‘Should I stay or should I go?’ was the question famously sung by rock group The Clash in 1981.
It is the question many in the Church of England – especially those of us who are ministers – are now asking.
I am currently on sabbatical from my parish ministry post (though not en) and last Sunday sat happily in a service at Peacehaven Evangelical Free Church. The previous two Sundays had seen me, respectively, at South Street Free Church, Eastbourne and an international evangelical church in Grenoble. None of them were Anglican, and of course it didn’t matter; the Bible was being preached, the services had heart as well as head, and there were good things at all three.
There are two somewhat different questions when it comes to ministry in the Church of England. The first is for those considering ministry (or training for it) and is simply this: ‘Is the Cof E worth going into?’ Twenty-five years ago, I answered yes. Now, I don’t think I could.
But the second question, for those of us already in ministry, is more difficult: ‘Can you just walk away from the parish or take it out of the Cof E?’ And that’s more difficult. I love the people here. This is where the Lord clearly called us. There is no obvious alternative meeting place. Smaller, local rural congregations are quite different from large, drive-in city-centre churches which might feasibly just ‘up and off ’. Is the current Cof E situation untenable and unacceptable? Yes (to put it mildly). Does there need to be some form of separation (‘visible differentiation’ as the Church of England Evangelical Council calls it) from error? Yes.
But the questions now for me are: ‘Is there any way of securing long-term gospel ministry here that I can realistically foresee? And do evangelical leaders in the Cof E have any real plan for enabling that to happen in places like this?’ At the moment, I don’t know.
We wait, and watch, and pray.
