14.03.2012
‘Bishop Undercover’ A two–part ‘Would You Believe?’ Special
Sunday 18th & 25th March, 22:30–23:00, RTÉ One
Members of the Church of Ireland may be interested to know about this forthcoming RTE 1 television programme. The Rt Revd Trevor Williams, Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe, ‘goes undercover’ among the people in his diocese. Bishop Williams sets out to find out about their needs, before challenging himself to do something about meeting them. He wants people to talk to him ‘on the level’, without deference or prejudice, saying, ‘I have been a Bishop for four years and I’m just about getting my feet under the table … I’m about to embark on this journey, because I need to find what my role is. I need to get in touch with community and find out what makes people tick…’
This isn’t, however, ’Secret Millionaire’. He has no cheque book, only the conviction that Christianity still has a powerful role to play in society. The bishop says his role is about finding more meaningful ways to bring Christ into the lives of people, who, he believes, need Him now as much as ever: ‘I don’t think this journey or what I am about is about promoting the Church of Ireland. I’m not a Director of the sales force. I am here, in whatever humble way I can, to share the good news that we have found in the story of Jesus and that’s what I am about…’
The bishop states that he is an unlikely choice of bishop. Raised by a single parent in Dublin, after his father’s premature death, it was service, not ambition, which took him into the Church. During the Troubles, he worked in cross–community mediation at Northern Ireland’s Corrymeela Centre. He was also a BBC radio broadcaster, although he remains somewhat reluctant performer. He says, ‘I am really enjoying being a bishop. It’s not something I thought I would be. My life has taken various twists and turns. The fact that I am here is really strange, the only thing I can rely on is that God has something to do with it.’
Leaving aside his crozier and his medieval cathedral, he heads to St Munchin’s Family Resource Centre on Limerick’s Northside, where he dons a hair–net to work in the kitchen, preparing meals on wheels, before delivering them to some of the city’s most vulnerable people.
‘I need to go where people are doing great things, to see what questions they are asking and see what motivates them, learn from them. First of all, I want to see what makes people tick and what I can learn from that…’
‘Whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me,’ says St Matthew’s Gospel. Is the Church’s role, first and foremost, a social one, then? Certainly, Trevor can’t imagine the Church having any credibility, unless it is committed to the poor. But poverty isn’t the only challenge the country is facing. Much commented on at the moment is the increasing sense of redundancy and isolation felt by many Irish men, who are no longer the breadwinners and heads of households they might once have been. In Kenmare, Trevor joins a church–run Men’s Shed Club, where men are learning practical skills, side–by–side. The group knows it is playing host to a ‘Would You Believe?’ documentary, but they have no idea that the latest man in the shed is a bishop. What will he learn from them? What does he have to offer them? One thing’s clear: as the local Rector who runs the project says, the Church isn’t there to recruit members. It can’t simply be about serving itself.
The group who are hardest to reach right now are the young, to whom ‘Church’ increasingly seems, not only boring and obsolete, but tainted by scandals and hypocrisy. Trevor is convinced that young people can revive the Church with their idealism and energy, if they’re inspired and encouraged to reinvent it in their own image. On the coat–tails of a ‘Would You Believe?’ film crew, he enters a classroom in St Anne’s Community College, a Co–Ed school in Killaloe, Co. Clare, where the students are unaware that the reporter to whom they’re offering a frank critique of the Church is one of its leaders. Can he inspire them? Can they inspire them?
‘Alternative meanings are now on offer through science etc and religion is seen to be one of those options. It’s not cool and in some ways it’s discredited. We’ve done that. It’s the past. But in the end of time, we will find out not everything is worth throwing out and one of those things is the Christian faith. I think it will survive. It’s God’s business and God has a future for us all.’
If Part One is a journey of discovery, Part Two is an even greater challenge, although, as Bishop Trevor points out, this series is the start of a process for him, not the end of one. As he reveals his identity to each group, he challenges them, as well as himself, not only to change the Church, but to BE the Church. He returns to St. Anne’s Community College in Killaloe and offers the students an opportunity to put some of their ideas into action. He brings the Men’s Shed group in Kenmare up to Limerick on a fact–finding mission, letting them loose in a boat–building yard.