Over the past ten days the churches in New Zealand, the USA and England have held their General Synods – or national meetings. In the case of the latter two, the secular media have been dominated principally with one issue at each meeting.
In England it was of course the mess which their House of Bishops had got them into with an almost last minute proposal which satisfied few and especially those who had campaigned long and valiantly for the admission of women as bishops. It was discriminatory in its intent and would have created first and second class categories of bishops.
This dominant issue detracted public attention from the other business of the synod. The summary of business each day was significant and comprehensive. For example on last Saturday afternoon it included: Liturgical Business: Additional Eucharistic Prayers – Final Approval, Annual Report of the Archbishops’ Council, The Archbishops’ Council’s Draft Budget and Proposals for Apportionment for 2013, Testing the Bridges: Understanding the Role of the Church Amidst Riots, Disturbances and Disorder.
One correspondent stated that Saturday morning “began with meetings in small groups of around 12. We studied the passage of the gospels where Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane in John 18 1-ll and were also encouraged to reflect on olives, seeds and growth in developing “Good News for Tomorrow”. Our group came most alive in the Bible Study, the implications for public witness and since there were two General Medical Practitioners in the group the issues of Christian witness in the workplace.
“The second half of the morning we debated a report on World Shaped Mission. This engaged with the complexity of the relationships of the Church of England with the Anglican Communion and the voluntary societies and the formal diocesan structures. The report in the view of some of us needed to give more space to the thousands of personal links between parishes and other parts of the Anglican Communion. It is the personal links between people and people, local parish to local parish and minister to minister that warms the hearts of our congregations, not headquarters to headquarters or agency to agency.”
Two members pleaded the cause of the people in the parishes who spend thousands of hours of voluntary time at their own expense to engage with churches in other parts of the communion. This succeeded in including the role of parishes in the links between parts of the communion, but not enough to get synod approval to encourage engagement in world mission by all parishes and individual members of the Church of England which another member argued would be an imposition too far on busy church people.
There was a debate on Fresh Expressions centring on at what point such Fresh Expressions could be regarded as a church in its own right. The report contains the following marks on page 181:
1. A community of people who are called by God to be committed disciples of Jesus Christ and to live out their discipleship in the world.
2. A community that regularly assembles for Christian worship and is then sent out into the world to engage in mission and service.
3. A community in which the Gospel is proclaimed in ways that are appropriate to the lives of its members
4. A community in which the Scriptures are regularly preached and taught.
5. A community in which baptism is conferred in appropriate circumstances as a rite of initiation into the Church
6. A community which celebrates the Lord’s supper
7. A community where pastoral responsibility and presidency at the Lord’s supper is exercised by an appropriate authorised minister
8. A community that is united to others through: mutual commitment; spiritual communion; structures of governance, oversight and communion; and an authorised ministry in common.
The Diocese of Liverpool has 200 churches and 80 Fresh Expression Churches, in which for every Christian who began in one four more have been attracted, whether from the de-churched or unchurched. Members were told that there is now a form of “Nationally Recognised Vernacular Worship”. Our correspondent concluded, “Some of us used to find the term Common Prayer clear enough – since Common in that usage meant “in the language of the common people” i.e. the vernacular.”
Food for thought.
Houston McKelvey