The rain in Spain…

… Is absolutely hammering down just now. Barcelona is lovely, but the heavens have just opened and I am going nowhere. (Unlike my wife who volunteered to go out and get something to eat…)

Being away from the office this week is a tad unfortunate. I am following Sandy developments in the USA and Carribean, but only when the wi-fi allows. Shocking pictures from New York and other places. Just wondering where the money is going to come from to restore what even Republicans seem to agree is a deteriorating infrastructure across the USA – presumably not from taxes?

Anyway, while I am struggling with the wi-fi here, there is nothing going on back in my Bradford office. Apparently. I though I was having the ultimate e-holiday – a totally empty Inbox – but discovered today that the server replacement and migration (that was supposed to take us out for an hour or so) has left the office without email or Internet access since Monday morning. Dead. Nothing. Oh well.

So, two things to point to while I am away: lead theft and proposals to dissolve three West Yorkshire dioceses and create a single new one (with an episcopal area system).

First, theft of metals. Croydon MP Richard Ottaway has the third reading of his bill to make it harder for metal thieves to get cash for their spoils. Shipley MP Philip Davies intends to try to talk the bill out. He opposes it because it doesn’t go far enough and doesn’t increase sentences for those found guilty. I have written to him to ask him to change his mind and his intentions. Apparently, he disagrees – which is his right. It is also the right of his constituents to question his response. Vote against the bill – no problem; but, why try to talk it out? The bill does not do everything needed to outlaw this pernicious trade, but it certainly helps.

George Galloway made me laugh (genuinely) when he said it was like trying to ban Steptoe and Son. Good image. But, Harold Steptoe didn’t strip war memorials, railway lines, communications lines, churches, houses and other buildings to get his scrap metal.

Bradford constituents – especially those who have suffered from this business – might like to reflect on it.

Second, the Dioceses Commission final scheme to dissolve three dioceses and create a single new one for West Yorkshire and the Dales. (Note: not ‘merge’, ‘amalgamate’ or ‘aggregate’; and not driven by ‘emptying pews’ or ‘saving money’…)

My response is available here. We vote on 2 March 2013 in Diocesan Synods. If agreed, it then goes to the General Synod in July 2013 and will begin to kick in at the beginning of 2014.

Not surprisingly the media are speaking as if this is a fait accompli. It is as if, by making the proposals, the Church of England has decided and now is implementing its decision. We get used to this. A report to the General Synod – usually the first word in a debate – gets reported as “Church to do…”. I can’t quite bring myself to believe that process is so hard for literate people to understand. But, apparently it is. Consistently.

(Philip Davies MP asked a question in Parliament last week that assumes that Bradford would be subsumed into a greater Diocese of Leeds. The question would be reasonable if this were true, but the assumptions are false – as indicated above. I am surprised that the question was even asked without any single direct approach whatsoever in the last eighteen months to me as the Bishop most closely involved for Bradford.)

So, I’ll leave it alone for a few days and get back to resting, reading and listening to the rain in Spain.

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Another sort of race

Mention the word 'race' at the moment and all eyes turn to the Olympics in London. But, it is another form of race that preoccupies my mind today.

Yesterday the parents of Shafilea Ahmed were jailed for life for murdering their own daughter who had – by her westernised independence – offended their cultural and community sensibilities. The case has been well publicised and I don't need to go into detail here.

However, there is a very good and clear response to some of the issues raised by Sara Khan in the Guardian this morning. She might also have questioned whether the inhibition of social and health services to protect and advocate for vulnerable arises not from misguided racism, but rather from cultural ignorance and fear of 'getting it wrong'.

Yes, this is sensitive stuff. Muslim leaders in Bradford have no truck with religious or 'cultural' excuses for criminal or violent behaviour. No question – and I know because we speak openly, frankly and without inhibition about these and other matters. And it is not simply about race.

