A provision in a statute authorizing notice to be given to an absent defendant to appear by publishing the same in a newspaper once a week for four months is not satisfied by a publication once a week for four lunar months, but the word "month," when so used, signifies a calendar month.
To support a decree for foreclosure against an absent defendant brought in by publication, publication for the full period required is necessary.
Cooper v. Reynolds, 10 Wall. 308, distinguished.
"the feeble defense and supineness and indifference to the interests of the said bondholders on the part of the said Green Cove Springs and Melrose Railroad Company, its directors and officers, as shown by the said judicial proceedings in said state court, if the same was intended to affect and destroy the lien of said deed of trust, was and is a fraud upon the rights of the said trustee and said bondholders;"
"that said company, grantor in said deed of trust, in effect consented to a sale of said road to pay simple contract debts and demands, which were not a lien upon its property paramount to said lien created by said deed of trust, and many of which had not been reduced to judgment;"
"a decree of sale was made before the indebtedness claimed to be due was ascertained, whereby no party in interest was given any time or opportunity to redeem or pay said indebtedness."
The bill prayed for a receiver and injunction against the transfer or encumbering of the road; a decree of foreclosure of the deed of trust, and for a decree declaring the sale under the judicial proceedings in the state court to be null and void, as against the plaintiff and the bona fide holders of any of its bonds.
Two answers were filed to the bill, which presented three distinct defenses: first, that the mortgage or deed of trust required that sixty percent in value of the outstanding bondholders should request the trustee in writing to initiate proceedings, and that no such request was alleged in the bill; second, that plaintiff herein, the Guaranty Trust and Safe Deposit Company was a party defendant to the proceedings in the state court, was bound by the decree and sale in that court, and that such sale extinguished the lien of the mortgage sought to be enforced in this suit; third, that there were no bonds of the railroad company which executed the mortgage to the plaintiff legally outstanding, and consequently it had not sufficient interest or title to maintain its suit. A decree was entered in the circuit court dismissing the bill, but no opinion appeared to have been delivered or filed.
"it shall be the duty of the said trustees for the time being, and they shall or will, upon written request of the holders of sixty percentum of the said bonds then outstanding, enter upon and take possession of the said railroad property and estate,"
"or the said trustee shall and will, after or without entering upon or taking such possession, upon the written request of the holders of bonds of a like amount, proceed upon and under this indenture of mortgage to sell the railroad property and estate, . . . at public sale, in the City of Philadelphia, first giving at least four weeks' notice by publication,"
etc., "and grant and convey the same to the purchaser, freed from all and every trust hereby created," etc.
As there is no averment in the bill that sixty percent of the owners of the outstanding bonds had requested action on the part of the trustee, it is insisted that these proceedings were instituted without authority, and the case of Chicago &c. Railroad Co. v. Fosdick, 106 U. S. 47, 106 U. S. 77, is claimed to be decisive of this question. In that case, which was a bill for foreclosure, the proviso was that the trustee, upon the written request of the holders of a majority of the bonds then outstanding, should proceed to collect both principal and interest of all such bonds outstanding by foreclosure and sale of said property or otherwise, as therein provided. It was argued that the office of this clause was merely to make the obligation of the trustees imperative, instead of optional, but the Court held that the whole article must be taken together as a unit, and "the nature of the provision and the character of its object must be taken into consideration as furnishing the rule of its interpretation." It will be observed, however, that the proviso was directed against the very proceeding taken by the trustee in the suit -- namely a foreclosure and sale of the property -- while in the present case it is directed only to a taking possession, or a sale under the deed of trust, without the institution of legal proceedings.
A case nearer in point is that of Morgan's Steamship Co. v. Texas Central Railway, 137 U. S. 171, decided at the present term, in which the condition was that on default continuing for sixty days in the payment of interest, or any part of principal, the principal of the bonds should become immediately due, and that, upon request of seventy-five percent of the holders of bonds, and written notice of the same, the trustee should take possession of the property, and operate it for the benefit of the bondholders, and that upon like request he should proceed to foreclose the mortgage and sell the property to the highest bidder for cash. It was also provided that nothing contained in the instrument should be construed to prevent or interfere with the foreclosure by any court of competent jurisdiction. It was held that the trustee could maintain a bill to foreclose the mortgage upon occurrence of a default, without averring or proving a request of seventy-five percent of the bondholders, as such request was necessary only in case the trustee wished to proceed to foreclose or take possession ex mero motu without the intervention of a court.
