So said Archbishop Michael Jackson in his Presidential address to Dublin and Glendalough’s Diocesan Synods 2024 meeting in Taney this evening (Tuesday October 1).
He suggested that our response to the recent Church of Ireland census figures must be to be open to doing something adventurous and Godly.
“More of the people of the diocese need to go to church Sunday by Sunday. For those who cannot attend, the church needs to keep coming to them to be with them to celebrate their witness and their shared faith and to be open to finding a range of ways to engage and re–engage and engage anew people in the life of the church. Life after Covid–19 cannot ever be the same as it was before nor would we want it to be. New people need to be invited to come to church and they need to feel incorporated in such a way that they may want to return or come for the first time and remain. The people of the churches need to populate their churches. The people of God here in Dublin and Glendalough need to get off the roundabout and follow the Spirit,” Archbishop Jackson stated.
Delivering his address in Christ Church Taney during the Synod Eucharist, the Archbishop explained why synods matter. They are dominated by two characteristics, he contended. Firstly they exist for the passing of legislation which is essential for any charity. The second is to enable people to express themselves. Often their expression was of dis–ease and disgruntlement, and even defeat and he expressed concern about this describing it as bereavement, distress and alienation. He offered a number of explanations but suggested it was due to a crisis of confidence in our part of the universal church about how we discern the Spirit of God and how we permit the Spirit to embrace us.
“The Spirit of God needs our footfall as Spiritual people to be known on the earth. We must do our bit where we live. It is called service and it is a work of discipleship not exclusively of ordination… And, on the evidence of people in the pew, there are now in the region of 5000 of us in church on any given Sunday. The people of our society and their concerns are our neighbours. How are we, carrying both our weekday and our Sunday Passports, to be and to bring Christ to them today? This is the perennial question of the church. The bigger, the more diverse the population, the more difficult this becomes – naturally. The fewer of us doing the manifest worship of God, the more difficult this remains – Spiritually. More of us urgently now need to be at church, in church, the church,” he stated.
Archbishop Jackson encouraged members of Synod to work together. Comparing Synod to Pentecost and said that the Holy Spirit was at the heart of synodical life, the life that flowed from and followed from a synod.
“Jerusalem was a synodal place. At Pentecost, all roads led to Jerusalem for a Jewish Harvest Festival… What Pentecost offers us as followers of Jesus Christ is truly a fresh expression of celebration and harvest in the Spirit of God. I spoke of nations in festal mode. I would hardly be alone in asking: Are we in danger of becoming a joyless church? Have we already become a joyless church? A joyless church is not a lifegiving church. A joyless church has said: Farewell! to The Spirit of God. Just cast your minds to the Invitation to The Peace on Whitsunday: The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. (Galatians 5.22) This is not a marketing exercise. This is a values and virtues exercise. This is an activity and a response fuelled by receiving twice over in giving to others. This is what spiritual and Spiritual harvest is,” he said.
The role of members of Synod was to take the inspiration of the Spirit to pull together energy to be the people who usher in the Kingdom of God on earth, not to deny the need for regulation but to force its pace and positivity to make regulation the handmaid of service, he said. He added that service would enable a synodical people to impact a secular world for the common good.
We can be guided in this contribution to the Five Marks of Mission which were, Archbishop Jackson pointed out, effectively revived throughout the Anglican Communion by Dublin and Glendalough, and through Interfaith engagement, encounter and dialogue. He said that people with Faith systems other than our own looked to the Church of Ireland for guidance as a minority who have survived for hundreds of years. He added that we needed to embrace this invitation to belong to our neighbour.
“The need to engage in this way is ever more pressing and has been highlighted over the summer past by the outburst of racist and anti–cultural activity in The Republic of Ireland, in Northern Ireland and also in England. This has been festering for months if not years and there are flashpoints in significant parts of our own diocese. I want to applaud clergy and others who have shown grace and charity in their engagements with those seeking asylum in particular but in other areas also; they have done this often in an intensely hostile local environment. The equally disturbing thing is the open hatred shown to those who are long–term and generational residents of Northern Ireland, most recently, who themselves or whose ancestors came from abroad long ago; they have been burned out, burned down and have decided never to open their businesses again,” he said.
The international movement of people would continue, he said adding that the quality of our own citizenship was tested by our capacity to respond to those who were new to Ireland. He said the move to the right drew on a wide range of phobias pirating religious identity (God) and national symbols (flags) in the service of diminishing and violating those who are other than ‘us’. “In relation to both the Five Marks and Inter Faith engagement we have shown the way and can show it again and we can show both of them together at the same time. We need to take the Spiritual energy of this synod and start tomorrow. All need to make the effort if we are to enable this to happen,” he commented.
The Archbishop said that much of the cause for the drop in numbers attending church was outside our control. But he suggested that there were also internal circumstances which affect our planning and thinking. “We need to be open to doing something adventurous and Godly in response,” he stated. Over reliance on maintenance was not going to work he said but he pointed to the gift that the parish system of religious life and civic life covered the whole landscape of the dioceses. “This is a gift. We need to stop talking about potential and talk more about the delivery of engagement, the celebration of transformation, the presence of the Spirit in the people of the place. This is the revolution that happened in the Upper Room in Jerusalem when the Risen Christ stood among his disciples and gave them peace after the torment of bereavement, of their loss of Him, in response to their fractured smallness. The Holy Spirit is there,” he said. “It is mission, not maintenance, that is the energy of God. It is to this energy that we are called as doers and givers to our neighbours.”
What the census figures showed was that there were fewer people to do the work, he said. “Each and all of us gathered here as the Diocesan Synods of 2024 are appointed and commissioned to do this work. Throughout history, God has worked with small numbers; the quid pro quo is that God’s people respond. It is this response that we now need. We are now called upon to be the church and to transform it. This will require that we ourselves be transformed. If you find church boring, please go to church and seek to energize it. If you find church invigorating, please invite new people to join you in invigorating it. If you find you want to complain about church, please make a contribution before you make a complaint. Remember what Jesus taught: See the plank in your own eye and address that first,” he stated. “We in the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough need to be present and to make noise if we are to have joy and give joy. The Holy Spirit is here …”