Today the English Defence League is due to demonstrate in West Yorkshire – Keighley, to be precise – and at the same time demonstrate its crassly simplistic (and selectively perverse) focus on missing the point. It is right that people should protest about the horror that is sex-grooming of vulnerable young girls. It is barely believable that men can do this in the first place and it demands condemnation and punishment. But – and this is the brutal point – it is not primarily a racial issue.

Sex-grooming of vulnerable girls is a male issue, not a race issue. It is an Asian male problem and it is a Muslim male issue… because it is a generic male issue. When white Anglo-Saxon men commit these crimes we don't write off 'white' 'non-Muslim' 'non-Asian' cultures as being inherently corrupt or dangerous. If this is an Asian problem, it is only so because it is a male problem. Of course, there will be factors peculiar to Asian culture and the Asian community – just as there will be factors unique to the phenomenon in other cultural communities – and these need to be addressed. But, to target Asians is misguided, to say the least.

In a conversation recently my Muslim interlocutors acknowledged straight up the fact that “this is our problem”; but, we followed this up with the recognition that it is also OUR problem. If the problem of such appalling criminality is to be properly addressed, we need to recognise the 'maleness' of the phenomenon and not simply target religious or cultural scapegoats whilst quietly ignoring the facts or the cultural ubiquity of the behaviour.

The best way to handle the EDL is simply to ignore them and not honour their case with attention.

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Affirming public service

This morning I preached at the Civic Service in Bradford Cathedral to mark the end on the Lord Mayor’s year in office. This enabled the Lord Mayor, Naveeda Ikram – the first Muslim woman Lord Mayor in the country – to reflect publicly on her year. It was a long service…

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank those who take up public office in any way and recognise the human cost of doing so (for some, at least). Here are the main bits, based on Matthew 5 and minus the jibes at Chelsea and questions arising from David Beckham’s haircut…):

The so-called Sermon on the Mount is often misheard and misinterpreted. It looks and sounds so simple, but is fraught with challenge and demand. In Matthew’s Gospel – which was not written in a moment of boredom as a twee way of telling stories about nice Jesus – this ‘sermon’ comes at the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry and serves as a summary of his teaching. In one sense, the rest of the Gospel puts flesh and blood onto what he says here. And it is gripping stuff that allows the comfort-seeker only one recourse: that is, to ignore it and walk away.

In this passage Jesus is not offering lots of self-help advice for people who want to live a fulfilled life. He is not suggesting ways of improving your happiness quota. He is saying very clearly that if you want to take God seriously – which means taking other people, wider society and the world seriously… and taking responsibility in and for them – there will be a cost. A cost to your prejudices (the meek will inherit the earth, not the powermongers after all), to your values (the hungry will be filled) and your expectations of comfort or satisfaction (people may revile and persecute you).

But, this passage does give us windows on the nature of public service which lies at the heart of this service and today’s celebrations. Let’s look at a few of them before we return to the point.

‘When Jesus saw the crowds’ he went away from them. He didn’t run after popularity or populism. There are dangers in seeking approval all the time. Yet, those who wish – for whatever reason – to serve on local councils must seek a popular mandate and canvas the votes of those who have the power to entrust it to you. In reality, whatever the benefits of public engagement, you get a pile of public exposure in which your personality, motives, dress sense, values, priorities and appearance will all be subject to popular critique – which is a nice way of saying that you open yourself up to being taken apart by people who carry no responsibility other than to pillory people who do. So, you can understand why Jesus didn’t run towards the crowds, but went up a mountain to do some serious thinking about what really matters when you come down again and can’t avoid the crowds or their demands.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’: yet many people can go though life avoiding contact with the poor, the humble and the publicly insignificant. One of the things that mayors – Lords or otherwise – often remark on is that until they began their demanding schedule of visits, they had no idea just how much amazing and self-sacrificial work and service was going on in their area. Naveeda has been to places she probably never knew existed and met people who, without any hope of reward, serve those in a variety of places of need. That is to be ‘poor in spirit’ – often unnoticed and unrewarded – serving those who are poor in spirit and just about every other way, too. Public service exposes you to things you might otherwise not see or encounter. (Which is why Anglican clergy live on the job – part of the community they serve and never being able to worship God without that worship being rooted in the realities of the community life around them.)

