Finding My Way on Skye

I was licensed last Friday as Priest-in-Charge for St Columba’s, Portree, and St Michael’s, Raasay, and I’ve taken my first Sunday service.  A tremendously happy day.  The congregation here are so grateful that a full-time priest has been funded, after a long gap.

Someone I told about the service was amused that I needed a ‘licence’ to operate.  And someone else described the part of the service where the licence was read out as ‘reading the riot act’! 

My licensing service did not feel much like permission-giving, so much as my being welcomed into a wide, warm family.  The Scottish Episcopal Church’s legal framework, which has local priests operating under the supervision of bishops, is essentially what was created by the Council of Nicaea in the early 4^th century.  It seems to me that it arises from a deep, organic, loving logic.  One bishop per place, so they don’t compete, and with bishops being accountable to each other.  Priests and lay ministers being overseen by bishops who both care for them, and keep them straight.  No self-appointed ministers, whose teaching might be dodgy or who might not be trustworthy.  The system expects that most people will do their best, but also allows for rogues to be dealt with, and limits the harm that can come from natural, human failings.

What was much more evident than legal authority on Friday was mutual support.  In this part of the world, where Episcopalians are not numerous, and where we are spread out across enormous distances, we need this kind of care.  I was greatly touched by how many people travelled a long way to join me for the service. 

I was also delighted that so many of the clergy from other churches came to welcome me.  There’s a strong tradition of collaboration here, I understand, and this bodes well to continue.

Those who could not come, sent gifts.  From the little church of St Margaret, on the island of Arran, I received a beautiful gift: a hand-made blanket or shawl, with a card signed by every member of their congregation.  I’ve never been there, I’ve never met them, but now I feel their loving support every time I sit in my armchair with the rug on my knee.  I have never known such a welcome.

I recognise that, to some, what I have written about bishops and authority will seem naïve.  Perhaps – time will tell.  I have certainly thought a great deal over years about Anglican legal structures.  Part of my last job was to help local clergy get the law right – but it often seemed like I was simply helping them avoid falling over a trip-wire that the church itself had stretched out.  It did not seem to help those who were struggling heroically with limited resources and in difficult circumstances.  But my disillusion was not really about Nicene order in itself, so much as a local application of it that seems to me to be quite decayed.  The CofE’s legal and authority framework seems self-serving, aiming to perpetuate a system that sucks funds from local mission but does not provide support and healthy challenge to the local church.

It seems different here, but I might be wrong.  I will be fascinated, in the coming years, to see if my initial and highly positive view of how authority is exercised within the SEC is borne out by experience.