A Pastoral Letter to the Methodist People from the President and Vice-

President of the Conference and the General Secretary

(following the address of the President and Vice-President to the General Synod
of the Church of England on 11th February 2010)

And are we yet alive? Our answer, despite some recent press speculation to the
contrary, is a resounding “Yes!”. We have seen the evidence in various ways
through our complementary roles. As President and Vice-President we have
represented the care, oversight, authority and support of the Conference as we
have visited local churches and situations in different parts of the connexion. We
have seen the Methodist people being faithful and the Spirit at work in them and
through them. We mentioned some examples in our address to the General
Synod. As General Secretary, Martyn is responsible for leading the
development of the mission of the Methodist Church. He too has seen evidence
of energy being released amongst us.

We are all convinced that God is not finished with the people called Methodist
yet. We began as a discipleship movement within the wider church, a society of
people seeking holiness and engaging in worship and mission. In Wesley’s time
and through succeeding generations we have continually adapted to
circumstances to fulfil that calling as effectively as possible. It is still Our Calling
today. And mission has never been more needed than it is now. We live in a
world ravaged by war and poverty, and torn apart by questions of how we care
for the natural environment and the morality of financial systems. We live in a
world where people need to hear the word of God in a language they can
understand, where they need to see the love of God through people like us and
experience it as good news for themselves. We live in a world where not enough
people are being attracted and formed into disciples of Jesus Christ, responding
to the promptings of the Spirit.

Responding to situations like this, allowing God to transform us so that we can be

most effective in doing so, supporting each other in that through our
interconnections, is what Methodism has always been about. We best honour
those who have gone before us by doing the equivalent in our time and our
circumstances of what they did in theirs. It is our DNA as a people to be a group
of disciples who are committed to glorifying God in worship, to holiness and to
being obedient and active in mission. We are therefore delighted to see an
increasing interest in and commitment to discipleship amongst us.

We believe that God has a role for us in this mission, and we are increasingly
embracing it. We have about 265,000 ‘card-carrying’ members, and that number
has been decreasing because of the age-profile of our members. But more
churches are making more members each year; a quarter of our churches are
growing; the numbers worshipping with us on Sundays and, increasingly, mid-
week is rising; fresh expressions are starting to flourish; we have regular contact
with over 800,000 people; and we are part of a growing world-wide Methodist
communion of over 70 million. There is a growing self-confidence amongst us
accompanied by an appropriate humility about ourselves, and a releasing of
energy for mission.

But we are not the whole of the church, and we cannot do it all by ourselves. So
we have voted consistently over the years for unity schemes that are designed
to increase the whole church’s effectiveness in mission. This is not a death wish,
but a desire to be obedient and a willingness to be transformed. We can
countenance ceasing to exist as a separate Church because we know that we will
still be the Methodist people within a wider Church.

As our major statement on the nature and mission of the Church Called to Love
and Praise put it in 1999 “the British Methodist Church may cease to exist as a
separate Church entity during the twenty-first century, if continuing progress
towards Christian unity is made”. Methodism will still contribute some of the
riches of its own distinctive history and mission to any future church. We know
from that history that we can be the Methodist people either in our own separate
church or in some wider expression of the universal church. Helping to create a
wider expression of the universal church and becoming part of it will require not
just us but other churches to be prepared to move forward together and to leave
some things behind in the process for the sake of the Kingdom. So it is not a
question of Methodists being submerged or absorbed in the Church of England or
any of our other partners. It is not a matter of Methodists returning to the
Anglican fold, but of seeing whether together we are prepared to become a ‘new
fold’.

This is not just true of our relationship with the Church of England. We have also
signed a Covenant with other churches in Wales, and recently a partnership with
other churches in Scotland. We have many local partnerships with other
churches, the United Reformed Church in particular. And we are all part of wider
denominational groupings. For example, the world-wide Methodist communion is
over 70 million strong and the world wide Anglican communion about 78 million.
Both are faced with questions of how they cohere in the 21st century, and how
they deal with situations where there are competing and even contradictory
convictions within them. In addressing these we have a lot to share with each
other.

