The Church of Ireland
Diocesan Press Release

These same great Christian Churches are heirs to centuries of tradition - they have inherited many responsibilities and liabilities, we simply do not have the freedom to opt out of all this. We have schools to run, hospitals, nursing homes, sheltered housing and countless other charities to develop. We have church buildings loved by generations of worshippers to maintain. We have a social commitment, and we play our part in the life and culture of the community. Here I speak not exclusively of the Church of Ireland of course, but of the historic churches in the world of the twenty-first century.

But for a moment, turn your thoughts with me to that wider canvas - the world in which we live. What happened on that September morning in New York one month ago today has changed the Western world as we know it. We have been hastened into recession. We have seen lay-offs, redundancies, on a scale that we have not seen for a very long time. We have been made aware in a ghastly new way of the power of the terrorist - the power of evil. We have seen in a new way what people in Northern Ireland, in Israel-Palestine, and in the Basque regions have been telling us for a long time. People are experiencing fear in a new way. There is a new spirit of fatalism about. In a year in which the ecumenical community launched a Decade for the Overcoming of Violence, we are taking so much violence for granted once again. We are more confused than ever. The scale of the tragedy of one month ago was staggering for us in Europe and North America, but we must be honest it does not compare in magnitude to the numbers dying in war and malnutrition in Africa and other parts of the world today. A new millennium began with high hopes in the Western world, but we face problems that we hardly thought to be on the horizon this time last year.

But we in one place cannot solve the problems of the world. Jesus ministered in a world that was full of suffering, of evil, of violence and of wasted life. He did not acquiesce, but he challenged individuals, he challenged the society to which he belonged with a better way - God's way. He spoke of a relationship with God that would literally spill over into everyday living. Those who lived this good news of another way were to be people who went the extra mile, who turned the other cheek, who gave what they could, and even more, to those in need. Jesus held before his listeners a vision of life transformed, of life lived under God's rule. It is summed up in the prayer he taught us: "Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be done, on earth as in heaven".

There is a challenge for us from the Gospel to say loudly and clearly in these difficult times that it is not tax cuts that we want - it is more provision for the poor, the sick, and the marginalized. The rising tide which has just began to ebb did not raise those at the bottom of the sea, but it did drown many. Our shrinking resources as a nation cannot now be poured into any more grandiose projects - our own version of the tower of Babel - they must instead be placed clearly where they will benefit the marginalized - the real poor, the sick and those for whom life is almost unbearable. What I am talking about are Gospel values, but they make less and less sense to many people today. Politically they may be suicide.

Actually in Ireland there is still a residual clinging to these values. This is because the effect of Christian teaching tends to remain in general morality for about a generation after people lose touch with the realities of faith. We cannot depend on this for ever. The signs of unashamed racism in society on one hand and on the other the actual despising of the poor are already there. Teachers are already telling us that there is now something more than adolescent indifference to religious teaching in schools, there is real parental opposition to the communication of Christian faith.

That is the world in which we are living. The last thing that I would want to suggest is either that we despair, or that we hide ourselves away form that world. My own love of the Church of God has always to be put in the context that the church is only there because God loved the world so much.

Today, I must address our responsibility as a church. I want to begin by affirming the faith, the loyalty and the dedication of the clergy of this diocese whom I am called to serve as chief pastor. So often when we realise that the church, our own local parish, faces a crisis, the first person to blame is the Rector. Now not one of us claims to be perfect, but it is also so easy to throw stones. The pressures on a changing ministry have increased out of recognition in these last couple of decades, and this is not least in the area of increased expectations on one hand and diminishing respect for every professional person on the other. I affirm too the many laity who are deeply committed to the Church of Ireland, who serve Christ faithfully in prayer, in worship, and in service in the wider community. I sometimes worry greatly that the most committed can so easily be smothered in church administration that they have little opportunity to live their lives in the wider community. Our large institutional structures are in many ways as great a burden on both priest and parishioner, even if in slightly different ways. Often I plead for more to be done by smaller groups of people with more professional expertise. I do so because the nuts and bolts of the church are becoming more time-consuming than its mission to serve Jesus as Lord.

Where do we need to put our energy as a diocese now ? We need to put it into the mission of the church. That mission is surely to transform life for the glory of God - that mission is to be lived out in a world that is hurting badly.

Many years ago C.S.Lewis wrote the Screwtape letters telling of how the chief devil instructed his minions to undermine Christians and to make them ineffective. I think if he were writing that book today in the context of the Church of Ireland, those minions could hone in on many things - but I leave you to make your own list. Sometimes it is the good at the expense of the best that undermines our mission, at other times it is the trivia that enable us to shelter ourselves from the divine Word.

What about this transforming faith that seems to be slipping away from a new generation ? I have the uncomfortable feeling that it is we who have failed that generation. We look for ways of reaching out, but so often it is an empty hand that we stretch out. It may be empty because we have lost touch with their real needs, but it is often empty because we have not grasped what we want to offer.

You will have heard that a group has been formed in the diocese called VISION 2020. This is because we need a vision of where we are going, of what God may be demanding of us, and what the Church could be. I do not want to pre-empt that work. I want to leave you with one thing to tease out. God cannot use us as part of a vision for the future unless we are very firmly grounded in God's life today.

The need is for us all to get a firmer grasp on the basics of the Christian Gospel. We need to learn more about Jesus so that we can really know him for ourselves. We need to learn more about prayer, so that we really maintain that relationship. We need to experience more of God's forgiveness in our own lives so that we may be transformed to forgive. We need to experience more of what it is to really to commit ourselves to Jesus Christ so that we know the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to really ask how we discover God's way in our daily living. We do all of this not simply through listening to sermons - we need to undertake study courses in our parishes, we need to talk together, we need to share together, we need to pray together. There are many people in all our parishes who are living very close to God. They may not be public speakers, but they would have something to give in a small group of friends or fellow parishioners. Some parishes are already holding Alpha course, other Emmaus courses - it does not matter what they are called, what resources we use - the point is that we are taking seriously what we are about as Christians. There will perhaps be few who take opportunities offered, but the life of a parish is transformed by a few - a few committed to a living faith, a few really praying. The way that God uses this is beyond our imagining.

I am going to make a point of asking parishes that I visit next year what they are doing other than Sunday worship about opportunities for growing in faith and about prayer. I do not want to put anybody on a guilt trip - lay or ordained - but I am giving you this lead - we cannot wait around expecting that somehow things can go on an on as they are for another generation.

We have a very real responsibility at this time in the parishes to minister to young families. The fact that we missed out on a generation means that there are many children at Primary School now who never receive any Christian teaching except through school. They have not been taught to pray at home, they have not seen faith playing any part in the life of their parents. Those same parents are excellent members of the community, indeed of our own families, but they do not know where to begin now, and there is so much else to occupy them anyway. These same people may not be attracted at the moment to the worshipping community, but if experience in other places has anything to say, they would seize an opportunity to honestly explore issues of faith.

There is a danger that we put a label on the changes and challenges facing the churches today. It so easy to dismiss the work of others because they are evangelical or catholic, simplistic or liberal, charismatic or traditional. The reality is that the challenge for change is reflected right across the churches and right through the churches. We have to make our priority the telling of the Good News of Jesus - telling it among ourselves so that we are so wrapped up in it, that we become effective for Jesus. We can afford no diversions - transformation beckons if we serve him who says : "See, I am making everything new…"