I’m responsible for ensuring the councils of the Church work well and are enabled to deliberate wisely, to ensure that Central Offices are working well and meeting the needs of the wider Church, and for relating with the 13 national and regional synods, particularly with the synod moderators.
There isn’t really a direct Anglican equivalent to my role. When I meet with ecumenical colleagues, I meet with William Nye, secretary-general of the Archbishops’ Council, though my role must be filled by an ordained minister of word and sacraments.
Administration is one of the gifts of the Spirit — often the poor sibling of more popular gifts of the Spirit. What enables churches to thrive as living, lively worshipping communities which make a difference in people’s lives are good systems and processes. My role is to keep the balance: to keep in our minds that it’s about the witness and service of the church in local context, and that’s why we’re involved in systems and processes and admin. Never fall into the trap of thinking those things don’t really matter, because, when the process falters, the consequences can be quite serious on the ground.
I’m the youngest general secretary that’s ever been appointed. Maybe the appointment of a younger person was a way of recognising that, as with all Churches, the United Reformed Church faces massive challenges at this point in history in this corner of the globe. I try to be honest and realistic about what those challenges are, because we’re recognising that we can’t keep carrying on like we’ve always carried on.
Yes, it’s a very young Church: I don’t have many predecessors. We’re celebrating our 50th anniversary in October. I’ll be in the thick of all of that, preaching and addressing. My hope is that it will be a moment of reflection and re-setting, as the biblical jubilee was meant to be. It’s easy to be self-congratulatory — and there’s much to celebrate — but it’s also a chance to make a fresh start.
I hope we can face honestly our challenges, and discern what it means to be faithful. In a highly secularised society, we’ve suffered massive decline. We believe God is active within history, and we must faithfully ask why we’ve been brought to the place we find ourselves. We also believe in a God of resurrection, and must discover what living through death and into life looks like as a Church.
Our Church Life Review is a wholesale review of our life together. We’re partnering with the think tank Theos to explore what flourishing looks like for the URC. We’re also doing some forensic accounting across all the various legal entities that hold the financial assets of the URC across the General Assembly and 13 synods. Then we hope that we can have a wise conversation about how we most creatively use the resources God has given us.
The URC is still passionate about ecumenism, which was central to our birth, and we’re a central player in many ecumenical forums. We’re deeply committed to engaging and serving the communities we find ourselves in, and we have a heart for social justice. Our work with the Joint Public Issues Team with the Methodists and Baptists enables us to have a strong voice within the public square.
We’re both young and old. The various traditions that came together trace their roots back into the 16th century; so we have long memories and short institutional history, which is an interesting combination. Our demographic is definitely older, but our structures and local ways of working make it possible for us to try things out more quickly than some of our larger ecumenical colleagues. We’re quite a broad Church, theologically, and our Congregationalist ethos allows some churches to perform same-sex marriages, for example, even though it’s not a national policy, and some congregations might not think that appropriate. We’re able to disagree without inhibiting freedom of practice.
It’s something at times we take for granted after 50 years, but it amazes people in North America. After all, Presbyterians are essentially top-down, Congregationalists essentially bottom-up. Very careful work was done to bring the URC into being at different levels of church life: things determined as locally as possible, but General Assembly having responsibilities for the Church as a whole. Congregationalism has moved more in the direction of regional county unions’ holding more responsibilities, and, within the more Presbyterian ethos, there’s still a strong emphasis on the local; so the traditions are moving towards one another.
When we dig deep in the riches of our traditions, we find the common ground is in Christ. Sadly, it’s often matters of culture or nationality that divide us — and the New Testament has lots to say about how totally unacceptable that is.
It’s because of careful listening, deliberate and intentional, over many years, and some leaders exercising exceptional leadership. Malcom Hanson took a very conservative view of many things, but came to the conviction that grace was paramount in the life of faith. But for the grace for God, all of us would be lost, and if God reaches out in graciousness to all of us, and to those with whom we profoundly disagree, then we should see them first as sisters and brothers, and secondarily as those who disagree about things like human sexuality.
My parents were Methodists, but they settled into a URC church, where I was baptised. They became Methodists again when they moved, but then we moved to Cumbria when I was eight, where the closest church happened to be URC. That Methodist heritage is partly the origin of my very deep ecumenical commitment. I’ve always worked in LEP parishes, and I taught at Westminster College for ten years, and became Vice-Principal there; so my day-to-day experience in the classroom was very ecumenical, and I taught a reasonable swath of students of the Church of England.
The theological differences between Wesley and Whitfield have rather moved past us. Our strongest differences now are more about ecclesiological structures. The Conference has an authority that exceeds our General Assembly; and the Methodists’ circuit system rather than each church is their primary unit. But, in terms of worship, witness, common life, we’re very similar. Differences may come out to bite only when people aren’t aware of them.
Unity is primarily a gift from God: it goes ahead of us. It’s something we are given, in our common baptism into Christ. When we turn unity into a human quest to build something, we start wanting common aims and commonalities and boxing things into received ways. We have a pre-existing unity with our sisters and brothers we’re called to live with, even those with whom we disagree. Don’t try so hard. Receive one another as gift.
Since 2018, I’ve been President of the Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe — Lutheran, Reformed, and Methodist Churches — which gives pulpit and table fellowship through the full mutual recognition of ordination. It seeks to enable Churches to work together in the European context in ways that individually we could not, from large national Churches to tiny diaspora Churches. It represents over 50 million Christians across the Continent.
Matters of God and faith were talked about often at home. The day I actually was received into membership of the Church, when I was about 13, is a day I treasure. There was a strong sense of being touched by the Holy Spirit and joined to the wider body of Christ that moves me to this day.
When I’m not working, you’ll find me drinking a pint of real ale, or possibly at my piano. I love the sound of piano in expert hands. I’m happiest spending time with friends and family.
I’ve never had a bucket list. Whatever one plans, the divine sense of humour has something far more unexpected lined up.
The pervasive and widespread lack of truth that seems to have become the norm in public life makes me angry.
What gives me hope for the future is that God is a God of resurrection. Beyond death lies unexpected and unimaginable new life.
I pray most of all for wisdom.
If I was locked in a church with anyone, I’d choose Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had such extraordinary insight into the kind of world that was coming into being, courage, and an ability to see to the heart of theological and worldly reality.
John Bradbury was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.
