Dear Friends
Vision in a Vacuum
I reported in
detail last month on the progress made in reviewing our vision and mission for
the Parish, specifically what had come out of our Parish meeting in mid-August.
I have since wondered if we did actually print it, such has been the
underwhelming response! I expressed my concern to Parish Council, and I
reiterate it here, that this process of review should not be the Rectors’
vision and mission for the Parish, but ours as a collective. What are your
thoughts on what I shared last month? Does what the August meeting came up with
excite you? Demotivate you? Surprise you? Give you hope? Do you think the ideas
shared touch on important issues or miss them? Do you see your experience of
Corpus Christi, and your hopes for the Parish, reflected in what was discussed?
Have we missed anything? Please, fill the vacuum!!
Leadership
October is
leadership month, and as you will see in the Diary section we will be holding
elections for Churchwardens and Parish Councillors towards the end of the
month. Having spent September focusing on Stewardship, we now have an opportunity
to be good stewards of the gifts of Leadership. Standing for Churchwarden or
Parish Councillor is an act of stewardship, a giving of our time and skills, a
utilisation of these resources. All confirmed members of the parish are
eligible. Please be prayerful and take time to encourage people you know and
trust to stand for election.
What are we about?
Within the
broad context of reviewing our vision and mission, our September focus on
Stewardship, and our need to elect new Parish leadership for 2013 this month,
along with the Synod of Bishops and Provincial Standing Committee meetings that
took place last week, the upcoming Anglicans Ablaze Conference that will focus
on exploring the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s vision, mission and
priority statements adopted in 2010, along with my own search for meaning and
relevance, I am conscious of asking the question, “What is it that we are
about?” … as Christians, as Anglicans, as South Africans, as Africans?
I spent some
time today reading an address by Trevor Manuel, then Minister of Finance, to
the Anglican Synod of Bishops in August 2004. In it he reflects on the need
both in our wider society and within Government for the Church as an ecumenical
movement to provide leadership, not by basking in the golden decade (1984-1985)
when the Church was bold and articulate, and fully committed to bringing about
democracy, but by embracing a sustaining and durable theology of reconstruction
and development based on the premise of involvement and not spectatorship.
What are we
about as Church? Manuel’s perspective back in 2004 was of the wider Church, largely
uninvolved in the needs of society, occasionally attempting to broad-side
government with accusations of failure from a spectator’s vantage point. I am
wondering, reading this document in 2012, where the Church stands today on these
issues? Do we continue to see responsibility for reconstruction and development
as the preserve of Government, or are we acknowledging that we have a role to
play, and are we playing it? Recent events at Marikana demonstrate that
employers, Trade Unions, Government have lost the trust of the working class,
and that they are even suspicious of the Church. Why is this? Is it, perhaps, because
the wider Church has somehow lost its ability to be present to society? Manuel’s
interpretation is that there is a powerful element – the Church Pty Ltd – in
the wider Church environment that implores us to forget the concrete or contextual
nature of incarnation, that leads us away from discovering our cause, our raison d'être, in serving the nations of Southern Africa, and the
new South Africa in particular. In offering an alternative, Manuel identifies
five pillars that, for him, needs define a Church with a cause. We need a Church that is aware of itself in the following
ways:
- A Church aware of what defines it – traditionally that of healer, intermediator, discoverer and uniter;
- A Church exploring its role as Convenor of itself and its congregation – re-motivating ourselves in order to lift the burden from the poor;
- A Church as keeper of values – building the norms of caring, campaigning against crime and corruption, helping society understand the difference between values and cash cost;
- A Church as constructor of communities;
- A Church as the conscience of Society.
Manuel also
quotes Thabo Mbeki, then president of the Republic, speaking to the South
African Christian Leaders Assembly in July 2003, “… you bravely and at great
cost to many among you, chose a path through the contextual understanding of
your mission. Once again, your mission calls for a reappraisal on the basis of
the real conditions that face all our people.” It strikes me that Trevor
Manuel, a fellow Anglican and senior Government Minister, touched on key issues
for us as a Church back in 2004, and that senior Church leadership has
responded to these challenges, certainly within our Anglican context: the
Provincial social development arm, Hope Africa, was expanded and better
resourced; our Diocesan social development arm, Tumelong Mission, has been
refocused; Bishops and Clergy throughout the Province have been exposed to social
development training through courses run by Hope Africa; a vision, mission and
priority statements have been adopted for the Anglican Church of Southern
Africa. But how is this finding traction at grass-roots level in the wider
Church environment? How do we experience a commitment to the reconstruction and
development of our society in the more specific context, for example at Corpus
Christi? Is our involvement with Louis Botha Homes, Iren Homes, Tumelong
Mission, a sufficient commitment in this regard? How many of us actually
pitched up and participated in the Environmental Clean-up day a couple of weeks
ago?
An additional
challenge is how we respond as the Church to the National Development Plan 2030
(see http://bit.ly/RxCSVx)? I have just read
the vision statement, a powerful and profound statement of the Nation I believe
we all want to be but are not yet, and I suspect, fear we will never be. It is
written in the present tense and planted in 2030, and is a call to build our
Nation. It proposes a powerful cycle of development approach to change designed
to build social cohesion around three important cogs: active citizenry,
effective government and strong leadership. I suggest that the Church, in a
wider ecumenical context, can be a powerful force in encouraging active
citizenry and participating in giving strong leadership. The vision statement
begins with the words:
We, the people of South
Africa, have journeyed for since the long lines of our first democratic
election on 27 April 1994, when we elected a government for us all.
Now in 2030 we live in a
country which we have remade.
We are
suspicious of Government, often with good reason. But as God’s people we are
people of Hope, people of passion, people committed to seeing the purposes of
God, the goodness of God triumph in our world. Pre-1994 as Anglicans we sided
with the politically poor and oppressed. In today’s world we need to side with
the economically poor and oppressed. If we sit back and choose to be the
spectator Church, the uninvolved Church, then we allow the Julius Malema’s of
the world to set the agenda. As an involved Church we can participate with
other committed parties, which include Government, in building up our
communities and our Nation. As participants we can have a voice and we can make
a difference.
In Conclusion
In the midst
of all the above, who are we as Corpus Christi Anglican Church in Garsfontein?
What defines us? What is our vision? What is our purpose? And how are we
utilising our core practises of worship, care and fellowship, education and
discipleship, service and witness to serve God in our world and serve those
made in God’s image who populate our lives?
Blessings
Mark