When we addressed the General Synod it was only the second time that the
President of the Conference had done so; the first since the Covenant between
the Methodist Church and the Church of England was signed in the presence of
Her Majesty the Queen in 2003; and, importantly, the first time the Vice-
President and the president had been invited to address the Synod together.
What we were saying to the General Synod was that Methodists have always
been committed to unity in order to create greater effectiveness in worship and
mission. We said that thinking like this comes naturally from our spirituality. We
approach our Covenant with the Church of England in the light of the Covenant
Service in our Worship Book which we pray each year. We were gently but
urgently asking the General Synod whether the Church of England was prepared
to make the same commitment and allow itself to be transformed for the sake of
the gospel. And what we say to the Church of England we say to our other
partners.

So what happens if other churches are not prepared to be changed in order to

become more effective in mission with us? Rather than being groups of
Methodist people in a new and wider church, we shall continue as a Methodist
people in a separate Methodist Church faithfully trusting in God’s continuing
leading of us. We could do that, and we currently do. But even as a separate
church we shall have to continue with our commitment to co-operate with others
in mission wherever possible and to whatever extent it is possible.

Whether co-operating with others or allowing a wider expression of the universal

church to come into existence will require a lot of working together in mission
locally. Doing that will throw up some obstacles that will have to be removed and
some issues that will have to be resolved if mission is not to be hampered. Some
of those include matters of interchangeability of ministries, common decision-
making structures, the role of women in the church, and how oversight is
embodied. Much work has been done on these and some people will have to be
asked to keep working at them on our behalf. When we signed the Covenant we
committed ourselves to working to remove any obstacles to visible communion
so far as our relationship with the Church of England is concerned. Any solutions
will have to be agreed by all of us in due course and by due procedure. But in the
interim we must all keep striving to engage as effectively as possible in worship
and mission.

We have found the Methodist people in good heart, and an increasing sense of
the energy of God’s love being released amongst us. We are a people of one
book, the Bible. We allow the gospel to both comfort and challenge us. We let
the love of God both confirm and transform us in the body of Christ through the
Spirit.

We are yet alive. We shall be alive in the future in whatever form God wills. God
has not finished with us yet!

The Revd David Gamble

President of the Conference

Dr Richard M Vautrey
Vice-President of the Conference

The Revd Dr Martyn D Atkins

General Secretary

(copy of address to the Synod attached)

APPENDIX TO THE PASTORAL LETTER
ADDRESS TO THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,
FEBRUARY 11TH 2010

The Revd David Gamble, President of the Conference

and Dr Richard M Vautrey ,Vice-President of the Conference

David:

Let me first thank Archbishop Rowan for his generous words of introduction and
welcome. And let me also thank both Archbishops for their invitation to us to
come and to address the General Synod today

We thought by way of introduction it was worth rehearsing a few basic things

about Methodism and explaining who we are.

The British Methodist Church has churches and circuits in England, Scotland,
Wales, Shetland, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Malta.

Each year the Methodist Conference, our governing body under God, elects a
President and a Vice-President. The President is a presbyter. The Vice-President
is a layperson or a deacon. At the annual Conference there is an election as a
result of which a President and Vice-President are designated to take office at
the next year’s Conference. So, you spend a year as President and Vice-
President Designate. Then, pretty well the first thing that happens at the next
Conference is the election of the President and Vice-President by standing vote.
As the person designated by the previous Conference you’re the only candidate –
so you’ve got a pretty good chance you’ll get elected and it’s pretty devastating
not to get in.

The President and Vice-President hold office for a year. They then spend a year
as ex-President and ex-Vice-President, before joining the ranks of what we call
‘Past Presidents and Vice-Presidents’. As one of my predecessors described it,
‘You spend a year being ‘It’, a year being ‘Ex-it’ and then you become ‘Past-it’.’