‘Blessed are those who hunger and search for righteousness’: Righteousness is not a pious notion… something to do with being a goody-goody. Righteousness has to do with being passionate about social justice, about recognising the inherent dignity and humanity of every person (made in the image of God, as Genesis puts it), and about committing oneself in body, mind and spirit to furthering the goals of that passion. At whatever personal cost.

And the personal cost can be great. Ask the family of those who serve voluntarily or in public service as councillors. ‘Blessed are the merciful’, says Jesus, but mercy is not something you will always find at the hands of a media seeking the sensational or the conflictual. Mercy is for the feeble and the sentimental in a society that speaks all the time of ‘fighting’ for causes. But, as Jesus says and we find so hard to believe or work out, ‘it is the merciful who will find mercy.

Can you imagine what it might look like to give our public servants the space to be merciful and to receive mercy for those they seek to serve?

(As an aside, I was listening to the Archbishop of York preaching at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Service here in this cathedral last Sunday afternoon and thinking about how we take for granted the culture and polity we enjoy in this country. For sixty years – whatever your particular views on monarchy itself as a feature of the polity – the Queen has presided over remarkable stability… and, as she reminded us in a speech last month, over a country whose democracy developed over a thousand years, rooted in a Christian theology and world view that is all-too-frequently disregarded or derided today. Our judicial system was not invented from thin air. The freedoms we take for granted did not just happen. These and other features of our assumed common life arose from an understanding of who we are as human beings, what matters in human living, why morality matters and where moral values derive from, how society should be shaped and on what moral and spiritual foundations it should be built. We take it all for granted as if ‘common goodness’ were a given in any human society. And we are in danger of giving some of this away without a moment’s thought about why we think what we think matters in human living and dying.)

Yet, as Her Majesty pointed out, we need to recall that our society has been shaped by a theology that enjoins self-giving, service, humility, justice exercised with mercy, a passion for ‘righteousness’. These things are written into the fabric of English life and law and into our assumptions about public service.

For this reason, then, I want, on your behalf, to thank those who serve our Metropolitan District of Bradford: those who stand for election and are rejected by the voters; those who, once elected, have to do the hard work of shaping the common good with the limited resources available to them – setting priorities that will always be deemed to be wrong by someone -, and giving their time to serve our wider community; those who are paid to make the whole thing work – the Chief Executive and all those who work at City Hall, carrying public responsibility and often seeing themselves kicked around in the public discourse.

In this context I think it right to note the service of the former Leader of Bradford Council, Ian Greenwood, who served this place for seventeen years and lost his seat at the last election. Many may disagree with his politics, but we would do well to recognise his service along with that of others who have been rejected by the electorate.

As we thank Naveeda and look to pray for the incoming Lord Mayor, Councillor Dale Smith, we conclude by remembering those demanding words of Jesus to his friends on the mountain when he went away from the crowds. Here he pulls us back to check the integrity of our own motivations and the focus of our own priorities and behaviours. Who, we might ask ourselves and each other, will be blessed by our particular form of public service? Who will find earth to inherit, who will be comforted, who will receive mercy, who will be filled, who will discover the freedom of the kingdom of God, who will ‘see God’ in and through us? And, the hardest question of all: when judgement is reached by future generations on our stewardship of our community, will we be seen to have been a blessing or a curse?

May God bless all those who serve in public office, in building civic society, and for the common good.

