsant Uchelgais Bersonol!
Delete"I am a self-made woman and I love my creator."
DeleteManon by the way has never to my knowledge written anything in Welsh. Some articles in publications like Cristion. Clearly she prefers English.
ReplyDelete@Rhigyfarch, oh she does not, she hates English, has been positively discriminating against English and has publicly stated as much. I wasn’t there but I’m sure someone on here will have been when she addressed a room with that statement.
Delete@Rhigyfarch: Arrogant she might be, but she's not ignorant. She knows jolly well that to earn a few quid from writing there's a 1,000 greater chance of making a bob or two by writing to the English-speaking market than to the small handful of Welsh-reading cronies who'll buy her 'thoughts'. The global publishing industry works to the principle: Publish in English first: If it sells, then maybe- just maybe - invest your own profits in translating into Welsh, or Mongolian or whatever. Even in English, I have to wonder how many copies were sold? Certainly not on the Sunday Times Best Seller's List and notably not even a mention in any Church parish-pump news-letter that can be found.
DeleteHow many books have you written and published, Fab? And how many have you sold? She's not even been consecrated yet, and already many of you are lining up to take a shot at her. That looks more like jealousy than constructive critique. If she reads this blog, I trust she can brush aside much of the negativity. I imagine she learned years ago that no matter what you do, you will never please everyone.
DeleteOutsider
See https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/21-september/books-arts/book-reviews/women-identity-and-religion-in-wales-theology-poetry-story-by-manon-ceridwen-james
DeleteSee the reviewer https://ancientbritonpetros.blogspot.com/2017/03/not-another-victim.html
DeleteOutsider, You are morally evasive and an apologist for the indefensible, possessed of a remarkable capacity to circumvent the substance of an argument while repeatedly contriving to stand on the wrong side of it, one can’t help but conclude, to satisfy your own enormous hubris. More troubling still is your dogmatic failing to appreciate that the institution run as it is and inadequate individual’s elevation within (such as the aforementioned) pry copyn you so readily defend, do such harm as to become a legacy for the world beyond the vale of Clwyd to lament. Beyond your narrow (ahem) circle, the reputation of the CinW is increasingly and disastrously defined by the judgement of a rather less indulgent world. Seniority within such an institution confers not merely status, but responsibility and accountability. History has rarely been especially charitable to those whom, when confronted with institutional failure, especially with such seniority, chose evasion, rationalisation or complicity over candour and principle. Rather than being remembered for the 1450th anniversary, there is little reason to suppose that future scrutiny will prove any more forgiving with whom responsibility lies….
Delete@Outsider. Answer: Five actually (four factual and one a children's book) All in English. One now in 3rd re-print; the TV rights to a second formed a 3x part documentary produced by German television, third not so commercially successful (still profitable) but it was directed at a very specific readership and the fourth according to latest sales audits looking like it too will go to re-print. The children's book which began as a fun-exercise for my young godson but sold well beyond expectations inspired me to spend happy hours putting together its sequel. And book-writing isn't even my profession or main source of income. Does that answer you curiosity?
ReplyDeleteJust as well she's an outsider!
DeleteBewildered
That's genuinely impressive. So why characterise Manon as arrogant or cast doubt on the success of her book? Anyone as familiar with the publishing process as you are knows the commitment and perseverance it demands. Manon has built quite a substantial profile within the Province, published widely, and done so alongside her other professional work. Writing is not her main vocation, which makes her achievements all the more noteworthy. Much like yours.
DeleteOutsider.
If she was doing the work of a priest properly and fully she wouldn't have time to spare for writing anything other than sermons"Her other professional work"?
DeleteDon't make me laugh.
To quote a previous Archdeacon of yore, she's got foot and mouth disease.
Rumour - but until confirmed, rumour only - but it seems the Welsh Owain Glyndwr spirit of the Welsh in burning down Bangor Cathedral has returned. An arsonist's attack in full view of fast-fleeing overseas tourists and presumably cathedral stewards on the Altar (destroying its frontal and damaging its wooden structure) on Wednesday afternoon. Police arrest (apparently) etc.
ReplyDeleteReminiscent perhaps of Sion ap-Rhys hoisting his rainbow Gays/Queers etc. banner above the Cathedral on his newly purchased flag-pole and then God, whacked down a storm which blew not only the flag, but ultra-expensive flagpole down to the ground!