Next year’s President and Vice-President therefore have already been designated
and they are the Revd Alison Tomlin will be our President and Deacon Eunice
Attwood our Vice-President.
It’s probably also worth noting that, because the President and Vice-President
are elected to the position for a single year, as President you remain in the role
to which you had previously been stationed by the Conference and at the end of
the year you return to your full-time station. The Methodist Church has a way of
creating snappy job titles and my ‘day-job’ is Conference Officer for Legal and
Constitutional Practice and Head of the Governance Support Cluster. You cannot
imagine how nice it is to be ‘President’!

It’s probably also worth noting that we have a report coming to this year’s
Conference on senior roles within the Methodist Church. One of the things on
which the Conference is likely to be asked to express its view is whether we
should remain with the current annual presidency or should we move to a three
year term – and if we did what would that mean in terms of how we express the
collaboration between presbyters, deacons and lay people in our Church.

Richard:

The Vice-President of the Methodist Conference is the highest office within the
Methodist Church in Britain that can be held by a lay person, and it’s a role that
I’ve been privileged to hold since the Methodist Conference last July. One of the
things I’ve quickly found is that so many people assume, that I’ll be the President
next year, but I have to assure them, or may be reassure them, that’s not be the
case.

One of the key differences between the President and the Vice-President is that
whilst the President takes on the role in a full time capacity, traditionally the
Vice-President continues to fulfil their lay role, so for me that means continuing
as a GP in a practice in Leeds and as deputy Chair of the BMAs GP committee. It
makes for a busy year, and you need a very understanding family, but actually I
think that this is quite important, as part of what any lay person brings to the
role of Vice-President is their lay ministry, and what I do in my day job informs
and enriches how I fulfil this office. In the position of Vice-President, the
Methodist Church affirms the central role of lay ministry in its life and witness.

David:
The titles of certain people within the Methodist Church are a reminder of our
polity. Authority lies with the Conference. That is where episcope or oversight is
primarily located for us, the process of ensuring that the Church remains true to
the gospel, to Christian tradition and Methodist experience, and to the
promptings of the Spirit. The President and Vice-President are the people who
preside at the Conference. Similarly, we call the person who chairs a District
Synod the Chair of the District. So the titles President, Vice-President, Chair
point to the way in which, for us, authority lies with the corporate body, rather
than with the individual.

Of course, with a Conference that only meets once a year there is a question of
where does authority lie in the meantime? Well, we have a Methodist Council
that meets regularly during the year. It has its own responsibilities and is the
employer of our Connexional Team. But it also has certain limited powers to act
as the Conference between Conferences. Any actions it takes in that way have
to be reported to the next Conference.

And then there are certain powers vested in the President to act on behalf of the
Church between Conferences. The powers are set out in our Standing Orders,
are strictly limited and have to be reported back to the Conference.

So much of what the President and Vice-President do could be described as

representational or perhaps ambassadorial. We sometimes speak on behalf of
the Methodist Church to the media, the government, or other bodies. And then
the President and Vice-President do a lot of travelling during their year. They
pay visits to probably just over half of the Districts of the British Methodist
Church – sharing in worship, meeting people and celebrating in important events
in the life of the local Church. We are shown exciting new developments and are
sometimes involved in discussions around major challenges or difficulties facing
the church in a particular situation.

Many of our visits include ecumenical gatherings, occasions and services. This
coming Sunday I shall be sharing in an ecumenical service in Pateley Bridge in
Yorkshire.

It also feels as though we visit half the world as well. We’ve been privileged to
visit partner churches on almost every continent. In each case we have been
challenged by a fast growing and vibrant church. Richard has been to Chile,
Bulgaria, Macedonia and Uganda. I’ve been to Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and
Ghana. In May we have been invited to Antigua to share in the celebrations of
250 years of Methodism in the Caribbean. But from Antigua we are due to go
straight to Haiti, on a pastoral visit to our sisters and brothers there.

