Vicar's Letter (The mission of maintenance)

Various of the officers of the parishes have been invited to a meeting during the course of June to discuss the priorities for the diocese over the next few years.  Mystic Richard, your Vicar, foresees in the mists that there will be much about putting mission at the centre of church life.  There will doubtless, therefore, be much of the old battle-cry, “Mission, not maintenance.”

Maintenance in this little motto has two meanings.  First, it can refer to the nuts and bolts of admin (including the building); and secondly, it can suggest the status quo.  However, in both cases, the dichotomy drawn between mission and maintenance is false.

Nobody at Saint Philip’s and Saint Matthew’s would, for a moment, doubt that there is a need for us to develop the mission of our churches to the communities around us, but we cannot, in the process, just abandon everything else.

First, the new work will be built on the foundations of what we have here already.  In seeking to draw people into the life of the Church, we shall be endeavouring to incorporate them into the communities, which exist and have life.  These, therefore, need to be in good order, if others are not be deterred by a feeling of chaos and neglect.  The routines of liturgy, administration and engagement with society need to be sufficiently strong and robust that they can effortlessly welcome new people as they arrive.  Of course they shall need to adapt, as indeed they have done gently over the past four years, but they cannot be neglected.  If the foundations on which our work is based are week, then new initiatives will also be frail.

Secondly, and this many churches seem to ignore in our modern day, the Christian life is a continuing quest.  Making inquiries about membership, even travelling as far as taking a set of envelopes for regular contributions towards the cost of running the church is not the end.  There needs to be scope for even the longest serving Christians to explore and reflect on the next steps in their own journey of Faith.  Whilst new engagements are vital to our life, sustaining and stimulating the existing ones is of equal importance to our continuing health.

Thirdly, as we all know, neglecting maintenance just stores up problems for the future.  Modest regular attention to such things is a much more effective use of time and energies than periodic negotiation of crises.  Anyone who imagines that things can just jog along indefinitely deludes themselves: even the most mundane and predictable aspects of life need some planning.

Fourthly, and again something that seems to be an unfashionable thought in the present times, the full implications of an initiative can take a long time to emerge.  Short term (apparent) success often does not always translate into enduring gains and sound programmes can take a long time to establish themselves.  A state of perpetual revolution is, at best, like to produce a shallow vivacity with activity rather than real progress characterising the life of a community.

All of this does not, of course, argue against the need for congregations always to be alert to the central importance of mission in the work that they do; but we do need to recognize that looking after what we have is an essential part of that.  We need to be laying carefully considered strategies that will serve the needs both of the longer term and of the deepening of the Faith of the community.  At times, this will require us to keep our nerve as the desired benefits dawdle in coming to fruition. 

All sorts of people need to recognize that many of the resources (people and cash) on which the diocese relies are generated by the parishes.  When these begin to crumble, the great edifice of other initiatives will be undermined.  Good maintenance is part of our mission, in fact the rock on which it is anchored.

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