This service was followed two hours later by a Service of Thanksgiving for the Church Urban Fund. in the last 25 years the CUF has invested about £2 million through 159 grants to projects in the Diocese of Bradford. From January 2007 to December 2011 CUF provided 51 grants totalling £305,554.11 ( and that 11p matters!). The CUF-sponsored Near Neighbours scheme has provided 50 grants totalling £166,887.95 to the Bradford district – £243,390.85 in 71 grants across West Yorkshire. Churches in the metropolitan district run more than 125 community projects, supported by around 3,000 volunteers. According to the figures, the churches now support more youth workers than the statutory services do. Projects include work with some of the most vulnerable people and communities: asylum seekers, refugees, street workers, people who are homeless, single parents, elderly, disabled, unemployed, youth and children, parents and toddlers, parenting classes, education, sport and community relations, environmental and English language (ESOL) learning.

Impressive or what?

 

Life Online

The work never ceases and the diary never slims. But, in the margins of all this there are some brilliant things going on.

Bradford might be at the heart of today’s news because of George Galloway’s (not exactly surprising) victory in yesterday’s by-election (and the inquiry by Labour should dig somewhat deeper than some of the analysis we heard today – if this was a protest vote, what was really being protested against?), but a couple of other remarkable events have also just taken place. They have brought exciting new life to the heart of a city that has some great good news stories to tell.

Yesterday saw the opening of the world’s first museum gallery dedicated to telling the story and exploring the cultural, social and technological impact of the Internet and the Web on the way we live. Life Online is the superb new addition to the already excellent National Media Museum in the centre of Bradford. It is the brainchild of the also excellent Director, Colin Philpott, who is soon to move out of his job and into pastures new.

This great event – marked by video greetings from people such as Sir Richard Branson – followed the opening of the amazing City Park in the centre of Bradford and close to the National Media Museum. Just look at this:

How can anyone not visit?

Anyway, back to the work…

 

Bradford making Britain

I managed to get home from a very positive Bradford experience (putting in a new vicar on a large estate) in time to see the second half of the first Make Bradford British programme. Having posted a media literacy lesson the other day, what is my response? I would simply make the following points:

1. Focus on the naff title is fair – especially as this first programme, if anything, is clear that Bradford is British. The question is: what does it mean to be British? It seems that when we try to identify identity we look to the past. But, ‘Britishness’ is not some sort of product we inherit and then try to keep in a cultural box; rather, it is evolving as time moves on. We are creating Britain as we go. In this sense, perhaps, the title of the series unwittingly opens up a more productive debate – or provides a better-shaped lens through which to look at local culture: how do we take our responsibility in shaping at every level the Britain we are becoming?

2. A friend who lives near the canal in Shipley was amused to see how the conversation between the white retired policeman and the Muslim ex-rugby player was edited. They were on a long boat on the canal – somewhere I haven’t yet been. The conversation seemed to be seamless, progressing from one expression of mutuality to another. However, according to my friend, for this conversation to have been played out the way it appeared, the boat would have had to have gone forward, then leapt backwards, then picked up further down the canal before sliding back again to a point they had already passed. Now, I don’t know; but, it wouldn’t surprise me if this were true. What we see on our screen is what I called ‘mediated reality’ – a narrative for which the evidence or illustration is then identified and edited into place.

3. The programme did portray some interesting encounters. I thought it showed strongly the important stuff of people realising through personal relationship the need for good listening, hard learning (about one’s own prejudices and practices), mutual respect and generosity. That’s good, isn’t it? Put aside some of the tacky stuff (like the title and the dramatic trailers) and the programme had some quite interesting stuff in it – certainly stuff worth thinking about and debating further. Such as how to create more such encounters so that people meeting together can challenge and be challenged.

4. It will be interesting to see whether the second programme points to how all the above is already going on in Bradford. There are loads of initiatives aimed at bringing people from different communities together. The Church Urban Fund sponsored Near Neighbours scheme (to name but one) is funding dozens of such imaginative initiatives – but they aren’t dramatic or sexy enough to hit the headlines. There is some great stuff going on here already, and in Bradford we know this.