Now - if true - (and odd that the Cathedral hasn't report this attack on its website) matey with the alcohol-problem also has a problem with ..... well read above folks!
Well, that's really put Rowan Williams in his place then, hasn't it? Writing books about Dostoyevsky etc when he was supposed to be an archbishop! "Don't make.me laugh", you say. Indeed.
ReplyDeleteHowitzer
Precisely.
DeleteLook at the dire state in which he left the Church of England.
Bewildered
What is wrong with these people? Archbishop Cranmer writing the Prayer Book. Bishop William Morgan translating the Bible into Welsh. Archbishop Ramsey writing such drivel as The Christian Priest. And Archbishop Rowan on as you say Dostoyevsky, arguably the best book written on the great Russian writer, but that doesn’t matter. All of these people should have been in the business of being bishops. Writing books! Dear dear oh dear.
Delete“The Dean of Bangor Cathedral and Ministry Area Leader of Bro Deiniol“ has just been advertised. Dual role for both managing a Cathedral and Ministry Area. Then again for a Cathedral church that only gets 20 odd on a Sunday there isn’t much for “the Dean” to do.
ReplyDeleteFormer Student
@ Former Student:
DeleteYes. By viewing the occasional Bangor Cathedral -U-Tube morning service pew-count I can well believe that the congregant base is a pathetic 20 odd which says little for the current Dean's 'revival' programme.
But wasn't it in quite recent years that a former Archdeacon of Bangor, now Bishop of Guildford (?) with the sign-off of his Bishop Andy John, shut down the City's three parish churches, St Mary's, St. David's and St Peter's (along with the University Chaplaincy) because their congregant base had fallen below 35 per Sunday Eucharist???!!! 'No longer financially viable' etc.
Loss of the choir by the madness of the current Bangor archdeacon David Parry of course has contributed to this dreadful decline, but so too the abandonment of a once strong Afro-Caribb. congregant base and despite the hard work and energies of new University chaplain, Rev Nado, not a single student of Bangor's 11,500 student population now worships there.
Which begs the question: where does the buck stop for this collapse of a once well attended (even two years ago) cathedral. It has to be its Dean and her inabilities as a Parish priest ... and far less as a 'dean'. God forbid the ruin when she takes on an entire 'diocese'. The church needs 'clergy' not 'Compliance Officers'.
There is an irony in Bangor Cathedral now apparently scraping together twenty-odd worshippers on a Sunday. This, remember, is the same ecclesiastical establishment that considered congregations of around 35 insufficient to justify the continued existence of the city’s parish churches. Apparently 35 in a parish is terminal decline, while twenty in a Cathedral is “revival”.
ReplyDeleteThe present Dean (is she still there)? cannot be blamed for creating Bangor’s problems, she inherited them. But let us not rewrite history. She arrived amid considerable fanfare as the person who was going to reverse the decline and restore honour and dignity, the great hope, the fresh start, the much-needed revival.
So judge the revival by its fruits.
The congregation has apparently shrunk further. Long-standing worshippers speak of being alienated rather than embraced. The choir has gone. A once noticeable Afro-Caribbean congregation has largely disappeared. And somehow a Cathedral planted in the middle of a university city can look upon 11,500 students and apparently persuade virtually none of them to worship there.
That is quite an achievement, although perhaps not the one advertised.
There comes a point when “inherited difficulties” ceases to be an adequate explanation. Nobody expected the new Dean to perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes, but attracting rather more people than would comfortably fit into a minibus hardly seems an unreasonable expectation of somebody heralded as Bangor Cathedral’s great revivalist.
This is where the Church’s modern obsession with management becomes almost comic. It can restructure, reorganise, devise strategies, appoint officers, write policies and produce enough compliance paperwork to deforest Snowdonia — yet seems increasingly baffled by the elementary business of getting people into church and keeping them there.
The clergy who built great congregations generally understood something rather unfashionable: know your people, visit them, love them, preach something worth hearing and make them feel that their church belongs to them too.
Bangor increasingly resembles an institution that has forgotten that lesson.
The Church does not need people who can manage decline while giving it an impressive name. It needs priests.
If twenty-odd people constitute Bangor’s much-heralded “revival”, one hesitates to imagine what failure would look like.
I have no dog in this fight, but let's be accurate. If we look at the video of yesterday's service and count heads, there are about 40 people visible.
