It is now nearly six months since I was formally welcomed in the Cathedral. Since then I have undertaken a programme of deanery visits, of which I am over half way through. I have been to more that forty churches and chaplaincies to conduct confirmations, inductions and Sunday worship. I’ve also visited many schools, farms and factories. It’s been a fascinating and exhilarating time, as I have listened and tried to understand something of the complexity, the problems and the opportunities of the myriad of communities which make up our diocese. As I travel around I am exploring three themes: Going deeper into God, Transforming Communities; and Making New Disciples. I am grateful for the warm welcome and the courtesy that you have extended to me, as I am still getting to know you – and as you continue to get to know me.

I have a text for this address from Romans 12. 1-2:

‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.’

Each month I have been rereading the document you produced for the appointment of your next diocesan bishop. The first priority you identified for him, and I quote, was “Developing a strategy for mission and ministry and actively encouraging its implementation”.

Peter Senge, a guru on strategy and author of a seminal book called The Fifth Discipline offers some challenging reflections on how organizations (which includes bodies like the Diocese of St Albans) grow – or fail to grow. His conclusion is that ‘Most change initiatives fail’, That’s a pretty blunt and damning verdict as we gather together to give thanks for Vision for Action and as we spend some time today prayerfully, and again I quote ‘Developing a strategy for mission and ministry and actively encouraging its implementation.’

Senge suggests that many initiatives look good and exciting but that in the long run they fail to make a significant and lasting difference. Things actually just go on as they did before. He writes ‘To understand why sustaining significant change is so elusive, we need to think less like managers and more like biologists’ He argues that ‘Leaders instigating change are often like gardeners standing over their plants, imploring them: ‘Grow! Try harder! You can do it!’ No gardener tries to convince a plant to ‘want’ to grow; if the seed does not have the potential to grow, there’s nothing anyone can do to make a difference’.

Second, Senge suggests that ‘leaders should especially focus on understanding the limiting processes that slow or arrest change, Above all, the gardener must understand the constraints that can limit growth and attend to these constraints. Why should this be any different for leaders seeking to sustain significant change? Entreating people to try harder; to become more committed, to be more passionate cannot possibly have much lasting effect. The biological world teaches us that sustaining change requires understanding the reinforcing growth processes and what is needed to catalyze them, and addressing the limits that keep change from occurring’.

Senge’s insights are backed up by even the most cursory knowledge of church history. During the past century there were a number of top down initiatives designed to encourage the church to grow, for example the 1944 report published by The Church of England entitled, Towards the Conversion of England, which was followed by initiatives, such as Archbishop Donald Coggan’s Call to the North, Mission England, and the 1988 Lambeth Conference which resulted in the Decade of Evangelism during the 1990s. Now it is easy to knock these initiatives. They helped to keep the church looking outwards and nudged us in the right direction. But they didn’t make the significant difference that many hoped for. Synods and committees may be good at debating issues but they don’t generally inspire people to take up their cross and live sacrificially. Spiritual renewal usually comes about in unexpected ways, inevitably from grass roots, often from the most surprising people and places.

This is why at my first diocesan synod in October I focussed on what I believe to be the most fundamental thing that we need to attend to: Going deeper into God, which is about prayer, conversion and holiness. This is preparing the ground, feeding the soil and pulling up the weeds which get in the way of growth. It is also why one of the first things that I did as bishop, along with Bishop Chris and Bishop Richard, was to write a Lent Course and also initiate Challenge.

What is terrific is that more than 3000 people have signed up and loads of others are using hard copies, including a group in the Young Offenders’ Institution at Mount Prison, Bovingdon. The urgent need to reinvest in our own spiritual lives also means that one of the things that I will be asking during Passiontide (the two weeks before Easter) next year is for every group in the diocese to avoid having meetings and instead to have two weeks dedicated to prayer. Of course, some groups and PCCs may be able to do this for the whole of Lent, which would be even better. I would be grateful if you would prayerfully consider this matter and see if you can reflect on how we might deepen our spiritual lives and ‘go deeper into God’. I need you wisdom on this. Let me have your ideas.

But one thing I am certain of: we cannot just till the soil. We also need to reflect together prayerfully on how our encounter with God spills out into the world, which leads me on to the main theme I want to talk about this morning.

Transforming Communities

On several occasions over the years I have visited an extraordinary missionary movement, which has its origins in Italy. It is called the Community of Sant’ Egidio (the Italian for ‘St Giles’, the dedication of the church they first met in). It is based in the Trastevere district of Rome. You might wonder why on earth there is new missionary movement going on in Rome. Surely of all places on earth this is the last city that needs any more mission. It is dominated by the Vatican and on nearly every street corner there is a church, a monastery, a convent or a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But, like every big city, Rome has its poor districts. It too needs new missionary movements if it is to be true to the gospel. I really like that statement from the Second Vatican Council: ‘Christ summons the church, as she goes on her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always has need’.

