Bishop’s Address to Edinburgh Diocesan Synod

 Saturday 12^th March 2005

Readings used in the Eucharist:
Ecclesiastes 3 vv 1-8
Matthew 5 vv 1-12

Because it has been featuring so much in our life recently, many of you will be expecting me to say something about the Windsor Report. We had a meeting of Synod members last month, to which the Primus came as part of his preparation for attending the Primates’ meeting. We have since then had a Communiqué from that Primates’ meeting. Our College of Bishops has made a response to both the Windsor Report and that Communiqué.  In the wake of the Windsor Report there is much discussion being generated, and I hope it will continue.

However, as a matter of principle I do feel constrained to evince a belief that, despite its importance and profile, there is more to the issues facing the Church than those of the Windsor Report.

But the Report and the subsequent discussion of it does tangentially highlight some quite important questions about how we see ourselves being open to developments in our Church, and as a church. It is certainly my belief and hope, that over the next three years, running up to the Lambeth Conference, issues raised by the Report will be looked at, and as many people as possible will share in this process. 

However, the matter has thrown up the wider question as to what sort of Church we are, a church in which bishops, clergy and laity share in ways that have been both defined in the past and continue to be shaped through time.  The question will arise for us as to what the role of the bishop should be, particularly in the process we are now entering.

My view about the role of a bishop is very simple, and is that the traditional way of describing the bishop as providing a focal point for unity, while not saying everything, is at least a good starting point for us.  That unity finds one focal point through the bishop’s sharing a ministry with other bishops in the Anglican Communion, and finds another focal point through his sharing a ministry with those responsible for the charges and chaplaincies in his diocese. This can of course create a real tension.

But the nature of that ministry of unity is one that he must exercise by constantly reminding all those with whom he shares in ministry, that we all worship the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that such unity as we have will be given to us principally through our right relationship to and worship of that God.

Thus to focus on God means that we are forced direct our minds away from the great sin which has always drawn people away from God, namely idolatry. 

The temptation for us in the current debate is to make an idol of the Anglican Communion, holding on to very specific ways in which we should understand it, modelling it on a business, a corporation, a federation, a large parish or a large diocese, or what have you, and devoting all our time and energy to the establishment of a Communion in the particular image which we favour. 

The thrust of Christian spirituality down the centuries has always been, as in the first commandment, that we should worship the Lord our God and serve only Him. To use the old language of Paul Tillich, our ultimate concern must be God and nothing less than God.  And the temptation that faces us, highlighted in the second commandment is that we can easily be led into the idolatry of preconceiving the form of church we want, before opening our eyes and ears to the form of church into which we are together being led by God, and which as yet may not have taken crisp form.

The Windsor Report urges us to listen. Often, when it says that, it means that we must listen to one another. That is right and good, but there is a sense in which we need also to be listening for the word of God. And as I say this I do recognise that we must be aware that at times when we are led to say that “I believe that God is speaking to us here”, we are simply advocating our own opinions, and have succumbed to a subtle temptation to disobey the third commandment, not to take the name of God in vain.

I know that many of you have heard me say before, that when we talk of achieving a knowledge of God, such knowledge is better conceived as coming to us by a process more analogous to that of listening than to that of seeing. If we are to be open to it we must be quiet, be patient, be still and wait, rather than struggle and actively peer into areas that are obscure. To talk of listening is to talk of discernment taking place through time. Talk of seeing suggests that we might hope to get a sudden and instant grasp in a picture.

I believe that we will best serve the Church, the Diocese of Edinburgh and the worldwide Anglican Communion if over the next three years we can (avoiding idolatry, and avoiding taking His name in vain,) keep our eye on God, and all be very open to the type of church into which we are being led with all other members of our communion - sharing concerns and insights as these develop. This will involve prayerful listening to Him, and because He will speak through our fellow members of the body of Christ, and a prayerful listening to each other.

In order that we can do this this will require us to have in our Diocesan life occasions for mutual learning, for meeting, for being open to hearing what the spirit may be saying to us. Some of these we shall debate later at this meeting.

• It is a time in our life to welcome the Ministry Development Service and its open educational programmes.
• It is a time in our life to welcome the ability to increase our awareness of, and challenge what is going on in all parts of our world and our society.
• It is a time to look at our structures and the mutual support we are able to give each other through our varied resources to be able best to work together. 
• These are not the absolute be all and end all of our life, but they can create the situation in which we can be open and attentive together to God.

Much has been said recently about the word repentance. I have often said that when we hear a call to repent issued to religious leaders and members of our churches we need to remember that etymologically it means to be ready to change our mind - to be ready to say that we have got things a bit wrong. 

And this applies to all of us in all our congregations and in all our provinces. Only if we approach any discussion in that spirit can there be any hope of coming together under the one God.  Being the kind of creatures we are, [we are not gods], to achieve that to which we may be called we do need time. And we also need the spirit of reconciliation and the spirit that thirsts to see the right prevail. The readings we had in this Eucharist reminded us of this.

