Just one of our Diocese's damaged churches

To my mind one of the most beautiful churches in New Zealand is St John's, Hororata, about 45 minutes drive from Christchurch. A church I was privileged to worship in as a young child. On occasional return visits its beauty, both as a building, and in its extraordinary setting in a field surrounded by trees and graves, takes my breathe away. But in this footage, about 28 seconds in, you can see the damage to the church as part of its tower has fallen away. Please pray for the Parish of Hororata and its vicar, the Reverend Jenni Carter, as they absorb this news, along with, no doubt, much other damage to homes and farm buildings. Hororata is close to the epicentre of the quake.

Meanwhile some churches are having no services today due to concerns about safety. Others will meet in alternative venues.

LATER: interesting to be in church, held in a hall 'cause the church has cracks in it, and during the service experience two further tremors ... but what is now concerning is the emerging picture that roughly half of Christchurch is fine-ish (the west has water, power, minimal damage to houses) and roughly half (plus a northerly satellite town, Kaiapoi) is not so fine (some houses in the east have no water, nor power, and some houses are significantly damaged, some even write-offs). So a challenge is to co-ordinate the blessings of the western half and share them with the eastern half. Then there are those in the country, especially around the epicentre near the small country town of Darfield, who have losts lots ...

Whole lotta shakin going on

Thank you to readers, including commenters who have actually commented about this, for your prayers and support for people in Christchurch and surrounds following a massive earthquake here this morning at 4.40 am. It was the biggest earthquake I have ever experienced, and I have never experienced repetitive aftershocks such as we have felt throughout today. The day has seemed surreal in various ways: damage here there and everywhere, yet the sun has been shining pleasantly; I thought I was going to be locked into our annual Synod from 7.30 am - 9 pm, but instead have had a kind of unexpected holiday as we have postponed the Synod; seeing many buildings undamaged (What disaster?) and then coming upon devastation (Wow!). If there is one theme to emerge from the day re the devastation it has been "old brick buildings, including chimneys and walls". All built before our building regulations toughened up re earthquakes. Modern brick constructions seem to have been fine.

Unfortunately one building to suffer is the church hall of St Mary's Merivale, where Theology House's offices, classroom and library are located. While our rooms are fine - just a few books on the floor and cracks in the ceilings, the building itself has lost lots of ... you guessed it, bricks. Not sure what the engineers will say about that.

Some of our vicars and vestries will have more on their plate going forward than others. One such will be in the Parish of St John's Latimer Square. Picture below. Other pictures of devastation round Christchurch are here.

Anglican order requires an Anglican magisterium

That title is something I am thinking about, but have little time at the moment to develop. Here is a sentence or two in the meantime: the one thing which Anglicans around the Communion seem to value as being in common and not different is the validity of our orders; if a Bishop of Member Church X in Good Standing ordains Y and Y moves to Member Church Z in Good Standing then Y is an ordained minister acceptable without question in both places (other things being equal around being 'safe to receive' because Y has not run off with the offering or the parish secretary). But why is it 'without question'? I think the answer is that there are a series of presumptions involved about the character of Member Church X: it is faithful to the doctrine of Christ, it is an Anglican church on at least some kind of broad definition of Anglican and that definition is agreeable to X and to Z, it follows common order re the orders of ministry (e.g. the 'bishop' is a bishop and not, say, a 'lay president for ordination'). These presumptions, in fact, constitute an informal magisterium. My question, whenever I can return to it, is this: can the informal magisterium of the Anglican Communion  continue ad infinitum? Does it need to become a formal (and therefore transparent) magisterium?

Signs of Hope

Good read on Taonga about the Theological Hui just completed at St John's College. Sounds like the hui went very well. I wasn't there. Perhaps that's why it was a success!

My Open Letter to St John's College

On Anglican Taonga today an 'open letter' to Gail Thomson, the Commissioner of St John's College, Auckland, is due to be posted. It has some suggestions about the future of St John's. One or two I agree with. A number I do not, mainly because the starting point for the suggestions is insufficiently grounded in commitment to the basics of theological learning which is laying a foundation of doctine on a base of thorough knowledge of Scripture. But also because I think the letter inadequately accounts for the good things already in place at St John's College. From last month I reprise my own suggestions here. You might like to write your own open letter ... Later: I understand that possible publication of this open letter is on hold ...

Reprised

All education is an exercise in seeking light - knowledge, insight, enlightenment - and theological education and ministry training is no different an exercise. The future of education is always a moving from the relative darkness of the present to the light of the future. In certain ways our church's oldest and best endowed residential theological college, St John's College, is in a shadowy place, having been deemed by our General Synod to be inadequately functioning in governance and management. But its future is 'ad lucem' with new governance and management structures being put in place. Today I believe is the day when the new Commissioner of our residential theological college, Gail Thompson, begins her duties. Were she to talk to me, what would I say to her? Here are five things.

