General Secretary’s Address to the 2025 General Assembly
The Revd. Dr. John P Bradbury, General Secretary of the United Reformed Church, addressed the General Assembly.
The Nicene Creed will be read.
Firstly, I wish to thank the Moderator for this chance to address you. It is not that usual for General Secretaries to deliver an address, and I don’t intend to make a habit of it. But this year, something in me was nagging away, that this was a moment to reflect, after five years in this role, and as we approach this year with our extraordinary Church Life Review General Assembly in November.
I also did not wish to let this Assembly go by without even a passing thought to the implications of the Council of Nicaea felt like we would not be fully inhabiting the fulness of the Church universal of which we are a part. There is, after all, a danger in calling a former teacher of Doctrine and Church History to serve as General Secretary…
One suspects that the as bishops and their companions headed towards Nicaea 1700 years ago in preparation for the Council of Nicaea, their sense of anticipation and expectation might have been even just a little higher than when we set out to come here to Swanwick to meet as a Council of the Church. After all first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity had called the council. I want to invite us, for a short while, just to dwell on something of the significance that that Council of Nicaea, best known now for the Nicene Creed, to which in our own confessional statements as a Church, we bear witness in its finally evolved form, adopted in 381.
It is easy to look back on the councils and the creeds as dusty old history or to write them off as simply the product of imperial politics and power play. In the URC we treasure our right to make new confessions of faith as we feel led by our engagement with scripture in the power of the Holy Spirit. We do ourselves a disservice if we do not take seriously those who engaged in that task before us, and which has shaped the whole life of the church universal in the process. Amidst the Imperial politics and theological factions, there was also profoundly faithful wrestling with what it meant to worship the living God, and what it means to be the Church.
What was at stake in the debates that surrounded the Council of Nicaea was God. Who is God? How do we know God?
Let’s go back even further than Nicaea for a moment, to the letter of Paul to the Colossians.
“15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, 16 for in[a] him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in[b] him all things hold together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God[c] was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” [Col 1: 15-20].
From the very earliest days of the Church, Christians instinctively worshipped and prayed to Christ. And yet, of course, for the Jewish context within which Christianity emerged, this was blasphemous, idolatrous, even. You could not worship a human being like you worship God, and you must only, ever, worship God. We know we are faithful to the one God, and that there is only one God whom we worship. And yet, we worship Jesus Christ. What are we doing when we do that – answer, we are worshipping the one, triune, God. Doctrine followed our worshipping practice.
The debates around Nicaea, were fundamentally debates about how one best expresses all of this. It is very hard to piece together exactly what Arius, the priest and theologian who’s views sparked so much controversy at the time believed, as we only have his words handed to us by those who opposed him.
However, it would seem he was trying to protect the oneness of God. God the Father was God. To protect the monotheistic nature of our faith, Jesus might be very close to God, but there had to be some separation. Some distance. Some way in which Jesus was secondary.
And this is, of course, all good biblical language. Son of God (not God), firstborn of all creation – not eternal and without a starting point. The rich tapestry of biblical image and language gives space for a wide variety of technical definitions. Alongside that language which Arius turned to, we also have Christ as the eternal word, Christ as the eternal wisdom of God.
Any set of biblical images you can perfectly well read through the lens of the other. Arius was seeking to protect the oneness of God, the perfection of God, and – coloured by the philosophical framework of the day which saw the reality of life in the world, the matter of which physical life was made up as profoundly inferior to the realm of perfection in which God rightly was – to keep God out of the messiness of change and decay, and those things which mark physical life in the world.
Understanding this, perhaps helps us see exactly what was at stake. Ultimately, the primary exponent of the position Nicaea came to was Bishop Athanasius, but a young priest at the council itself. Over time he spelt out the significance of the issue. God, ultimately, is not far removed, distant, unsullied by engagement with the world. God is in the midst of the world in Christ, in the midst of the day to day life of suffering and pain and brokenness, and joy and celebration and laughter.
Creation itself, matter itself, is good, such that God becomes incarnated in it. As Nicene theology developed, so did the explication of the fact that the Holy Spirit too, is alive and active in the midst of creation, uniting us with Christ, drawing us to the Father. God is not a distant, philosophical idea, a creator who creates and then withdraws, who only deals with creation through intermediaries. God creates, and then dwells with, and in and amidst that creation. God is known fully in Christ.
