The Church of St Jargon & All Gobbledegook – formerly known as the Church of England – is affectionately called “Jarg’s” or “Gob’s” by its devotees. It is “a resource where exciting things are happening.” Last year, for example, they appointed Mike Eastwood, Liverpool Diocesan Secretary, to the “exciting” two days a week job of Director of the nationwide Reform and Renewal movement, aka “The Welby Babes.” Mike has held exciting posts before his current appointment. He was Director of the Directory of Social Change – and they don’t come more exciting than that in the social engineering and class warfare sector!
The official announcement of Mike’s appointment mentioned that he had previously worked for the not quite so exciting Resourcing the Future Task Group and that, “He brings knowledge of the Church to support the programme into the delivery phases.” His responsibility at R&R will be, “…to bring the current work streams together and co-ordinate the activities in a way necessary for delivery.”
When we read such invigorating sentences as these, we can see at once that the new name, The Church of St Jargon & All Gobbledegook was chosen with brilliant aptness.
The announcement continues in the same exciting style: “Mike will retain his role in Liverpool, with some changes in day-to-day activities to ensure manageability of workload.”
The tired old C. of E. is in its death throes – thank God. The stuffy old diehards, Prayer Book lovers and the like, are dying off too. The numbers attending church show relentless decline. We should see this as a blessing, as the dead wood makes way for the exciting new ethos of R&R with its pulsating rock music “worship groups,” its informal, pass-the-parcel style liturgy, its hugely popular community thumb-sucking programme and its scintillating shoals of “management teams.”
The chronic shortage of priests is “enabling” R&R “to explore exciting new possibilities for lay leadership.”
The future is bright. The future is all Jargon & Gobbledegook (with charismatic choruses obbligato).
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Any time now we’ll see an outbreak of heritage churches, in the manner of heritage railways. Traditional forms but with secular membership and no sense that they’re going to take back the network that’s been lost. And no irritating vicar squirming his way through this mix of management-speak and human rights platitudes. And no crocheted hassocks or modern clappy songs.