URC and the discourse about being too diverse

First something for people to ponder and get back to me upon. Martin my supervisor started to day to ponder that the URC had more similar theological core ideas than Anglicanism did. I challenged this, I think effectively by pointing out that I have on occasions to use an "Anglican dialect" in order to get ideas across on places like Ship of Fools which is dominated by Anglicans. However my reason for challenging that was not that experience but being involved in the "Who the Heck are we?" I heard people within the URC expressing the exact same sort of opinion about the URC. So I am sceptical about both claims.

However it is worth pondering that some people in the URC don't feel that there is a lot in common with others in the URC. I suspect it has a number of roots.

1. Firstly I think that some of it is due to our independent spirit. The feeling that the way the our URC does things is the way our URC does thing and is a full legitimate way of being URC in all its idiosyncrasy. 
2. Secondly I think that when people start to encounter other URC congregations there is surprise at the different valid forms of being URC that others have. It is a richness but it also starts many people asking about what does it mean to be URC. 
3. Thirdly I think there is some genuine bewilderment at the diversity, especially on certain hot issues. 
4. However I suspect there is some importing of the Anglican discourse where there are real and current power struggles going on. The question is if the Anglican's are having such a difficulty on keeping their show on the road, why aren't these issues causing us equally difficulty. 

That last question needs answering in multiple ways, both in terms of:

• our independent heritage which leaves us with a much more  bottom up structure than the Anglican Communion, 
• the commitment to unity and therefore travelling together, 
• that tensions have been faced at other stages, remember what the 1990s were like anyone?
• conditionality of our understanding of revelation which results in a blurred identity 
• that we have several not just one hot topic, anyone fancy a round on whether its necessary for a Christian to be pacifist?

Turning the other cheek

There once was a man employed at a Northern University on a temporary contract in staff development. Actually lots of people have, but this is a story he told.



When he was fairly new in post, somebody in the manner of University switch boards put a lady through who wanted to send a copy of her magazine in which the University had put a job advert. Why she got his number, is one of the obscurities of University switch boards and people trying to negotiate the fact that there is not one central number. I don't know whether she had dialled two numbers in the wrong order, or if she had been passed pillar to post as people tried to guess the right person.

Anyway as he was new (maybe that should be especially as he was new) he did not have the number of the correct person to hand. At which point she turned on the snot. She made him feel as if she was in some lah-de-dah operation in the South of England with swanky offices and all creature comforts and he should just jump at her behest. Southerners who try and make northerners feel small don't go down well. He obviously had assertiveness training as he managed to after some time to get off the phone with the promise to ring her back.

He can remember doing two finger signs at the phone after he put it down.

Then, in his words, he "took control"

He looked up the number required, which was in personnel and in the next block of offices  but not something he knew at the time. He rang the lady back, said he now had the address which he passed onto her all the time being as courteous as courteous, even offering to email the address to her so that she would have it in the future.

When he had finished the lady apologised for her earlier behaviour, which is what he had intended her to do.

It's a great story as it is not one we hear told very often. The guy in "taking control" meant that he did not let the ladies unprofessional attitude rile him into unprofessional behaviour. However the maintenance of professional behaviour here seems right in line with Jesus' instruction to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile. I am not claiming he was a Christian but he was repeating Christ's teaching to a secular group.

So is the commands about forgiveness or about not letting others determine how you respond and your mood? Is it about freedom or forgiveness?

A Welcome is not enough

I said in the discussion that welcome is not enough. I think I can now spell out the two other stages that need to happen, one is prior to the welcome, invitation/introduction and the second comes afterwards integration.

Firstly most people are not going to cold call a church for worship! A few, a very few and normally in my experience people who are fairly marginal to society do. The rest when looking for a church, would rather go to one where they know somebody or even know a friend of a friends. So at this stage it means people letting it be known they go to a particular church and speaking of the good things about it. You will notice that personal evangelism can be part of this process but it does not have to be. So a congregation needs to actually spend some time thinking about what it is good at and encouraging people to talk about those things.

I also think that it is quite possible if we want people to cold call our congregations putting up the old fashioned "Public Worship" is more effective than "All welcome". The thing is that "public" says to people "you have the right to be here". In a world where more and more public spaces are being privatised that may be an important message to get across. Actually "All Welcome" is very problematic. It is used in many situations where all are not welcome, so people tend to disbelieve it. It sounds desperate, we will take anyone who comes. Nobody particularly wants to belong to an organisation that is desperate for new members.

