Llandaff Diocesan Conference 2017

Llandaff Diocesan Conference 2017

Presidential Address

Around the time I’d been invited to become the Bishop of Llandaff I found myself in the new Map Centre at Stanford University. As you can imagine, Stanford being the academic core of Silicon Valley and not short of either creative imagination or funds, the experience made a huge impact on the group I was leading. It felt like a sacred space. There were ancient maps such as those which have written in wilderness areas or oceans ‘here be dragons’, reminding us of how people’s maps once reflected an enchanted world where angels and demons could be tracked in physical landscapes. There was a whole wall of google maps in which you could watch any part of the earth by courtesy of the wonders of satellite surveillance. And there were goggles for you to wear, allowing you to enter into alternative realities, maps of a zone in which you were travelling into virtual worlds.

It was a reminder to me of how human beings have always been map makers. We portray both our securities and our threats in the maps we draw. We shape our world through the maps we hold in our heads. Some of you will know that I was, for more than a decade, responsible for parishes in the East End of London, at that time the poorest borough in Europe and I remember how, when I first arrived in Tower Hamlets, I used to hear people talk about things happening ‘across the water’. I assumed that by this they were talking about things happening in France but eventually I fathomed that they were simply referring to Rotherhithe which you could see just on the other side of the Thames. I could walk under one of the tunnels to Rotherhithe in about half an hour, but the way they described their mental map it sounded like a foreign country. I’m sure you’re used to the same tendency as between Vale and different Valleys, maybe even neighbouring villages, no more than a stone’s throw apart and yet feeling worlds aparton the mental maps we create for ourselves.

As someone whose first love was sociology I’m fascinated by how people draw the various maps of their world so one of my earliest requests to help me understand the diocesan landscape was that we should have a large map in the office showing the physical shape of the diocese. It arrived last week and already I stand in front of it with colleagues getting them to explain to me how things work.

• At a simple level it’s showing me the shape of the benefices and how they’re defined;
• It’s also making clear where boundaries lie. You’ll be familiar with how important boundaries are in relation to ancient habits and assumptions about our neighbours and I already have on my desk a small campaign by parishioners who wish to renegotiate their boundaries. I know this concern about the right boundaries well from a completely different context which is my relationship with the Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan where the administrative lines on maps drawn by the colonial British bear little helpful relation to tribal loyalties and the physical terrain which have driven life for centuries.
• The map on the wall is also telling me exactly where our buildings are placed which begs some important questions of how parish life has developed, and gives me a series of questions you can answer for me in due time;
• And, of course, when I know more I will be able to superimpose on this map the social realities of different parts of the diocese. I was talking with one of our MPs last week who was able to plot on the map of his constituency how certain social habits such as domestic violence increased as you travelled in certain directions.
• What I don’t yet know is where you and your community place yourself on this map of mine, not in terms of geography but with respect to the sense of the wider church and of being a diocesan family. It’s relatively easy to tell when someone feels secure in the mainstream of the diocese, feels at home in our structures, our beliefs, traditions and culture. But for all sorts of reasons it’s possible to feel marginal or detached from the core identity of the diocese. Talking of boundaries, those East End parishes I had responsibility for were the very limit of the Diocese of London in the east. Whilst there I sometimes felt a certain sympathy with Pontius Pilate, trying to maintain the imperial identity of Rome on their eastern frontier as I looked over the wasteland of the Lee Valley and viewed the Diocese of Chelmsford in the shape of the Borough of Newham. The only thing inhabiting that wasteland at the time was the Big Brother House. The irony was that not long after I left that same wasteland was designated as being the site of the Olympic Park and so what had been treated for generations as entirely marginal suddenly became a place of great honour and investment for the diocese. So you can see why I’m interested in asking – where do you feel yourself to be on the map of the diocese?

I will go on studying and using my map of the Llandaff Diocese but there’s another map going on which I’ve begun to study and that is the map of the diocese which we each carry in our heads. We’ve been doing some exploring of it today: and as I visit all the Deaneries in these next months I’ll be listening carefully to what you think ought to be our priorities because they’re writ large on your maps of how church should work.

The purpose of these discussions is that we might draw for ourselves a common map of the diocese. I’m passionate about what the local church does and you could easily coax me into saying that the church’s mission is always local, always contextual, at its very best when it recognises the way of Christ in the shared life of the community, responding to memory and joy, to tragedy or sorrow, being of the people. It’s what we in the Church in Wales do well. We call it incarnational ministry because it mirrors how God shared our life in Jesus Christ before anything else.

One of the greatest gifts I’ve had since arriving is the collection of pen portraits of each parish or benefice – just two sides of A4 so quite succinct – which you put together for me as a way of welcoming me to my new role. It has been simply wonderful to read and I will go back to what you have to say about yourself often. Thank you so much to those of you who took the trouble to do it and to the Diocesan Secretary who made it happen. But you know one of the things which has struck me forcibly is how unique each church is, and how distinctive you are in your responses to being the church in your context. I want to honour and support your sense of mission where you are but I also believe that you will be stronger in those responses if you see yourself as belonging to, supported by and contributing to the diocesan family. We are not a congregational church. We are better together because there are some realities of our faith which we can only hold on to by connecting with each other. Going it alone, creating ghettos, becoming isolated, neglecting the needs of Christians elsewhere, being purely self-interested: such is not the way of a catholic faith and the map we create will be more confident and true to the wide and inclusive instincts of Jesus if we assume that it includes all of us, quirky and odd though some of us be.

The task then is to draw a common map of the diocese. To agree who we are. To identify how the Diocese of Llandaff does things. To be clear in our self-identity and for that identity to be attractive and ambitious, such that people will know the Llandaff style and know what we’re about: that we will know our priorities and we’re more likely to be successful in making sure we deliver them.