The community of Sant’ Egidio began in 1968 when a young man, Andrea Riccardi, who wasn’t yet 20 years old, gathered together a group of high school students to read the gospels and to put them into practice. They reflected on the first Christian communities in the Acts of the Apostles and on the life of St Francis of Assisi. As they studied and prayed they felt that God was calling them to do five things:

1. First, to put prayer and the scriptures at the heart of their shared life. They believed that God was calling them to be more deeply converted by the gospel and to dare to live for others. Each night, after work, thousand of them gather together for prayer and to study the bible together. This is a lay, grassroots movement.
2. Secondly, to communicate the gospel, to reach out to all those people who are seeking for a meaning for their lives. They discovered that it is only when you give the gospel away that you find its reality for yourself.
3. Thirdly, to embody a solidarity with the poor, not by being sorry for them or doing them a favour, but by truly befriending them and sharing their lives. Soon the original small group of students began visiting the slums on the outskirts of Rome to work among the poor. They set up afternoon school clubs (the Scuola Populare) for the children.
4. Fourthly, to work with all Christians to search for the unity that Christ prayed for.
5. Fifth, to engage in dialogue as a way of resolving conflicts. Members of Sant’ Egidio have been involved in resolving national and international conflicts as far apart as Mozambique, Guatamala, Southern Sudan, Berundi, Albania and Kosovo

Today there are more than 30,000 people in thirty countries who belong to the community of Sant’ Egidio. When I talked to members of Sant’ Egidio recently on a visit to Rome I noticed instead of talking about all the things that they have done for others, they spend much more time talking about what they have received from the poor.

Now transforming communities can sound like an overwhelming, impossible task. There are always more needs that we can possibly meet. Yet again and again there have been grassroots renewal movements which have made a profound difference to the communities in which they are set. Arising from a renewed sense of worship, the Oxford Movement inspired many priests to move into the most impoverished parishes and lived alongside the poor. Also responding to a move of the Holy Spirit were the Evangelical revival and the Welsh revival when, for example, the temperance movement addressed the huge problem of alcoholism which was killing individuals and destroying families. I’ve already come across many examples of such transformation going on in our diocese: the work of Open Door here in the city, a night shelter and day centre to help those who are homeless; in rural Bedfordshire a vestry which doubles as village shop ; in Luton a big breakfast club serving kids on their way to school; the holiday club for older people in Ware ; the Living Room project in Stevenage changing lives of people with addictions; in many of our town centres reaching out to young people through Street Pastors or Street Angels.

Behind all of these movements and initiatives is a rediscovery or a reaffirmation of the teaching of Jesus called the gospel principle. Once you grasp it you will spot it on virtually every page of the New Testament. The gospel principle is not ‘make yourself rich and then give of your bounty’. The gospel principle is ‘long before we feel we have enough, long before we have satisfied our needs, we are invited to give freely and generously’. It is the starving widow who gave her last drops of oil to Elijah; it is the little boy at the feeding of the 5000 who gave away his packed lunch of loaves and fish.

The gospel principle tells us that ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit’. The grain of wheat has to be buried in the earth; its husk has to be broken to allow growth and life and a harvest. But what do we do then? Well we don’t just hold onto the 20 grains and keep them. No, the 20 are to be planted to become 400, and the 400 to become 1600.

Down through the ages millions upon millions of Christians have found that when they dare to live the gospel principle, when they step out in faith and trust, it actually works. But it always feels a very vulnerable thing to do.

Often, when we talk about the cross, we focus on the painful business of dying to self, which doesn’t sound like very good news. But, of course, that is never the right starting point. First and foremost the cross is the most powerful demonstration of the way that God gives himself to us: ‘God loved the world so much, that he gave his only son…’ ‘God proves his love for us that while we still were sinners Christ died for us...’

It was this experience of a God who gives himself so utterly, so completely, and without reserve which captured the hearts and minds of the early Christians. They did not shy away from the cross, thinking it was negative and life denying. On the contrary they embraced it because they had grasped that it was life giving.
Virtually every major mission and renewal has begun with a fresh insight or experience of the cross - of the self-giving, overflowing, out-pouring, undeserved love which God shows us. All we do is to respond with the same reckless self-abandon.

Think about the saints down through the ages who had been gripped by this same gospel principle: St Anthony, St Francis, John Wesley or Mother Theresa, who day after day got down in the gutters of Calcutta to pick up the destitute and dying. It was this same gospel principle which undergirded Archbishop Robert Runcie’s Faith in the City which in my last diocese levered in over £28m of grants and supported literally scores of projects in some of the most disadvantaged communities in the West Midlands. Twenty five years on it is still making a great difference. In examples such as these we catch the raw energy that is released within individuals and communities when we are grasped by the love of God and in response are willing to die to self and be raised to new life. I long that each parish and each chaplaincy will be involved in some way in transforming their community. It could be a large initiative or something much more modest, but it is fundamental to our calling as followers of Jesus Christ.
St Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome: I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Paul challenges us to offer ourselves – without qualification, freely, openly - because this is what worship is truly about. When we do this we are transformed – or as it says in the original Greek ‘metamorphosed’. That brings me back to where I started and Peter Senge. You will recall he says that it is only biological, organic change that will really work and deliver long term change in us and in our diocese.
This metamorphosis is what we see in the lifecycle of, for example, the butterfly. It is the biological process by which an organism develops after birth or hatching. Built into its DNA is the ability to become the creature that it was meant to be. It finally realises its full potential.
In a few minutes we are going to spend time together reflecting on the future of our parishes, chaplaincies and diocese. If it is really going to bear fruit, if it is really going to give us the direction we need to go and the courage to embrace it, then it will have to be centred in worship; infused with a sense of a generous God who pours out his life; and a profound sense that as we walk together we will discover who God has created us to be.

9.3.2010