5. So, if the picture of Bradford offered by the programme is of more interest outside the city, what might be the response so far? Well, inevitably the local media proclaim ‘fury’ locally – Bradford being ‘hit’ again, misrepresented by outsiders who then just walk away. Outsiders who know the city have rightly complained that it represents the place as a single-issue city in which ‘race’ is the only lens through which all else must be seen. This, of course, clouds the multifaceted richness of the place… and the other challenges we face which are identical to those faced by neighbouring cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. It would be more helpful to have a focus on Bradford that went beyond race. Such an approach would be enlightening for everyone and would demonstrate a maturity and intelligence on the part of media production companies (rather than a rather lazy stereotyping or recourse to tired cliche that a more media-literate and sophisticated audience simply sees through).

6. I might (again) be in a minority of one on this, but responses from around the country also demonstrate that how Bradford responds to a programme such as this also forms part of how Bradford is seen. The response is fairly cross so far. Yet we should have confidence in Bradford and its people to be able to watch a programme such as this and not be taken in. Confidence allows us to take the hits, turn the focus, shine a different light, and shape the debate as we go forward. Complaining makes us sound like weak victims when we certainly have it within us to take some control.

Bradford is a brilliant place. It is facing questions in the public spotlight that other cities face in a more hidden way. The microcosm we saw last night points to the source of hope: that people in relationship can see themselves more clearly, be ashamed by their prejudices more readily, and find themselves changed by their encounters. Relationships lie at the heart of how we shape our future – not just of Bradford, but of the Britain (and Britishness) we are now creating. After all, today’s ‘Britain’ will be tomorrow’s ‘inherited Britishness’.

 

Bradford is British

Tomorrow evening the first of two ‘reality TV’ programmes about Bradford will be screened on Channel 4: Make Bradford British. They have clearly earned their money in the media world by drumming up a lot of interest and – which I guess was the purpose – eliciting pre-emptive suspicion and resentment against the series… even before we have seen it. I have met two people who have seen it – I have not.

When it was first announced at the back end of last year there was an immediate outcry here in Bradford. The line is – and, given past experience, it is fully understandable – that Bradford keeps being visited by media types who give the place a kicking before departing and leaving the rest of us to pick up the pieces. So, we can understand why even the mere suggestion of yet another experimental programme will raise the hackles and provoke pre-emptive resentment locally.

But, I have not been part of this history – having only moved back to the city nine months ago when I took up my new responsibilities as the bishop here. All my media instincts tell me (a) not to preempt what I haven’t seen, (b) not to assume everything in such a genre must always be negative, and (c) to think that it is possible to take control of a thing like this, turn it, shine a different light on it, and shape the subsequent debate/response. So, although I fully understand the response of some to the prospect of these programmes, I want to see them before making any judgements about them.

Yes, I might be proved to be naive, over-generous and in a minority of one.

Ahead of the screening I would make the following points for consideration as we watch it:

1. All ‘reality’ programmes are always selective and mediated reality. In other words, it has been edited according to the story the programme makers want to be seen. So, it is not ‘neutral’. Therefore, we need to ask how far the mediated reality takes into account in its ‘messages’ the actual multifaceted realities on the ground.

2. Images of people getting on really well do not make for good television. The ‘story’ must involve danger, conflict, emotion and some sort of resolution. Otherwise no one would bother to watch it. So, we need to dig beneath the apparent story to ask deeper questions about what is going on in and between the characters presented to us. The trailers for the programme are irritating because they purport to highlight the conflicts – but, that is a ploy to get us to watch the thing. It is entirely possible that the brief conflicts depicted in the trailers represent the sum total of conflict in the mediated narrative. We will soon find out.

3. The title is crass. Bradford is British. But it raises a very good question about what it really means to be British in the first place. No one ever said Bradford was Irish, but it was the immigrants from the Emerald Isle who really got the place going. Jeremy Paxman in his interesting book The English illustrates how impossible it is to say what it is to be English… in a way that doesn’t apply to the Welsh, the Scots or the Irish. I am German, French, Norse, Celtic (Welsh, Irish and Manx) and probably related to Genghis Khan somewhere down the line. This is why the English Defence League is barking up a branchless tree in trying to defend something undefinable.

