Ecumenical Information

CTSY | Ecumenical Links | Living God's Covenant |Anglican-Methodist Covenant

The geographical area of the Sheffield Methodist District overlaps to a large extent with the Anglican Diocese of Sheffield and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Hallam.

There are good relations between the Sheffield Methodist District Chairman Rev Vernon Marsh, the Anglican Bishop of Sheffield Rt Rev Jack Nicholls, and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hallam Rt Rev John Rawsthorne, who meet once a month for a prayer breakfast.

Parts of the District also overlap with the Anglican Diocese of Southwell whose Bishop is Rt Revd George Cassidy and the Anglican Diocese of Derby with its Bishop, the Rt Revd Dr Alastair Redfern. The Sheffield Methodist District also contains parts of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, whose Bishop is Rt Revd Malcolm McMahon OP. The Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Church Leaders meet on a regular basis.

Churches Together in South Yorkshire (CTSY)

The Methodist Church in the area is a member of Churches Together in South Yorkshire (CTSY). The Rt Revd Jack Nicholls, Lord Bishop of Sheffield, is the current Chair of CTSY. To contact CTSY please get in touch with the Ecumenical Development Officer, Rev Louise Dawson, who is a Methodist minister, at Louise@ctsy.freeserve.co.uk

Ecumenical Links

• Hallam Diocese
• Diocese of Sheffield
• Diocese of Derby
• Diocese of Southwell
• Nottingham Diocese
• Industrial Mission in South Yorkshire
• Church Net
• UK Christian Handbook
• UK Christian Research
• Churches Regional Commission for Yorkshire and the Humber
• East Midland Churches Forum
• Churches Together in England
• Churches Together in Britain and Ireland
• Church of England
• Vatican
• Movement for Christian Democracy

Living God's Covenant - Second Interim Report (2007) of the Joint Implementation Commission (JIC) under the Covenant between the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Church of England

This is also available as a pdf file for printing, click here

Set up in 2003 after the signing of the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, the JIC now presents its second report, and begins by telling us that they have mixed feelings of encouragement and disappointment about the relationship of the two churches. On the positive side is the fact that 600 people took in ten regional workshops on the Covenant in 2006, revealing a good deal of grassroots activity and progress. There are also many contacts and much consultation and collaboration, including the Fresh Expression initiative, at national/connexional level. The disappointments include the very negative outcome of the Methodist consultation process on 'What Sort of Bishops' and the very slow progress the Church of England is making towards the ordination of women as bishops. Resolution of these issues would be a key building block in bringing about the interchangeability of ministries. The Report comments: 'In some parts of the Church of England and the Methodist Church the Covenant has not been taken to heart. We are up against apathy about visible disunity and inertia about ecumenical responsibilities.'

The Report has four main sections.

Living God's Covenant - Practical Initiatives

The chapter outlines the feedback from the ten day workshops held across the country in 2006. There were four key questions, and some of the main answers given are summarised here:

1 In your experience as members of communities of Christ's disciples, what are the local needs?

The needs expressed included:

• to let go of the past, while still affirming the good aspects of each denomination's character;
• improved relationships and trust at local level;
• a deeper understanding of today's changed cultural context for mission;
• greater freedom for local churches to follow their own vision in practical projects; to discover unity by doing mission.

2 In your experience, what are the obstacles to implementing an Anglican-Methodist Covenant - to 'living God's Covenant'?

Some of the obstacles mentioned were:

• mismatched boundaries, church cultures and ways of doing things;
• lack of imagination in church leaders;
• self-pre-occupation, inertia, hurt, indiscipline and tiredness;
• the word 'covenant' not understood ('Why put all this effort into ecumenism?')

One group identified a problem for Methodists: 'Which Church of England is my partner?'

3 In what ways are these obstacles being addressed - or could they be addressed?

The suggestions included:

• Looking together at wider issues of mission and social responsibility;
• Joint appointments; joint training for lay leaders; trusting the other church to fulfil a needed role locally;
• Congregations seeing the whole agenda in a positive light;
• Better consultation, communication and transparency, perhaps especially at circuit/deanery level.

4 What commitments are you yourselves ready to make to help local Christian communities to implement the Covenant and/or develop their discipleship in a covenant lifestyle?

