BRITISH METHODISTS could have bishops in the historic succession within
seven years. Delegates at next month’s Methodist Conference will debate a plan
to create the denomination’s first bishops. A final decision is expected to be
made in 2007.
If the proposals in the report
What Sort of Bishops? Models of Episcopacy and British Methodism are
backed next month, churchgoers will be asked whether they believe that the
plans fit their tradition.
“We want to know whether our people would recognise bishops as Methodist
rather than as something alien being transplanted in,” the Revd Kenneth
Howcroft, Assistant Secretary of the Conference, said last week. Some
Methodists didn’t want bishops, and were quite frightened by what they
perceived as Anglican bishops, he said. But Methodist bishops would not be
copies of their Anglican counterparts.
“The closer we got to the Church of England, the more we realised that we
would have to develop our own thinking about bishops, so that we had something
to bring to the table. Otherwise, we would find ourselves accepting the C of E
model by default,” said Mr Howcroft.
“We have our own ways of living in communion, and we want to offer that back
to other Churches. How a communion coheres is an Anglican issue, and we are
working on that in our own terms. We might have something to add to the debate.”
The report considers what pastoral and leadership tasks are undertaken by
bishops, and how these correspond to the levels of authority in the present
Methodist Church. The report says that British Methodism “cherishes” its place
in the holy Catholic Church. It celebrates the inheritance of the apostolic
faith, and it exercises a “communal, collegial and personal” episkope. But it
asks whether “an order of bishops” could help it in its pastoral and missionary
task and in its ecumenical relations.
Creating bishops would not be an admission that the Church lacked anything
essential, the report makes clear. It would accept “the sign of episcopal
sucession” only if it did not involve repudiating what it “believed itself to
have received from God”. Nor would bishops be isolated or superior, but would
have to “exercise oversight within the ministry of the whole people of God and
at its service”.
Methodist bishops would work alongside others. Their primary focus would be
the Methodist Conference. “In Methodist understanding, personal episkope is
very clearly derived from communal episkope,” the report says. Individuals had
no authority independent of their colleagues and the communal body.
Methodist bishops, men and women, would be presbyters and bishops for life,
taking their place within the threefold order of ministry. They might revert to
“ordinary circuit ministry” or another position, after serving in episcopal
office. They would lead by their example of searching for “a contemporary form
of holy living”, and in mission and ministry. They would expect to be involved
in ordination “subject to the decisions of Conference”, whose President would
always “automatically” be ordained bishop.
Methodists are asked to consider five different models of who would become a
bishop. The most modest proposal is to have just one bishop, the Conference
President. A second model adds selected past Presidents; a third proposes the
President and district chairs; a fourth adds the general secretary to the
others; and the final model dispenses with past Presidents but adds three
superintendents or other presbyters in each district to the rest.
The Methodist Council, and the faith and order committee, has posed two
questions: did the report “adequately articulate a Methodist understanding of
episcopacy”? And “who should the specific representatives of that ‘corporate
episkope’ be?”
If next month’s Conference approves, the options will be discussed
throughout the Methodist Church in Britain, and also with its ecumenical
partners. Responses would be sent to the general secretary by the end of
October 2006, and the matter would return to the Methodist Conference in 2007
for what the report describes as a decision “whether to embrace the historic
episcopate”.
Mr Howcroft said that the “historical gift” of episcopacy could then be
received between 2010 and 2012, to coincide with the implementation of the
covenant with the Church of England.
“If we said that we were to receive this historical gift, where should we
receive it from?” he asked. It could be from the Church of England as a partner
of the Covenant. Or from another Church, “so that we are bringing something
distinctive to the covenant”.
www.methodist.org.uk