4. A confident city will not be afraid of a television programme. Bradford is big enough to look at what is portrayed, take seriously the questions it raises, challenge any misrepresentations or selective representations, hold the programme-makers to account, take control of the debate and move it on.

5. Bradford is a unique place and one that is compelled to address questions the rest of the UK will need to face at some point. Pioneers will always feel exposed. Yes, there are significant challenges, but there are also great resources, massive successes and huge opportunities. I might be wrong, but it seems to me so far that most of the challenges are fundamentally economic and rooted in confidence.

6. Check the language when you watch the programmes. Undefined (or ill-defined) shorthand can set hares running that either don’t live in the field or are not hares in the first place. For example, lazy use of the word ‘segregation’ does not help us to understand a complicated and complex set of social relationships. (For example, when wealthy Brits buy houses in Spain and, ignorant of all but a few holiday phrases in Spanish, choose to live close to and associate with other Brits, we don’t speak of segregation. When they then bring in British plumbers and builders, electricians and administrators, foodies and others, we don’t scream that this is unjust segregation, do we? What we say is: “Well, it’s natural for people to want to live with people like themselves, people who speak the same language and eat the same food, people who share a set of cultural experiences and expectations that do not (in this company, at least) have to be articulated or rehearsed.” So, when the same phenomenon happens in an English city – as it does in every English city – why do we change the rules?

There are ‘issues’ and challenges in Bradford and some of them are unique to Bradford. But, lazy and superficial readings of the situation are not helpful when it comes to tackling them on the ground.

As I said earlier, I haven’t seen the programmes. In fact, I won’t be able to see tomorrow’s at all. Why not? Because I will be licensing a new priest to a parish on a huge estate on the edge of Bradford where the previous vicar did 26 years of utterly committed and brilliant work. His successor is coming from the south of England to pick up the mantle and develop the work further. I will be out all evening with him, his wife, and loads of people from the churches who, rather than pass judgement on a telly programme, will be doing the real business with real people on the ground – not being voyeurs, but being committed. These guys have moved north with vision, faith and hope – all words which, in my time in Bradford so far, I have found in abundance in many of the communities here.

Now watch Make Bradford British with your media brain engaged.

 

Positive Lent

Lent is often associated with giving up and being miserable. So, I was amused to read that one of my clergy has found a typically positive and creative way to use this reflective time of year.

City Centre Priest, the Revd Chris Howson, who is committed to seeing the city of Bradford thrive again, attended a ‘Positive Bradford’ event in the Midland Hotel. He was so impressed by the hard work going on behind the scenes by different organisations in the city that he decided to make it his Lenten theme in the run up to Easter.

He said: “So, over the next 40 days and nights I will: 1) support Bradford businesses by shopping locally 2) always challenge those who are negative about the city, and remind them why Bradford has so much going for it 3) do something positive, like a street clean or make something beautiful for others to enjoy 4) celebrate the city’s rich cultural and faith heritage by visiting places of worship, local museums, restaurants and beauty spots 5) give to local Bradford Charities that are really making a difference to people lives, such as Hope Housing, BEACON (Bradford Ecumenical Asylum Concern) and Bradford Nightstop.”

Bradford is a great place, but gets lots of knocks – from inside as well as outside. But a creative future demands a recovery of focus on the great resources and assets here already. As Chris Howson went on to say: “This is a great city, and we’ve a lot to be thankful for. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves of that. When we know there are problems, our duty is to challenge them and change them – not to just moan and talk our city down. Over the next 40 days, whether we have a faith or not, we can all do something to enjoy our city and make new friends from other cultures along the way.”

