'How do I feel?': in multi-ethnic Ministry. # 94. 25/10/2022

Welcome. A more personal blog this week. I would love to hear how far this range of feelings resonates with the experiences of those in ministry. Do respond. And do commend the blog to colleagues in ministry.

‘How do I feel’: in multi-ethnic Ministry

I was very grateful to Bishop Toby Howarth of Bradford to be invited to be part of a very encouraging and helpful clergy group that was reflecting on my blog on ‘An Audit for Churches on Race and Ethnicity’ (# 73, 03/05/2022). In thinking about it beforehand it struck me that the Audit didn’t ask clergy to reflect on the most important question of all: ‘How do I feel?’  After all, as the focus of a parish’s life, the emotions and feeling of the incumbent will be one of the most important factors, probably the most important factor, in how the church responds to its mission in a multi-ethnic area.

So here is a list of ten possible emotions such clergy may feel, beginning (since I tend to be a glass-half-full person) with the most positive and working down to the most negative. I realise that multi-ethnic parishes vary enormously, from being amongst the most deprived in the country through to fairly affluent and comfortable suburbs. I realise too that clergy differ, not least in their emotional make-up. Because this blog is a personal reflection it is written from a white minister’s perspective.

1. Elated.

Two weeks ago I visited my old parish to take a funeral. Seeing Ealing Road, Alperton gave me a familiar buzz. A visually undistinguished suburban shopping street carried a heady mix of diverse histories, cultures, aspirations. The ubiquitous sari shops, the busyness, the Somalis going to prayer at the mosque. So many unknown personal stories of achievement, suffering, adaptation, improvisation. The first step to ‘Cultural Intelligence’ according to David Livermore is ‘intrinsic reward’ – simply finding ourselves invigorated and rewarded by the complexity and liveliness, the strangeness yet recognisability of the context we find ourselves in.

2. Privileged.

Ethnic diversity, migration, change, attractions and revulsions are increasingly central to the fabric of the modern world. It is the big story for much of the world over the past seventy years, and as a minister of the gospel you are pitched into the middle of it, seeking to make Jesus known as a Saviour, Reconciler and Friend. You have the privilege of ministering on one of the most strategic front-lines and fault-lines of the modern world. Every minister in a multi-racial, cross-cultural setting ought to feel that theirs is the most important parish in the country. You are sitting in the middle of one of the world’s greatest hot issues, with the opportunity to work out a distinctive and gospel-centred way forward.

3. Encouraged.

The journey of moving outside our own culture and background involves new discoveries, many of them positives. Hearing the fervency of African prayer, to encounter world-class gospel music in an ‘ordinary’ funeral, to come across heart-rending stories of courageous faith in painful circumstances, or simply to see faith in Jesus bubbling up where you might not expect it – these and a myriad of other experiences point us to the living God who is ceaselessly at work around us. Hopefully there will be times when each of us is open-mouthed at what he has done.

4. Challenged.

The order to the children of Israel as they were about to cross the Jordan that ‘you have never been this way before’ (Joshua 3:4), even if somewhat out of context, is central to ministering amongst ethnic diversity. It is a situation relatively new to this country and to which we are still awkwardly adjusting. It is important to learn from others, including internationally, and to share experiences, but the very ‘super-diversity’ of British society means multi-ethnic parishes have huge differences between them, so your situation will be significantly unique. As well as learning from others each minister need to learn how to pioneer, how to improvise, how to adjust to their own very specific situation.

5. Daunted.

Whatever the specifics of our situation, the amount of homework required – of knowing about, of partially understanding and internalising a range of different cultures and experiences – presents a daunting syllabus. ‘Who is equal to such a task’ (2 Cor 2:16). Most multi-ethnic parishes include people from a wide range of substantially different ethnicities. Getting an understanding, and more crucially the ‘feel’- reflected by differing values, histories, influences and politics, and emanating into varied cultural, artistic and religious expressions - is more than a lifetime’s work in itself. Mercifully the Information Age has made that task somewhat easier. I used to say that every minister needed a good atlas, now all the information needed is on-line. But the challenge is more than intellectual, it is the personal engagement with people whose have experienced greater prejudice, deprivation, disruption and violence than probably has come across our relatively comfortable horizon.

6. Guilty.

We will hear painful stories of people whose lives have been seriously damaged by exclusion on the grounds of race – from career prospects, social interaction, even the church. It may well be that our particular church has been guilty in that respect. At times we will be on the receiving end of resultant hostility. We ourselves may well be rebuked at times, or our consciences troubled by past choices or actions that we now recognise to be racist. The revealing or re-evaluating of our national history and our global policies over the centuries will have moments of dark shame. Quite simply, we will realise that in the long story of our interplay with other races and cultures, including our own recent past, we are not neutral ‘vanilla’ observers, but rather agents whose hands are not clean.

7. Dependent.

Some churches, probably decreasing in number, are well resourced, and so, within limits, is the national church. In such cases rational, thoughtful planning is easier. But most churches in multi-ethnic areas are resource poor, not just materially but also more crucially in human resources. Things that ought to be done just can not be done because the resources are lacking. Therefore, in such ministry, intentionality – a strong settled conviction to be ethnically diverse and inclusive – needs to go patnered and also qualified by opportunism; an alertness bred from the scarcity of resources that makes us alive to taking opportunities when they are presented to us rather than when we would like them. This is particularly true where most of the parish are from other world faith backgrounds. In a book from a few decades ago, ‘Belief in a Mixed Society’, Christopher Lamb coined the phrase ‘loitering’ – rather than having the power to generate opportunities, clergy needed to be patiently (but attentively) ready to enter the occasional openings that presented themselves. One upside of this is that it makes prayer much more central to our ministry. Crying out to God to provide the people or occasions that allows our ministry to extend, along with the confidence that he will do so, is essential to any progess.

