As I understand it from people inside CHP, the deal relating to the outsourcing of CHP’s publishing function is due to be signed today.
It seems that General Synod won’t get a chance to have their say. While I’m aware of a couple of questions regarding CHP that have been submitted for the July Group of Sessions, it seems that it will all be pretty academic by then.
With the exception of a couple of people transferring to Hymns Ancient & Modern and a couple of people who will be the in-house publishing department of the Archbishops’ Council (i.e. the CHP command structure), the rest will be made redundant and by July, when Synod meet, it seems very feasible that some of them will already be gone.
Now, for some readers, that may not seem out of the ordinary. General Synod doesn’t micromanage the Archbishops’ Council or the various departments of the National Church Institutions. Indeed, I’m not arguing for setting precedents in which nothing can be agreed or moved on without the approval of General Synod. Our general speed of decision making is bad enough as it is. 
Nevertheless, I think it’s worth reiterating that the AC’s Financial Review earlier in the year did not talk about CHP because (it said), the matter was being reviewed separately. I don’t think it was clear in that document whether that separate review was only an AC level review or whether it would go wider than that.
Moreover, I think the outsourcing of CHP raises a fundamental question about the mission of the Church of England. Does the Church of England think that publishing books (and also new media products like websites) is a fundamental activity of communication within the over-arching raison d’être of the Church – the gospel of Jesus Christ. I’m not sure Synod or the House of Bishops, for that matter, has ever had a chance to think about that and state their mind on the matter and for that reason, more than any other, I think Synod should be given their chance on this one.
Depending on what answer and conclusion they came to, it could have some pretty large implications for how the Church chose to engage in publishing activity, or otherwise, and therefore on any outsourcing of CHP’s functions. It seems, however, that ain’t gonna happen and this deal really is gonna happen. As some of my geeky mates might say: ‘Meh’.
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David, I’ve been reading this story with interest but have not had an opportunity to comment until now. There is a whole story yet to be told, I’m sure, about the cost to the staff of CHP, and I hope you can continue to keep that story in the light as it unfolds.
I wanted to comment on the issues you’ve been raising about the place of publishing within a church, particularly the CofE. I’ve only been aware of CHP for a few years; I learnt of it as an enquiring layman, but now I’m contemplating the possibility of ordination training, I’m particularly concerned about its future. The question as you’ve put it is “Does the Church of England think that publishing books (and also new media products like websites) is a fundamental activity of communication within the over-arching raison d‚Äô√™tre of the Church ‚Äì the gospel of Jesus Christ. I‚Äôm not sure Synod or the House of Bishops, for that matter, has ever had a chance to think about that and state their mind on the matter.” You’ve asked the right question, I believe; it seems that the operational management of the National Church Institutions clearly thinks the answer is “no,” preferring instead to understand and practice “communication” as a short-term, immediate, one-directional process consisting of statements or utterances on an agenda dictated by the prevailing culture and demands of the media.
Two things I’ve read recently have helped me reflect on this. On the same day as I read your latest blog entry, I was catching up on other blogs and read this story (http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/06/cast-into-thetiber-and-told-to-swim.html) from Ruth Gledhill’s blog of an Anglican priest who is moving to Rome partly beacuse it is “almost impossible to say ‘the Church teaching is’ within the Anglican church.” I recognise that sentiment, and it seems congruent to with the idea of a Church that has decided it no longer needs a publishing company. If the Church has nothing of depth to say why would it need a publisher?
The other impetus to this chain of thought has been a recent conversation with Oliver O’Donovan at the launch of A Conversation Waiting to Begin (http://www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk/bookdetails.asp?ISBN=9780334042105) This was an evening jointly organised by Fulcrum (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/) and SCM-Canterbury Press at which O’Donovan was generous enough to present us with an essay entitled The Reading Church (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=422). In this essay he proposes a “line forward from the act of reading into the liturgical, teaching and moral discipline of the church…a church which is shaped in any measure by the authority of Scripture will be a reading church.”
Now he is talking specifically about reading Scripture, but his reflections on reading that evening were interesting to those of us who enjoy thinking and talking about publishing, and the use of new and old media, in an ecclesiastical context. In his essay he says “In order to think the thoughts of another person, to grasp the world as another grasps it, all one has to do is to listen to the spoken word. Speech is potent for good or ill, and therefore Christ says, Take care how you hear! Reading is a kind of hearing, yet it does not hear voices around us or speak directly to us. The voice the reader hears is from another place and time. As we read the historical and geographical dimensions of the world are opened up to us. There are, of course, texts so nearly and newly produced that the reader treads, as it were, on the writer‚Äôs heels: the e-mail darting to and fro, the hastily produced news report, ephemeral writing of every kind which reproduces and concentrates the riot of voices ringing in our ears already. We may reasonably doubt the value of such immediate texts as this… The real value of text lies in its power to set us at a distance from the hubbub and to open up wider prospects for the intelligence. It is this that we call ‚Äúserious reading‚Äù.”
He echoed those thoughts in conversation with me that same evening when I asked him about the publication of “A Conversation Waiting to Begin” which began life as a series of seven ‘Sermons on the issues of the day’ on the Fulcrum website. I asked him what it was like to see his thoughts published once in that medium where immediate response is encouraged and is visible to the author, and then again in a book, that very tangible medium which so many of us still love. He is the kind of author who does not enjoy that immediacy of feedback, he said, and prefers to review his work in the longer term. I happen to think O’Donovan is the kind of author whose work repays slow careful consideration, and is well-suited to good old-fashioned books. And as it happens, I also think the sort of deep intelligent reflection that O’Donovan offers is in desperately short supply in our Church at the moment. I recommend Fulcrum as a good introduction to O’Donovan, and Doug Knight’s essay (http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/news/2007/20070217knight.cfm?doc=191) is a good place to start.
I think he’s right; there are clearly many kinds of communication, and there are useful distinctions to be made about different kinds of writing. I think the Church of England should appreciate that – after all, who will have something meaningful to say about the meaning of “communicate” if not a church? – and I remain convinced that in order to communicate meaningfully a church must have a publishing operation as an essential part of its missionary structures.
I know you’re a real evangelist for new media, and I can be, too, but I always want to see it as part of an organisation’s toolkit of communications. I don’t see Web 3.0 replacing books, do you? And I think that part of the Church’s counter-cultural role is to say “yep, thanks, your modern tools are great and we can use some of those, but we’ve got this long embodied experience of some traditional stuff that works pretty well, too, so we’ll offer you our experience of that in return….” In my book, that includes, err…books.
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