Page 47 - The Church of Ireland Apologetic for Mission?
P. 47

The temptation is for smoothing over to become more important than honest frank discussion. It resembles the family priding itself on not arguing in public, but where the effort of keeping up appearances becomes exhausting.
These pressures lead to a paralysis of thinking and risk taking at every level. This is likely to manifest itself in any of a number of ways, at every level of Church life:
• To be risk averse.
• To be more maintenance focused rather than being instinctively entrepreneurial. This loses the
full advantage of the creative and entrepreneurial skills that members have in their everyday lives.
• To develop a tradition of not saying anything controversial or challenging - the ‘don’t rock the boat’ syndrome.
• To obfuscate and use ‘holy language’ to give the appearance of saying something but actually saying little.
• To use language that does not communicate or engage with the world outside of the institution.
• To talk so formally that meaningful engagement with difficult or underlying issues all but ceases.
• To act in such a way where structure becomes more important than
the goal. Process becomes more important than achieving that goal.
• To focus on outward appearance. Public image matters as it enhances authority. Yet excessive concern for public image creates a culture of denial.
• To live by the norm that the safe conventions are the ones that are protected and nurtured.
• To put ‘good taste’ before telling the truth.
One interviewee captured a dilemma when he said, “The Church of Ireland silences our strident voices to generate consensus. We need more space for our people to be prophetic.”
b. History, psyche and identity: One
can only speculate on how history
has helped shaped psyche, identity
and organisational culture within the Church of Ireland. A sense of identity is a knowledge of who one is, where one has come from, and how one is placed in the world. It is not only individuals who need a sense of identity. Communities and churches have similar needs!
Identity is something that is shaped not just by the present, but also by the past. It is found not only within the reaches of oneself but is also negotiated in relationship to others.
To examine the human psyche is to look at how one tends to use personality traits to think about and evaluate
what is going on in the world or the immediate environment. It is to ask how a person thinks, learns, solves problems, remembers or is able to forget. The psyche is not just a collection of problem solving or analytical mechanisms within an individual. It includes their motives and desires – the things they aspire to, desire, fear and believe are necessary for life.
One wonders how much of the concentration on process goes back
to the shock of disestablishment of
the Church of Ireland in 1871? The
Irish Church Act ended the role of the Church of Ireland as a state church. It also terminated state support and took into government ownership much church property. Having to redefine not only its identity the Church of Ireland also had to ensure its financial viability.
The development of the Church of Ireland from 1871 onwards also took place in the context of turbulent political events on this island. It has been a context where religion has often been a tribal marker,
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