Given that C4 is about to run a two-part series called Making Bradford British, some positivity might be needed. It is widely assumed that this series will be negative and compound the negative image of the city. However, we haven’t yet seen it, so we don’t know and can’t know whether the story it ultimately tells is interesting, accurate, helpful, good or bad. What I do know is that we are looking at creative and engaging ways of using it to take a look at the issues we already know are here. But, apart from the crass title (Bradford is British already…), the use of provocative words like ‘segregation’ without further explanation or illustration is a bit wild and reckless.

Anyway, we’ll see what it throws up. A confident community is able to take the hits and turn them into something useful – something I will be interested to help with when the programmes go out in March. And if they present a travesty of reality, we will entertainingly tackle the programme makers. Watch this space.

PS. Another Lent idea comes from a great initiative with children in a tough area of Bradford: here’s the link to Kidz Klub.

 

 

Better together

This evening I finished a set of meetings with leaders of faith communities in Bradford – where such relationships matter enormously.

A couple of weeks ago I spent an evening as the guest of the Hindus at their newest mandir. Next I met the Council of Mosques. Then, accompanied as usual by my interfaith adviser, Dr Philip Lewis, and the Dean of Bradford, David Ison, we met the Sikhs.

These visits were not simply anodyne, bland meetings. They were not set up in order to tick certain boxes – or simply make me feel that I was doing something useful. They were arranged in order to establish open, clear and practical relationships between resident religious communities and the new Bishop of Bradford.

We were given wonderful hospitality in each case. We were briefly introduced to their worship and culture. We were shown great friendship and respect. And we also spoke frankly, honestly and clearly about our faith, their perceptions of the main issues facing their particular community, and how interfaith relationships can be further developed in Bradford for the common good.

In fact, this was the key point. Each community had its particular concerns about the situation facing its own people, but the major concern was about the good of Bradford as a whole, the whole of the community, the well-being of the city. And each one has great expectations of how the Bishop can influence things for the good of the people: economic, social, political. Common challenges relate to young people, cultural change, changing values and a need for economic regeneration. The common complaint is that the brightest young people are leaving in order to get work elsewhere.

We are going to meet twice each year: one ‘elder statesman’, one woman and one young person from each of the four or five religious communities. These conversations will also be open, frank and constructive. And I will repeat my visits to each community once each year.

This might not seem earth-shattering. But, it is based on the fact that relationship is essential if business is to be done effectively and people of faith are to positively influence the life of the city and district. I am trying to learn what already is… in order to work out where to go from here.

It’s not boring…

 

Traffic in my mind

There’s a great Bruce Cockburn song (are there any that aren’t great?) that begins with the line:

Knots in my muscles, too much traffic in my mind, traffic in my mind…

That just about sums up the inside of my head, too. While the world goes mad (US brinkmanship regarding debt ceilings, Libyan contortions, Syrian massacres, Zimbabwean injustices, deepening exposure of media corruption, England beating India at cricket…) life carries on as normal for most of us. For me that means huge investment of time in getting to know the people and places within the boundaries of the Diocese of Bradford. It is both encouraging and challenging, but it also raises huge questions about future development.

It also makes it difficult to sleep. Not because I am worried – I am not. Not because there is too much going on – although there might be. It’s simply because my head is full and alive with questions, thoughts, options, imaginings. All good stuff, but, in Cockburn’s words, “too much traffic in my mind”.

Questions like:

1. How can the Church best serve the deverse communities of urban, suburban and rural West Yorkshire and the Dales?
2. How can clergy best be deployed, supported, resourced and led in leading their churches and parishes?
3. What will be the pros and cons of dissolving three dioceses and creating one new one (where the pros so far well outweigh the cons, in my mind)?
4. How do we best capture the public imagination with the announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ for all people?
5. How do we best allocate our resources in order to enable us to achieve our vision: to enable the church to resemble the Jesus we read about in the Gospels – to be a sign of the presence of God in the messy world?

