Let me start with a statement of the obvious: I have never received any training on how to minister during a pandemic. There wasn’t a course on it, or even a lecture, when I was at theological college, and there wasn’t a module on it during my initial ministerial training. So there you go, just like every other ordained minister, church worker, and member of our congregations I am having to, broadly speaking, make it up as I go along. Of course we all hope that in doing this we are listening to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but in a very real sense we are all ‘seeing through a glass darkly,’ (1 Corinthians 13, 12). We are living and ministering in strange, confusing and awful times.

One of the very real challenges for the church, indeed all institutions as well as individuals, is, I think, is the absence of predictability. Most, perhaps all of us, live by rhythm (even those of us whose sense of rhythm is woeful!). In our daily, weekly and seasonal lives we have a sense of where we are and what is coming up; we are in fact liturgical beings.

We are, by contrast, thrown by the unpredictable and we don’t like it when circumstance means that all we can do, the very best that we can do, is look through the proverbial glass darkly. Predictability and clarity are props that allow us to cope well. In the absence of predictability and clarity we find ourselves walking a never ending Emmaus Road, confused, confuzzled, perplexed.

My greatest COVID woe is that I miss the pattern of predictable events that give shape, clarity and even meaning to my life and vocations.I missing seeing my daughters and my mother. I don’t enjoy having to look through a glass darkly in the hope that they are okay. I also miss my regular, routine, week-by-week pattern of activity. I really miss visiting the sick, the dying and the beavered. And, I miss going into church.

The absence of all that is predictable inevitably leads to a constant and relatively low level of anxiety and, the trouble with constant low level anxiety is that it can easily escalate. As someone who has in the past experienced the toxicity of acute anxiety and the numbness of depression I need to be vigilant.

My greatest COVID worry is, let’s put it bluntly, money. Are we going to be okay, are my parishioners going to be okay, is the church going to be okay? I strongly believe that the economic future is going to be bloody, far bloodier, that we are programmed to accept and believe. I also believe that the economic future is going to be highly volatile and unpredictable. We are all going to have to stare into the economic future ‘through a glass darkly.’ It could well be that the assumptions on which planning tools are so frequently based will prove to be about as much use as the proverbial chocolate fire guard.

From a church perspective my biggest worry is that we will be alarmingly slow to acknowledge this and will seek to cling on to our existing ways of financing and arranging ourselves until we are forced, backs against the wall, to accept that we can no longer do so. We will also hold on to our cherished plans and generic strategies for too long, for we will not dare to look into the darkness and admit that those strategies on which we had placed all our hopes (and bets) might be moribund. I worry that what we are hoping is that a couple of aspirin and a course of antibiotics will do the trick when what is actually required is some pretty radical surgery.

Could it be that in church houses up and down the land we need fewer pharmacists and more surgeons? My gut instinct is that this is probably the case but, like all of us, all I can do is look through a glass darkly. Just one more sobering thought: for surgery to be effective is normally needs to be deep and early and the temptation is frequently to delay (in economic terms behavioural finance provides some really interesting insights – insights that might allow us to see through the glass a little less darkly).

Are there any blessings that we as Anglicans might receive, rather than necessarily pronounce or give, in these strange and dangerous COVID times? Well, maybe on the blessings we might be receiving is a renewed understanding of what it means to be an established (and stable) church; a church which is embedded in community and which exists in large part to serve, tend to, and feed the community.

My own experience of ministry over the last few weeks has been a renewed understanding of what the community expects from its parish church and, put simply, what it expects is that we tend (listening to the requirements of those in need with compassion and commitment) and that that we feed those in need, both physically and spiritually. I wonder whether our communities have a far richer understanding of John 21, 15-17 than the church? I also wonder whether the civic community has a greater appreciation of the concept of mission-partnership and, the importance of an established and stable church than we church insiders would dare admit?