You will want me to acknowledge how it is. And in drawing afresh our common map there will be challenges ahead. One of the things I know about looking at maps is that they very often challenge what has got itself already fixed in my head. They make me revisit things which I’ve long assumed. Sometimes the sheer familiarity of a terrain leads us astray. We forget that the map has changed. This summer people from far and wide have been keen to tell me things about the Llandaff Diocese which I already sensed weren’t accurate. They were telling a story based on outdated or misleading information. In asking that we agree together a shared map I want to respect the historic pathways which have made this diocese what it is, but I also need to make sure we’re working with accurate assumptions true to today’s task of mission, and that we tell a story which is authentic to us, which is our story.

Of course, I realise that I myself represent one of the spheres of unfamiliarity and where the map has changed. Let me say a few words about the fact that part of Llandaff’s identity is that it now has a female bishop. I’m unlikely to refer to this again because as you might expect I think of myself as your bishop not as a woman bishop but I do want to say something to those for whom the redrawing of this part of the map creates uncertainty.

Firstly I want to thank you for your gracious welcome to me. In all my correspondence and conversations those who question the sacramental ministry of a woman bishop have been both courteous and candid, wanting me to know that the issues we’ll have to address are in no way a judgment on me personally. I deeply appreciate that approach and it gives us a good basis to explore the options we have together.

Those options have to include how I exercise the proper jurisdiction as your bishop, the duty of care I have for every parish, the share in the cure of souls which a bishop properly delegates but from which he or she never abdicates responsibility. My desire is to find a pathway in which I can express the means to do that, so that every parish feels known and valued by their bishop. Yet to do it in such a way that I respect the integrity of the clergy and lay leaders of each parish, and encourage them to flourish. I’ll be seeking the highest degree of relatedness we can manage together, that we maintain good communication and build trust between us. We meet in the Church at a very broad table and the model given us in the gospels is that in the kingdom we all eat together at that table. Our table manners are different, our dress code sometimes offends, our diets may be incompatible – last Christmas Paul and I entertained in our home four young people who shared not a single dietary preference with one another, so every meal was a challenge – it wastrying to accommodate to everyone. It wasn’t as if those who were vegan all ate the same thing either! But we did celebrate the Christmas feast at the same table and despite incompatible preferences found our life filled with the joy of having them all there within the family.

So to those who have already expressed to me your uncertainties I ask that you stay right at the heart of our diocesan life. I believe I know the cost of that for you but Llandaff will be poorer if you are not on this map. Let us be honest and generous and gracious with one another. It is not the way of the world but it is surelythe way of Christ.

Drawing the map of Llandaff. I’ve said that it’s a map which needs to pay attention to all the diocese. It may also look different than we once imagined it not least because the surrounding landscapes are changing. It’s likely to be challenging in what it asks of us. It’s a map designed to help us preach the gospel afresh in this generation and to live abundantly whilst we do it. It’s more like an orienteering map than a sat nav because there won’t be orders telling you how to follow a pre-plotted route. Instead there’ll be a shared task of interpreting the terrain and achieving progress, of wise improvisation.

Some of what we’ll face as we navigate the years ahead will be unforeseen and unexpected but we can already see some of the immediate agenda which lies before us, where no one parish or benefice can find the whole solution so we have to orienteer together. Let me mention three:

• We’ve inherited a model of church membership and finance which worked really well in the middle of the 19th Century when more than half of the population of Wales made Sunday attendance at church a weekly habit, and the diocese was well endowed with glebe land. If I understand the figures rightly we’re already at a place where more people affiliate with our life through occasions beyond Sunday worship than attend our core services. How do we go on developing the model of where Church happens, in a way which increasingly and effectively draws people into the community of faith?
• Ministry Areas. What is a Llandaff-shaped model for the offering of ministry and deployment of resources? I don’t have a blueprint or one-size-fits all approach and I very much like the organic approach which allows things to grow in the soil of what you know works locally. It’s one of the most significant items I’ll be discussing with the Area Deans next week because I want to hear where you think we are with Ministry Areas.
• We also face the question of how we confidently and appropriately promote the distinctive place of the Anglican faith in Welsh society - pluralist as it is - and how we make a fresh invitation to individuals who have either never had or who’ve lost the habit of church going. Here in Llandaff I’m keen that we go on building on generations of faithful witness through what I might describe as ‘pastoral evangelism’. We’ve long drawn alongside people at key moments in their life and through that pastoral ministry shown them a God who is welcoming and compassionate. Let’s not lose our confidence in that form of pastoral outreach, but in an era when people are less familiar with what happens in church and fear they may get judged for not being good enough how do we become better at converting such encounters into personal faith and unashamedly aim for a stronger and growing church?

It’s my hope that we will construct the Llandaff map around some very familiar landmarks in the years ahead. There’s the font: that our congregations might be filled with people who know themselves to be baptised Christians and can articulate that in deed and word. There’s the altar: that our sacramental life goes on giving grace and transforming us. There’s the book: for we search the Scriptures together to learn the way of the Word who is our Lord and Saviour. There’s the table: may we rejoice in being a community of hospitality and learning from each other. And there’s service: that we let what is real, what shapes people’s lives and brings them life, inform our sense of Christian believing; and we respond, as I know you do, with practical outreach.

With such faithful landmarks our Llandaff map will serve us well. I feel very blessed to be creating it with you and now invite us to place our hopes and our hesitations within our act of thanksgiving.

Let’s end this day remembering Christ’s sacrifice of love and the extraordinary mercy of God towards us. Let us be an Easter people whose song is alleluia; whose sign is peace and whose name is love. With the angels we now worship and pray that God will pour his blessing on all we do together in his name in this diocese.