ReplyDeleteEven by your hour long wastage of 'counting heads', the Bangor situation is dire.
DeleteEven by employing your wasted hour of 'counting heads' for an hour of U-Tube watching of a Bangor 11 am service to challenge the facts - as some people count sheep before nodding off - the point is missed. The majority of Bangor cathedral 'congregants', s0, 30 or 40, are not from the Bro Deiniol ministry area but drive in, hedge-hopping over their own declining local churches and parishes. Even then with perhaps a 10-15 miles drive-in radius, the statistics are abysmal.
DeleteCounter this with the known fact that umpteen 'regulars' of yore have now opted to worship in St Asaph, the Afro communion in Bangor appears to have gone 'Baptist' and the RC Church in the city has picked up a number of the student population's discontents. Research should be done on the ground and not from watching an hour of 'U-Tube' and then drawing conclusions.
I can't comment on Bangor, except to agree that the congregation seemed very small for a "main" cathedral service. However I didn't spend an hour watching the video, a couple of minutes sufficed!
DeleteBravo @Regular, well said. The very basics of priest craft, in whatever tradition, seem to have been forgotten and utterly devalued to the point at which not even trying any longer seems to be acceptable. But relational things form the heart of the Gospel, built the church universal and are what transforms lives today.
ReplyDelete@Fr Duddleswell, Quite so, perhaps the most uncomfortable point is that we have allowed the language of strategy, restructuring and ‘new ways of being Church’ to obscure a much simpler failure. Too often the Church has ceased to do the ordinary things by which it once earned a place in people’s lives. Priestcraft is not principally administration, institutional management or the cultivation of an ecclesiastical profile. It is about presence; knowing your people, being seen in the community, visiting the sick, accompanying the bereaved, noticing the lonely and being there long before somebody needs a baptism, wedding or funeral.
DeleteThe relational nature of Christianity is not some nostalgic attachment to a bygone parochial model. It is intrinsic to the Gospel. Christ encountered people personally. The early Church grew through relationships, hospitality, witness and communities in which people were actually known to one another. That remains how lives are changed.
What concerns me most is not that clergy sometimes fall short, inevitably they do, but that the expectation itself appears to have been progressively lowered. When absence can be dressed up as a different model of ministry, and declining engagement explained almost entirely by forces outside the Church, accountability conveniently disappears.
An institution cannot continually lament that people no longer come through its doors whilst displaying remarkably little curiosity about why. If the Church wishes to remain relevant to people’s lives, it first has to be present in them. That is not innovation. It is the job.
"Perhaps the most uncomfortable point is that we have allowed the language of strategy, restructuring and ‘new ways of being Church’ to obscure a much simpler failure."
DeleteCodswallop.
"WE" haven't allowed anything of the sort.
"WE" weren't given a choice.
Whenever "WE" complained about the queered theology nonsense being foisted upon us by the likes of His --Darkness, his coven of menopausal feminazis and his golf caddie Capon, "WE" were described as subversives and told in no uncertain terms that we were no longer welcome in our own Church.
@Exodus, you make a fair point, history will have to distinguish between those who saw the disaster unfolding and said so, and those who found the disaster remarkably useful for their own advancement.
DeleteFor years, inconvenient voices have been sidelined while failure has been rewarded with preferment, titles and promotion. The institution shrinks, congregations disappear and credibility evaporates, yet somehow the architects and beneficiaries of the decline continue to prosper.
This is what makes the whole thing so grotesque. Accountability appears to be reserved for those who challenge the system, bring skills and experience from without the institution and are dismissed, have individuality’s and uniqueness, rather than those who have demonstrably failed within it.
History will judge this ridiculous period, and I suspect it will be savage. The great question will not be how the Church declined, but how so many managed to build careers from the ruins while silencing those who warned them what was happening.
Sod history, history has done this before.
Delete"Beware false prophets".
Rather than beware them, they were allowed in, like the worm at the centre of an apple, and allowed to prosper, breed and destroy everything from within.
The Arch maggot is Barry Morgan and Satan's imp still wields his influence from Llys Ego.
One of the priests I admired most was the Passionist Priest, Fr Austin Smith of Toxteth, Liverpool. What do you do all day, Austin, I asked him once. I hang about, he said. That hanging about, so that you are visible, talking about the weather with people, getting to know them has completely gone. Priesthood is in the end relational. And those who have bought in to the management culture are in my experience no good at it anyway.
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