Integrity Matters

We once had a team from a large evangelical church come and help us with some summer outreach. We did children's clubs, door-to-door and a bit of outreach to the community who were largely from a Muslim background. The large church brought their expert in Muslim outreach to do some training and lead some of the outreach sessions. It turned out he was getting large sums of money to do church planting and was using the visit to plan some future church plants in our town. When he eventually told me why he'd come up to 'help', he also told me that he couldn't partner with me because I was toxic in the diocese. I was toxic because I'd stood up against the liberalism of the diocese, but his money was dependent on staying friends with the diocese. He would boast that the uber-liberal archdeacon loved him. He chose to partner with liberals and not the 'toxic' evangelical.

As part of the the Church of England, you usually go to an Archdeacon's Visitation each year. This has a legal aspect (church wardens are sworn in to their post) and a corporate worship aspect - it's essentially a church service at which the Archdeacon preaches. This presented us with a bit of a problem given the uber-liberalism of the Archdeacon. The idea was that you took your church wardens and church council, but the difficulty was that you were taking them to hear a false teacher. Following some actions by the said Archdeacon (nominating a transgender priest for General Synod and becoming a trustee of a liberal campaigning group on LGBT issues), I suggested she had made her position clear and that it was time we evangelicals in the diocese stop going. It was possible to do this and even legal - you just had to do the legal bit another time. I was the only one in the diocese who did this and was criticized by fellow evangelicals for suggesting it was important. A couple of years later, the Archdeacon promoted the new 'inclusive' gospel in her sermon, so those evangelicals in her archdeaconry took their people to hear a false teacher, a bit like we might have taken our people to hear Billy Graham in the past!

A little while after, as I was considering leaving my post and hopefully planting outside of the Church of England, I spoke to the conservative evangelical bishop who was involved in trying to appoint someone to a neighbouring church. He asked about whether I would be willing to take the church on as well as the two I already had. I declined giving several reasons, including the possibility that I would be leaving. Shortly afterwards I received a phone call from my aforementioned Archdeacon which started "Stephen, I hear you're leaving..." The supposedly supportive bishop had at least in part passed my plans on (is there a link between this and the new enthusiasm to plant in my town from the diocese?).

A while after, having spent significant time setting ourselves up in our town for the long term, so that we could plant with an Anglican church planting group who we had been talking to about the option for some time, I had an assessment meeting with two of their church leaders. A week or two prior to the meeting they started asking me about another town a little way away from us - they were hoping to plant there. I went to their conference and one of their trustees encouraged me to think about planting there, which was odd because there were already some conservative evangelical churches in that town (unlike our town). When it came to the assessment they weren't interested in our town, they wanted me to go to this other town. In fact, it turned out we could plant anywhere we wanted, apart from where we'd set ourselves up to plant. As part of their research they had spoken to our 'friendly' bishop who was clearly concerned about what a faithful Anglican church might do to the church he was trying to get someone appointed to. This is the church he still hasn't got sorted 18 months later and has managed to achieve getting it reduced to a half-time post. It was too late for us to practically change our plans for where to plant (plus we weren't too keen on what had happened anyway!)

In the end I resigned. These supposedly orthodox 'friends' put me in an increasingly impossible position. They weren't the only reason. Of course an increasingly aggressively liberal diocese did lots to make my life difficult. But when people ask me why I left and why I don't think conservative evangelicalism has much future in Anglicanism in the UK I want to talk about integrity within conservative evangelicalism.

I read this quote from John Maxwell referring to the book of Daniel this morning:

Leaders must first possess godly qualities before they develop skills.

This matches Paul's focus on godliness for leaders in the pastorals (1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9). Without integrity, whatever you build will not stand, probably not in this life, but certainly not before the Lord (James 3:1).

For what it's worth, although it's sometimes a struggle not to be bitter (I've been basically unemployed for over 6 months and it isn't the best time for that!), I wish these guys well. For one thing, I know that I've not shown perfect integrity. For another, as far as I know they love and trust the Lord, they want to tell people about Jesus and they want to disciple people in ways faithful to Scripture. But integrity matters and when you cut corners in your leadership because it's convenient or achieves goals you want there are consequences. Those consequences have been tough for me, but the consequences for their ministry are more significant. In the end, you find you're building on sand not rock.