To pray that such a spirit may animate our hearts as we work at the task before us is, to my mind, the only alternative to a form of ecclesiological idolatry which can only be divisive, because it has taken its eye off that which alone can give us our unity, namely the worship of one God, Father and Holy Spirit.

Extracted from the Bishop’s Charge at the Edinburgh Diocesan Synod March 2004

I would like to think that today’s Synod could mark a significant stage in the development of the Diocese. We have gone through a long period of looking at our structures, a period which began even before I myself arrived here as bishop, and we now have our new Committee structure up and running. 

We have our Standing Committee and its two principal committees – Ministry and Mission, and Finance and Management - operating under it. The Standing Committee had begun a process of having more general reflection on policy and direction for the Diocese, and a note on this is included in the Synod papers.

There is a single theme that I see running through the development so far as we present it in this Synod. That single theme is to hold together.

It is the concern of your Standing Committee to ensure that the apostolic demands of ministry and mission that are binding upon the Church are addressed appropriately and effectively with the resources that we have available to us.  We seek to hold together finance and management, with our mission and ministry. 

Within our financial and management structures we are aware that in the Diocese our resources differ in our different areas. Working together at a pattern of mutual support must be on our agenda.

Within the Mission and Ministry Committee a major item facing us is the development of a new training programme and a ministry development programme within the Diocese. This involves holding together on a number of fronts. It will be a holding together of the training that is offered for clergy and laity, and a coming together of different parts of the Diocese to offer training into a single service.

And we are not a single diocese on our own in our work we are part of the Province, we are one of the churches in Scotland and we share in the world-wide Anglican Communion. Our links there need to be strong. At our Synod we consider both the invitation to form a link with the diocese of Connor in N.Ireland, and our ecumenical involvement in Scotland.

We seek to hold together the different parts of the Diocese, different training programmes, matters of finance and mission, different dioceses, different churches. But this “holding together” is not a structural thing even though this new Synod is built upon several years’ work of structural review.  The philosophy of “holding together” can only work if the holding together is seen as a personal matter and personal calling as well. 

Fundamental to the life of a Church it is not what is achieved through its committees holding items together on an agenda – vital as that is. More fundamental is our willingness to attempt the holding together of diverse matters in a spirit of love and trust. It lies in the willingness to hold together through disagreement and through difference.  The building up of trust across diversity is a spiritual imperative that must undergird all our synodical and other church work.

Bishop’s Address to the Diocesan Synod of the Diocese of Edinburgh
16 October 2003

Last month I was in Glasgow at the Mothers’ Union meeting. It was a good meeting. As we went into the principal session, in addition to being given various papers, we were given small tubes of sweets - M & Ms. 

They were given to us not just so that we would have something to eat during the proceedings but because one of the speakers wished to use the name of the sweets to highlight an issue in his talk. This was one of the major concerns facing the Mothers’ Union namely that of holding together ministry and mission – M and M. 

That same concern is ours at this Synod today.  We might, for the sake of completeness, say that three Ms are on our mind - Ministry and Mission in the first part of our proceedings, and then Money at the second.  But it is principally to introduce the debate on Ministry and Mission I am directing my remarks now.

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It became apparent to me fairly early in my time as Bishop of Edinburgh that a number of matters concerning ministry, and how these related to issues of mission in the Diocese were important ones. They were ones concerning which significant developments were taking place, and different emphases being articulated in different parts of the Diocese.

Under the single topic of “Ministry” were matters that excited passion, enthusiasm, and anxiety - indeed, the whole gamut of emotions associated with theological discussion were involved. 

I originally wished to have a debate in Synod, on this topic, fairly early in my time here, but I was rightly advised that as our General Synod was soon to be debating ministry, and that it was likely that a significant papers would be passed up for discussion at the Diocesan Synod. I was advised that it would be best to wait until that discussion had taken place before holding our own discussion.

We now have the General Synod papers, but I would like our discussion not to be just about those papers, but about issues of Ministry and Mission in as wide a sense as we can manage - almost as we might have discussed them before we had the General Synod papers. 

Our Standing Committee produced a general paper which was sent out for before this meeting, and attached to that paper as one appendix is the text of one of the papers produced by General Synod, and attached to the other as an appendix was a very brief summary but containing all the recommendations of the other report.
What issues concern us? There is before us an immediate task, and there is before us the general question of policy and strategy.

And immediate task we have is that of shaping within the diocese a programme of education and training for ministry, ordained and lay, following the devolution of these responsibilities to the dioceses. That will happen.

But as this programme takes shape and grows it will grow in response to concerns and developments in our congregations, and as these get articulated in this Synod, and to that extend this Synod must aim to be a place where such issues are aired.

And so there are certain questions we must ask ourselves.
What sort of ministry does the diocese require in order to fulfil it mission?
What sort of training, initial and continuing is required in order to sustain it?

In looking at the first of these questions: What sort of ministry does the diocese require in order to fulfil it mission? I would wish to say that at least four key notions need to be held together.

Ministry must be informed.
And we include that it must be theologically informed. 