Nothing new or radical there, but the actual realities of a new (for me) context raise them in new forms and in different colours and with changing urgencies. So, life is not boring. The questions that look general have to be addressed in the light of the particular, and that is where it gets tough/interesting/challenging/stimulating.

There are other questions, of course:

1. When will American politicians learn that their ideological intransigencies make for a dangerous game in a contingent world where most of us wish they would grow up and learn the art of compromise for the common good? Or at least learn a vocabulary that isn’t automatically inspired by the demonising of ‘the other’?
2. Why did we ever get involved in Libya and why did we decide to back the rebels before they even have popular legitimacy there? Did we learn nothing from Iraq?
3. What legitimacy does the UN (or the ‘international community’) have when Syria just ignores ‘demands’ that they stop killing civilians with heavy weaponry?
4. When will African leaders (particularly in SADC) take responsibility for insisting on the rule of law in Zimbabwe where Mugabe increases his snook-cocking at his subjects, uses the police as his personal judiciary and allows the nightmare (and profoundly dim) Nolbert Kunonga to terrorise the Anglican Church there?
5. Who cares about cricket? I never did understand it. Roll on the footie season…

Oh dear…

 

Creative space

Slaughter in Norway. The sad, sad death of Amy Winehouse at only 27. Reports of continuing slaughter in Sudan. It’s a grim week.

Add to this the abuse that has come my way following the Telegraph headline a couple of weeks ago. What I have learned from this is that those who write or email me should (a) check the facts, (b) expand their vocabulary, and (c) try to use adjectives other than those based on or around ‘f**king’. I thought of keeping them and sending them to the Telegraph, but just deleted them.

So, today is a day off. Having spent two days up in the Yorkshire Dales and on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border (visiting parishes and clergy) I have begun to ask myself questions about what Anglican ministry might look like in the next five or ten years. What is clear is that most church advice on such questions assumes the social circumstances of urban or suburban parishes. The rural context is incomparable and, clearly, a different language is needed for interpreting and encouraging rural ministry.

For example (and simplistically – leaving out factors of the ethnic mix of a parish, etc.), a ‘large’ congregation of 200 in a parish of 20,000 people might appear ‘successful’. A congregation of 60 in a parish of 600 is stunning in terms of proportion. However, both congregations have to maintain buildings, ministry and outreach. So, what works for the urban or suburban will not be appropriate to the rural, and vice versa. My job as bishop is to work out (along with others) how we staff and support the variety of parishes in such widely differing contexts where ministry has to be exercised differently and numbers don’t tell an obvious story of success or failure, strength or weakness.

Anyway, next week sees a three-day visit to an urban/suburban deanery and my questions and perceptions will continue to develop. Before then, however, a day off allowed a visit with visiting Swiss friends to the Industrial Museum in Bradford and then Salt’s Mill in Saltaire. The former is great (and I can’t wait for my grandson to grow up a bit so we can take him there). The latter must surely be visited by anyone with imagination. I expect all our friends in the south of England to now book in to stay in Bradford and visit Saltaire.

The mill (and the town) was built by Sir Titus Salt during the textile revolution. More recently it has been developed into offices, apartments and the most wonderful bookshop in the world. (OK, I’m a fan.) Down near the railway, river and canal you climb the stairs at the corner of the mill building and enter the art gallery full of David Hockney paintings and arty books and stuff. Go up two floors and there is the bookshop, a cafe and a kitchen shop (not that I have bothered with that one). The length of the mill floor is preserved and brought to new expansive life with fantastic use of space and light. It has to be seen and walked through to be appreciated. I can say no more.

Yet, all this was the genius of a guy who saw the potential no one else even glimpsed: Jonathan Silver. He died young. There is a statue to Sir Titus Salt, but there is as yet no memorial to the man who risked everything and breathed new life into these buildings. An industrial site that saw human suffering (look at the life of children in the Victorian mills) is now a place of creative space, light and community life. When will he get his statue?