Maybe one of the blessings that the church might receive (rather than pronounce) is a renewed understanding of what it means to be a stable and effective parish church? Maybe for too long we have insisted on doing our own thing, in our own ways, thinking that we are a primarily a membership organisation (and our financial models in may ways are based on this assumption), set over, above and in many ways against society? Maybe out of this crisis a renewed focus on the cure of souls, all souls, will arise? Maybe we will (re) learn what it means to be authentically parochial? In the meantime all we can do is continue to look through a glass darkly.

A few days ago I watched a talk which explained why attempts to compare the worship of the early church with the worship of the COVID 19 church are misguided.

As I have been mulling things over over on my daily walk the thought that has been uppermost in my mind is that I am not really that bothered in making such direct comparisons between the COVID Church and the early church, or indeed the church of any era. Such direct comparison, even when the motive behind the comparison is honourable, is bound to be wide of the mark.

I do, of course, think that it is important to understand the church of bygone eras. I also think that it is important to receive the good gifts that have been bequeathed to the contemporary church and to cherish them, whilst at the same time jettisoning the dubious beliefs and practices of ages gone. For me this is what it means to be a traditionalist.

The reason why I am non too bothered with direct comparisons is simply this: the eschatological vocation of the church is to preach the gospel afresh in every era. We are the church of the COVID era, so our challenge, is to preach the gospel afresh, through word and deed, in the here and now. Yesterday has much to teach us, and tomorrow’s challenges will be different, but our concern is the here and now, for as Scripture informs us ‘each day has enough trouble of its own,’ (Matthew 6, 34).

One of the good gifts that has been given, handed down, to the Contemporary or COVID Church is liturgy, or language of the church. One of my hopes is that through the experience of being the church dispersed a renewed understanding of the richness, importance, and mystery of liturgy will arise.

Liturgy, put simply, is a means, perhaps the means, through which the catholicity of the church is celebrated. Liturgy is the language that binds us together and draws us day-by-day, week-by-week, into community, even when we are dispersed. Liturgy is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, (maybe even one of the tongues) to the church. And yet sometimes we forget, or maybe simply take for granted, the power and authority of our common liturgy? Maybe, because we prize the cerebral (preaching), the appreciative (music and visuals), and the individualistic (expository forms) we have become immunised to the common, communal and vernacular (liturgy)?

In Rev’d Peter Antony’s film the importance of gathering together as community in the early church was, in my view, rightly stressed. Place and buildings remain important and we should lament the fact that we are not able to gather, in person, together, to worship. But, does the fact that we are now worshipping from our homes mean that we are being encouraged to worship (as the films suggests) as individuals? I don’t think it does.

I think what we are being invited to do is to worship in community, as the church-dispersed. The reason I think, and more importantly, believe this is because the tradition has handed on to us, ‘common prayer’ and ‘common worship.’

The great prayers of the church, in fact the entirety of the language of the church belong to no-one and everyone, for as George Lathrop and George Guiver insisted the the language of the church is plural (Our Father, We Believe, That We Might etc, etc). If this is true, private worship makes no sense even when we are geographically dispersed and isolated. Whenever we pray and whenever we worship we are together, even when we are apart. This is the great and catholic paradox of liturgy.

The communal property of liturgy was explicitly stressed by some of the great liturgists of the Twentieth Century including the Benedictine Catholic Odo Casel, the equally Benedictine Anglican George Guiver, the Orthodox Alexander Schmemann, but perhaps it was the Methodist Don Saliers who most powerfully argued for liturgy as the language that binds community together even when the community is dispersed:

‘Liturgy is an intentionally gathered community in mindful dialogue with God’s self-communication…….liturgy is something prayed and enacted, a common art of the people in which the community brings the depths of emotion of our lives to the ethos of God.’

We are the COVID Church, we are the Church-Dispersed and we are the Church that is mandated to proclaim the gospel afresh in and for this generation and in doing so one of the ways we can be renewed, strengthened and emboldened is through a renewed appreciation of our common language; the liturgy in other words.

The world, of which the church is a part, likes big strategic plans.