There is no summary provided in the Report, because the responses were either very generalised of just focussed on their local context, but there is an encouraging report on the growth of the Fresh Expressions initiative as a significant example of joint working between the two Churches.

Their conclusion in this section is that the Anglican-Methodist Covenant has to be seen in the wider context of God's covenant with the Church. Therefore: '(1) Christ's people will inevitably fail to 'implement' a covenant while they continue to fall short in discipleship and mission. (2) Conversely, faithful discipleship and engagement in God's mission is also seriously inhibited so long as Christ's people fail to tease out the implications of what it means to live as God's covenant people. The Covenant between our two Churches challenges because it is a specific and grounded application of a general principle.'

The workshops revealed how much we are each locked into our own structures and culture, but the call is not to uniformity, but rather to 'relational discipleship', which would include the characteristics of trust, generosity, gratitude, a sense of purpose beyond self-preoccupation, constancy, consistency and accountability.

Church, State and Establishment

This chapter is a response by the JIC to the report Church, State and Establishment, which was received by the Methodist Conference in 2004, and it includes a response by the Anglican members of the JIC to the most controversial issues. It is strongly affirmed that any relationship with the state must make sense in terms of the Church's mission. The final recommendations are as follows.

• The Church of England should do more to share the particular opportunities for mission that are available to it by virtue of its historic relationship with the state, and the Methodist Church should embrace these opportunities when they are offered.
• A Methodist representative should be involved in the deliberations of the Diocesan Vacancy in See Committee (i.e. in the process leading to the selection of a new bishop).
• The Methodist Church and the Church of England should consult together on the shape of a reformed House of Lords and consider making a joint submission to government.
• Anglicans and Methodists in both Houses of Parliament should work more closely together and, with MPs and Peers of other Christian traditions, should seek to present a united witness to Christian truths and values.

Encouraging Lay Ministry

This chapter addresses the need for 'mutual recognition and acceptance of authorised lay ministries.' It looks at the Methodist Church's lay ministries - including: Vice-President of Conference, Local Preachers, Class Leaders and Pastoral Visitors, Lay Workers, Worship Leaders, workers with Children and Young People, etc. It also considered the Church of England's lay ministries - including: Readers and Lay Workers, Pastoral Assistants, Parish Evangelists, Church Wardens, Parish Clerks, etc. It also considers the differences in practice of the distribution of Holy Communion.

This chapter ought to be studied by both churches at every level.

The summary of recommendations is as follows:

• We recommend that any initiatives in mission, including evangelism, are, wherever possible, shared between our two churches (as well as with others) and that our lay and ordained ministries, as well as the gifts of all our people, are deployed to make those initiatives more effective.
• We recommend that the existing co-operation and sharing of resources between our two churches should, wherever possible, be extended to lay ministerial training.
• We recommend that the Regional Training Partnerships and regional Methodist Training Partnerships should, in consultation with the appropriate bodies within our churches, develop training programmes that, as far as possible, meet our churches' training specifications for Readers and Local Preachers.
• We recommend that our two churches maximise the practical opportunities for the sharing of lay ministry (particularly that of Reader and Local Preacher) that are already legally available under the rules of our churches.
• We recommend that the Church of England consider whether it can lift the current canonical requirement for the episcopal Confirmation of those seeking a ministry in that Church, who have been Confirmed in the Methodist Church.

The Eucharist: Two Theologies or One?

The final chapter continues consideration of the theological understanding of Holy Communion in both churches begun in the first interim report, focussing particularly on 'Eucharist: Sacrament of Unity' (2001) (the Church of England bishops' response to the Roman Catholic bishops' document 'One Bread One Body' 1998), and on 'His Presence Makes the Feast' (2003) from the Methodist Faith and Order Committee. It concurs with the claim made in the Common Statement: 'The richness of meaning in the Eucharist has produced different theological emphases. These are mostly differences within rather than between our churches.' And it claims, 'It does not appear… that there are fundamental differences of understanding between us.'

