I see from this weeks Methodist Recorder that this topic has raised its head again and according to Rev Martyn Atkins, General Secretary of the Methodist Church the covenant is now back on the agenda.
While I appreciate it may be back on the agenda for Church House and the Anglican HQ I am not sure it is on the agenda of many ordinary Methodists and Anglicans. There is a lot of good work going on across the country where groups are working together well but I don't believe the majority of them are looking for the formal joining together of the two churches.
I mentioned it at the coffee morning at our church this morning and the reaction was not at all positive.
I think there is a long way to go convincing us that this is a good move.
3 comments:
This would be of interest to a number of churches in my former circuit that have entered into LEPs with the Anglicans - and very good, workable ones at that.
My biggest issue, from my experience, is that when a Methodist Church enters into an LEP with an Anglican church - even if both congregations are of the same size, the Anglicans basically assume that everyone should act and function as Anglicans.
I read Martyn's article, and pondered what he might be expecting by the so-called serious questions the denominations are going to ask each other. I suspect the biggie will be bishops - the Anglicans will (to use Martyn's phrase) ask the Methodist Church to accept the historic episcopate from them. They already did that. And the Methodist people said no. So the Implementation Group reported to Conference that they regretted that the Methodist people had somehow not understood the question, and it should be explained again. I wrote to the MR at the time, and asked "What bit of 'no' don't you understand?" The people had heard the question, understood what was asked, and said no. And will almost certainly do so again.
Which means the real questions are, in the first place, what can the Anglicans do to accept that they have said we ARE a valid church with valid ministry, but will not have the historic episcopate, and so work more closely with us? And do we really think that any sort of scheme which will require millions of man-hours in legal work and Parliamentary Acts and untold amounts of money in fees and things to change the legal bases on which our churches are built will in any way do the work of the Kingdom?
I fear we still haven't escaped the 1960s agenda of denominational organic union. Wrong agenda. Count me out.
First off I'm an Anglican I guess, I've been to a fair few Methodist services too (my wifes family are Methodists).
My question whenever this comes up is Why? I'd be quite happy working with the local Catholics, Methodists, Baptists or whatever. We're all Christians and have a fundamental belief that joins us. But there seems a need to join the thing the one thing that most non-believers at best don't care about and at worst hate, the "organised religion" part. Let's accept our differences and work together for God.
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