Today, 3rd July, is the 18th anniversary of my ordination as a deacon and 17th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. So I’ve now been a member of the clergy for quite some time, and in that time, I’ve obviously met and worked with many other members of the clergy. I’ve met and worked with clergy who’ve had many different talents, clergy from many different backgrounds, clergy with many different understandings of theology, clergy of different churchmanship, and clergy with many different understandings of what being a priest means and how to go about putting that into practice in their own ministry. But when you remember that the clergy are a group of people drawn from so many different backgrounds, with so many different life experiences, the fact that they do have so many differences is only to be expected. One thing the vast majority of clergy I’ve met over the years do seem to have in common though is their rather lukewarm attitude towards meetings.
This does seem to be a very widespread attitude among the clergy and speaking to them over the years, it stems from a number of things that are inter-connected. One reason is that the clergy are expected to attend so many meetings (and the list seems to grow ever longer as time goes by). Another is a feeling that all these meetings impinge upon time that could, and probably should, be better spent doing other things. And then there’s the feeling, which is by no means unique to the clergy, that meetings usually involve a lot of time and effort for very little, if any, reward in terms of decision making and progress. As the American comedian, Fred Allen famously said,
“A committee is a group of people who individually can do nothing, but who, as a group, can meet and decide that nothing can be done.”
And I’ve attended more Church meetings than I care to remember where that has been undeniably true.
Having said that, the PCC meetings in this benefice are, on the whole, amongst the better Church meetings that I’ve attended. On the whole, PCC meetings in this benefice are fairly short, they’re conducted in a friendly, though business-like manner, people stick to the meeting agenda, we do what we need to do, and rather than putting things off for further discussion, we try to make any decisions that need to be made, there and then, we get through the agenda, and we close the meeting and go home.
Unfortunately, that can’t be said of a lot of the PCC meetings I’ve attended over the years. I’ve been at PCC meetings that have gone on for hours, and I do mean hours. I’ve been in parishes where PCC meetings that started at 7:30pm were still going on after 10:30pm and had to be adjourned without the agenda being completed. The reason for that was usually because the meetings were neither friendly nor business like; they were either too friendly, occasions for people to chat about their social lives rather than to address the business of running a parish church (I’ve even been to meetings where people started passing photos from their holidays around instead of getting on with the business of the meeting), or they were very unfriendly, occasions for people to argue, lose their tempers and fall out, for people to threaten to resign if they didn’t get their own way, and for people to walk out of the meeting if it wasn’t going their way. And when meetings turn into this kind of bad-tempered free-for-all, any hope of conducting any meaningful business goes out of the window. And I’ve been to PCC meetings where it was almost impossible to get a resolution or decision on anything because the PCC’s answer to any question was to form a sub-committee to discuss the particular issue further. And if you’ve ever heard that committee’s meet to have meetings about meetings then, in my experience, PCC sub committees are the example of that par excellence.
One of the problems with committees and meetings is that people bring to them what we commonly refer to as their ‘baggage’. I don’t mean bags to carry things in, though they often do that too, I mean their past experiences and long-held attitudes, and it’s these that are usually the root cause of the arguments and the lack of decisiveness we often get in committee meetings. For example, people might bring bitterness and even anger at past events to meetings. At one PCC meeting I attended (and I only use PCC meetings as an example, all meetings are prone to the same problems) a neighbouring parish which was struggling with falling numbers and failing finances had asked if we’d consider forming a team ministry with them. One person on the PCC was vehemently opposed to this and when he was asked why he was so against it he said,
“I’m sorry they’re having problems, but so are we, and they’ve never offered to help us, why should we help them?”
I’ll leave you to form your own opinion about the depth of Christianity revealed through that statement.
Or, as there are on every committee, people might bring their pedantry with them. I experienced a prime example of this in another parish where the PCC member who was responsible for putting up the flag on the bell tower refused a request from the British Legion to fly the Union Jack on Battle of Britain Day because it wasn’t on his list of days when the flag should be flown. There are, in fact, no set days to fly flags from church buildings, only local custom and practice. Nevertheless, he refused to put the flag up, which caused an argument in and a delay to the meeting. Then, when someone else, who thought the flag should be flown, put it up, the designated person resigned because someone else had done his job.
And on a wider scale, and stepping away from committees and meetings, we see something similar I think, in the Church of England’s dogged determination to stick with its ‘Marks of Mission’. I’ve heard it said that this is because these Marks of Mission have stood the test of time. But the mission of the Church is to proclaim the Gospel, to teach people all that Christ taught, and to make new disciples and baptise them into Church membership, and considering that in the almost 40 years since the Marks of Mission were first introduced, attendance at Church of England services has declined by around 50%, then I think it’s quite justifiable to ask in what sense have these Marks of Mission stood the test of time, except that time has shown they haven’t worked? And yet the Church of England is very reluctant to leave this particular piece of baggage behind.
When it comes to mission and ministry, in all its forms, including the business of running a parish church and including all the meetings that now seem to go with being an active member of the Church, we simply can’t afford to carry baggage with us. And when it comes to the business of the Church, neither can we afford to waste time in trivial matters that have nothing to do with moving our mission and ministry forward. And this is one of the central messages of this morning’s Gospel reading. We find it in Jesus’ instruction to the seventy-two;
“Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’”
Shortly before this in the Gospel, we’re told that Jesus was passing through Samaritan territory, and we know that there was a great deal of enmity between the Samaritans and the Jews. So, in part at least, this was perhaps a warning to the seventy-two – they were being sent out as lambs among wolves, and the less they carried, and by keeping themselves to themselves until they got to where he’d sent them, the less likely they were to be attacked and robbed. But we can also think of Jesus’ words as instructions on how to go about our work for the Church.
If we’re going to carry out this work of mission and ministry that Jesus has given us, we’re going to have to step outside our comfort zone. And there’s perhaps nothing so comforting to us as what we know and are familiar with, our baggage. But we have to leave that behind. What we do need to carry with us into this work, is the Gospel that Jesus gave us. And when we’re about this work, we’re called to go straight to it and get on with it. So we’re not to stop for other things that are going to slow us down or stop us in this work of proclaiming the Gospel. In other words, if we’re going to carry out the mission and ministry that Jesus gave us, the mission and ministry of the Church, we can’t afford to do all the things that we so often do in church meetings. We can’t afford to bring our baggage with us, we have to leave that behind and step away from what we know and are comfortable with so that we can get on with what Jesus has called us to do. And we can’t afford to get side-tracked by things that are irrelevant to our mission and ministry and that stop us from getting on with the work that Jesus has called us to do. These things apply to us as individual Christians, they apply to the committees, the councils and synods that the Church has put in place to carry out the work of the Church, and in the meetings where these committees get together to decide how to carry out the work of the Church. And they apply to those who meet to decide Church policies at deanery, diocesan and national levels too.
I suppose this may have come across as a lecture on what I expect from PCCs and PCC members. I think though it would be more accurate to say that this is what I’d like from PCCs and PCC members but, as we read in this morning’s Gospel, what Jesus expects from all his disciples. It might be yet another hard thing to do, but if we can do it, if we can leave behind our baggage and avoid being side-tracked by irrelevancies, if we can avoid all the things that hold us back from carrying out the mission and ministry that Jesus entrusted to us, and simply get on with it, then perhaps, just like the seventy-two, when we meet Jesus, we can rejoice that our names are written in heaven too.
Amen.
The Propers for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 3) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 