We think that such limitations upon the power of the trustee to take legal proceedings to enforce payment of the amount secured should be strictly construed. In this case, the condition only relates to the taking possession of the property under the deed of trust, or to a sale in the City of Philadelphia, under the power of sale contained therein, and we think it should not be held to apply to foreclosure proceedings begun in a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain a judicial sale of the property. This was the ruling in the Eighth Circuit by Judge Dillon in Alexander v. Central Railroad of Iowa, 3 Dillon 487, and by Judge Caldwell in Credit Co. v. Arkansas Central Railroad Company, 15 F. 46, and we think it is sound.
of all others." This clause, however, is open to the objection of attempting to provide against a remedy in the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, and oust the jurisdiction of the courts, which, as is settled by the uniform current of authority, cannot be done. Hope v. International Society, 4 Ch.D. 327; Edwards v. Society, 1 Q.B.D. 563; Horton v. Sayer, 4 H. & N. 643; Scott v. Avery, 8 Exch. 487, 5 H.L.Cas. 811; Thompson v. Charnock, 8 T.R. 139; Mitchell v. Harris, 2 Ves.Jr. 129; Tobey v. County of Bristol, 3 Story 800; Noyes v. Marsh, 123 Mass. 286; King v. Howard, 27 Mo. 21; Conner v. Drake, 1 Ohio St. 166; Trott v. City Ins. Co., 1 Cliff. 439; 2 Story Eq. § 1457.
Again, it is evident that this was a condition for the benefit of the grantor and its assigns, and that intervening lienholders, and those who have purchased the property under decrees in their favor, do not stand in a position to take advantage of this covenant. The sole object of the covenant was to protect the mortgagor against a seizure and sale of its property for nonpayment of interest or principal at the mere caprice of the trustee, or without the consent of a majority of the bondholders, and it has no application to a case where the mortgagors have already lost the property under adverse proceedings instituted by parties having no connection with the mortgage.
defendant in that bill. On the day the bill was filed, the state court appointed a receiver of the property.
In the latter part of July, 1884, Budington, Wilson & Co. filed a bill in the same court against the Green Cove Springs and Melrose Railroad Company, Philip J. Canova, the Chester Construction Company, and the Guaranty Trust and Safe Deposit Company, plaintiff in this suit, to recover for labor in building the road and to enforce the payment of certain of these bonds deposited with it as collateral security. On the 6th of February, 1885, these two suits in the state court were, by order of that court, consolidated, and thereafter proceeded as one suit. Before this consolidation was effected, however, and on July 29, 1884, the court made an order that the Trust and Safe Deposit Company appear and answer the bill of complaint on or before the first Monday of December, 1884, "otherwise the complainants' said bill shall be taken pro confesso." It was further ordered that this order "be published once a week for four months in some paper published in Clay County, Florida." The only evidence of publication appears from the affidavit of H. E. Bemis, the business manager of the Springs, a newspaper published in the Town of Green Cove Springs, that the foregoing notice "was duly published in the said newspaper for nineteen consecutive weeks prior to this date, to the best of his knowledge and belief." This affidavit was made and subscribed the 15th day of December, 1884. The testimony further established that the newspaper was published on Saturday of each week, and, as the manager swears that it was published for nineteen consecutive weeks prior to this date, the last publication must have been upon Saturday, December 13th, and the first publication on the 9th of August. The notice, however, required the absent defendants to appear and answer the bill on or before the first Monday in December, which was the first day of the month; hence there could have been only seventeen publications, including the first on the 9th of August, before the day the defendants were required to answer, and from this day to the first Monday of December would be only 114 days, more than four lunar months, but eight days less than four calendar months, before the first of December.