Thus I would hope that as a Diocese we would be setting up training provision available to all who exercise ministry, both ordained and lay, so that our ministry is theologically informed. It should also be informed about the history of our particular Province and Church within Scotland, informed about our place within the world wide Anglican Communion, within the world-wide ecumenical movement, and within the world of inter-faith dialogue. We need to know who we are, what we have inherited, and what it is our duty and privilege to proclaim.  And in addition we need to understand the society in which we are set – the changes and changing pressures on those who live in it. So the Diocese if it is to be effective as a unit of mission needs to have a training programme so that those who exercise ministry within it are informed and theologically informed.
 

Ministry must be collaborative.

We are familiar with talk about Local Collaborative Ministry operating within a congregation. 

That is good, right and proper, but ministry must be collaborative in every sense of that word. We are part of one body of Christ and we need to work together, within a congregation, and also within a diocese and province.

Thus as we reflect on our mission and a ministry appropriate to it congregations in a given area may need help in working together. Individuals within a ministry team may need assistance in developing collaborative skills.

Thus if our ministry is to be collaborative then part of the training programme which we need to develop will be one where collaborative skills are developed, facilitated by consultants. In all this we shall draw upon what we already engage with under our Mission 21 programme, and shall draw upon provincial resources concerning Local Collaborative Ministry.

The third feature of ministry that must be part of the life of the Church in this 21^st century, and must be handled within our training programme, is our ability to handle change.
 

Ministry must be adaptable 

Clergy move from one job to another, and even within our own diocese, jobs vary considerably, and skills finely honed in one place, may not neatly fit the new. Persons change roles within a congregation or within a team. We must help people, clergy and laity, make transitions.

Congregations themselves will undergo change perhaps from having their own rector to sharing of a rector. Perhaps from having shared a rector to having their own rector.

Changes can make one to look back to a golden age and feel dissatisfied with the present. 

Changes can make one have overblown hopes and disappointment results. 

If ministry is to be effective it must be effective in handling the change of which we are a part.

But the three things that I’ve mentioned - an informed ministry, a collaborative ministry and an adaptable ministry, is going to be totally ineffective unless a fourth item is present.
 

Ministry must be a caring ministry

When discussing ministry it is very easy for us, bishops, clergy and laity, to orientate ourselves in an unhelpful direction.

Even the most high-flown talk of ministry and mission can be very inward looking, simply concerned with the structures of the Church and what church officials should be doing with church members within church buildings.

Certainly pastoral care must be exercised within those walls, and caring for both those who are active in service and also for those whose active days are over is a vital part of the life of the Church.  But the Church exists to show care and concern for God’s world. It must be out looking as well as inward looking. 

Ministry must be about caring, and that care for the world is the root our pastoral engagement, it is the root of our taking up matters that would traditionally be labelled “Social Responsibility” , and it is also the root of our evangelism, and the desire to bring people to Christ and into Christian faith and worship.

Into a programme of ministerial training and support people will offer a variety of gifts, and it is not possible to sketch all of this in the course of a few opening remarks. 

I am very conscious that in this Diocese we are privileged to have an exceptionally able body of ordained priests and deacons in the stipendiary and non-stipendiary ministry, and extremely skilled lay people offering gifts into the life of the Church of the highest calibre.  It is because of this that I hope the Synod feels very confident that in having been invited by the General Synod to set up a training programme within the Diocese for all sorts of ministry this is something we can in fact do well. 

The building blocks are there. It’s up to us to find a way of putting them together.

It will involve discerning where there are those with gifts of knowledge and teaching skills.

It will involve collaboration in various components in the project between individuals and congregations.

It will involve looking forward and adapting to new ways to learning, teaching and serving.

Ministry is something that God offers to us both as a privilege and as a challenge. Within an Episcopal church traditionally the unit of mission is the Diocese, with congregations collaborating together in that. I want us to grasp the opportunity that the Diocese has been given to shape together the tools for training and sustaining a variety in ministry. I think we are about to embark upon a very exciting time, and the new Mission and Ministry Committee will run with this as fast as it possibly can. 

One of the things that will inform us will be the discussion that takes place at this synod today. The Church in the past, indeed over centuries, has been littered with discussions about ministry that have been acrimonious, that have been shaped by misunderstanding, that have been shaped by the preservation of vested interest, and that have been unadventurous concerning how they wished to move forward. My view is that we are now at a potentially very exciting time, and can move forward confidently and with vision.

I know someone may be saying surely the reason we are talking about collaborative ministry and more lay ministry and more non-stipendiary ministry is simply because we don’t have the cash any more. We face financial issues. We shall do so later at this Synod.

But if we look honestly at this Diocese, we see that the reason we shall seek to move forward in this way is because we are rich. We are immensely rich in personnel – our stipendiary ministry, or non-stipendiary ministry and our lay ministries, such that that the possibilities we can achieve if the spirit is willing are really vast. My belief would be that in the end we could make a significant contribution not just in the Diocese, but also ecumenically and beyond our immediate concerns.