Our first visit to St Nic’s confirmed my suspicions that there was much to do there, but that suited me down to the ground. I needed a real challenge, and a cosy bolt-hole was not for me. We met the churchwardens, Gerald Brooke and Dick Bongard, and hit it off with them at once. They were frank about the church’s problems, which were many. The local congregation was very small; there was hardly any youth or Sunday-school work to speak of; the buildings were in bad shape; the student congregation had shrunk ever since George Marchant had left, wooed away by the Charismatic, Catholic style of another city-centre parish, St Margaret’s; giving was appalling; and there was too much reliance on a small but dedicated lay team who had struggled manfully during the interregnum.
I was to learn some very important lessons during the exciting seven years I spent at St Nic’s. First, one has to have a clear theological vision. I made no secret of mine when the churchwardens and the Church Council asked me what I stood for. I replied that I was first of all a Christian who accepted other Christians of all mainstream traditions as full members of the Body of Christ. Although the Church is hopelessly divided, all baptised Christians are members of God’s one family. I remember quoting the statement attributed to Archbishop William Temple: ‘I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church – but regret that it doesn’t exist.’ I went on to say that I was a cradle Anglican, able to work and live with people from other traditions in one Church. Although an evangelical – and absolutely convinced of the role of the Bible as the ultimate authority in matters of faith and morals – I did not regard the evangelical tradition as the repository of the total truth about God. Furthermore, I continued, I believed that the emerging Charismatic Movement in the Church of England had much to teach us. It would be my intention, subject to Church Council agreement, to bring in some of these new elements in worship and their spiritual gifts to make the faith more appealing and exciting. I am glad to say that the Council were prepared to take a risk by giving their wholehearted backing to this vision of change.
Secondly, I found that one has to have clear objectives. For me the overall objective was to make St Nic’s an open, accessible church where everyone was welcome. I believed in growth, and aimed to increase the congregation and improve the giving. The church was positioned perfectly at the heart of the small city but was closed six days a week, when shoppers, workers, students and tourists crowded the streets, and only open on Sunday, when there was hardly anybody around. I wanted St Nic’s to be available to all, truly a serving and caring church.
In order to achieve this objective of growth, the character of worship had to change. Worship at St Nic’s was solidly morning and evening prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer, but there was no choir to lead or enliven it. With a heavy heart I came to realise that the services were, frankly, very boring. Furthermore, the coldness of the church building meant that there was little that might attract casual worshippers to come regularly. Although there was a regular 8 a.m. communion service every Sunday, celebrations of the Holy Communion at other times amounted to the final part of the 1662 Service, used after a morning or evening service for the handful of worshippers who remained. This was plainly unsatisfactory. The missionary situation the Church was now in demanded a fresh approach to worship – it had to be accessible, friendly, joyful, yet also reverential. I was confident that we could make it so, with the talents of the many able people in the congregation. Indeed, as I drew upon these talents in creating a music group, and in encouraging children to bring their instruments along when a church orchestra was formed, the congregation increased and with it a deepening sense of fellowship.
Not everyone liked the changes to the worship, of course. A small core of devoted members of the congregation felt that I was changing the character and identity of St Nic’s to such an extent that it was no longer their church. One evening in my second year a former churchwarden asked me to meet twenty-two mainly elderly members of the congregation. I was shocked and saddened to learn of their deep distress. The last thing I wanted was to cut them off from their spiritual home. As we talked I realised that the conversation was wholly one-sided. They were only concerned about their worship, what the church meant to them and how important the Book of Common Prayer was to them. There seemed to be no awareness of the missionary context of the Church, and the necessity of adapting to meet the needs of a new hour. The Church of England had been experiencing years of decline, which accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s as I began my own ministry. The situation was so serious that no regular churchgoer could afford to be sanguine. The need for change, I felt, should have been obvious to all.
I realised that there was no real meeting of minds; yet it was important to keep everyone within the family of the church. We therefore replaced the 8 a.m. communion service with a new traditional service at 9 a.m. All the services with their new styles of worship attracted greater numbers, including this one, although its growth was more modest.
This was a very important lesson to me, showing that it was possible – indeed, essential – to include the more traditional element in church life. That is not to say that the other services were extreme, by any means. I saw no reason to depart from the Church’s expectations that clergy should use the official prayers and should robe properly. It was and remains my conviction that liturgies, appropriately and imaginatively used, and the traditional dress of clergy are not barriers to understanding.
Another lesson I learned at St Nic’s was that if there is to be growth in church life, it cannot be accomplished by the clergy alone. It is imperative to utilise the gifts and abilities of lay people. The problem was that at the beginning I had to do everything. This was a shock to the system, having served my curacy at St Mary’s, Islington, where I was used to working in a team, and having attended two theological colleges where manpower was readily available. I realised that I had to bring about a change of culture in which the leadership of the church was corporate rather than singular. Of course there were lay leaders there from the beginning, but there were many others whose talents were not being tapped. Over the next few years I gradually broadened the leadership team.
This was not without its problems. One of the main challenges when lay people bring their gifts and skills to the task of leadership is the tension between the corporate and the specific responsibility for the ‘cure of souls’ entrusted to the clergy. The church, through the Bishop, had given me responsibility for building up the congregation, and the Bishop’s words at my induction rang through my mind again and again: ‘Receive this charge which is both yours and mine.’ I could not democratise this role too much without completely abdicating from it. On the other hand, neither could I run away from a desire to share my leadership, and to accept the challenge when somebody else came up with a brilliant idea or when I found myself in a minority.
In my third year this became a very real issue. I began to feel uncomfortable and even threatened by the fact that more and more people were sharing the exercise of leadership. At about this time I shared the platform at a meeting with a leading clinical psychologist, Dr Frank Lake. I told him privately that although the work was going well at St Nic’s, I had a problem: ‘As I widen the team I’m finding that I’m delegating areas of ministry where I’m strong, and being left with areas of ministry where I’m weak-’
Before I could finish, Frank beamed at me and said, ‘That’s wonderful, George! How few clergy have the grace and ability to surrender what they’re strong at and bear the burden of weakness!’ Without another word, he left for another seminar he was leading.
Frustrated, I initially did not consider this to be an adequate reply to my comment, but as I drove home I began to see that he had in fact given me a profound response. He was saying: ‘Leadership includes the ability to trust others and give them freedom to flourish. A true leader keeps watch on the whole, but is prepared to exercise humble ministries as well.’ That was an important lesson, and my sense of feeling threatened when leadership was shared diminished – indeed, my confidence in the exercise of my own leadership deepened.
Another thing I realised was that we had a very serious problem, in that there was hardly any children’s