Richard:

One of the first visits I made after the Conference was closer to home, to the
birthplace of Primitive Methodism in the early 1800s at Englesea Brook and Mow
Cop in Staffordshire. Primitive Methodists separated from the Weselyans in the
19th Century. One of the characteristics of the early Primitive Methodist
movement was the way that lay leadership played such a prominent role. From
the early days of camp meetings, organised by lay leaders Hugh Bourne and
William Clowes, to the widespread development of class and cottage meetings,
prayer meetings, love feasts and Sunday schools, lay women and men played a
crucial role in the development of this movement. Lay people were not only able
to be preachers as they were in the Wesleyans, but they also had a voice in the
decision making bodies of the church, which was for many if not all, a new and
exciting experience.

Over time, as the Primitive Methodist Church became more established the voice
of lay people, and in particular women, did start to wane although it was they
who in 1872 introduced the position of Vice-President of Conference and on rare
occasions a lay person like Sir William Hartley, of jam making fame, was made
President of the Primitive Methodist Conference.

Much of this has fed through in to our current tradition. In 1932 Wesleyan,
Primitive, United and other Methodist traditions united to make the Methodist
Church in Great Britain as we know it today. The Methodist Church is still
characterised by the tradition of recognising and valuing the role of lay people.
Many of our major committees are chaired by lay people and the Conference
itself in its representative session is half lay and half ministerial. We’re also
seeing a greater emphasis on lay ministry and recognising the importance of
collaboration and working in teams across circuits, that each of us has different
God-given gifts and talents but by bringing them together and working together
we can often be far more effective in our work and witness.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians makes it clear, we have different gifts, we
can offer different services, but the body is only made whole if we all appreciate
and value what each other brings and offers.
I saw this clearly on a visit I made to a small Methodist church in the north of
Scotland. A few years ago they had 12 members and their church was literally
falling down around them. But through the inspirational leadership of a woman
in the church, working together with a supernumerary minister, they’ve fought
against what seemed the inevitable and completely renovated their building.
Time and time again problems have been solved better than could have been
hoped for and money has been found to support the work. And now they are left
with a building that serves their mission and is no longer a burden to it. But
more importantly there is a renewed sense of confidence that they are doing
what God intends. And as a result their membership has almost doubled.

It’s a great story that is replicated around the country but wouldn’t it have been
better if the work they had done was between churches in the area, not just
them alone. Shortly after the signing of the Covenant between our two Churches
my own church in Leeds joined in a covenantal relationship with our
neighbouring parish church. It was the culmination of years of working together,
exemplified by St Matthew’s hosting Chapel Allerton Methodists whilst our own
church was rebuilt. It was wonderful that Bishop John Packer could join us in our
Methodist Church to celebrate the covenant that we signed. And since then
we’ve continued to develop a fruitful partnership, not least by the joint
appointment of a children’s worker, together with our Baptist colleagues, and the
running of weekly joint youth groups.

David:

Obviously, one of the main reasons Richard and I are here today is because our
two churches, the Church of England and the Methodist Church, have made a
Covenant together. A covenant is a serious, deeply committed relationship. Not
some irrelevant optional extra. But something at the heart of how we
understand our present and future life as church.

And you, the Church of England, and we, the Methodist Church, are committed to
each other in a covenant relationship. Within God’s overwhelmingly gracious
covenant relationship with us and with our churches, we are in covenant with
each other. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, but always for the gospel.

Others could tell you far better than I where the Joint Implementation
Commission has reached in its thinking and doing. It’s well and truly up and
running and it’s identified some of the big issues to which as churches we are
currently responding.
One of those big questions is what does it look like on the ground? What signs
are there that these two churches have a covenant relationship with each other?

One sign is our presence here today – to be followed by a visit by Archbishop

Rowan to our Conference in June.

Another sign, one which you will be looking at later this morning, is the Fresh
Expressions initiative, to which both of our churches are fully committed.

Another, with which I have direct involvement, is our work on safeguarding

children and vulnerable adults – with a joint post as our national officer,
increasing joint working between dioceses and Districts and new joint
committees supporting this work.

