Review: The Archer and the Arrow

Many years ago, I remember attending a service at All Soul’s, Langham Place, where the preacher was Richard Bewes. I had been ordained about six years at the time, had heard many sermons and had preached even more. But I was aware that evening of being on the receiving end of something special.

“I don’t how he is achieving what he is doing,” I thought to myself, “but that’s how I want to do it.”

Those who have heard the preaching of Phillip Jensen may have felt the same, and will therefore be instinctively interested in this attempt by another preacher, Paul Grimmond, to explain how Phillip does what he does so well, namely the exposition of Scripture.

As soon as you put it like that, however, you can appreciate the difficulty of the task. I would find it hard enough to explain to others how I do something. How much more challenging for someone else to explain it!

Those who have heard Phillip preach and teach, moreover, will appreciate that this is not just a matter of picking up a few hints and tips about techniques of presentation and preparation. Indeed, Grimmond’s own introduction cautions against the idea that the book might contain “five simple steps to preaching like Phillip.”

It is best, therefore, to approach this book simply as a ‘primer on preaching’ — which happens to have Phillip Jensen’s name on the cover and some of his input in the contents. If you are new to preaching, however, or even if you have been preaching for some time, you will undoubtedly come away the better for having read it. Its focus is on the basics, but those basics are also the fundamentals, and like piano scales or times-tables, they are things we need to get right if we are to move on constructively, and they are things we may need to revisit if we have become rusty or lazy.

The book takes its title, and its structure, from an analogy: comparing the sermon to an arrow. The word of the gospel is the arrowhead, the exegesis of Scripture forms the shaft, which carries the head to the target, and the feathers represent the whole of our theology which guides our preaching and its application.

The analogy is helpful, but it is important also to understand what the authors mean by these ‘parts’ and how they see them contributing to the overall task of preaching.

The ‘gospel’ arrowhead, for example, is not simply the repetition of the point that Christ died on the cross for our sins and we need to repent and get right with God. Indeed, one of the most helpful parts of the book, in my view, was the explanation that the gospel is every aspect of revelation when it is understood and presented in relation to Jesus. Every sermon, therefore, ought to be a ‘gospel’ sermon, from whatever part of the Bible the preacher’s material is drawn.

It is encouraging, also, to see so much emphasis on theology — something which English evangelicals have for a long time treated as if it were almost a dirty word. (The same might be said, incidentally, of ‘good works’!)

Many of those who so admired Phillip on his first visits to these shores overlooked the fact that Sydney clergy were required to spend not just three but four years in full-time theological education before being ordained, and that these years were spent in the library and the study, not in ‘student ministry’ on the nearby university campus. One reason for the paucity of English evangelical preaching in the second half of the twentieth century is undoubtedly that so few preachers had an undergirding theology, or even much grasp of the biblical languages.

But the book is equally emphatic that preaching is no mere academic exercise. Rather, it is part of our spiritual struggle, and the primary quality it calls for from the preacher is not a love of study or exposition, but the love of God and of those whom God has called the preacher to serve through his preaching.

The Archer and the Arrow is not the last word on preaching. But it will benefit anyone who is just embarking on a preaching ministry and many who have been preaching for years. If this is you, then buy it or borrow it, and make sure that you apply it.

John Richardson
9 January 2011

The Archer and the Arrow: Preaching the Very Words of God, by Phillip D Jensen and Paul Grimmond (Kingsford: St Matthias Media, 2010), pb, 148 pp, no index

Purchase here.

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Evangelicals, priesthood and elitism

A lot of what I have written about ministry over the last few days has been ‘thinking out loud’ (for the last posting, see here) — and whilst I don’t think I’m at the end of the trail, I do think I’ve reached something of a personal milestone.

Some time ago, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali caused some controversy when he said that there are “virtually two religions” in the Church of England. He was referring, of course, to the long-standing divide between conservatives and liberals, and although this division is endlessly nuanced, in the end it is clearly present.

I have now reached the (interim!) conclusion, however, that we must overlay on top of this divide between “two religions” another divide between ‘two ministries’ — in short, two ‘priesthoods’.

On one side of the divide are those who view the Anglican priesthood as essentially ‘functional’. The priest is someone given public authority to do what any Christian can do, as it were ‘in the privacy of their home’. Ordination therefore confers on the priest nothing other than this authority, and any accompanying prayer for the grace of the Holy Spirit is simply that the priest may perform this function of priesthood properly and effectively — just as we might similarly pray for a newly-arrived teacher or a local mayor. For sake of simplicity, we will call this the ‘priest as presbyter’ model, bearing in mind that the English word ‘priest’ derives from the Greek presbuteros, or ‘elder’.

