The Archbishop of Canterbury

12 November 2001

According to the 16th century poet Michael Drayton:

'Ill news hath wings and with the wind doth go, Comfort's a cripple and comes ever slow.'

Here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we need little persuading of that observation. Words and indeed images of the appalling events of 11 September ricocheted round the world at extraordinary speed, somehow magnifying their impact. Nearly two months on, we continue to live amid the aftershocks; the reverberations go on and on. We still struggle to come to terms with what happened and to respond adequately.

So where, in a world like this, is the Good News? That after all, is what we preach, what we believe in: the good news of the Gospel that, through Christ, God's Kingdom is at hand.

How do we, how can we, take up that Good News challenge, both within the life of the Church and also in our dealings with the wider world? I want to reflect on that for a few minutes this afternoon, by looking at the state of our church and its service to God, our nation and our communities.

Perhaps the first thing to note in the aftermath of 11 September is the way in which so many people have turned to the Churches for support and sustenance. We have seen that in many ways and in many places: for example, in the tremendous response (even though at short notice) to the national invitation to prayer which was issued early last month. But it has also been seen on a daily and individual basis ever since 11 September: prayer and reflection, comfort and compassion, listening and encouraging - the steady, often unremarked but indispensable mission and witness of the Church.

On the day after the attacks in the United States, the vicar presiding at a simple mid-week communion in one of our West Country churches saw a woman he did not know. He went to her only to learn that she, a bride of a fortnight, was now a widow. Her husband had been in the Pentagon. Almost the first thing she had done on learning what had happened was to go to church. We were there for her.

I could just as easily have cited the Church's response to the foot and mouth crisis, where we have offered both pastoral and practical support to those in need and those, at times, close to despair. The continuing witness and presence of the Church does make a difference - sometimes a vital difference - not only through the bigger things, such as the millions of pounds disbursed through the ARC-Addington fund, but also through the smaller. One farmer related how his parish church helped pull the entire community together by tolling its bell every day at noon as a show of support.

But despite examples like this, there is one particular piece of bad news that the Church has to contend with endlessly. This is the prediction of its more or less imminent demise. It is not, one is bound to say, fresh news; in fact it is arguable whether it is news in that sense at all. Let me quote from one report: 'The present irrelevance of the Church in the life and thought of the community in general is apparent from two symptoms which admit of no dispute. They are (1) the widespread decline in church going, and (2) the collapse of Christian moral standards.' When do you think that was published? Well, the answer is 1945.

I am tempted to observe that if those infamous reports of Mark Twain's death were exaggerated, those concerning the Church of England have been inflated to elephantine proportions.

Of course we do face considerable challenges as a Church, and it would be a grave mistake simply to ignore them or brush them aside. Some of these challenges - the financial challenge among them - will be before us in the coming days. I want now to look briefly at several of them, and at possible responses.

One concern is that in recent months our focus on the challenge of increasing contributions to clergy pensions could point us towards substantial cutbacks in clergy numbers, in order to balance our diocesan books.

Whilst I acknowledge the need for proper management of our funds, let us not waver in our commitment to maintain the highest possible number of clergy in our parishes. This is what our parishioners want, and it is now our parishioners who fund most of the Church's active ministry. They will hardly be inspired to greater commitment if we ignore their wish. And as we seek to avoid cutting clergy numbers wherever we can, we also need to decide what balance we should strike between the level of support we give clergy in their stipends and in their pensions when they retire.

It is against this kind of background concerning finances and resources that I am especially pleased to be able to announce this afternoon a new initiative - the Parish Mission Fund.

The Archbishops' Council has decided to launch a programme to help develop new Church ministry through investment in parish mission initiatives. The Church Commissioners - following their recent excellent investment performance - are making available an extra ten million pounds over the next three years for what the Commissioners' founding documents call 'additional provision for the cure of souls'. And the Council has agreed to share these funds between all dioceses, with the poorest receiving the most. They will be free to use it, not only as extra help for existing clergy stipend costs, but also to fund mission work, in new ways, where needs and opportunities are greatest.

There are as many possibilities as there are parishes. Could a new outreach worker help a church's mission programme? A schools worker or a work-based minister? Might a church building be adapted to welcome new members - say young people and families? It will be for dioceses, working with their parishes, to assess where the greatest mission opportunities lie, in line with funding guidelines which the Council will share with dioceses very shortly. I believe this initiative sends a clear message of hope and confidence to the whole Church at a difficult time. It is a real mark of our commitment to investing in the Church's future growth, and in that spirit I commend it to Synod.

Another challenge involves doing all we can to create a climate in which new generations of leaders can be identified and nurtured for the Church of tomorrow, a Church where gifted young people from many backgrounds can flourish. Fortunately, we already have a rich variety of lay and clerical leadership opportunities. For example, I recently spoke at the first degree ceremony of the Centre for Youth Ministry. This is an ecumenical initiative with strong Anglican input and in partnership with Oxford Brookes University. We in fact now have more youth ministers working in churches than ever before and this new degree course in Youth Ministry is an encouraging development - and one which is quite probably unknown to most of you present today.

A third challenge - and one also related to young people - is how we respond to the report from Lord Dearing and his colleagues on church schools. It envisages an exciting expansion of the Church's provision in secondary education. We have accepted that education is at the centre of our mission. Here is a way that we can clearly demonstrate that commitment. There are many more challenges that any of us could identify, and I am confident that with energy, imagination and determination we can and will meet them.

But I want also to bring a different perspective, a different kind of challenge, to bear. For while we cannot and must not ignore the practical matters of being a human institution, there is another important aspect of our Christian calling of which we must never lose sight.

