Living God's Covenant: Exploring the Issues

When culture is an embarrassment?

Some stories of what happens when difficulties arise

It’s not just a cultural blindness on the part of one church in its dealings with another. It’s also about how the other church fails to understand what’s going on – and does nothing to save its partner from tripping itself up!

This list mainly shows how the Church of England fails to understand the Methodist Church.

It surely works the other way round as well!

Share your horror stories – in either direction – but be sure to tell us how we can all overcome the problems.

OOPS!          1. Covenant Partnership or circuit?

The Anglican and Methodist churches in a group of villages have a long-standing Covenant Partnership (LEP). Many good things come about as a result.

The problem is the conflict that arises for the Methodist congregations between their loyalty to the covenant and their loyalty to their circuit. It feels to them that they are part of two circuits simultaneously.

The demands of the denominational circuit almost invariably have to be given priority, since the circuit leadership is not able to make allowances for the ecumenical bond.

OOPS!          2. Your minister or ours?

In a single-congregation Anglican-Methodist-URC LEP, the agreement used to be for a five-yearly rota in the provision of ministers. This system worked, not without difficulty, until the Methodist stationing process caught up with it.

The Methodist minister, three years in post in the LEP, was removed on a priority appointment to the other end of England, leaving the LEP and the other two denominations completely in the lurch.

In the Methodist connexional mindset, the commitment to the rota within the LEP meant nothing – since the appointment had been to the circuit, not to the individual church.

OOPS!          3. I didn’t mean to snub you!

'As a newly Recognised and Regarded Minister, I was contacted by the Secretary of the Circuit’s Local Preachers’ Meeting with dates for forthcoming meetings - on the assumption that I would attend. I made my excuses and never attended – since my responsibilities lay not with the circuit but with the whole district.

'I realise now, however, that this was an extremely discourteous act and revealed a complete failure to see how central the ‘Preachers’ Meeting’ is in the life of a Methodist circuit. I had assumed that it was a gathering of (lay) local preachers, akin to the area meeting of readers.

'In fact it is the place where all accredited preachers in the circuit, local or itinerant meet to agree strategies for their ministry, to review the life of the local churches, and to study and pray together. It is the spiritual boiler-house of local Methodism – and I trivialised it and ignored it!'

OOPS!          4. We know what symbols work for us!

Methodist congregations instinctively claim a primary right to decide what practice is right for them in worship in order to express a shared truth.

Any suggestion that those with greater theological wisdom should tell them that a certain action (e.g. the use of grape juice instead of Ribena) is a better symbol of the Body of Christ and should therefore replace the local tradition is simply ignored.

Chapter 5 of the JIC’s 2005 Interim Report is therefore widely regarded as being totally out of order, and the local reaction from one Methodist congregation in the north of England is unprintable! A symbol is only a symbol if it means something to us.

OOPS!          5. Partnership? What partnership?

A single-congregation Anglican-Methodist LEP (in a diocese that had better remain nameless!) is still smarting as a result of changes that were made recently to the apportionment system by which parishes contribute to diocesan finances.
 
The diocese moved ‘quota’ apportionment from the diocese to the deanery, and abandoned any special concessions for LEPs who would otherwise face ‘double-taxation’ – owing contributions to more than one denomination.

If the deanery had taken the strain on its own, the burden of making any concessions would have borne down quite heavily on the other churches in the deanery – not a realistic proposition.

Except, of course, that it has left the LEP congregation to bear the burden alone – or else to default on its obligations. So far, the diocese has refused to listen.

OOPS!          6. Sorry, we had forgotten you were there! (1)

A prestigious theological college was, proportionately, as much part of the ordination training provision of the Methodist Church as it was of the Church of England.

Yet its unilateral closure by the Church of England came as a total surprise to the Methodists, who were left having to relocate students at short notice part way through their training.

This is probably one of the starkest examples there has ever been of how denominations can function as though there is no-one else on the planet.

OOPS!          7. Sorry, we had forgotten you were there! (2)

The problem seems to be that churches are constantly overlooking their ecumenical partners – or else they argue that circumstances give them no choice but to act unilaterally.

The peremptory dissolution of Industrial Mission by one Church of England Diocese is alleged to have happened without consultation with the other churches who were also involved in it.

OOPS!          8. 'The best laid plans of mice and men …'

What would be the most likely reaction of local Methodists if it were suggested that the Connexion was really an outsize ‘diocese’ and that therefore the President of Conference was the most obvious candidate to be made bishop?

Alternatively:

What would be the most likely reaction of local Methodists if it were suggested that, if Methodism had emerged before the Reformation, it would quite naturally have evolved to become a ‘religious order’ within a unified Church, and not a separate ‘denomination’?

And in either scenario:

What would be the most likely reaction of local Anglicans?

Your responses, so far:

For several years a licensed layman had been given permission to preside at the Eucharist in a small rural Methodist chapel.  The provision for lay presidency as an 'emergency' measure had been accepted by local Anglicans but the long term permission without steps to ordination was seen as a step too far.  It resulted in less than cordial relations between the chapel and the C/E group of parishes. 

The principle of lay presidency in extenuating circumstances could be accepted; but what was seen as an abuse of the system was hard for C/E people to accept.

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