Avery v. Pixley, 4 Mass. 460, 461. Indeed, the English rule was not adopted without a protest from Lord Kenyon, one of the most eminent of her common law judges, in Lacon v. Hooper, 6 T.R. 226, and was abolished by statute in 1850. 13 & 14 Vict. c. 21.
"We do not deny that there are cases . . . in which the legislature has properly made the jurisdiction to depend on the publication of notice, or on bringing the suit to the notice of the party in some other mode, when he is not within the jurisdiction."
"it is an equally well settled rule in jurisprudence that the jurisdiction of any court exercising authority over a subject may be inquired into in every other court, when the proceedings in the former are relied upon, and brought before the latter, by a party claiming the benefit of such proceedings. The rule prevails whether the decree or judgment has been given in a court of admiralty, chancery, ecclesiastical court, or court of common law."
"could be exercised under the act, it was essential to show that all its requisites had been substantially observed. It was necessary for the plaintiff to prove notice, and negative proof that the notice was not given, under such circumstances, could not be rejected."
"it appears from the inspection of the record of a court of general jurisdiction that the defendant, against whom a personal judgment or decree is rendered was at the time of the alleged service without the territorial limits of the court, and thus beyond the reach of its process, and that he never appeared in the action, the presumption of jurisdiction over his person ceases, and the burden of establishing the jurisdiction is cast upon the party who invokes the benefit or protection of the judgment or decree. . . . When, therefore, by legislation of a state, constructive service of process by publication is substituted in place of personal citation, . . . every principle of justice exacts a strict and literal compliance with the statutory provisions."
Later cases to the same effect are Earle v. McVeigh, 91 U. S. 503; Settlemier v. Sullivan, 97 U. S. 444; Cheely v. Clayton, 110 U. S. 701; Applegate v. Lexington &c. Mining Co., 117 U. S. 255, and there is scarcely a state in the union in which the same principle has not been announced and reaffirmed.
We think the publication of the notice in this case for the full period required by law was necessary to the validity of the decree pronounced upon the basis of such publication, Early v. Doe, 16 How. 610, and, as such publication was not made for that period, the decree based upon such notice was no estoppel of the plaintiff in this case.
them, nor had Walker such knowledge, so far as he knew. He says, "I cannot by any probability imagine that he could have any suspicion of the invalidity of any of the bonds sold to him." Walker, who is also a lawyer at Jacksonville, swears that he was employed by Ambler & Taliaferro to look into the condition of the affairs of the company, with the expectation of their becoming the purchasers if they could do so safely.
"My investigation satisfied me that there were a number of bonds outstanding of this company which were of doubtful validity as liens. . . . With Mr. Marcy's assistance, I ascertained all the facts touching the bona fide holding of the bonds in Philadelphia. The evidence satisfied us that all the bonds were purchased in good faith, and I authorized Mr. Marcy to represent my clients and complete the transactions with these parties, Dunn and Harris, carefully instructing him to avoid the purchase of any bonds of Mr. Shreve Ackley, as to the validity of whose holding I had come to entertain doubts."
of the case to determine as a finality the amount, validity, or ownership of such bonds or the number which were held bona fide by the present holders, but that the case should be reversed and remanded for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion. Should the court proceed to a decree for foreclosure and sale, the holders of the bonds can be notified to appear and file them with the master, and all questions connected with their amount and ownership can be settled upon a final hearing.


This is the third in my series of posts on the Green Report. See the first (which explains just what I think I’m up to) and the second (which focuses on prayer and confidence).
The Green Report has a great deal to say about ‘Leadership’. The words ‘lead’, ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ and their derivatives turn up on every page of the main report. In this post, I want to suggest some ways in which we can receive that emphasis – and repair some of the ways in which the report presents it.
If that is where we start, however, we immediately have to reject any simplistic division of the Body of Christ into ‘leaders’ and ‘led’. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that ‘To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.’ We need each other; we are built up by each other; we assist each other in the growth and enactment of our faith. Starting with the low-key definition of ‘leadership’ above, we would have to conclude (as a first move) that leadership is something in which we are all involved or called to be involved.
