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Serving God in the heart of our community since 1881 St Andrew's Church, Taunton |
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Hot Topics - Outside the comfort zone: responding to the challenge of our Local Ministry Group
A sign on the M66 proudly proclaims that it is "the highest motorway in England". Last week I was driving along it in thick fog, and thinking that I would like to write something for this 'FWIW' column. But my ideas were as murky as the morning. So I murmured something along the lines of "OK, God, have you got any bright ideas?" Well, maybe it was the high altitude and hence the relative closeness to Heaven that the M66 enjoys, but communications must have been pretty good because "Local Ministry Groups" flashed into my mind with the resulting feeling of "ah yes, of course". A more charismatic Christian might use the phrase "God told me to write about Local Ministry Groups" - but I'm not in the least charismatic and feel uncomfortable with the idea of God addressing me so directly. So I'll limit myself to saying that the idea came from somewhere and it felt important to follow up on it. So here goes.
Most of us are aware that St. Andrew's is part of a 'Local Ministry Group' or 'LMG'. If asked, probably the majority of us could name the other three churches in our group: St. Peter's, All Saints and Holy Trinity. The majority of us will also know that when there is a 5th Sunday in the month the LMG churches worship together at 10am at one of the four churches. (We may differ in our views about whether or not the resulting absence of a 10am service at St. Andrew's roughly 3 times a year is "a Good Thing" or "a Bad Thing".) Rather fewer of us will regularly attend the LMG service when it's at another church. Even fewer will attend the weekly LMG Prayers, faithfully held each Tuesday evening - even if we know about them we assume that it is "something for the clergy" and that mid-week praying in church is something that should be left to the experts.
Now before I go any further I need to confess my own sins. I have attended only a fraction of the Sunday LMG services at other churches - after all, it's a good opportunity for a Sunday off isn't it? I rarely attend Tuesday prayers - I work hard and am often tired by 6.30pm - a glass of wine seems more attractive. (Katharine, I have to say, is much more faithful to both of these activities!) So you will see that I am in no position to point the finger at anyone. Finger pointing, however, is not what this piece is about. Like that journey on the M66, it is more about finding a way through the murk.
The LMG: how do you view it?
I have overheard a couple of interesting perceptions about the LMG recently:
I quote these comments not to be petty, but because they illustrate how much fog there seems to be around LMGs. They portray LMGs as, in the first instance, a devious plot to close a church (and probably ours!) and in the second, a form of inconvenience that early risers have managed to wriggle out of. To view the LMG in such a way is to reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of its purpose.
Let's go back to basics. Bishop Peter Price is an innovative clergyman who thinks "outside the box". When he introduced the idea of LMGs back in 2004 he described their purpose as “to develop and maintain a vibrant, worshipping Christian fellowship at the heart of every local community, however small or large….staffed by ordained and lay ministers who are working together and who are both stipendiary and non stipendiary…enabling individual members to play to their strengths and making their expertise available across the LMG."
So it is fairly easy to extract from that statement that LMGs are about sharing resources, making the most of gifts and expertise, working together to support each other, all with the aim of serving God in the heart of our communities. (Now where have I heard that phrase before?)
More broadly, Bishop Peter acknowledges that the church faces a challenge to its traditional culture: "we need to encourage and nurture a dependent people into a process of transformation, no longer being people who are being taken care of. Weaning both those who take care and those who are taken care of, away from this dependency is a major challenge." The challenge, in other words, is to reduce dependence on formal ordained ministry and transform ourselves into ministering congregations. It is in this context that the support and sharing available in an effective LMG can be so invaluable.
When the challenge of the LMG was given to us by Bishop Peter the churches in our group, to their credit, eschewed the jam making competitions favoured elsewhere in the town, and decided to start praying together regularly. Thus, the concepts of regular Tuesday evening prayers and combined worship on 5th Sundays were born. They have been maintained since.
Moving out of the comfort zone
The American business motivational speaker Brian Tracey said: “move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.”
Without doubt that has been true. It has not been all plain sailing. Experiencing patterns of worship different from those you are used to can be challenging. We have come up hard against some uncomfortable differences in theology between churches. There are times when we have offended each other, albeit inadvertently. Nevertheless, the conversation between our LMG churches continues and the relationship develops.
This conversation is itself a blessing, and there have been many others. Amongst them:
So what of the future?
Graham Dodds has produced a useful diagram that illustrates some different types of LMG. Take a look at it: what circle does our LMG fall within? Of course, as the overlapping circles imply, it is not an 'either/or' choice. My own view is that we are mostly in the Relational/ Informal circle. Perhaps, for the future, whilst maintaining, indeed, strengthening our relationships, we could look at the opportunities available by moving more into the Purposeful/ Pragmatic circle, and asking less "what can the LMG do for us?" than "what, with all the resources and gifts that we have at St. Andrew's, can we do for the other churches in the LMG?"
For myself I make these commitments:
There is no doubt in my mind that Local Ministry Groups are the way of the future. As a layman - a 'man in the pew' - I believe we need more shared ministry, not less. We need to further develop relationships between the churches in our LMG and work together "to develop and maintain a vibrant, worshipping Christian fellowship at the heart of every local community" as Bishop Peter puts it. To do this it is vital that we all understand the underlying purpose of the group and see it not as a threat, something to be feared or resented, but a blessing, an exciting challenge, and a real opportunity to create sources of God's light and grace in our communities.
If our LMG is working it will take us outside of our comfort zone: that is the way of growth and the antidote to stagnation. The group has made a great start: the best, however, is yet to come.
With blessings from all of us at St. Andrew's Church, Taunton, UK.
Adrian
Webmaster
P.S. If you have views or ideas about the Local Ministry Group please feel free to . I will be happy to publish responses here. NOTE: I am the webmaster of St. Andrew's Church, not clergy or a reader. I write as 'a man in a pew' and the opinions stated are personal. You should not assume that I necessarily know what I'm talking about, or that what I say reflects the views of other people in our church! |
Page updated 13/10/2007
