Ordination Anniversary

Today is a significant anniversary for the Church of England. It marks 25 years since the first group of women were ordained priest in Bristol. It marked the end of a strange transition time, as I had trained alongside women, including Debbie, and my year were all ordained deacon in 1990. The men were ordained priest in 1991, but the women weren't, as the changes had not yet gone through. 

Because of the timing of our move from Southwell Diocese to Coventry in 1994, Debs missed the big services in both cathedrals, but it worked out nicely as she and one other candidate were ordained at a special service at All Saints', Leamington Spa. As I was sharing here in Beverley the other day, Debs was 7 months pregnant at the time, and said Jono gave a big kick at the moment of ordination. You can see the 'bump' in the picture. That must explain why he now works for a church...!

It was St Barnabas' Day, 11 June 1994, so red stoles were worn. My first Sunday back on duty after Debbie died was Pentecost Sunday, when we also wear red, and this was the stole I wore. It's probably the only bit of clergy garb that really holds any significance for me - reminding me of her, and also that extraordinary day.

The following day, Debbie presided at communion at St James', Whitley - the first time a woman had ever done so, of course, and she also officiated at some other 'firsts' at other churches in the months (and even years) that followed. Back then it was all new, exciting and for some people deeply traumatic, but now it all seems very familiar and normal. 

Lay Presidency

When I was training for the ministry, I remember someone drily commenting that the word president came into use for church orders of service around the time of Watergate. It wasn't the best start for the word used in Church of England service books to refer to the person who has the overall responsibility for officiating during a service of Holy Communion.

Apparently the C of E considered various options - putting priest probably upset people who prefer the word presbyter, and explaining that it includes bishops makes it all a bit wordy. Some churches use celebrant on their own leaflets, but that wasn't adopted. The movement to renew the liturgy, both in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches in the 60s and 70s took very seriously the participation of all the people. As all the people gathered are celebrating, they didn't single out the person overseeing the celebration. In the end they settled on president.

My experience is that whenever anyone suggests lay people might preside at an Anglican communion it prompts a reaction. In the comments on my previous post, it was called 'daft'. I have witnessed otherwise reasonable Anglican clergy get very upset - often very much more upset than they do about lots of other issues. So I thought I'd use this post to muse a little about the issue and, having lit the touch paper, wait for some reaction.

Opponents are often dismissive, or resort to an appeal to tradition which is little more than "we've always done it this way, so it must be right". It may well be right, but it needs better argumentation. We can't be entirely sure of what happened in the very earliest days of the church - the New Testament indicates a period of transition, so I suspect it wasn't as tidy as some would suggest. However, it would be hard dispute that our current Anglican practise mirrors what most of the church has done for most of its history. Whether it has an authentic continuity with that historic ministry remains a very big question in Anglican-Catholic relations.

Let's do a thought experiment, which is contrived and silly, but might help us to get started. Imagine you're invited to Desert Island Communion. You're all lay people, washed up on a desert island with little immediate hope of rescue - it's a Robinson Crusoe job. Remarkably there is bread and wine, and with no prospect of a suitably ordained minister being present, the gathering has an ad-hoc communion. The question is whether it's a real communion or not. For some people, it would be irregular - put crudely, it's not conforming to the normal rules of the church, but as it's exceptional circumstances God turns up. For others, it will be impossible for that to be true. Depending which side you you land probably determines a lot of the rest of the discussion.

Over the years, my observation is that the proponents of lay presidency (which is what we call it in the trade) fall into a number of categories. However the different character of the arguments is rarely addressed, and is usually just dismissed.

The first example I came across in my school Christian Union. We had a weekend away, and some people wondered if we could just 'do' a communion. It was innocently proposed as a nice idea, but for reasons I can't remember it didn't happen. I don't recall having an opinion at 16, and I suspect quite a lot of people don't. The second are people from church backgrounds where an ordained person isn't required, but have subsequently started attending Anglican churches. "Having someone authorised makes sense, but why can't the Reader do it?" said a Baptist to me once. From their previous experience, it was a reasonable question.

However, there are people with more of an axe to grind - either simply rebels or pragmatists who think that the solution to the communion problem (see previous post) isn't extended communion, but lay presidency. As I've already said, I don't think any of the available options should be adopted as a quick fix for that issue, so my answer to them would be the same; it's answering the wrong question.