We shouldn’t have a division between leaders and led, but a complex ecology of multiple forms of assistance and encouragement, building up the whole body together. (As we say in the FAOC report, ‘Even the ministry of oversight, of episkope, is first of all a ministry of all God’s people, who are called to exercise self-control and hold one another to account’ – §177.) We can certainly recognise many forms of differentiation – different gifts, callings, talents distributed around the body – but they are all differentiations within a Body in which every member is called to minister.
The Green Report is focused on Bishops and Deans, but also talks about ‘heads of theological colleges, mission agencies, para-church networks or significant pilgrimage centres’ and leaders of ‘large churches with specially significant roles in national church life’ (§64). If we start with the kind of vision of the Body of Christ sketched above, we won’t think of these people as ‘the leaders’ over against everyone else as ‘the led’. We won’t think of them as people who have come out on top of some hierarchy of excellence or importance or value. Rather, we will simply recognise that, in the midst of a Body in which every member is called to minister, some people have received a specific kind of calling which involves ministry to a large geographical area, or playing a significant role in relation to a large number of people, as well as (in some of those cases) playing specific sacramental roles and specific representative roles. To be called into these roles is not promotion; it is not a form of elevation. Even ‘seniority’ is potentially a very misleading word for it. It is, rather, a call to occupy one specific niche in the overall ecology of the Church’s ministry.
Training specifically aimed at enabling the holders of these posts to develop in what they do will therefore need to strike a careful balance. On the one hand, it does make sense, for some developmental purposes, to take them out of their contexts and bring them together as a cohort, in order for them to share the wisdom and experience they have gained in similar roles, and in order for them to receive appropriate training in how to face common challenges. In the same way, we might bring together people involved in similar ministries in all sorts of other niches of the church’s ecology – there’s nothing specifically ‘senior’ about this idea.
On the other hand, we should guard against any sense that those being brought together are a breed apart, or even an elite, separating off into their own exclusive club. They are brought together as a cohort for the sake of their distinctive contribution to the overall weave of ministry that they share with others, and in order to energise and refresh them for deeper engagement with those around them, wider collaboration, and a fuller sharing of the tasks of ministry. The design of the programme of development, and of the patterns of prayer woven in with it, will need to work hard to protect against any sense of isolation or exclusivity.
In the light of all this, there are elements of the Green Report’s language that do, I think, call for repair.
First, from time to time, the language it uses to discuss leadership can indeed suggest that readers are a race apart. Take that word ‘cadre’, for instance, in the statement of purpose (§32). The dictionary definition, ‘a small group of people specially trained for a particular purpose’, is not itself problematic, but it sounds to my ears all too like a group defined over against their surroundings (the group of army officers who have their own mess; the closed communist cell that is working against the surrounding bourgeois society).
Second, and more pervasively, the Report uses language that moves away from a simple differentiation of ministries and towards a hierarchy of value. We are, it seems, looking for ‘exceptional individuals’ (§6), ‘candidates with exceptional potential’ (§10), ‘exceptional potential leaders from among the clergy’ (§12); people who demonstrate ‘exceptional performance’ (§49) – and so on. It is hard not to read this as suggesting that we are looking for people who are better than others – the talent, over against the untalented mass. It makes it sound like we are indeed talking about promotion, about climbing a hierarchy with the best and brightest at the top.
It is not just this language that needs changing, however – it is the whole tempting mind-set that it can encourage and express. Yes, of course we are looking out for people who are exceptionally well suited for the specific ministries that we have in mind – but only in the sense that we might also look for people who are exceptionally well suited to be a welcomer at the church door, or who are exceptionally well suited to do staff the night shift at the homeless shelter, or who are exceptionally well suited to clean the church hall loos. That is, we’re trying to discern together to what roles, to what forms of ministry, God is calling each person; where each person best fits in the activity of the body, in ways that will do most justice to the specific gifts – the specific talents – that God has given to each person.
That is why the Green Report rightly says that a Bishop or a Dean will be someone who ‘Recognises and develops unique gifts’ and who is ‘a creative steward of lay and ordained talent’ (§32); someone who will give priority to ‘Supporting the formation and development of individuals in the full range of their ministry’ (§10). The Bishop or Dean is one minister in a whole church of ministers, a person with one peculiar set of talents amongst the talents of all those who make up the church.