As for integration that is the real test of inclusiveness. It is very easy for someone to be welcomed the first three or four weeks they attend and then ignored once their face is familiar. This makes becoming part of a congregation very difficult indeed. At this stage people still need someone more familiar with the congregation to befriend them. For instance if it is stated "Please see Jane Bloggs for tickets for the Christmas lunch" they often won't know who "Jane Bloggs" is even though they have been around for a while. They need to have someone they can ask in a none threatening way. Otherwise they are effectively excluded from these events. That goes further, any idea how hard it is to set up a direct debit, when you don't know who the giving secretary is, etc. Then their gifts aren't know to the congregation so often overlooked. There also is a need for pastoral care before they are fully a member and one gift they do have is the ability to see the congregation more as an outsider would than those who have been there for twenty years.

Diversity within the URC

This is part of my response to "Who the Heck are we? Exploring identity within the URC"

On the online seminar (Webinar) I heard several people say "We are very diverse". I want to question that. I have attended ten different URC. These include two in Urban Priority Area and it also includes liberal and conservative ones. Also there are former Presbyterian, and former Congregationalists as well at least one ecumenical partnership.  It covers membership sizes from about twenty to two hundred and includes growing and declining churches. I simply don't see it in most areas of our life.

Let me start off stating where there is diversity. If there is theological spectrum from liberal to conservative then yes we are very diverse on that spectrum. However many moons ago, I sat in on a qualitative methodology course in the social science. One lecturer was comparing a Durkheim statistical analytic approach to Sociology with something like the approach a Barthian  postmodern experiential approach. He pointed out that although they were unlikely to agree on anything, they did agree that there was something worth discussing, and even though they were pradigmatically opposed they could have a conversation with each other because in some extent they were talking the same language. In some ways Reformed Theology is like that. It tends to lead to strongly held extreme positions (both liberal and conservative), people don't agree, but they are working out their positions within a framework of thought.

However in many other areas we simply do not display that diversity. We go from very low to something approaching low moderate when you talk liturgically. That is weekly service of the word with monthly communion are normative whether conservative evangelical or liberal. We change the hymns but not the format.

Views of the Eucharist go from low Lutheran to pure Zwinglian with very little at either end. Ironically I suspect of those that have thought about it Calvin's position is the one most commonly held although Zwinglian is more often taught (but then according to my supervisor that is the case even among the Roman Catholics and he is a sociologist of liturgy)! There is little or no correlation with the views on communion and the frequency of partaking!

Then there is the way the Bible becomes a symbol of "orthodoxy". I can still remember sitting in a organising committee reviewing lent groups. One member was a liberal URC member, another a moderate liberal Anglican (at least by our standards). The Anglican said "too much bible study", the URC said "too little bible study". Over and over again I have come across a smattering of members in many different congregations who have a knowledge of the Bible that is only possible to attain through years of consistent study. Twice ministers from the pulpit has said that very few have read the Bible from cover to cover only to find that there are several in the congregation who have. One congregation would maybe labelled conservative; the other liberal. Actually neither name fits the complexity of the theological position of either congregation well.

Our ways of working create a similarity between congregations.

Then, congregations are proud of the "independence". Even the former Presbyterians tend to voice independent sentiments, and quite enjoy doing things their way. Normally their way is very similar to the URC just up the road, but hush don't tell them that. Its a bit like the no uniform days at school, where all the girls are free to wear exactly the same pink dress.

Painting things blue and selling orange marmalade are not random. The blue one is very particular and there is nothing accidental about it. The colour blue is actually a light shade of royal blue, it is called Presbyterian Blue and was coined at the time of the Orange revolution! It is a method of saying strongly protestant and loyal to a protestant monarch. I doubt that 10% of those who are choosing this colour are aware of its heritage but they feel that this is the colour they ought to use.

Selling homemade orange marmalade I first put down to it being a "Scottish thing" and therefore done in congregations with a Presbyterian background. However I am finding this common elsewhere. It may still be due to "Scottish Heritage" as many of congregations which don't have a Presbyterian background (or not a recent one) do have a lot of Scots as members.

Thirdly we are culturally similar. Two obvious reasons for this, one is the asking of hard questions: this is not culturally normative, as far as I can make out most people, perhaps after a period of youthful rebelliousness, feel that keeping the show on the road is enough for them, and they don't want to analyse things. Its not just our Anglican and Methodist friends. Secondly we are governed by committees. Committees take skills, and they are not skills the majority of the population have. In fact they are largely middle class and they are getting rarer in society. I suspect that you have to be upper middle class, senior management, before you actually get to deal with committees. The small local institutions that used to "train" people in this sort of process are failing, and have been for a while. There is an increasing split between the highly committed "keenies" and the majority lax membership, whether this is unions, social club or church. It is a fairly specific group within the population who will be attracted to a church where asking hard questions is encouraged and that is run by committees.