This whole chapter deserves study, but this is the conclusion in full:

• 67. In this chapter we have set out the resources - official and unofficial - in our two churches for the understanding of the Eucharist, Holy Communion or Lord's Supper. We have noted our common heritage in the writings of the English Reformers and the Book of Common Prayer, the work of Anglican divines up to the mid-eighteenth century, and the eucharistic hymnody of Charles Wesley. We have brought the story up to date (though at the cost of leaving out considerable tracts of history) and summarised recent reflection on the Eucharist within our churches. Differences of practice with regard to the eucharistic elements, presidency, and the scope for non-liturgical worship have been considered in the Common Statement An Anglican-Methodist Covenant and in our first Interim Report In the Spirit of the Covenant.

• 68. The Common Statement concluded that the inexhaustible richness of the Eucharist had given rise to different theological emphases, but noted that these were held as differences within, rather than between our churches. It is a basic rule of ecumenical engagement that we should not require more from our ecumenical partner than we require from the members of our own community. We therefore concur with the judgement of the Common Statement that there are no 'fundamental differences of understanding between us' (para. 138). But we believe that we can go further on the basis of the material that we have looked at in this chapter and say that there is no discernible difference in the teaching of our churches on the Eucharist. With regard to this central sacrament of the Christian Church we share a common faith.

The Joint Implementation Commission, created in 2003 and consisting of six Methodist and six Anglican members with a representative from the United Reformed Church, will make its final report to Conference and General Synod in 2008, dealing with such issues as the diaconate, 'Calvinism and Arminianism' and episkope. It already realises that there will have to be a continued JIC from 2008, with a renewed mandate and fresh membership.

THE METHODIST ANGLICAN COVENANT

CONTENTS

• Words of the Covenant
• Covenant page of Methodist Church web-site
• Order of Service for use in local signings
• Implimenting the Covenant
  • Everything you wanted to know about the Covenant and were afraid to ask
  • Good News Stories
• Links

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AN ANGLICAN-METHODIST COVENANT

We the Methodist Church of Great Britain and the Church of England, on the basis of our shared history, our full agreement in the apostolic faith, our shared theological understandings of the nature and mission of the Church and of its ministry and oversight, and our agreement on the goal of full visible unity, as set out in the previous sections of our Common Statement, hereby make the following Covenant in the form of interdependent Affirmations and Commitments. We do so in a spirit of penitence for all that human sinfulness and narrowness of vision have contributed to our past divisions, believing that we have been impoverished through our separation and that our witness to the gospel has been weakened accordingly, and in a spirit of thanksgiving and joy for the convergence in faith and collaboration in mission that we have experienced in recent years.

AFFIRMATIONS

1. We affirm one another's churches as true churches belonging to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and as truly participating in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God.
2. We affirm that in both our churches the word of God is authentically preached, and the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are duly administered and celebrated.
3. We affirm that both our churches confess in word and life the apostolic faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the ecumenical Creeds.
4. We affirm that one another's ordained and lay ministries are given by God as instruments of God's grace, to build up the people of God in faith, hope and love, for the ministry of word, sacrament and pastoral care and to share in God's mission in the world.
5. We affirm that one another's ordained ministries possess both the inward call of the Holy Spirit and Christ's commission given through the Church.
6. We affirm that both our churches embody the conciliar, connexional nature of the Church and that communal, collegial and personal oversight (episkope) is exercised within them in various forms.
7. We affirm that there already exists a basis for agreement on the principles of episcopal oversight as a visible sign and instrument of the communion of the Church in time and space.

COMMITMENTS

1. We commit ourselves, as a priority, to work to overcome the remaining obstacles to the organic unity of our two churches, on the way to the full visible unity of Christ's Church. In particular, we look forward to the time when the fuller visible unity of our churches makes possible a united, interchangeable ministry.
2. We commit ourselves to realise more deeply our common life and mission and to share the distinctive contributions of our traditions, taking steps to bring about closer collaboration in all areas of witness and service in our needy world.
3. We commit ourselves to continue to welcome each other's baptised members to participate in the fellowship, worship and mission of our churches.
4. We commit ourselves to encourage forms of eucharistic sharing, including eucharistic hospitality, in accordance with the rules of our respective churches.
5. We commit ourselves to listen to each other and to take account of each other's concerns, especially in areas that affect our relationship as churches.
6. We commit ourselves to continue to develop structures of joint or shared communal, collegial and personal oversight, including shared consultation and decision-making, on the way to a fully united ministry of oversight.

ANGLICAN-METHODIST COVENANT

District and Diocese of Sheffield.