However, it has to be said that around the country the situation is patchy. In
some places there are very close working relationships and exciting new
initiatives. In others you could spend quite a long time trying to find any sign of
the covenant in practice. Some churches, clergy and communities are very
enthusiastic. Others have theological, ecclesiological or other differences and/or
reservations. Some think we have moved beyond these ways of thinking of
church structures. For them, the Church is post-denominational and the
ecumenical movement as we know it is history.

And sometimes a bad relationship or total non-relationship between churches

can even be down simply to how particular individuals do or don’t get on.

It’s also the case that ecumenical working potentially involves many other
churches and Christian groups as well as Church of England and Methodist. Quite
rightly. There’s a long tradition of very valuable ecumenical working in
chaplaincy to the forces, to hospitals, to prisons, etc. And some of the most
exciting newer ventures I’ve seen on my recent travels have been developments
of the chaplaincy concept – workplace chaplaincy, for instance; or town centre
chaplaincy. I’ve seen this in several places now, most recently in Watford.
Often, part of the chaplaincy setup is some kind of street pastor or street angel
scheme. I also saw it in Wolverhampton. At its best, it is always ecumenical,
across a wide range of Christian traditions.
Another place that impressed me was Cambourne, a new town outside
Cambridge where the churches have worked together from the beginning. First
they established an ecumenical church school, which provided all kinds of links
with the new community developing there. Now, 10 years on, they’ve opened
their church building. Again, ecumenical, to be used by all denominations
including the Roman Catholics. The other denominations contribute resources of
people or money to an ecumenical staff team. So it really is ‘the church’ in
Cambourne.

When I entered theological college, at Wesley House in Cambridge, in 1971, I

really expected to spend my ministry as minister in a united, Anglican/Methodist
Church. I still remember our great disappointment in 1972. I really hope and
pray that we can take this Covenant seriously and enable it to bear fruit as we
worship, pray and work together wherever and whenever we possibly can.

Richard:

We can and do work together on issues of social justice, on issues that we both
know God calls on us to challenge our society and our world. We saw that clearly
in December when Archbishop Rowan joined David and me along with a large
number of other ministers at a service across the road in the Methodist Central
Hall prior to the Wave climate change march which was held before the
conference in Copenhagen. The President even lent Archbishop Rowan a pair of
blue gloves so that he was appropriately dressed for the march. What better sign
of the covenant could there be? We saw it at the political party conferences
where we both offered our support to the Citizens for Sanctuary movement, a
campaign to challenge the negative stereotypes and prejudice towards those
whom we often call asylum seekers but who are seeking sanctuary from
persecution elsewhere in the world. We’ve also seen it on our joint working on
the social impact of gambling and the expansion of the gaming industry, and the
campaign to decrease the danger of nuclear weapons Now is the Time. .

There is though more that we could and should be doing together. David and I
have just come back from a visit to Israel/Palestine. There can be few other
places in the world where the cries for justice and peace strike deeper in to the
heart. We heard of the pain and hurt of individuals from all communities, not
least Palestine Christians who so often feel forgotten about and marginalised.
We also saw the inspiring work of the Ecumenical Accompanier Programme of
the World Council of Churches, men and women from all denominations and
none who stand alongside their brothers and sisters as they try to go about their
daily life, including the crossing of the separation barrier that now extends
hundreds of miles through Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.
Palestinian Christians have recently articulated their concerns in an important
statement, the Kairos Palestine Document. It’s a clear call to their own people,
but also a bold and courageous call to the whole international community and
the Churches in particular.

We know that Archbishop Rowan is shortly to visit Israel, and perhaps on his
return we should explore ways that we could jointly work together, Methodists
and Anglicans, to respond to the increasingly desperate cries for help coming
from the Holy Land.

There is much too that we can learn together from our partners in the World
Church. There are some 70 million Christians world-wide who claim a Methodist
heritage. We as Methodists in Britain are having to re-think how we relate to this
growing and vibrant Methodist family, and how we can best support our partners
when they themselves are in difficulty.