8. Helpless.

It can be discouraging facing a task without having the resources to carry it through, but that is the lot of many urban ministers. In my early years in a multi-ethnic parish the picture in my mind was of trying to pick pins off the floor whilst wearing boxing gloves! It simply felt impossible to get any effective engagement with the job that needed doing. As said in the previous section, that makes prayer central. It also upgrades patience. The dictum that we over-estimate what we can do in one year and under-estimate what can be done in five years I found to be very true. Growth more likely comes from incremental change, rather than sudden transformation. It also points to the need for greater staffing. I think one key (sadly usually unavailable) to building a growing, vibrant multi-ethnic church is having a good curate (and/or parish assistants). Sustaining the week in/week out life of a parish takes most of the energy of a single minister; if new ground is to be broken, if the church is going to be significantly diversified to include substantially different ethnic groups, then it may well require suitably gifted additional staff to take that forward.

9. Exhausted.

When I was minister on the so-called ‘devil’s island’ of Kingsmead Estate in Hackney there were times when you simply didn’t want more people to join the church – coping with the needs of the congregation we had was more than enough. There is a limit to the number of emotionally damaged and demanding people that a church can carry. We are not super-heroes. Unless more stable and resource-offering people join, or can be recruited, then the church will remain limited. This, of course, raises serious problems for the national church since congregations in ‘difficult’ areas will always be a demand on central finance and resources and underlines the need for a much higher level of sacrificial giving across the church.

10. Depressed.

The physical state of your buildings are in serious decline, the finances to make changes are too meagre, that able people are moving away depletes your church’s capacity to minister. Domestic tensions, unsociable working hours, mental illness, financial pressures all limit people’s capacity to offer support to the church. Decline feels inevitable. What to do? You need to find out. As well as open consultation with friends or senior staff, and time given to prayer, what next? - have a sabbatical? hang on and believe a better day will come? move elsewhere? There is no shame in any of these answers. We live in hard times and hard places. Facing the pain of that also honours God.

On second thoughts it might have been better to go through these feelings in reverse order and not end on a down note! But hopefully they cover honestly the range of ministry experiences that multi-ethnic areas especially highlight. As Israel’s calling to the Nations went through a range of experiences from elation to despair, so seeking to make the love and grace of God in Christ known to the peoples of our parishes brings the same range. Behind which, as Israel was constantly reminded by the Psalms, lies the enduring covenant faithfulness of God.

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Add-Ons.

* A ‘BAME’ PM.

At what point in the recent past did it become thinkable that a non-white person could become Prime Minister? Obama’s election in 2008 raised the question but a UK parallel seemed unlikely. Perhaps all we can say is that politics, like life, can at times be delightfully unpredictable (as with the election of a woman PM in 1979?)

The main point of Sunak’s rise to the top is that it is a good story about ‘race’ in Britain. The situation is not as negative, the barriers not as great as often supposed. Saying that he is a very rich man with a very establishment education pursuing very right-wing policies does not qualify that good story, unless you believe (as many seem to) that the only proper place for ethnic minorities is to be poor and on the left.

But the good story needs to be qualified by several negatives – by how much was the Conservative membership’s election of Truss two months ago slanted by racial prejudice against Sunak? In reality, he is a leader of last resort for a party in a deep crisis, not a thoughtful choice made from a level playing field. More importantly, come a General Election how many votes will be swung away from the Conservatives by racist prejudice against their leader? His election, positive though it is, does not mean that racism as a factor in British life has been vanquished.

A final reflection: the contribution of Sunak and so many others to British life, is a remarkable vindication of Britain honouring our commitment to receive East African Asian-background British passport holders, despite the racist scare-mongering of the right-wing press at the time.

* ‘Why did European Economies Diverge from Asia’ – an on-line lecture on Tuesday 8th November at 6pm available from Gresham College, by Martin Daunton (Emeritus Professor of Economic History at Cambridge).

‘The levels of income in parts of China and India were similar to those in Europe in the middle ages, until the Mediterranean pulled ahead – followed by northern Europe, initially Holland and then Britain. This ‘great divergence’ was one of the fundamental shifts in history – and is only now being reversed. Did the divergence arise from imperialism and a 'drain' of wealth from Asia, or did it arise from internal features of Asian and European Society?’

Interesting, as this is ‘writ large’ also the central issue in understanding ethnic differences in outcome in Britain today – the respective roles of ‘external’ and ‘internal’ factors.

* Intriguing to read that the rapper Little Simz (aka Simbi Ajikawo) winner of the Mercury Prize, developed her skills at the St Mary’s Islington Youth Club; especially following the success of the raised-at-St James, Muswell Hill 2019 winner, the singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka.

Probably just coincidence? Or are there any explanations, interpretations, or further information of the delightful factoid that two African-background musicians with links with north London evangelical Anglican churches should win two of the last four Mercury Prizes?