Going for Gold

As the Para-Olympics have now finished our minds are fresh with the image of plane-loads of athletes returning with an unbelievable number of medals. The world is asking how we do it. Sixty six medals in the Olympics put us second in the table, one above China. One hundred and forty seven in the Para-Olympics also put us second, this time one below China. How can so small an island produce so many champions. The answer, it would seem, is that a lot of lottery money has been sunk into Olympic sports. We (that is lottery players) funded our athletes to the tune of about four million pounds per medal. The whole situation is a wonder of focused strategic planning with money being targeted to fund what is likely to succeed. In the process, some pretty hardnosed decisions had to be taken and not only have athletes been funded, to enable them to devote themselves to full-time training, but the infrastructure of Sport GB has been set up and funded to achieve the greatest effect.

It brings to mind another scenario, which is the current state of play in the Church of England, in which the treasure chest of the Church Commissioners is being unlocked to fund those projects of church building and growth which are deemed likely to succeed. The same principles are in play. Proper strategic planning is thought likely to produce results and the hoped-for change to church growth. Money will be channeled into those things which will provide such growth, whilst other parts of church life will lose their funding. If it worked for the Olympics, then why should it not work for the Church?

Olympic funding and sharp management is not the whole story. Without the skills of the runners, the rowers, the horse-riders and so on, there would be no medals. It is not just focused strategic thinking that brought in the gold, although that seems to have helped. Primarily it took the focused and often sacrificial dedication of each athlete to devote their lives to the pursuit of excellence in their chosen field. The good management of second rate athletes will not active Olympic glory, but good strategic thinking is a tool which can greatly assist in the fostering and development of talent.

For the Church of England, the Renewal and Reform program is a welcome tool both to unlock and to focus the potential that is there within the church. Indeed it might be said that the church will only succeed in its mission if it gets its act together and starts working in a much more determined way. But we must not confuse good management with the inherent talent of being the face of Christ in the world. I support the Renewal and Reform program, indeed I voted for it before I left General Synod in 2015. But the program itself cannot be the success we hope for. It can only a means to foster that success. Being good managers is not what the church is about, although managing well ‘what we are about’ is to be expected. What we are about is to live lives of holiness with an engagement in the world which will always be sacrificial and self-giving and through which the face of Christ is revealed. This raises questions as to whether all bishops need to be outgoing, dynamic managers, or whether there is a place for mystics, prophets, thinkers, or men and women of deep prayer. Good management on its own is of little use unless what is managed is thereby transformed and empowered in mission.

But there is one other question about Olympic gold which is relevant to these discussions. There is something glorious about coming home with so many medals, at the cost of several hundred millions of pounds, but does that help engender community sport projects in the ordinary places of this land? In other worlds, it has been argued that there is something very elitist in the way that Olympic funding is done. It can be argued that, by going for excellence, ordinary people in ordinary communities might be inspired to go out and engage in sport, but would the money being spent of Olympic gold be more productive if were to be spent at the more local level? For the church, is the present ethos of the Church of England weighted to the more 'successful' and high profile churches, whereas there may be many small congregations, perhaps condemned by having small numbers, which area nonetheless exercising heroic ministry as salt in the communities in which their lives are set?