The Church of England has this strange structure called "A clergy chapter" which is a gathering of the clergy in a local area called the Deanery. Clergy chapters work (and Deaneries) because no-one really knows what they are for or what they are supposed to do.
However over the past few years the hierachy have tried to give some purpose to chapters - jargon words like "support", and even worse in a Diocese (regional area) like Bradford where people don't take decisions at a Diocesan level but have devolved all the triky decisions to the Deanery without ever thinking about how this totally unsuitable arena was ever going to make the decisions.
So today we had a wonderfully positive Chapter meeting where collegues simply said enough is enough - its our chapter and we prefer it if no-one knows what it about so it can meet our needs.
In a wonderful moment no-one stepped forward to fill the vacant Chapter Clerks ( person who does all the minutes and all the donkey work between meetings) and despite heavy leanings and hearnest exhorations that someone "had to have minutes" we had a whole meeting without minutes being taken. Far worse it emerged that cos we didn't have a Chapter clerk no-one was available to handle the Chapter budget ( all £33.42 of it!). Two "important Diocesan bodies and one Deanery committee have no clergy representatives on them.
Guess what happened? - cos there was no minutes recording what people said or decisions made - people were open honest and no decision were made - and decisions made by the Bishop and Diocesan committees were openly challenged.
At last the Deanery might get the message that the Church is supposed to be about mission rather than meetings!
Congratulations and envy in equal measures, I think....Our Deanery has been told to sort out the Quota, and make recommendations on pastoral reorganisation (aka turkeys voting for Christmas), so we spend many miserable hours in meetings, while the Holy Spirit gets on with things in the world without us :-(
Posted by: Kathryn | 12 October 2005 at 09:52
Thank God there are still mission priests that realise that meetings are not what life or mission is about.
Posted by: Jonathan | 12 October 2005 at 12:50
Despite theoretically knowing what Deanery Chapters are for(!) I simply see ours as a chance for a bunch of clergy to get together who would otherwise not do so. It is a forum, as far as I understand it in practice, where whinging, speculation, education and laughter all seem to happen in equal measure.
We even had a trip to the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and lunch after too.
Meetings like that I find are actually enablers of mission...
Posted by: drmoose | 12 October 2005 at 13:30