Coming home in Sheffield

To Sheffield yesterday for a visit to Wilson Carlile College. 

Libby and I had left Sheffield in 1993 after my Commissioning as a Church Army evangelist, and as we embarked on an adventure into full-time Christian ministry. 

My first two parish posts (St John's, Polegate and St Dionis, Parsons Green) were with CA, but on being accepted for ordination training in 2000 I was told that I must resign my commission as an evangelist. This arose from a long-standing identity crisis that the Society had struggled with, leading them to decide that they were a Society of Lay Evangelists within the Anglican Church - therefore if you were Ordained you were out!  It always seemed to me to be a negative move, revealing the lack of confidence in the Society's own self-understanding,  and suggesting that an Ordained minister couldn't fulfil the CA's aim of 'Sharing faith through word and deed'. I have never stopped aiming to do just that - in fact, it is something that every Christian should be about!

In recent years, however, Church Army has undergone nothing short of a revolution under its present Chief Secretary, Mark Russell. For the last couple of years I have read his emails, followed the changes within the Society - including the decision to remove the need to resign your commission on ordination, which received 100% support from its membership  - and have been very encouraged at what I had seen.  And yet I was still taken aback at what I experienced yesterday.

I attended a 'Day for Ordained Evangelists' - unthinkable under the previous regime! -along with 3 other ordained evangelists who had lost their Commission (though one of them had shredded the letter telling him to return his Commissioning papers, refusing to co-operate!). We were met by grace, positivity and apology by the bucketful, and were treated to a whole day with Mark Russell as he outlined his vision for a new Church Army Mission Community. The move from a Society of Lay Evangelists to a Mission Community is an inclusive move that has taken place over a number of years, and finalised in 2012.

At the heart of it is the desire to include all who are involved in the work of evangelism within the Anglican Church, and membership of the Community operates at 4 different levels. See their website for more details 

I left Wilson Carlile College feeling hopeful not just about CA, but reflecting on how the changes made within this one organisation could be a model for the wider Church of England. The structural changes within the Society have been radical and painful - they have had to lose paid staff members, lose buildings that were part of their history, and lose a residential training program in favour of on-the-job training. They have become a 'dispersed evangelistic community'. No longer maintaining expensive buildings...no longer focussing on internal debates about identity...but united around the mission of proclaiming Christ through word and deed. It is an imaginative  faith-filled venture that speaks of a new confidence in God and the gospel.

Just imagine the possibilities for the C of E if Synod made some similar decisions based on uniting the Church around mission. Risky, painful, costly, but surely the way forward...and far better than simply managing decline, which seems to be the approach taken in some Dioceses.

The day ended with prayer in the chapel where I had been Commissioned in 1993, and we used the prayer of Wilson Carlile (founder of Church Army). I didn't need to read it from the sheet, as I have used it regularly throughout my ministry, and have used it every day for the past 12 months as I've been considering rejoining the Society. Here it is:

            And here and now I give myself to You

            And here and now You give yourself to me

            And here and now I find Your love within

            Break through me, Lord, that others I may win

            Your wounded body and your lifeblood poured

            Impel me forth to live and preach you Lord. 

I shall be recommissioned as a Church Army evangelist on 24th April this year. It feels like a homecoming and an exciting new chapter in my own ministry as I become part of a reshaped Church Army.