(1) The single most important decision any college of education can make is the appointment of a principal. Gail Thompson knows this already as she has a strong and distinguished background in secondary school principalship (including, most recently, running schools which have fallen on hard times). But I would underline the importance of General Synod's decision in May to bring to an end the dysfunctionality of trying to run our college with three principals and I would press upon her, should it not already be clear, that the single priority of her time between now and General Synod in 2012 is to model with excellence a single principalship of the College. We need our church to be united in agreeing to move from a Commissioner leading the College to appointing a single principal to lead the College beyond 2012.

(2) Notwithstanding any messages our church may have given the College over preceding years about what it wants from the College, what the College most needs to achieve is outstanding graduates who have been well-educated for Anglican ministry and mission. Useful though it has been for St John's College in certain individuals' lives to be a dormitory so they can pursue studies or training in other professions, the one thing which distinguishes St John's College from the multitude of educational institutions which dot our landscape is the opportunity it provides for an outstanding and well-supported education for Anglican ministry and mission. There should not be one residential scholarship at St John's College which is not focused on gaining education and training for ministry and mission.
(3) In relation to (2) the question needs to be asked with vigour and frankness, What will it take for St John's College to be recognised throughout our church as the premium college for ministry and mission education? Or, put in a different way, What will it take for bishops in our church to be beating on the Commissioner's door demanding that the College take their prospective students, only to be told that there is a waiting list for places? The building blocks are already being put in place for a positive answer to these questions, but more needs to be done. Hence (4) and (5).

(4) There is an urgent need for a communications strategy for St John's College. Ad lucem, remember! Too many Anglicans outside of Auckland (perhaps inside as well!) are in the dark about what is happening at the College and, worse, think they know what is happening at the College. Except what they think is happening, and cheerfully tell others is happening is, actually, what was happening two, five or ten years ago. But to be fair to them, when there is no regular newsletter from the College to its alumni, when there is no particular effort made to promote the College or to disseminate news about the College (had you heard about the Commissioner's appointment before reading it here?), then how would anyone know accurately what is happening at the College? Good things are happening at the College, great things are around the corner ... but our church needs to know this.

(5) Stay focused on offering an excellent theological education (via B. Theol. studies available right now at SJC) and an outstanding ministry and mission training programme (via the Anglican Studies programme available right now at SJC). But ask what it will take to draw a long line of applicants to want to enrol for these opportunities (in line with (3) above). Explore how staffing might be developed which excites and inspires future student enrolments: there have been significant retirements in recent years so the College has potential to appoint staff in areas of biblical studies, Christian thought and history, and aspects of ministry training. Speaking of the last of those, some think preaching in our church is pretty dire. What if the College were to appoint a 'Director of Preaching' of such calibre and stature that we in the dioceses without fail sent our budding preachers to learn from this person? And, while I am at it, I suggest thinking creatively about possible appointments. Perhaps (because of the way various things are structured about B. Theol. education), there is no great room for appointing a teaching member of staff in (say, because lack thereof is often lamented) systematic theology, but why not appoint a researching member of staff. One day the Archbishop of Canterbury will retire. A change of scene as Research Professor of Theology at St John's College might do him, and us, good. I can guarantee some keen doctoral students lining him up for supervision!!

So, one final point, communicate well with the St John's College Trust Board. They finance the College to a certain budgeted point each year. But that point can be broken. It has often been said that the Board will fund worthwhile, well-justified theological education and ministry training at the College. Now may be the time to explore the openness of the Board to funding a new vision for St. John's.

Sinners across the Tiber are no worse than on this side

There are all sorts of reasons why I am unlikely to 'cross the Tiber', ranging from customs of my life through to lack of conviction on certain things such as Marian theology. (Reasons why I might cross include some things Romans 'get' about great liturgical worship!) One reason would certainly not be that, what with being a continuous church built on the Petrine rock, and having better inbuilt safeguards against heresy (the magisterium, something I think the Communion could do with), there is, so to speak, a better quality sinner on the other side of the Tiber. Sinners, say, who know the truth, stick to the truth, and commend the truth of God by what they say as well as what they do on a good day. No, across on that side are sinners thinking thoughts such as this:

"•Politicians are obliged from time to time to conceal the full truth, to bend it and even distort it".


•On Hans Kung, the theologian and notorious dissenter from Catholic teaching on abortion, euthanasia, contraception and much else: "My Oxford friend, Pete Thomson, always sung the praises, rightly, of the inestimable Hans Kung … a distinguished scholar and author [of] great works."

•repeated references to his support for the homosexual agenda*, such as: "Just before Christmas [2005] the Civil Partnership Act came into force … I was really proud of that."

•On illicit affairs by politicians: "I tended to look upon such things with a fairly worldly eye"."
 
