Comments on ‘Vision and Strategy’ in +Guli’s lecture
You can read our transcription of +Guli’s lecture here
If you would like to add to these comments please email help@savetheparish.com
Facebook post by Father Robert Thompson.
This lecture from +Guli is I think the most significant episcopal contribution we have had to real theology of church & place (ecclesiology), to mission in its broadest sense & to a theology of episcopacy which places pastoral care of the shepherds of Christ’s very little flock at the heart of that ministry.
She is completely right in her diagnosis of ordinary parish clergy feeling overwhelmed & burnt out by the constant demand for numerical growth.
She is on point in that she places suffering & failure at the heart of what it is to be faithful to Christ & to his life, way of being, death & resurrection.
She is revealing in how some of these remarks which were initially made at her diocesan synod got her a slap on the wrist from Lambeth … the controlling centre needs to devolve power.
Hers is a narrative journey that questions both the practicality & theological inadequacies of a centralised Vision & Strategy that apes the growth, power & control of neoliberal capitalism.
She ends with a vision of ‘resonance’ – a resonant, church with a resonant people, a community that resounds with the joy of the way of the Cross, the values of the Kingdom & is open to the world around them.
Essential listening for all concerned about faithfulness to Christ.
Extract from letter to the Church Times by Jonnie Baird, General Synod member for Salisbury Diocese.
With apologies to Sir Michael Caine, the Bishop of Chelmsford (Podcast, 27 September) is to be congratulated on “blowing the doors off” Vision and Strategy. In pursuit of a misguided centralist policy, this is leading to distortions and unintended consequences on an industrial scale. Yet the General Synod has neither approved nor agreed to Vision and Strategy. How so?