For instance the Methodist Church in Fiji is currently under pressure from the
government of Fiji. This year their annual Conference was prevented from taking
place, as was their annual choir festival; significant speaking restrictions have
been placed on senior church leaders; and in August the President of the
Methodist Church in Fiji, the General Secretary and seven other church leaders
were arrested and appeared in court. We are supporting them as well as we can,
but wouldn’t it be better if we could do it together as covenantal partners?

David:

So where do we go from here? That’s not just down to the Joint Implementation
Commission, but to all of us.

Clearly, there are some big issues with theological, ecclesiological and other
implications that we need to work on.

Our structures have something of a mismatch about them. You have national,
diocese, deanery and parish. We have connexion, district, circuit and local
church. But it seems that things we might do by way of connexion or district,
you do through diocese or parish. So, some of the things we do through our
daily work, actually we have a mismatch on our daily decisions.
Then there are all sorts of questions still to work on relating to ministry and
ordination. How far can we develop interchangeability? What about women’s
ministry at every level? We Methodists still have work to do on how our
expression of episcope relates to personalised episcopacy in the form of bishops.
And then there is diaconal ministry and two rather different histories of a
diaconate.

Both of our churches are part of world communions where we have influence and
history, but where churches in other parts of the world are growing rapidly in size
and importance and sometimes see things very differently. As churches and
communions, we’re both struggling with how we can cohere in a post-modern
word, with learning how to live with contradictory convictions. And at such times
it is hard to pay attention to those beyond us. But it is precisely at those times
that we have things to offer each other.

More practically perhaps, how do we relate to the rest of Britain? The Methodist
Church covers the whole of Britain and we are delighted that the Scottish
Episcopal Church and the Church in Wales are now involved in our explorations
under the Covenant.

But whatever happens in our discussions and theologising at a national or, as we

would say, connexional level, the question of what is happening locally remains
of major significance. There are many places, especially in rural areas, where we
probably have too many buildings and maybe too many services and we could
go much further towards working and worshipping together as The Church in
that place. I mentioned Cambourne earlier, and that is quite a large community.
But there are many much smaller where we could do so much more. The
beautifully named MAPUM (Methodist Anglican Panel for Unity in Mission) can
help us develop appropriate local covenant relationships and get the
practicalities right.

But I wonder, too, how far we could work further on ecumenical church schools.
Again, we have a lot to learn from Cambourne. Speaking from the Methodist
Church’s point of view, it’s interesting that we have been involved in recent
years in opening more schools – always ecumenically, generally with the Church
of England, and always where it’s been a response to the needs of a particular
community.
I suppose my last question – at least for this morning – is how do we together
respond to the challenges of the 21st century. A society of different faiths,
different cultures, different histories. A society where many have no history of
involvement with a faith community but where the big questions still remain on
the agenda. Questions of meaning and purpose. Of how we shall live together.
Of life and death. Of the future of our planet. Of right and wrong and the value
of each person.

Throughout the history of churches working together, as I have experienced it,

one of the major and oft-repeated texts has been John 17.21, where Christ prays
for the unity of his followers not because it’s a nice idea, not because it’s
financially a better use of scarce resources, but that the world might believe. It’s
mission led. We only exist to glorify God, to ensure that the word is duly
preached, the sacraments duly celebrated, and the people duly formed in
discipleship for worship and mission.

For Methodists, the word ‘covenant’ is very important – part of our spirituality
and our understanding of our relationship with God. Many of you may have
shared in our annual Covenant Service, with these powerful words:

Richard:

I am no longer my own but yours.

Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you,

exalted for you or brought low for you;

let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing;

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.

David:
Methodists approach the Covenant with the Church of England in the spirituality
of that Covenant prayer. So when we say to God “let me have all things let me
have nothing”, we say it by extension to our partners in the Church of England as
well. We are prepared to go out of existence not because we are declining or
failing in mission, but for the sake of mission. In other words we are prepared to
be changed and even to cease having a separate existence as a Church if that
will serve the needs of the Kingdom.

Are we willing to take our covenant that seriously? It’s quite a challenge – for
both of our churches.