Just the thoughts of well-known Roman, Tony Blair ... cited from a citation on Anglican Mainstream. I would love to known what Benedict makes of this ... It escapes me what distinction exists between Roman Catholics and Anglicans when this kind of thinking is going on in the citadel of truth. OK. I know. One criticism of Tony Blair is that he really is still an Anglican. Leopards, spots, that sort of thing.

Will Sydney drive TEC's wedge into the Communion wood.

LATER: I now realise that my original post here worked on a mistake - that some resurrected posts from 2008 by Stand Firm were actually new posts reflecting new news. But Sydney's next synod is not till October, 2010 ... so a few changes below!

EVEN LATER: I see that Matt Kennedy has made a current post on the matter, at Stand Firm, firing a shot across Sydney's bows. I feel an imminent post coming on about why I agree with priestly (and episcopal) presidency as an evangelical!

If there is any point to this blog's existence in respect of global Anglican matters it is to work for Anglican unity, to find the things on which we are united and underline them, to discern the things which divide us and argue against them, and to plea in the spirit of the epistolic Paul for being one church in one Spirit (and that a prelude to an ecumenical unity of God's universal church).

If there is any point of despair for me, and others, it is finding Anglicans continuously and stubbornly resistant to unity, one measure of which is the persistence with which innovation is adhered to in the face of an overwhelming majority of Anglicans voicing their lack of reception for it. Thus TEC is often in the spotlight of this blog, and of many commentators around the Anglican globe. But not out of view has been the Diocese of Sydney on the specific matter of deviation from customary Anglican (and the vast majority of Christians, Roman and Eastern) presidency of the eucharist via the orders of priest and bishops. In 2008 it decided in its Synod that it approved diaconal and lay presidency at the eucharist. A decision only partially implemented by Archbishop Peter Jensen who has not authorised lay presidency, recently challenged and rebuked by a Tribunal of the Australian Anglican church, but now, in a month or so, in the latest annual synod of the Diocese, the question arises whether the 2008 decision will be confirmed. We are reminded of this by Stand Firm re-posting in the past few days some pertinent posts from 2008.

In my view this is not an Anglican innovation supported in any way by Anglican custom, tradition, theology, great figure from the past such as Cranmer or Hooker, let alone any significant theologian, diocese, or movement in the present, other than Sydney itself (though I acknowledge some talk on the internet that diaconal presidency may be occurring in one or two African churches). It is as much an innovation as the blessing of same sex relationships and the ordaining of bishops in same sex relationships. Will the Sydney Diocese be found to be as stubborn in its innovation as TEC is in its novelty? Or will it be 'suitably chastened' by the Tribunal decision? If one drove a wedge into the Anglican log, the other has potential to finish the job and split it!

What to say? A plague on both your houses? That is a tempting thing to say! Certainly in my mind an operational Anglican Covenant would have as much to say about this innovation as any other innovation under the microscope at this time. It also strikes me that a pared down Anglican Communion, without TEC or Sydney, would find unity much simpler since not only would it not be trying to square the circle being spun around innovations, it would not be dealing with stubborn Anglicans bent on determining that 'Anglican' is broad enough to cover their unusual vision of Anglican breadth.

In the meantime, of course, that paring down is not an option, and Anglicans keen on a global, united Anglican Communion are exposed in the sight of ecumenical partners without even a figleaf of unity on basic matters such as marriage and ministry orders.

Quite what God thinks of Anglican pretence to discern the will of God through listening together to the Spirit, I do not know, but I wonder if God is chuckling as we play the role of fool in the court of heaven.

Here is Matt Kennedy at Stand Firm, as recently reposted from 2008, on this decision.

In the comments to Matt's post is this comment which captures precisely one of my own objections to lay presidency:

"Several years ago, I asked a Sydney Bishop how exactly lay presidents for the Eucharist would be chosen? Would they be identified by the congregation and diocese in advance? Would they receive some sort of training to prepare them to do this? Would they be set apart and commissioned as those who were licensed to preside at the Eucharist? He answered yes to all three questions. So, I asked, then what is ordination? And how (apart from the length and depth of the training) does it differ from what you have just said you are going to do with “lay presidents”? He couldn’t answer.
The plain and simple fact is that this whole mess in Sydney stems from an anti-clericalism and a reaction against the idea of the ordained presbyterate (priesthood) that has grown to become an obsession.

At this time in the Anglican Communion, when the unity of orthodox Anglicans should be a paramount concern, Sydney’s pressing forward with this aberration in ecclesiology is inexcusable.

Although some of us who are conservatives will not draw a parallel, liberals in other provinces in Anglicanism will seize on this as being an even greater departure than their own aberrations in Anglican faith and order.
What a tragedy!
Robert S. Munday
Nashotah House "

To be fair to Sydney, we can mention a defence of the move  by David Ould (though even this defence admits that it is a devisive move). Notice by the way the similarity to TEC inasmuch as the defence includes the notion that the innovators here understand true Anglicanism as opposed to its many dim-sighted supporters.

Which way will the Sydney Synod head? Deeper into the log?