On the other side are those who take the view that the Anglican priesthood is essentially ‘personal’ (the technical term is ‘ontological’). In ordination, the person being ordained is, as it were, ‘made into’ a priest — he (or she) is no longer quite what they were as a layperson, and is not simply ‘authorized’ by ordination, but is changed and ‘empowered’ by it. The views on this ‘empowerment’ may vary, but the essential characteristic is that priest and laity are in some way separated in what they are, not just in what they do. We will call this simply the ‘priestly’ model, since for most people, the word ‘priest’ conjures up exactly this ‘set apart specialness’ of someone different from the layperson.

Now of course, there are nuances also to these distinctions. There are many jobs, for example, in which it is hard to separate the office from the person. A policeman, for example, is always a member of the police at all hours of the day or night, whether on duty or not. Again, a fortunate person may find themselves in a job for which they were, in a sense, ‘made’ — such as the skilled teacher or compassionate carer. The clergy are very fortunate in often being able to find their niche in this way.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the two views are clearly distinguishable. And the important thing is that they overlap the other distinction between liberal and conservative.

In particular, there are traditionalist priests and liberal priests — both sure of their ‘separateness’ and of the fundamental importance of their own ordination to their relationship with God, with the Church and with the world, but both (as Nazir-Ali observed) operating with entirely different theological assumptions at almost every other level. Importantly, this overlap also includes ‘evangelical priests’, who, for example, see themselves having a singular importance in relation to the sacraments, not simply a particular role.

One finds rather less overlap between traditionalist and liberal presbyters. Indeed, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually encountered the latter. On the contrary, the insistence on using the actual term ‘presbyter’ is something I have only found in the most ‘straight’ of strait-laced evangelicals. However, there are undoubtedly liberal Anglican priests for whom what they do outside the framework of liturgy and church is a fundamental expression of their ‘priesthood’ — as theologically important to them as celebrating the sacraments.

To repeat: the key point is that the ‘priesthoods’ overlap, rather than simply distinguish, the theologies.

The recognition of these two ‘priesthood’ models is important, however, for two pressing reasons. The first is that it directly affects whom we will admit to the priesthood and on what basis. The second is that it directly affects what we expect this person to do, and therefore how we will train and equip them.

Now the problem as I see it at the moment is this: the Church of England desperately needs, and indeed is increasingly demanding of its ministers, a predominantly ‘functional’, ‘presbyteral’, approach to ministry. However, it is deeply committed to the personal, ‘priestly’, model of ministry. We are thus calling people on the basis of their ‘personal’ characteristics, and training them to function accordingly, whilst what we need is predominantly ‘functional’ ministers, completely unlike what has gone before, enabling others to share their ‘presbyterate’.

The final point I want to make at this stage, however, is that for all evangelicals our whole practice of ministry is infused with the ‘image’ of the personal priest. The result is that even whilst we may decry the ‘sacramentalism’ of the  ‘priestly’ model, we imbue the  ‘presbyterial’ model with an almost unconscious elitism! Later, when there is a bit more time, I want to post on the implications of this for Anglican ministry.

John Richardson
1 March 2010

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What future for the Anglican clergy?

A short while ago, I had a conversation with a friend who is going through ‘Continuing Ministerial Education’ —what use to be called Post-Ordination Training, or ‘Potty’ by some wit. He had phoned me to express his concern at what seemed to be the message coming from diocesan management about the future of Anglican ministry, which envisaged significant changes in the nature and deployment of clergy.

That conversation has left me musing on what the church might look like in a decade or two, but also on the whole approach of the church’s ‘managers’ —its leaders and policy makers —to issues which affect ministry at the ‘grass roots’.

Clergy cuts
Behind this current thinking is a recent diocesan report which confronts the declining numbers of stipendiary clergy with proposals for a decreasing deployment of full-time clergy in the parishes. (This, of course, is not being driven by money —it is simply a lack of people coming forward, let the reader understand.)

The clergyperson of the future will thus need to be, above all, a team leader, since he or she will be in no position to do personally the work that used to be presumed of clergy in the past. Only such team players will be affordable as stipendiary clergy. The individual ‘specialists’, apparently, will have to work on a self-supporting basis.

Clergy deployment
At the same time, therefore, clergy will have to be capable of being more widely deployed than is currently the case, ready (my friend was told) to work outside their ‘comfort zones’. What I think this means is that the old concepts of ‘churchmanship’ will no longer apply. Catholics will have to be able to slum it with the low church, and liberals to lead charismatic worship-fests —or something of that sort.