The most interesting rationale I heard for lay presidency was described by Tina Baxter at a meeting I attended in the early 90s. It was more persuasive because it didn't ignore the importance of history or ordination in the Anglican tradition and sought to put the possibility of lay presidency into an Anglican structure. Her argument was essentially that ordination to the priesthood/presbyterate was primarily ordination to responsibility - for the life, nurture, ministry and mission of a church. Priests delegate and share many of these responsibilities - including ones which are key to people's spiritual life and nurture - notably teaching the faith and leading some of the liturgy. In extremis lay people can even baptize, but all under the ultimate supervision of a priest/presbyter. Her question was, therefore, why is eucharistic presidency different. [That's my brief recollection of a discussion from 17 or 18 years ago, and it was a question, so don't hold her to that!]

Personally I think lay presidency is theoretically possible - I don't regard ordination to the priesthood as being primarily ordination to preside at the eucharist. Nor do I regard appeals to historic continuity as ultimately persuasive. Other ancient churches regard me as a lay person, so even my qualification to preside is already a matter of opinion and dispute. However, I don't think it's a constructive proposal in practise. We're already a church plunged into disputes about the legitimacy of people's ministries - based on gender, sexual orientation, doctrinal belief and so on. The last thing we need is another. And I suspect that the only driver to consider it would be pragmatism, which is the last reason to proceed.

Communion by Extension

Despite the title, it's not about church services in conservatories. It's quite a churchy thing, so if you're not interested in that sort of thing, feel free to call back later!

I keep meeting people who talk about church services moving to communion by extension, led by an authorised lay person. This happens in some places because in the Church of England only people ordained priest can preside at a communion service, and there aren't enough priests to take services in every location and at every time that churches currently require. The logic goes, therefore, that if consecrated bread and wine can be taken from one venue to another by a lay person and then distributed by them, this can meet the requirements.

Aware that I may be accused of all manner of things at this point, perhaps I should clarify before I go on:

• I think the celebration of holy communion is central to the life of the church, and should be available to the whole people of God on a regular basis.
• The ministry of lay people needs to be expanded and developed and is sometimes restricted unnecessarily by clergy  - either through insecurity or an inflated sense of their own importance.
• Communion by extension is what several of us do in my own parish when we take communion to individuals or small groups of people who are housebound or in residential homes.

However, I think communion by extension is not the way forward for the Church of England's Holy Communion service staffing problems. It's a reasonable answer to the question: "how can we maintain the present system, with its patterns of services, congregational expectations and church structure". There are other solutions - fast track ordinations for local leaders or even allowing lay people to preside (which would be hugely controversial). But I think they are all answers to the wrong question. 

We should be asking what the church needs to look like in order to develop and grow communities which can transform both individuals and neighbourhoods with the love of God. I don't think that necessarily means providing Holy Communion at every venue and in every time slot that we have become accustomed to. Change won't be popular, of course, and some people get very agitated about it - I've heard people talk about "my communion" which they would defend at all costs.

If the Church of England is going to do more than "keep the show on the road" we need to have a bigger picture in our imaginations than communion services. We need to get away from thinking of communion as a commodity we're entitled to at XX o'clock on a Sunday, and rather as a gift we appreciate whenever it is available. We need to move away from being parochial in our vision - what about thinking in terms of areas or Deaneries with a certain number of celebrations at specific locations, but other forms of worship elsewhere which lay people can lead. I even dare to ask whether not having communion as a weekly routine might actually make us appreciate it more when it happens.

My own view is that participation in the eucharist or communion isn't just about consuming the elements - it's about the entire journey of the communion service. In some traditions that is affirmed by the fact that people unable to consume the bread or the wine are still deemed to have received by being present (it's in the 1662 Prayer Book, for example) If we drift into a widespread practise of communion by extension, we potentially lose that insight. And maybe it's an undervaluing of non-eucharistic worship to assume that it cannot feed people's spirits adequately - assuming they are still able to attend the eucharist sometimes.

Depending on our upbringing or spiritual preferences, we'll react differently to some of these ideas. I grew up on communion once a month - and it was a special occasion; those of a more catholic tradition may find it more difficult, although in the developing world the mass is sometimes an infrequent but joyful occasion. However, we need to be thinking about these things now, before expediency takes over and we acquire habits and practises which we might not have chosen if we had paid more attention.