That is also why the Green Report only makes sense as one report amongst many. This one deals with some specific issues surrounding this particular kind of ministry; others deal with aspects of Continuing Ministerial Development, or with developing the ministries of all the baptised. This isn’t the top of the pyramid; it is one small piece of the patchwork.
In my next post, I’m going to delve more deeply in to what the Report has to say about the processes of discernment and development by which we identify and train people for these peculiar roles.
This is the second of my posts on The Green Report. The first can be found here.
The main body of the report starts (in §10) by repeating, in slightly fuller form, the quote from Justin Welby given at the start of the introduction (§1). It is a quote from his first address to the General Synod as Archbishop of Canterbury, in July 2013. He spoke of the members of the Church being ‘Custodians of the gospel that transforms individuals and societies….called by God to respond radically and imaginatively to new contexts.’ That word ‘custodian’ suggests that we hold faithfully to what we have received; the reference to imaginative and radical response suggests that this faithfulness will be expressed in new ways in new contexts.
are not developed in the pages of reports. They are developed in situ, hammered out in context by Christians drawing deeply on the Scriptures, engaging with the tradition, attending to their situations, questioning and challenging and encouraging one another, and discovering prayerfully over time what bears fruit and what does not. In other words, good answers to this question are produced by faithful improvisation, in the never-ending diversity of contexts in which the church finds itself. By ‘improvisation’, we do not mean ‘making it up as we go along’ or ‘bodging something together from the materials available’. Rather, we are drawing on the way that ‘improvisation’ has been written about by a number of theologians in recent years, and are using the word in something like the sense it can have in musical performance. Musicians who are deeply trained in a particular tradition (who know its constraints and possibilities in their bones) draw on all the resources provided by that formation to respond creatively to new situations and to one another. Compelling and faithful answers to the church’s questions about leadership require something of the same deep formation and deep attentiveness in situ, and will be similarly diverse and creative.
Deep rootedness in the gospel underpins our improvisation, or our imaginative and radical responses to new contexts. The central form that the Green report suggests this rootedness will take is prayer. It talks about the importance of the leaders’ ‘life of prayer’ (§10), a substantial element of prayer is built into the proposed patterns of training (§35), and the diagram of ‘Leadership Characteristics for Bishops and Deans’ (§32) has at its top this statement of ‘purpose’: ‘Develop a prayerful cadre of Bishops and Deans who are confident as leaders and evangelists who release an energy for mission and growth across the Church, as the urgent priority set by the Gospel’ (see also §10). I’m going to come back to various aspects of this statement later, including that word ‘cadre’ and the idea of releasing energy for mission and growth. For now, however, I want to keep the focus on prayer, and take the report at its word: the highest priority, the first element in its purpose, is a call for leaders to be ‘prayerful’.
constant, prayerful, humble and attentive listening by the whole church, and especially by those who exercise leadership within it, to what the Spirit may be saying to God’s people. Wise improvisation in leadership will therefore only emerge from communities and individuals gathered by the Spirit in sustained prayer and worship, with the Son, before the Father.
All our action, including any action we call ‘leadership’, is a joining in, a participation in what God is doing. As the FAOC report says elsewhere, ‘one’s action is a gift that one receives more than it is something that one achieves; [and] there can be no effectiveness without grace’ (§48).
Prayer is the starting point not simply because we need to seek guidance before acting, or to recharge batteries before expending energy. It is the starting point because our agency – our determination, our endeavour, our action – is never primary. Our vision of ministry, and of leadership within it, should not begin with any picture of heroic activity on the part of those who minister, but of deep and abiding receptivity and attentiveness. To minister is to be acted upon by God, to be caught up in what God is doing in and through us. Its centre is not labour (though there is almost certain to be labour involved), but our rest in God. Prayer is therefore necessarily the centre of ministry, including of all those forms of ministry we call leadership.
The training programme promised by the Green Report has prayer and reflection as one of its major components. To fulfil its promise, however, that needs to be more than simply a space for prayerful reflection on what has been learnt. Rather, central to the substance of the training, there will need to be a focus upon developing the kinds of habit of prayer, the kinds of community of prayer, the kinds of rule of prayerful life, that can underpin the kinds of ministry envisaged.
