Well it would appear that the Church thinks it has found the yellow brick road and they are determined to traverse it. The trouble with going to visit Oz is that you discover that rather than some magical change that a great being can bestow on you to change your future, you find you did indeed have all the skills and knowledge inside yourself all along you just had to learn how to use them. Equally you find the the great endgame your chasing is not what you thought it was. When will the hierachy learn the Church is not a great business and the mythical idea that you can create a marketing policy that will fill the pews. It is like looking for the Wizard of Oz, you will find it is not what you thought it was and what was needed was on the inside all along.
The situation we find ourselves in, encouraging less and less theological learning and training of leaders is a result of a hierachy who have largely been fast tracked from backgrounds that are not Church based with signifcant leanings towards a particular churchmanship. Meaning there are no checks and balances, no one to question the theology, no one to question the history and no one to actually look at why we need that corperate knowledge at the top to make sensible and wise decisions. Most crucially those at the top have very little understanding of what it means to be one of those "key limiting factors" in a parish like my husbands that is so poor that even our vicarage could not hold 20/30 people in one room. We struggle to have 15 in happy times when social events were a thing. A community that has struggled with technology over the pandemic becuase they either can't or wont engage with it. A community made up of some many different elements that meeting round a house would never bring people together like the neutral territory of the church and the church hall. A community much in need of the space to find peace everyday with an open door to a shrine and prayer, not the closed door of a house that is only there during the services. A place that can engage everyday with the need to see people, provide food, emotional support and the sacraments. For example someone who has no other vocation they need to attend to and they can then sit with someone while they wait for emergency services because they are suicidal or being threatened. Someone who can drop everything and be at the bedside of the dying. Being trained and set aside is not a bad thing, wearing clericals means that people can see you, approach you for help even if they don't regularly attend your church. It means that you are noticed as some one called by God to lead and help.
Having been seen, you are expected to be able to deal with people who are questioning, lost and in need of help and understanding. If we remove the deep theological training that college provides, we enter into superfcial answers that do not wash with people. One of the key issues with losing young people. Young people and indeed adults alike need boundaries, something to attempt to live within, even if they fail sometimes. This is why we have a catechism and why we have the sacrament of reconcilliation. We have something to have faith in and the eternal forgiveness when we fail. If we do not educate our leaders, how can they know what to teach and what to forgive. In short how can they live, the Bible as is, is not all the answers. There is much historic study in order, to gain understanding of what is written rather than just a superficial understanding, which would lead to both clergy and congregations understanding the value of the Sacraments as something vital.
We can not side line the Sacraments as something that can only happen when the rare trained Priest can turn up, is not a situation when can end up in. This is the salvation of people's souls we are talking about. In a community, that is fractured, tormeneted by gun crime, rivalry and poverty. The Church building proivides a portal into something different a space to encounter the peace and the divine. It is a place where what is outside stays outside. When you come to a service you can encounter the kingdom of God here, on earth through the sacraments. For some this is a lifeline, in a turbulent and disturbed life, for others a time just to breathe and recieve the gift of God. But has the Church learnt nothing from the uproar surrounding thoe closing of Church buildings during the pandemic, from witholding the Sacraments from the people. In a time when people literally had nothing it was the need for that encounter with the divine that they were searching for. We recieved letters of complaints begging for the Church to be open and for the ability to recieve the Sacraments and indeed when other Churchs closed latterly we remained open giving people the space to recieve that divine gift in order to find the hope for another week. This can simply not be replaced with a buffet meal and a shallow chat about the Bible. Being a Chistian is hard, it is sacrficial and occassionally it can be boring, but I am fairly sure that dying and abandoned on the cross Jesus didn't suddenly say this is a bit hard and no one much is here anymore I need to rethink my stratergy. No, he continued to his death with instructions for our future. Instructions and teachings that have been carried through the Apostolic line of Succession to uphold the Church for thousands of years, soemtimes through booms sometimes through quiet times. But we must not give in or up because the times are hard, we most engage, learn from and embrace the past as well as the present. We must continue to train our leaders to understand that which they teach, the history and theology from whence they came. We must have enough of those paid to have the time to set aside for people to be there 24 hours a day to provide those Sacraments as required for each and every soul in their care. We must have buildings that are open, quiet, beautiful and transcendentant in order to allow all to encounter God wether they want to attend a service or not. The Church and Faith can not be managed like a business, because it is a different entity one that pervades all areas of our life, demands far more than 9-5 hours and door closed at the end of buisness. We must cease our search for The Wizard of OZ here and learn to embrace and encounter the wonderful world of awesome gifts we have alredy had bestowed upon us by God. Or else we will find the emptiness of the false journey and we will lose the People, the Faith and The Church forever.