The United Reformed Church, born as it was in its initial form in 1972 came into being in a world where theologically, the idea of a creator God inherently alive and active in the midst of creation was perceived, in a rapidly secularising society, and a world that felt it was coming of age scientifically, very difficult to sustain. Theology, in movements represented perhaps by John Robinson’s in his Honest to God, or Don Cupitt, in his sea of faith, sought to recast faith away from what was perceived as the supernatural and unbelievable.
That was something of the theological waters in which many in the URC were perhaps swimming at the time of union. They are theological waters which in their way formed me personally too. They very much captured the imagination of my Dad, one of the first theological influences on me. I believe such movements were a genuinely faithful attempt to make the gospel and faith understandable, and to articulate it, in the modern world. However, over a lifetime to date of struggle as a Christian disciple and theologian, I have come to see how profoundly lacking this is.
The danger is it removes God precisely from being in the midst of creation alongside us, with us, in Christ, in the Spirit. Places God once again back into the realm of a safe philosophical space. I do owe much to those lines of thinking, for creating the space where thinking the unthinkable was possible, for making questioning possible, for taking seriously the task of trying to make God intelligible in the modern world. But I simply don’t think it is enough. It does not ultimately make sense of a world that has not moved into a rational scientific
utopia, but in which we see populations murdered, slaughtered, starved. Nations waging war against nations. A massive rise in mental ill-health within our societies. An environmental catastrophe of our making. A neat God, protected and removed form all of that is, frankly, no use to us. The God we encounter in Jesus, condemned, beaten, scourged, and tortured to death on the cross is. The God who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, makes the seemingly impossible and insurmountable become reality, is.
That is ultimately the same realisation that those at the Council of Nicaea made – they grasped, and formulated, and gifted to the church universal throughout the centuries – a gift we still receive and bear witness to as the United Reformed Church today.
Many of you will have heard me, in the last 5 years, keep insisting that we have to face the reality of the place that God has brought us to. The decline that has been the hallmark of the United Reformed Church is real, must be faced squarely, and its implications wrestled with.
Don’t worry – I’m not going to stop doing that and become fluffy all of a sudden. However, something is shifting and moving. Something in the tributaries that make up the Church in the western world is changing. We owe much to our own Justin Brierley at Woking URC for exploring this for us – I recommend his podcasts for any interested. The statistics are beginning to show for the first time an uptick, particularly younger people engaging in the life of the church and its worship. I’ve been reading the fascinating account of Lamorna Ash, in her Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever, of the exploration of the stories and faith of many of those young people who have come to faith, in an extraordinary wide range of church and theological contexts. Something which began as a journalistic interest, but began to become her own story.
I am struck, reading her account, that whether in fiercely conservative evangelical spaces, or in much more radical progressive spaces, what is recounted are experiences of encountering the living God in worship, in ways which become transformative of people lives. It is precisely encounter with the living God, the God made intimately known in us in Jesus, and through the work of the Spirit, which lies at the heart of these stories of conversion and transformation.
Whether in the context of evangelical spaces training people for missions, on the Isle of Iona, in convents or monasteries of the Catholic or Orthodox traditions. These are profound experiences of God, they are often mediated in the experience of collective worship – ranging from Quaker silence, to mega-church style rally, to high mass.
They are rooted in a sense of being caught up somehow in a community beyond oneself.
I want to take us back to the Nicene Creed for a moment. I want to take us too to the third article where it confesses, ‘We believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’. Do we, I wonder, believe in us, us as truly ‘church’?
That might seem a daft question, but there is a hesitancy about the church in our traditions at times. We don’t wish to claim too much for ourselves – we won’t, rightly, proclaim ourselves the one, true Church. We’re aware of our ecumenical vocation, and therefore our incompleteness. But too, at times, we can slip into the language of faith and discipleship in very personal terms. As if faith, or discipleship, somehow precedes church. As though one decides to explore faith, and only then explores church.
If the Church is the body of Christ. It is the People of God. It if is the place where Christ is made present in our exploration and proclamation of scripture in whatever form, in water and bread and wine in the sacraments, the Church is the place on earth where the living God is encountered. What would it be to live as if that were so?
One of the most memorable moments I’ve had this year was when I met with the Youth Executive. Myles and I were in conversation with them about the Church Life Review, hopes and expectations and so on. I was profoundly struck that as conversation unfolded, the number one thing that was being said that is being looked for in the life of the church is worship. Transformative, engaging, inclusive, challenging worship that feeds, nourishes and builds up.
