Читать книгу A Complete Parish Priest Peter Green (1871-1961) - Frank Sargeant - Страница 13

CHAPTER FIVE: EVANGELIST

In October 1926 Green held a 15-day mission at St Philip’s to celebrate the centenary of the parish and his twenty five years in Salford. For the mission he trained men and women to visit, run house groups and speak in public. From this venture the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of St Philip’s were formed as leaders of the church, giving them a recognised ministry, whilst supported by Green who assured them he would stay with them.

As a result of this successful mission he published Parochial Missions Today in 1928. He was convinced that evangelistic missions, preaching the Cross and the conviction of personal sin and the need for salvation, which involved the emotions and the will were not out of date and were preferable to teaching missions which appealed to the intellect but did not demand conversions.

By that time he had conducted 25 evangelistic missions believing them to be a powerful weapon in invigorating parish life.

Donald Coggan linked Green with Simeon and Venn as exemplars of English parish priests and evangelists.⁸³ If he was right in this respect, he was most certainly wrong when he said Green was no administrator. Apart from the detailed instructions he gave in his previous How to books, his Parochial Missions Today⁸⁴ gave a rationale for parochial missions and advice on their preparation and purpose, their aims and objectives and their general running. In particular what is conveyed is Green’s insistence on good communication, co-operation and collaborative ministry. His attitude to parochial missions demonstrated his enthusiasm and commitment for them.

By parochial missions he meant evangelistic ones. He was well aware that the view was that parochial missions had had their day, but he believed that it was lack of faith in them which had caused the decline as human nature had not changed over the last half century. Christ, if simply preached, could still draw, and the Holy Spirit had the same power to call to repentance, to convert, renew and sanctify.

He was insistent, after his experience of forty missions, that there was no lack of capable missioners. It was the message rather than the eloquence of the preacher which mattered. This meant thinking less of the man and more of the Holy Spirit. It was the prayerfulness of the missioner which counted, finding his own method, and making his own mistakes. Green pleaded with young clergy “to stir up the gift.”⁸⁵

Changed conditions did not call for a change of method. It was argued parochial missions might have been effective forty years ago before universal education was available, and the ignorant people with gross sins needed a strong emotional appeal in their lives but that time had gone. In addition there were intellectual doubts prevalent such as: Is the Bible true? Did Jesus live? Was he divine? There were other doubts such as: Has modern science proved religion to be a delusion? Can psychology deal with sin better than theology? Is the church on the side of the powers against the workers? Hence, in the face of these questions it was claimed that the Church must address itself to the intellect or the mind by teaching missions rather than to the heart or will through evangelistic ones.

Green admitted there had been improvements in manners, morals and education of the working class but that did not mean people were better Christians; and the aim of the parochial mission was to bring people to a point of decision: “Choose this day whom you will serve”, with the reply “we will serve the Lord.”⁸⁶

For Green the idea of a teaching mission was bad psychology as it was aimed at the intellect when it should be aimed at the will prompted by the emotions. He thought what passed for intellectual doubt was really a lack of interest.

He conceded that teaching missions were useful for those who had accepted Christ but still had intellectual doubts. They were in a position to face them, unlike the unconverted. Furthermore, preaching failed if it did not stress conversion which was the sum of the Christian life not merely the beginning of it. The acceptance of Christ with the consequent self-dedication and consecration should be part of every sermon with the aim of bringing sinners under conviction and leading them to accept a free salvation.

Often congregations did not take their responsibilities seriously. The mission was not for their benefit but for the benefit of the parish but if the Church was the body of Christ then how it presented itself would be the way Christ was made known, a primary purpose. If the local congregation did not have the heart for its own neighbours it would not have it for those beyond its parish boundaries. Green knew the objections to parochial missions made by individual congregations who complained they interfered with the regular services; the emotional appeal was unhealthy, and pastoral visiting could be as effective, but he feared it was more likely they did not want new people to interfere with their comfortable existence.

In a later Fishers of Men,⁸⁷ Green expanded on the power of the emotions. Emotional appeals should not be derided as psychologists were agreed that human beings were moved to action by their emotions and not by reason. He listed among the powerful emotions love, fear, shame, remorse, despair, hope, confidence and joy.⁸⁸

There was no doubt that parishes had to be in the right condition for a parochial mission. Sometimes the preparation time was too short; sometimes the mission itself was too short, often there were not appropriate groups in the parishes to which to refer the converted people; often the zeal of the workers was exhausted and there was no provision of aftercare.

A question which engaged Green was the appropriate but acknowledged form of liturgy for a mission. It should conform to the teaching, practice and ceremonial of the Book of Common Prayer without extremes. He regarded the via media of hearty homely services as the survival of Georgian or early Victorian “slovenliness and neglect”,⁸⁹ but the liturgy should be introduced with the consent of the regular worshippers and any changes made before the mission.

He summed up the intention of a parish mission as follows:

“In a Mission we ask God to grant a special outpouring of His Holy Spirit, an outpouring on the congregation for edification and sanctification, and an outpouring on those that are outside for conversion.”⁹⁰ He considered it necessary for the parish priest to have a trusted band of people round him, including some young people whom he had prepared for confirmation and who had grown up “under his eye.”⁹¹ It would take some years to build up such a loyal group to justify what he called unashamedly “aggressive evangelistic work.”⁹²

Green insisted that where the people of a church were self-satisfied there was little point in having a parochial mission, and certainly not for the sake of it. One way to arouse evangelistic spirit was to encourage the support of foreign missions in the first place. In Green’s experience those keenest on missions abroad were also keen on social and evangelistic work at home.

Green admitted that after World War I there was depression all round. Parochial missions were a way of lifting the spirits as they started people praying with intention, speaking publicly, and gave a sense of corporate responsibility and deepened personal religion, but failed if they did not draw outsiders in. Parishes were in different states. The importance was to feel to be the Body of Christ, but with the potential for attracting those outside the church. Some had a young congregation with full Sunday schools but their parents who needed to be converted, others had good eclectic congregations but did not touch the parishioners. Green pointed out: “the Vicar, when he is inducted, is given the charge of a parish, not of a congregation. It is for their soul he will have to give an account at the Last Day.”⁹³ He considered the parish priest’s chief objective was to reclaim the lapsed communicants and to convert those who were formal members of the Church but not converted Christians.

Making a dig at the uneven allocation of clergy between North and South in the country he agreed there was the major problem of deciding who would care for the newly converted after a mission in a northern parish of 12,000 souls with one priest, his own position at the time, compared with a parish in the south of 1,400 souls with five priests. The answer must be the quality of the voluntary recruits.

Green displayed his own careful nature and his eye for practical planning and detail as he recommended discussing the planning of a parochial mission with the Church Council and its evangelistic committee as its purpose was to cooperate with the clergy on spiritual matters.

Members should decide on the practical details of when to hold the mission bearing in mind the date of a proposed confirmation so that converts could be prepared for it; the length of the mission which he suggested should be three weeks with four Sundays; the number of missioners as the chief missioner can only do the Great Mission Service every evening of the week; which missioners should do the women’s services and which the men’s at factory gates etc.; and who would be the children’s missioner. Green thought it might be necessary to hold the children’s mission at another time, but admitted that if held at the same time enthusiasm for one spills over to the other.