A guide to the A-M covenant

A guide to the Anglican-Methodist Covenant

Last Updated on Thursday, 23 September 2010 10:05

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 - as 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 if the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, entered into nationally in 2003, is to have any hope of moving towards the unity which Christ 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're 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:

• 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 were licensed to do in the Church of England. They could even be authorised as Local Preachers by the Methodist Circuit.
• 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.
• 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; forms of application for 'authorised to minister' status in the Methodist Church can be obtained from the District Office. 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?
• 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).
• 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

Click here to read the Anglican-Methodist Covenant

Attachments:

File	order	Last Modified
Joint Implementation Commission of the Anglican-Methodist Covenant-Second Interi		05/10/10 12:12