Quality worship. Worship in which there is an expectation that the living God will and does meet us. It was noted with some sadness, that often, such worship is not encountered within local United Reformed Churches.
I think back to the best evangelist I’ve ever met in a local church, an Elder I was privileged to work with. She had the most remarkable gift to be able to get alongside anyone, and talk about God. That was rooted, I noted, in her absolute confidence in the local church, that it was a good place, an alive place, a place where worship fed people and there was encounter with the living God. Come and taste and see – the invitation could be offered in the full confidence and conviction that in this local church, there is something great, that you may well find utterly transformative.
A place God meets us. I have been fortunate to be a member and minister of churches like that. I have also been a member and minister of churches, sadly, very much not like that. I wonder, how many of our congregations embody that sense that they are the living body of Christ in the world, with a vivid expectation that God will encounter us there in worship?
And so, I want to bring us back to here and now, and this General Assembly and the Assembly that will be when we gather in November. And I want to bring us back to the Church Life Review. I believe that the very foundations of our faith that we’ve been pondering with the help of the Nicene Creed are calling us to renewal.
Renewal of our trust and confidence in the living God, and our ability to expect that, experience that and speak of that. Renewal of our worship, such that, in whatever form or style it might be, it truly is a place where we genuinely gather as the Body of Christ, and are touched and transformed by the living God. Fed, to empower our discipleship in the world. Renewal of our evangelism, our confidence is speaking of the ways of God with the world with conviction, and in ways which invite people to ‘taste and see’.
Is the Church Life Review going to deliver this for us? No. Can any programme, strategy, set of resolutions, or activity of the General Assembly deliver that for us? No. In all kinds of ways the Church Life Review is very practical, and it is very much about resources.
How do we lift burdens from local churches to give them the time, space and energy to seek renewal? How do we resource local churches through forms of paid lay work, when ministerial resource of Ministers, CRCWs, Lay Preachers and Elders is already massively stretched?
How do we meaningfully have the resources to invest in the emerging of new communities of worship and discipleship? I do believe that what it can help us achieve are better circumstances, and better resource provision, to enable and equip the renewal of church life. We’ll hear more of that from others later in Assembly.
What it can’t do by itself, is renew the life of the Church.
Five years ago if I’d suggested one more Mission or Discipleship strategy or programme, my term as General Secretary would have been short. There was a sense of initiative overload – that we’d been there, done that, often time and time again. What we’ve tried to do, and in a limited way, I hope, may succeed in, is giving us some structures, resources, and possibilities that can form the practical undergirding of our response to the call to be the body of Christ, the People of God, the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Not more. Not less. It’s not nothing. It’s certainly not all that we need.
Things are changing. Church attendance figures, even in the URC, are climbing, just a bit. In some places, quite a lot. I pick up a significant change in mood music in many place – stories of new people emerging into congregations. New life emerging where it felt like the end was in sight. Younger people turning up to explore. God is moving, and something is shifting. Are we ready, waiting and alert to spot the signs of God at work and join in?
It is my deep conviction that there are now vital things we must begin to take seriously throughout the life of the Church. In Assembly, in Synods, in local churches. Its for ministers and elders to worry about and lead on. Its for all of us to be concerned with. We need to deepen our confidence in the reality of the living God, alive and active in the world today, shown to us in Jesus, and made known to and through us in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We must become more confident evangelists – we must become more confident about speaking of God – which is, of course, also what the word theology means. We must deepen and enrich, and simply at times significantly improve, the quality of our worship such at we have absolute confidence that it is a place of encounter with the living God. So that when we say ‘come, taste, and see’ – we are confident that this is indeed a community which expects to be encountered by the living God, awaits that, and where that encounter becomes utterly real and transformative.
So my real challenge to you is not to simply discern with care as we deliberate the proposal that will come in November from the Church Life Review. Though obviously, please do… It’s not even that in your Synods you consider giving generously, and indeed sacrificially, so that we can indeed lay the groundwork for the next stage in our being the Body of Christ together. Though please do.
My real challenge to us today is to say that all of that is but preparation, groundwork, enabling, and resources. The real call and the real challenge to renew our faith in the living God, to renew our worship, to renew our church life as that which we can confidently confess is one, holy, catholic and apostolic – places on earth and in our communities where the living God is known, transforming us, and in turn made known.
May God’s Spirit be with us as, together, we discern how we build one another up in faith, discipleship and worship such that we might respond faithfully to the call of God to be God’s Church.
Amen.
