To give you another view of what St John's is like we thought these extracts from the 2006 report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting by our Vicar, Jonathan Smith might be useful:
Every Maundy Thursday the Bishop of St Albans calls his Clergy and licensed Lay Ministers to join him in the Cathedral for a Eucharist at which all those present renew their commitment to their vocations and ministries. At this Service, the Bishop himself preaches, and I suppose that is the nearest he gets to making a 'State of the Union Address' to his Diocese. This year he gave a warning against two tendencies which he saw making a creeping progress into church life. The first was hyper reality and the second was commodification. These are long words but put at their simplest, hyper reality could also be called Disneyfication, a world where everything is perfect and indeed must be perfect or it is no good and commodification means treating the gospel as if it were a commodity to be sold and for us to be successful in mission all we have to do is get the marketing right. One does not have to know a great deal about the Anglican Communion to know that it is in crisis mode at the moment. It lurches from one contention to another with the area of human sexuality often the sharp point.
Actually, I suggest that what it is really about is the use and authority of the bible together with constitutional autonomy. Various sections of the Anglican Communion, be they theologically conservative or radical, are maintaining that they have the blueprint for the authentic gospel and that everyone else must agree with them or else be in error. Hyper reality. The traditional Anglican way, the Bishop of St Albans asserts, is conversational. We engage in dialogue, humbly and genuinely hoping to learn from other’s insights as well as witnessing to our own. I entirely concur. Of course the truth of the gospel, the good news of Christ dying for our sins and being the first fruits of the resurrection of the dead must not, indeed cannot, be compromised. But neither does the truth give us the mandate to rush into judgment over others who, faithfully and sincerely, under the grace of God, arrive at different conclusions to our own. This conversational way of exploring theology is one of the strengths of Anglicanism and I believe that at a parish level, here at St John’s, we must always be on the look out to counter any tendency of exclusivism. We are a parish church that has wide and deliberately porous theological boundaries and that is a strength to be celebrated.
At St John’s, there are represented many differing theological understandings which will find their expression in differing moral viewpoints. For example, last month I was privileged to help lead an evening with the Women’s Forum looking at the theology of the Just War Theory. The excellent discussion which ensued was wide ranging and a great example of how Christians can share their particular insights into an important moral and ethical area and learn from one another. The Study Group is another meeting place where, in the safety of mutial respect, the participants can begin to tease out the implications of their Christian faith. I am always rather suspicious of autocratic theological regimes which insist on this interpretation and no other. That way lies the Inquisition. There will always be believers who want to be told what to think; they usually erroneously describe it as "sound and unambiguous teaching". I really would have to wonder whether St John’s is the natural home of such a tendency. However, what I hope we do here is to provide input and guidance to help people to think theologically and to be given the tools to express, in a life of faith, the hope of the Christian calling. .... More ....