Author: Leighton Carr

…on Augustine working with the English

By the time Augustine was consecrated in Gaul as the ‘Archbishop of the English’ in 597 he had already made a good start as a missionary. Within a few months of arriving in England he had baptised Ethelbert, King of Kent.\r\n\r\nAugustine was sent as Apostle to the English by Pope Gregory the Great, who showed the quality of his strategic mission leadership by sending a team to these distant islands.\r\n\r\nAlongside his strategic foresight Pope Gregory also offered a shrewd spiritual insight, perhaps to help Augustine keep his task in perspective over the long haul. He passed on this message to the Archbishop:\r\n\r\n“Tell [Augustine] what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affairs of the English, determined upon, viz: that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed but let the idols that are in them be destroyed. There is no doubt that it is impossible to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds: because he who endeavors to ascend to the highest place rises by degrees or steps, and not by leaps.”\r\n\r\nIt’s good advice for today’s mission focused communities. Here are some lessons:\r\n

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  1. discerning strategic leadership was at the heart of successful mission then … and so it is it is now.

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  2. this strategic leadership should be carried out by Archbishops at a national level and Bishops at a regional level, but also by vicars and their leadership teams at a local level.

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  3. successful mission is not only the product of strategic planning, and it necessarily requires a ‘mature deliberation’ of the people and culture in which it is carried out.

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  4. the key issue in mission is rightly identified by Pope Gregory the Great as idolatry. Mission is primarily a matter of worship not apologetics.

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  5. … and we should generally expect to move forward by degrees or steps and not [usually] by leaps and bounds.

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\r\nAnd of course, in the end there is always someone who has to risk something …

William Temple and the Threshold of Faith

The average church member’s timidity in articulating their faith outside the church walls should be one of the greatest concerns of Western church leaders of the early 21st century church.\r\n\r\nToo dramatic?\r\n\r\nWell, not in the context of the decline of the established church in the west. Some notable observers of these things reckon that the church as we know it today will not exist in England for many more years.\r\n\r\nThe pressure felt by the average Christian to be more articulate is a product of multiple factors, not least of which is the fear of being ‘found out’ to be intellectually weak. But here are three simple ways we could start to remedy the situation.\r\n

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  • first, we could rely less on the didactic presentation of ‘truth’ from the pulpit as the sole means of developing theological thinking, as generally it doesn’t. Instead, increase the quantity and quality of conversation around theological themes among ordinary parishioners.

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  • second, as this conversation grows, encourage people of faith to recognise that those of us within the church are not as far apart as we presume from those outside, who may also wish to join the conversation.

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  • and third, we should realise that good quality conversation on theology, like good conversation in general, doesn’t rely on formulas or ‘magic bullets’ to score points. Rather, by its nature good conversation is an open minded way of finding an approach to the ‘threshold of faith’, as William Temple put it.

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\r\nMore fully the Archbishop says: \r\n\r\n“remember that [there are] many ways of approach [to faith] and that all the ways of approach lead us only to the threshold; for religious faith does not consist in supposing that there is a God; it consists in personal trust in God rising to personal fellowship with God”.\r\n\r\nAnd we do that, says the Archbishop, “by going to school not with the philosophers but with the saints