Everything you wanted to know about sharing in worship but were afraid to ask

A Guide and Encouragement from the Ecumenical Officers

The vision of Father Paul Couturier who created the international Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in the 1930s was for a massive solidarity in prayer by Christians of all denominations, seeking the mind of Christ. He believed that this committed and regular prayer, which he came to think of like an ecumenical monastery, would, if it were continued faithfully, eventually be rewarded by the gift of unity - Christ willed it.

Common prayer and worship do not, of course, absolve the churches from the need for sensible decisions about working in partnership in mission, but they will always be the foundation for any valid (= Christlike) structure.

This means that it the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, entered into nationally in 2003, is to have any hope of moving towards the unity which Chist wills for our two churches (and that will may not match anything currently in the mind of human beings) it must be founded upon the common prayer and worship of Methodists and Anglicans - not of course forgetting other Christians - in every local place. And, at least for Anglicans and Methodists, that will mean moving beyond those fleeting annual ecumenical events that we have all done for years. It Will mean breaking our pattern and doing something quite new and quite often with our Christian friends down the road.

'But the rules don't allow it.'

' We are not in a Local Ecumenical Partnership.'

' 'The members like their own service.'

' We have enough clergy and laypeople to cover our own worship, thank you.'

'A Methodist minister is not fully recognised by the Church of England and so can't preside at Holy Communion in a parish church'

In fact, you will be surprised how much sharing of worship is allowed by the rules of the Methodist Church and the Church of England. Here are some examples:

1. Suppose a particular Anglican parish has a couple of (lay) Readers in it and the local Methodist church no active Local Preachers attached to it. Those Readers could be invited to take part in or lead services in the Methodist church, going on the Methodist Plan. They couldn't, of course, preside at Communion services, but they could do all the things they ware licensed to do in the Church of England. They could even be authorised as Local Preachers by the Methodist Circuit.
2. But the situation might be the other way round, with plenty of Local Preachers available in a community, but no Anglican Readers. Again, it is perfectly possible for Local Preachers to conduct worship in parish churches. If, for example, there were many funerals in a given community, it could be a tremendous help to the incumbent if he or she could ask a Local Preacher to take a funeral now and again, in appropriate circumstances and with the approval of the family concerned. In fact a Local Preacher with local knowledge of families could be a better person to take a particular funeral than, say, a new vicar.
3. Suppose a Parochial Church Council and the local Methodist Church Council agree that it would be good to have a united Eucharist (Holy Communion) once a quarter - is it possible? Yes! The Methodist Conference can authorise an Anglican priest to minister in its churches, and... Well, of course the Church of England can't officially recognize the full validity of Methodist orders (but the Covenant Joint Implementation Commission are working on it!), but as long as it says in rather small print somewhere that the occasion at which the Methodist minister presides at the Eucharist in the parish church is, properly speaking, a Methodist or an Ecumenical occasion (not an Anglican one), how many people are going to worry?
4. Suppose that in your immediate area there is a Methodist chapel but not an Anglican place of worship, or - the other way round - a parish church but no Methodist church nearby; and suppose you know that there are in the area significant numbers of members of the denomination that does not have a local church; what can you do? The denomination that does have a local church building can make a Declaration of Ecumenical Welcome, which means that they commit themselves to welcome members of the other church denomination, to incorporate styles of worship that those members will find familiar (perhaps inviting a local minister or lay leader to take a service occasionally) into their own service plan, and to invite members of the other denomination to play a role in the organisation of church life (perhaps on the church council).
5. And suppose you don't just want to make savings in church heating and ministerial resources, but you really want to pray and worship regularly together, for the sake of increasing trust and friendship, with a real determination to find the mind of Christ for the future, and with a common concern for effective Christian outreach, are you going to let the few official permissions and authorisations required get in the way of your progress? The local leaders of both denominations are positively longing to give these permissions and authorisations, and to see local unity in prayer leading to the unknown future shape of the church and its mission.

'It is because the disciples are together that Christ is in the midst of them. In the face of the ugliness of their separations, this simultaneity will allow Christians at last to present to their non-Christian brothers and sisters, and to all waiting creation, the moving and visible beauty of the unity of their spiritual efforts, the prelude and measure of Christian unity, transcending any purely human strivings for concord.'

Paul Couturier