On a wind-whipped night in late January, Bishop Justin Welby said goodbye to the Diocese of Durham (UK) to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury. In a land of famously empty churches, Durham Cathedral was filled beyond capacity for this service. One might have expected the mood to be celebratory as the move to Canterbury is quite an honor for both bishop and diocese. Instead, there was a palpable grief as Bishop Justin, as he is called in Durham, had been in office for a mere 14 months and his work seemed to have just begun.
What he accomplished in those months, though, explains the grief.
In many ways, he brought hope to a region that knew little of it. The economic recessions of the 1980s ravaged northeast England. Most of the mines were shuttered, and jobs lost then have yet to return. The region still has the highest unemployment rate in the country, and it is not uncommon to find three generations of unemployment within a single family.
When Bishop Justin was seated, he called the church to respond. He prioritized job creation initiatives and urged the development of community partnerships throughout the diocese to provide skills training and job placement services to the unemployed. An elderly woman at the service was overheard saying that her grandson “owes his job and his future to Bishop Justin.” He’s not alone.
If the bishop sought to change the way that diocese responded to community problems, he also brought change in response to internal diocesan problems.
For years, the diocese had created its budget then divided the total estimated expenditures among its constituent parishes, expecting them to give accordingly. Bishop Justin flipped this process. Instead of the diocese setting the budget first, the parishes would first tell the diocese what they would and could contribute to diocesan ministries; then, based on their pledges, the diocese would establish its budget. Not surprisingly, this led to a reduction in total giving, but parishes that had long felt oppressed by these obligations now felt liberated and empowered to give.
What is curious about both of these pastorally sensitive innovations (and the other changes Bishop Justin made) is the way that they sparked the imagination of the diocese. Speaker after speaker at the service thanked the bishop and then, in their individual ways, challenged the assembled congregation to continue in such paths, changing things for the good of the community and the good of the church.
Bishop Justin himself, who had the unenviable task of speaking a word in sermon in this setting, echoed similar themes.
The sermon accomplished what such sermons must. He spoke about their shared time, honored creative participation in new work, and called the diocese to continue to follow the God who had inspired it all in the first place. Using the metaphor of the cathedral itself, he juxtaposed the seeming stability of the 10-centuries-old edifice with the variability and vitality of the worship within it. It was a sermon that paid tribute to traditioned innovation.
And on a blustery night in Northern Britain, to congregants as anxious about their future as they were saddened by his departure, it made for a good goodbye.