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June 2005, Pages 1-2.
Index of articles:
by subject,
by date.
In this issue:
(June 2005)
HC less often?
Bishop's Charge,
Social Committee,
Song.
Holy Communion less often
As discussions about the Deanery Pastoral Plan continue, both Thorpe Edge and Greengates churches are without clergy, and Thornbury will shortly lose theirs.
We could ask retired clergy to cover the services in these three churches, but that doesn't give care to their congregations. We could use curates, but they can hardly be trained if they're always out on their own doing services. These "answers" don't help us adapt to having fewer clergy than churches.
We'll never again have 15 vicars to go round 15 parishes (16 churches). At most there will be 11 or 12.
In the short term it seems likely that the problem will be solved by secondment: one of the vicars will be asked to remain half-time vicar in his/her own church, and give the other half of his/her time to a vacant church. So each church will get him/her for two Sundays each month. On the other two Sundays s/he will be missing. We could ask the clergy to run round like scalded cats, covering two church buildings in one morning, but if we do that we'll just end up with exhausted vicars. There would certainly be no slack for churches to launch modern services like our 11.15am, which is vital for the future.
Would it be better to go back to division sums? 11 or 12 divided by 15 or 16 equals about three quarters, so each church would get a vicar about three quarters of the Sundays. Say three a month. So what would they do on the fourth?
There are other people as well as clergy who can preach and lead services. For instance, readers. If the church isn't having holy communion that morning, why not use readers?
An example is 5th June. Greengates would like communion at 10am. I could go and help, but who would cover Eccleshill? Since our 10.30am service isn't communion that month, Shirley Firth, reader from Idle, can cover for me. Problem solved.
Some might ask "Why should Greengates be allowed to demand Holy Communion and thus take away the vicar of Eccleshill?" But isn't that the wrong way round? Shouldn't it really be that all the churches in the deanery should take a cut in the number of communion services, so that the clergy can be shared around and any "loss" is shared equally?
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Calverley Deanery: Each church of the Deanery would
On this Sunday the service(s) would
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This had several advantages. New people could attend without immediately being put on the spot about whether to go up and receive the bread and wine. Confirmation was much less about qualifying for communion - instead it was more about an adult profession of faith. And there was less pressure on time - in those days the sermon could be longer, and in our day special items (such as drama, song-slots or anthems, quizzes, interviews or testimonies, and times of open prayer) can be fitted in more easily. If we had communion less frequently it would help us to rediscover our roots as Anglicans: we are supposed to take the ministry of the word as seriously as the ministry of the sacrament, because we believe in the bible as well as in holy communion.
So I would like to make a suggestion for discussion in our deanery (centre panel). Could we agree that each of our churches will have one Sunday morning each month when there isn't communion? It would mean we would all prepare for the days when we won't have a vicar present every Sunday. When the vicar is present, s/he would help the church congregation get used to the pattern of a non-communion service. And then when it comes to that inevitable time when s/he is away, there might well be a visiting preacher, but at least all the regular churchgoers would know how the service without communion goes!
John Hartley