It is this: the Church must be first and foremost about God's mission in the world. All that we do must be guided by this overarching priority. That is to say: all that we do must be guided by Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. So beyond our institutional responsibilities and concerns, the task you and I as a Synod share is to help to ensure that the Church has a vibrant heart and a God-serving soul. We must seek to move from maintenance alone to mission. Mission based on worship and witness.

Worship is that faithful, repeated task of leading people, who by their humanity are spiritual beings, back to the origin of their being. Witness is that task of proclaiming in word and action the glory of the One 'who has called us out of darkness into his marvellous light'. There are no greater responsibilities than these two pivotal elements. Worship and witness - word and action in worship and then word and action in establishing that kingdom in our homes and communities.

Later this week, the Archbishop of York will unveil the new Church Life Profile. This is an important new piece of research which asked 100,000 people in the pews about their views and experiences. It is the first time in the UK that any survey like this has been undertaken and, I believe, it will have much to teach us. I do not want to steal my fellow Archbishop's thunder, so let me simply say that it speaks loudly of the joy and inspiration that so many people draw from their Christian worship and witness.

Worship and witness: these are key. For there is a danger that we may focus to such an extent on the Church as institution that it becomes the be-all and end-all of our existence. Something of the same assumption can be seen in the thinking of some hostile commentators, for whom there is nothing to Christianity beyond the Church, so that our shortcomings as a human institution are used to discredit the faith we so passionately want to promote.

Now of course the institution of the Church is important. Rightly we are concerned that our structures and life are in as good shape as they can be. Rightly we worry in our dioceses and churches about the quota and about all other matters which loom so large in keeping the show on the road. But it is the Kingdom which is our ultimate reference point - not survival, not our existence, not even anything that leads merely to a successful church! 'The Kingdom of God,' declared Jurgen Moltmann, 'isn't there for the sake of the Church. The Church is there for the sake of the Kingdom'.

The Church's mandate from our Lord is to proclaim the gospel of God's kingdom to all human beings. At the heart of that gospel is the finality of the words and works of Jesus Christ. That means that our ministries and our service will direct our attention outside the parameters of Church life. In The Household of God, surely one of the greatest books of its kind of the last century, Lesslie Newbigin argues: 'When the eschatological and missionary perspective has been lost from the thinking of the Church, its task comes to be conceived in terms of the rescue of individuals one by one out of this present evil age and their preservation unharmed for the world to come. When this becomes dominant, the Church thinks primarily of its duty to care for its own members and its duty to those outside drops into second place'.

Sometimes I wonder if our sights are set too low and that we settle for what we can most easily achieve instead of reaching for the difficult and seemingly unattainable. Just after the Second World War, Aneurin Bevan bemoaned the lack of expectation of Labour supporters despite the opportunities of post war development: 'The only problem with my people is the poverty of their desire,' he said. Poverty of desire; lack of expectation; shortage of vision - in spite of the opportunities. What a crushing assessment. That must not and will not be the epitaph of our Church. For we remain a pilgrim people and we know that without vision to guide our footsteps we will be lost.

The road we travel can often be through unrewarding or even hostile terrain. No local congregation can assume today that people living in the parish or community will automatically come to church. There is fierce competition for our time and attention, for the shaping focus of our lives, not just from the demands of work, but from the demands of leisure as well, for we live in a culture where consumerism is rampant and endless self-gratification is viewed as a birthright.

And yet there is much to encourage us. I received a letter just a few weeks ago from a clergyman who wrote: 'Archbishop, I want to encourage you. I became priest-in-charge here three years ago. There were less than 30 in the congregation and the bishop hinted that this was the last chance for the church. Today there are over 300 and we are excited about the future.' That kind of letter is far from unusual. I was in a Canterbury parish two months ago which has planted two other congregations in the last eight years and all three are doing well.

Other things encourage me too. As Chairman of the Church Urban Fund I believe that this work in our inner cities continues to show our credibility as a national church in our commitment to the marginalised and those in need. I think too of the fact that for the last five years ordination figures have been up and different styles of ministry have come on stream. In 2001 there are more than 1600 ordinands in training. Again, the initiative that I started ten years ago - Springboard - so well supported by the Archbishop of York - indicates that mission, in the widest understanding of the word, is very much on the agenda of Church life. A report I have just received from the Springboard Travelling School in the diocese of Gloucester indicates that the work of the Church is not in decline. Sadly, this kind of news doesn't excite the press and won't make riveting television. But it is happening and it is important.

So, I do want to challenge us all - bishops and synod alike - to reach deeper into the riches of our faith to stimulate further growth and to affirm it. From my experience of Bishop's staff meetings it is my observation that we spend a great amount of time on clergy in difficulties but very little time on those many clergy and congregations where such good things are happening. It is right, of course, to give time to those in need - that is what pastoral ministry is about - but we should not neglect our affirmation of those many clergy and congregations who are getting on with the work so faithfully and without fuss.

Effective leadership leads to confidence in mission and outreach. Where that is not happening, there is a need for help and support to encourage it. I see plenty of signs of growth in our church, and one of the triumphs of the past few years has been how words like 'mission' and 'evangelism' are now no longer simply associated with a particular section of our church or strand of the Anglican tradition, but shared across them all. Regardless of our background, we have all, as a Church, come to accept Christ's call to share the good news, and I rejoice at that. More of it, please, as we work and witness together.

And so we travel on in hope towards the good news of God's Kingdom. As recent events have shown once again, the Church is at its best when our mission is shaped by witness and worship. It is the Kingdom that must give us our bearings for the journey. It must be our spiritual lodestar, our focus and our ultimate loyalty. This is the good news that we celebrate. September 11th was certainly a day that changed the world. But so did the first Easter Day. It declares to our world that no bad news, no man-made darkness, can extinguish the light of the gospel - the light we are privileged to share with the rest of God's world.