This also seems to imply, however, that the deploying will be done rather more actively than at present, with diocesan managers being more able to send clergy where they are ‘needed’ or ‘suited’.

The good side
Those of us brought up on the old understanding of parish ministry, who also happen to have an innate cynicism towards diocesan management, may react to these suggestions with instinctive hostility, but some of them do make sense.

It is a welcome suggestion, for example, that clergy need to be team leaders. Indeed, my last six months spent overseeing a Benefice of three parishes has not only demonstrated the importance of this, but shown what a great job was done by the previous two vicars.

The earlier of the two, for example, with the permission of the then diocesan bishop, set up a preaching team. This means that we can now draw on anything up to half a dozen laypeople who can, and do, preach on a regular basis. Most of them have learned to do this ‘on the job’, and they are not half bad!

Similarly, we have laypeople leading most of our services, so that the one regular service I do lead in its entirety is BCP Holy Communion, and that not at every venue where it is held.

However, I am painfully aware that so much lay involvement needs a level of input which is currently hard to provide. People need training and supervision, yet there is still the expectation that clergy will be hands-on with traditional parish ministry, especially visiting anyone and everyone who ‘needs a visit’. Deploying clergy as team leaders will need some explaining in a culture which does not understand the church as a team needing to be lead.

The down side
And then there is the down side of these proposals —or rather of the thinking behind them. I am especially suspicious of the emphasis on deployability and deployment. Of course there are potential advantages to clergy being deployed across a wider range of theological situations. In some cases, it will mean good, conservative, biblical preaching going places where it has never gone before. But I wonder if the desire for clergy to be deployable in the terms envisaged will mean in future recruiting only those with a ‘middle of the road’ theology which is inevitably quasi-liberal.

As to the deployment itself, does this mean bishops and archdeacons moving clergy around like those little markers on maps that they used to use in the Battle of Britain? This could only be done effectively if the bishops and archdeacons were themselves situationally aware in a way that I doubt is currently the case, given the lack of contact one has with them on a day-to-day basis. Given that my only two experiences of taking jobs on a bishop’s recommendation were both disastrous, I will need some convincing!

Consultation
My biggest worry when I heard about these proposals, however, was how much consultation they reflected with the ordinary parish clergy. Have diocesan management been interviewing clergy to see what they think about the job, or what resources they wish they had? If so, it has rather passed me by, but that does not mean it is not happening.

My suspicion, however, is that most of the theorizing and planning is being done by those who move largely in the cloisters of power, rather than by those who face the daily challenges and demands of the typical parish.

Independence, authority and money
I am also concerned that the thinking behind these proposals will, almost by definition (given that it seems to be coming from our present managers), fail to allow those tasked with putting them into practice the tools they need for the job.

It is the natural tendency of management to want to manage. In an hierarchical church, this is exacerbated by the view those managers sometimes have of themselves as divinely ‘gifted’ with managing. I remember one bishop, now retired, who believed that at his consecration he was actually given by the Holy Spirit the ability to discern trends and movements.

Of course, some people do have greater gifts than others in such areas, but I am instinctively worried about someone who claims to have these gifts ‘because they are a bishop’. (I would be rather less worried if I could be persuaded that the system made people with such gifts into bishops, but I am not yet convinced.)

In fact, I would say that for quite some time leadership skills as such have hardly been a requirement for the English episcopate, where the motto seems to be ‘Moderation in All Things’ rather than ‘Who Dares Wins’.

This innate tendency to conservatism and control sometimes leads to bureaucratic farce. For example, everyone who administers at communion in our diocese (ie who gives out the bread or wine during a service) needs a ‘card of authorisation’ from the bishop and is to be given “careful instruction ... before they begin this ministry.”

For heaven’s sake! You’re giving people a piece of bread or a sip of wine. It isn’t bomb disposal. What could go wrong? Yet I have been in a church vestry where the wall is covered with such cards. Is it inconceivable that the incumbent just might be able to spot a good ‘un from a wrong ‘un in this ‘ministry’?

The fact is that if the clergy of the future are to be team leaders, they must also be allowed to be team managers, and this means being allowed independence to exercise local initiative, authority to commission local leadership and financial control to fund what they propose doing.

And that is where the problems will come, because I cannot see the Church of England’s current hierarchy allowing any such thing. What we will have instead, I fear, is centralized control, outside interference and fiscal starvation. In that case, for Anglican clergy, the future’s bleak, the future’s purple.

Revd John P Richardson
25 January 2010

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