Endings

Tonight was the end of my course. Formally it was session four of the Gospel & Mission course and indeed that's what we did. There were no special rituals to mark the end of three years' study. We made a small presentation to John, our course director, at half time and we ended by saying the grace together. That was it.

We will all meet again at the start of our ordination retreat in three months' time. It all seems a bit unreal; there's relief certainly and thoughts will turn to practicalities such as preaching scarves, stoles and the rest of the impedimenta of sacrality.

We talked again about our role. Will our incumbents let us be mission-focused? Can we be instrumental in Rowan Williams' 'mixed economy'? There are moves to dilute the differences between Ordained Local Ministers and other clergy. The net result of these may well be that we, too, are sucked into maintenance of the existing structures and provisions. This cannot be what God wants, surely.

Yet how can we avoid it? The inertia of the C of E is so great that it sometimes seems that despair is the only authentic response. Sybil said that someone had done a presentation on 'Mission Shaped Church' at their deanery. When it came to exploring the notion of mixed economy there was huge resistance from the clergy. "If you can't get them to come to the main service then you're doing something wrong" seemed to be the message. It would be better, it seems, for no-one to come to worship than for a group of people to worship together in a way that is not directly connected with the traditional Sunday service.