Today I had a chance to learn about another aspect of sharing ministry, a very important dimension which too often is hidden or not even considered. I was invited to sit in at the meeting of the Regional Senior leadership meeting in Northampton held at theBishop's House in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Northampton. Bishop John chaired the meeting, and Bishop Peter Doyle, our host, invited me to sit in on the conversation.
It was an honor to be invited because the meeting involved the Methodist Chair, the Baptist Regional Minister, and the Country Ecumenical Officer in addition to the host and Bishop John. They had an interesting discussion about the nature of their ministries, with a little "guessing exercise" that gave the ecumenical partners a chance to share what they knew (or didn't know) about the denominations each represented. For example, I learned that there are 5,700 Methodist churches in England, 155 Baptist churches in England, about 400 Anglican churches in the Peterborough Diocese alone, and 69 Roman Catholic parishes in the Northampton Diocese (one of 22 RC dioceses in England).
They also discussed specific Local Ecumenical Projects where churches of their various bodies form local churches and use clergy from their respective traditions in a pre-decided pattern depending on a variety of factors.
After lunch we visited All Saints Parish in Brixworth (where Bishop John is the Bishop of Brixworth), a church starting out as a monastery over 1,300 years ago by monks as a "Minster Church" from which other churches were started. Their new Vicar was installed just Saturday and had her first service just yesterday, so we "dropped in" on her and her husband for tea. Nothing like having the bishop visit a day or two after just starting out in a new post.
Tomorrow I head out by train from Huntingdon to Norwich where Andrew Tyler will meet me and conduct me for a few days on my journey in the dioceses of Norwich and Lincoln (the oldest Local Ministry diocese in the Church of England). We start early for the train station.
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