For the last few years, perhaps decades even, we have inhabited a world where big, macro, generic strategies have held sway. In the world of business this approach was popularised by Michael Porter, a charismatic professor at the Harvard Business School. I think that it is fair to say that Porteresque theories have managed to crowd out insights from other, more relational, more emergent, strategic thinkers. Models and generic strategies are, after all, fairly easy to understand; they are easy to have faith in.

Now to be clear generic strategies have their part to play. From a Church of England perspective such top down generic strategies as Resourcing Churches, Plants, Grafts and Fresh Expressions all have a part, maybe a significant part, to play in the building of the Kingdom ‘here on earth.’ But, what generic strategies should never be is the sum total of the strategic output. God, I think, cannot be easily contained within the generic, for God is equally content in the incremental (J.B. Quinn) and the emergent (Mintzberg). And, anyway, doesn’t God go ahead of us in mission?

The new set of circumstances we find ourselves in talks deeply to the nature of mission and evangelism as relational, emergent and embedded in community.

In the new set of circumstances generic models might be something that need to be gently set aside for a season. It is hard to build a new congregation or plant a resource church in periods of self isolation. Self isolation isn’t however the major point for at some, as yet unspecified time it, alongside social distancing, will presumably come to and end. Money, cash, finance and the potential return on missional assets employed is the major issue.

It is and will remain hard to fund generic models (because generic models rely on significant funding), if we are to be a substantially poorer church over the longer-term. Generic strategies by their nature are costly strategies. The rewards can be substantial, but the losses when they go wrong are truly frightening. To invest the majority of missional assets in volatile and uncertain times in generic models really is to bet the farm.

As we gaze into an uncertain future we can only ‘see through a glass darkly,’ (1 Corinthians 13, 12), but we can, I think, make some basic assumptions and begin to ask some searching questions. One basic assumption that I would make is that the church (and her parishioners) are going to be substantially poorer. I don’t think we are facing a blip or a shortfall in revenue but a potential catastrophe.

The temptation for the Church (and other institutions) will be to plan on the basis of a short fall in revenue of say between 25 and 40% over a six month period. My own view is that this a hopelessly optimistic hypothesis. If I am correct then the ongoing commitment to cash consuming generic strategies should surely be called into question. We need to ask ourselves, as the church, whether our collective faith in such approaches might be now misplaced.

One of the things that I have learnt in the current crisis is that people – non church people – have expectations of the church. Let me illustrate: For several years we have operated a small scale food cupboard scheme. It works like this. We retain a small stock of non perishable goods. When we receive a referral from the school or health centre we contact the family, discuss their needs, and supplement our existing stock with fresh produce which we buy in. Several weeks ago a number of individuals and civic institutions contacted us asking if they could provide us with cash and produce so we could scale up our offering. Other people of goodwill provided us with a timely reminder that part of our mandate is to ‘feed my people.’

Due to the generosity of others we are now able to provide food and other staple products to a relatively large number of families and individuals who would by now be living below the bread-line. Yesterday a local Indian Takeaway contacted us to say that they were going to give a percentage of their takings in April and May to the St. Laurence Food Cupboard Scheme.

St. Laurence was a deacon of the church and an early martyr. Before his death is reputed to have said that ‘these (the poor) are the treasures of the church.’ In my context it feels as though we are being nudged back to pursuing an increasingly diaconal form of ministry, where ‘responding to human need through loving service’ is at the heart of what we do and who we are.

In telling our story I am not seeking to promote yet another generic, do what we are doing, form of strategy. I am simply suggesting that the local church, embedded in the local community, should listen to the community and its expectations of the church.

At the institutional level I do wonder whether the Church of England should gently place aside (maybe only for a season, maybe for a longer period of time) the preference for generic strategies and think afresh about how assets and reserves are deployed?

Do we need to relinquish some of our faith in the generic and instead have a little more faith in the relational, incremental, authentically parochial, and emergent?

Just a few questions!