When the report speaks of ‘confidence’ (as in ‘a prayerful cadre of Bishops and Deans who are confident as leaders and evangelists’), we should read this first of all not as self-confidence, but as confidence in God. As §15 says, ‘This confidence is rooted entirely in the victory of Christ.’ It is the confidence that flows from prayer, and so from trust in God, from rest in God. But God’s action and our action are not in competition, and to focus on God’s action does not mean that we have to deny our own. God’s action enables, accompanies and directs our own, and a primary confidence in God is compatible with a secondary confidence in ourselves – what the Green report calls a ‘realistic confidence’ in our ability (§13) – a thankfulness for the gifts that God has given us, a practiced knowledge in their possibilities and limits, and a joy in their exercise.
Our confidence in ourselves is, however, bounded by our confidence in God. Our self-confidence must never become a conviction that we are the centre of what is going on. It has to be a self-confidence that remains attentive to what God is doing beyond us and without us, ready for surprises, and open to correction. It has to be a self-confidence that does not let us take ourselves too seriously. As the report says, ‘We want leaders so centred on God that they exhibit neither neurosis nor narcissism’ (§17) – and finding that balance in the context of a demanding ministry is a serious spiritual discipline – and, again, exploration of this will need to be en element of the training offered.
Our future is in God’s hands. That does not mean that we don’t need to act strenuously in the present, but it does mean that we need to act not out of anxiety and panic, but out of trust: wholehearted reliance upon God.
One aspect of the ‘culture change’ that the Green report speaks of (§8) is therefore a move away from a culture of anxiety. On the one hand, that means a move away from a culture of communal anxiety about the future of the Church – as if everything depended upon us. On the other hand, it means a move away from a culture of individual performance anxiety – as if the one thing needful is to make a success of ourselves, to demonstrate our worth by what we achieve. Confidence in God is the root of a move away from such ecclesial Pelagianism – and it is the root of the joy, resilience, energy, and hope of which the Green Report speaks (§12).
The Green Report warns against the aversion to risk that can flow from the belief that we can manage risk away (§22). Instead, the church needs ‘spaces of safe uncertainty in which creative and emotionally intelligent change can happen.’ A move away from a culture dominated by anxiety and control is necessary if faithful improvisation is going to flourish. Micromanagement kills improvisation; insecurity kills improvisation; fear of failure, the need to perform, the obsession with targets, all kill improvisation.
The statement of purpose at the top of the Report’s diagram of Leadership Characteristics (§32) speaks of leaders who ‘release an energy for mission and growth across the Church, as the urgent priority set by the Gospel’. In the light of all I have been saying, we will read this not as the high-octane energy of the big leader, but as the energy that flows in each of us from a confident, trusting participation in what God is doing, grounded in prayer.
As that word ‘release’ might suggest, this is not an energy that some of us possess and then distribute to others. Neither, however, is it simply an energy independently found in each of us. Our relationships of trust and confidence in God are never simply about the individual and God. We encourage one another, we build one another up, and we are involved in one another’s relation to God. That is what it means to be a body. The Spirit’s work in each of us is inseparable from the Spirit’s work in those around us, and we can therefore all be involved in the ‘release’ of energy of the Spirit in those around us.
The Green report does not simply talk about mutual encouragement, however. It talks about a cadre of leaders who will be engaged in this work of encouragement. If I am to take this project of retrieval and repair further, I need to tackle that next.
My aim in writing now, as a latecomer to this party, is not to try to get that debate flowing again. Instead, I want to try something a little different. Rather than setting out yet another critique, I want to try for retrieval and repair. This first post will try to explain what I mean. I plan a few more posts, over the next few days, to try and put this retrieval and repair into practice.
All sorts of criticisms were levelled at the report after it was leaked, but most prominent among them were those which saw in it the triumph of corporate language over theology, or of business culture over the culture of the church, or of managerialism over Christian wisdom.
