Ruth Haldane provides some answers
[This article is from our Winter 2019 back issue. To read back issues dating back to 2015, please activate your subscription]
As I travel around the country I find that LLMs are asking similar questions: How do I communicate with millennials and younger generations? How do I tell my faith story in the twenty-first century? How do I help Christians to stand up for their faith in the workplace? What about the difficult apologetics questions arising in Sunday to Saturday faith? How can my church reach out to my community? What about focal ministers, and leading in a vacancy?
Teaching the faith
The first area we have identified is the need to teach the faith to our congregations and missional communities, particularly those new to faith. We can no longer expect adults to have had a familiarity with the basics of Christianity and the Bible through school or contact with churches during their youth. Teaching the faith involves learning to tell our faith story using words and actions. We need to break out of the box, do more than preach better sermons, write better courses and model whole life discipleship, although all of these are important. Faith, prayer and witness in everyday contexts are what underpin and shape Christian lives. Teaching the faith involves enabling others to deepen their own faith so they can live the story in the workplace, on social networks and through everyday conversations, where they can tell stories of what God is doing. This may involve leading Alpha, Christianity Explored or Pilgrim Courses, but LLMs also need to operate at a different level, for example training others to lead these courses. This is the principle of replication or multiplication – growing a network of transformational lay ministers, and of others willing and equipped to lead in different ways within our church communities. As formally trained lay theologians, LLMs are ideally placed to enable new Christians to be incorporated into the body of Christ, and to do so in a way that helps them live out their faith in everyday life.
Enabling mission in the everyday
Our second response is to the changes taking place in our society, which means we are now in a new kind of missional context. The UK is sometimes described as a ‘post-Christian’ society. What implication does that have for the Church? What implication does it have for the way we communicate with those currently disconnected from Church and faith? How can we harness a generic interest in ‘spirituality’ by signposting people to Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life? There is a need to actively re-imagine the Church’s engagement with wider society, whether it be in rural, township or urban situations. For example, many of our parishes are experiencing housing growth through new-build estates. Do LLMs have a role here in beginning to model and birth new Christian communities on new developments? What would training for this look like?
There has already been creative re-imagining of licensed lay ministry in many parts of the country. Readers on the frontline of work and society have a great opportunity to encourage and enable Christians to live out their faith in their workplace, their social networks and their communities. Their liturgical and teaching ministry means they can grasp many creative opportunities to enable others in mission, perhaps through mentoring or coaching Christians in the workplace. I am aware of ‘soul trader’ lunchtime meetings for self-employed people, of café gatherings for isolated people, of parenting courses run in the workplace, to name just a few initiatives.
Leading in Church and society
The third response is to see LLMs as leading the way, living authentically, mentoring, motivating others in their roles/vocations, perhaps getting involved in fledgling fresh expressions of Church. And doing this always with an eye to training up leaders to take over. Roy T. Bennett says ‘Great leaders create more leaders, not followers’.1 What are we creating? Who are we leading?
Refreshed vision and values
In discussing the future focus of the CRC, we agreed on the importance of resourcing LLMs/Readers for their everyday, Sunday to Saturday ministry. Our vision was established:
To resource Licensed Lay Ministers/ Readers to enable everyday mission, teach the faith and contribute to leading in contemporary church and society.
This vision is supported by our core values:
- Informing – providing examples of good practice and new models of teaching, mission and leadership
- Teaching – through learning modules, publications, online learning, online books
- Motivating – to new ways of doing things.
Responding to the need
The CRC considered how best to enable and support LLMs to play a key part in transformation of our local church communities. A questionnaire was sent out to every diocese, and it soon became clear that there is evidence of good practice throughout the country in continuing ministerial development for LLMs. There are also dioceses that are very constrained by budgets in what they can achieve in offering CMD for LLMs. The CRC is changing its focus to support all LLMs in lifelong training, as well as encouraging potential LLMs in their calling and vocation. It was therefore decided to introduce online/blended learning modules which will be accessible to all LLMs throughout England and Wales. We will also showcase good practice nationwide, to inspire and challenge others.
New identity, new resources
As part of this strategy, we are establishing a new website, introducing social media and launching a Moodle platform for blended learning modules.
The Reader is the national key publication for all LLMs/Readers in England and Wales, and its purpose is to inform, teach, inspire, build faith, share experience and give a picture of local and national developments. There are many excellent articles and resources in each edition. However, around 30 per cent of dioceses in England use the term LLM rather than Reader, and some dioceses are considering adopting other titles. In order to reflect this, from the beginning of 2020 the title of The Reader will be Transforming Ministry, with an explanatory subtitle: The magazine of the Central Readers Council. The purpose of the magazine remains the same, to support Reader/LLM ministry, and it will continue to emphasise our new direction and priorities. We are delighted that so many LLMs now contribute to the magazine, and we hope that this will continue and increase as we share with each our
initiatives and transformative ministry in our communities. We believe this is a very positive step towards the renewal of LLM ministry in England and Wales – not forgetting what has gone before, but pressing on towards our goals for the future.
Why Transforming Ministry?
Our new title refers to transforming ourselves, through our Christian journey, lifelong learning, and being equipped for ministry. It also refers to helping/enabling others to be transformed: to come to faith, to grow in faith, and to learn what it means to be disciples of Jesus Christ. And it refers to transforming our communities, wherever we lead in our church and society.
Transforming Ministry therefore encompasses our three identified pressing strands of ministry: teaching the faith, enabling mission, and leading in Church and society. Lifelong ministry and learning are at its core.
You will notice a new logo appearing in 2020, featuring the new title and the current Reader badge. We hope that it will soon become recognisable and identifiable with LLM/Reader ministry.
And as part of our new focus, we have developed a new website, the launch of which is imminent. It contains information for those enquiring about LLM ministry; news and events; and signposting to helpful articles, websites, podcasts and books. It will become the gateway to our new Moodle site, a learning platform specifically developed for LLMs to further our lifelong learning, to equip us for our ministry now and in the future. We will have links to existing courses, as well as blended learning modules specifically tailored for LLM ministry, available to all LLMs. The Moodle site will be launched at our gathering on 25 April 2020 in Birmingham – be sure to save the date. There will be more information in the next issue about this wonderful opportunity for all LLMs to gather together to network, listen, discuss and inform. We are all invited to be part of Transforming Ministry – wherever and however our calling leads.
Ruth Haldane is the CRC’s Reader Project Training Manager and a Reader in the Blackburn Diocese.
[This article is from our Winter 2019 back issue. To read back issues dating back to 2015, please activate your subscription]