It is not hard to see where this criticism comes from. The corporate language starts on the title-page – indeed, in the first two words on the title page: ‘Talent Management’.* And when readers whose critical senses have been alerted by that title turned to the Introduction, it is not hard to see how their suspicions might have deepened. The first paragraph is confidently, if briefly, theological. It quotes Justin Welby speaking about our being ‘Custodians of the gospel’ and ‘called by God’. That initial theological note immediately vanishes, however. From the next sentence on, we are in the realm of ‘leadership development’, ‘talent management initiatives’, and the engagement (to develop detailed proposals for these initiatives) of the former ‘Head of Talent and Learning at BP’. It was therefore inevitable (and entirely predictable) that, by the time they reached §8, the report’s claim that its recommendations ‘mark a culture change for the leadership of the Church’, most readers will have seen the change in question precisely as a takeover of the church by the habits and language of the corporate world.
This opening actively invites a suspicious reading of the report. In fact, it does more than invite, it all but demands it. The choice of title; the way the introduction has been put together; the brusque transition from §1 to §2 – it all says, as Martyn Percy said in his critique in the Church Times, that what is ‘on offer is a dish of basic contemporary approaches to executive management, with a little theological garnish’.
By the time the reader reaches the body of the report, just over the page, the damage is already done. That body contains strands of theological language and recognisably theological ideas woven in with strands of management language and borrowed corporate ideas. Having reached it via the introduction, many readers will inevitably see the corporate strands as central, and see the theological strands as twisted around them – whether as decoration or disguise or inadequate amelioration. In practice, that means that they will take the specific proposals (§§33–78) as bearing the main weight of the report, and see the discussion of ‘principles and context’ (§§10–29) as secondary – to be read, rather sceptically, in the light of the later proposals.
My claim is not that the suspicious reading is wrong. Much of the language and argument of the remainder of the report lends itself very well to being read in this suspicious way – and the suspicious reading is powerful, penetrating and worrying. I do not, however, think that the suspicious reading is the only thing that can be done with this report. I have said that the report is woven from multiple strands, including ‘strands of theological language and recognisably theological ideas’. I want, in my subsequent posts, to try the experiment of flipping the suspicious reading over, and seeing what happens when one takes the theological strands as central. I’m not ignoring the critical readings – I have learnt a great deal from them – I am simply doing something different. I am attempting a ‘retrieval’.
This retrieval also involves ‘repair’. There are times, I will suggest, when the report resists being read around its theological strands. There are indeed times when its managerial language pulls hard against the retrieval I am attempting. There are moments when I am forced to say that if I want to re-read the report in the way I am suggesting, I will have to refuse some of the specific language it uses. Just as the suspicious reading is forced to say of some of the theological material in the report that it is undermined or evacuated or denied by the corporate content, so I am forced to say from time to time that some of the corporate content is called seriously into question by the theological content.
I suggest, however, that this very task of repair is one that the report itself encourages. Very close to the end, in §85 (far too late for the suspicious reading to take seriously), the report notes that it has used ‘corporate labels such as “talent management”, “leadership development programme”, “talent pool” and “alumni network”’, and acknowledges that ‘these should perhaps be replaced by terms meaningful to the Church’.
I’m on the Faith and Order Commission. I’m therefore one of the co-authors of the report Senior Church Leadership: A Resource for Reflection, published in January, which tackles some of the same territory as Green, but from a very different angle and with a very different remit. There was some discussion and consultation between members of the two groups, and the FAOC report is cited in the Green Report, but I wasn’t involved in the writing of the latter. I’m not writing these thoughts on behalf of the Green group or anyone on it, nor on behalf of FAOC or anyone on it. Of course, my thinking in this area has inevitably been shaped by the work we did in FAOC and the conversations we had with people involved in the Green group, but these are entirely my own personal ramblings, and nobody else bears responsibility for them. You could however, plausibly take my proposal as an attempt to read the Green report in the light of the FAOC report.
* Of course, the word ‘talent’ travelled from referring to a particular weight of gold or silver, to meaning an divinely entrusted gift to be used wisely, and so to meaning a capacity for success in some sphere of endeavour, by way of Jesus’ parable in Mt 25:14–30. In other words, we do owe the word ‘talent’ in the title of this report ultimately to the Bible.