bath & wells: diocesan information

general synod matters

The following is 'a personal report by Mr Tim Hind, one of our five elected lay representatives'.

General Synod – July 2007

Friday 6th.

A difficult weekend ahead

The General Synod is heading for a weekend of debates which will help to shape the future of the Church.  On the one hand we have the debate about Clergy Pensions which will determine the resolve of the Church to provide adequately for its stipendiary clergy in retirement.  On the other it will decide whether it has the appetite for continuing dialogue with other provinces over a covenant statement aimed at preserving order within the Anglican Communion.

It started with a feisty speech from the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, who spoke of the plight of UK children.  His organisation, rebranded as 11Million to represent the children in the UK at the moment, aims for children and young people to be actively involved in shaping the decisions that affect their lives.  He spoke movingly about the Well being report which categorised the UK as bottom of the heap and particularly on 5 out of 6 key measures.(Poverty, Health, Relationships, Behaviour, Education and Self Assessment).  He encouraged us to get involved in various upcoming events

and to express our outrage over the treatment of the vulnerable.

Friday continued with the usual debate on the agenda and questions

Saturday started with a Bible Study on the whole of 1 Corinthians.  Fortunately it was segmented a little into blocks which concentrated on a few chapters at a time and within those chapters we focussed on a handful of verses.  The aim was to look at the diversity of the Corinthian society and to ask what St Paul was saying to their situation.  From that perspective we attempted to understand how that might inform our current situation.

In past Synods these groups have not been well attended.  The group that I was privileged to lead had 15 people present.  I was only expecting 16 and so I felt quite pleased.

The rest of the morning was devoted to legislative business.

In February, a somewhat rebellious Synod told the Marriage Measure Revision Committee to go back to the drawing board over the question of demonstrable (Qualifying) connection.  The tension here was between the folk who want total freedom to allow anyone to marry anywhere and those who wish to have some form of qualifying connection. 

The previous draft measure had been overly prescriptive and quite complicated.  The new version, which allows people to marry so long as they, their parents or their grandparents have a reasonable connection in the parish ticked most people’s boxes and was passed.

Next up was the now annual debate on the Parochial Fees order.

There is a number of legislative orders, schemes etc which are tabled as deemed approval.  They are only debated if someone asks.  Julian Litten always asks for some element(s) of the Parochial Fees Order to be debated - typically around burials and monuments.  He succeeded in getting the order changed to increase the burials of ashes to be half the equivalent fee for burial of bodies.  It was passed by 112 to 97 and required a division of the whole synod.

Because of the complexity of this, this forced the Standing Orders debate to be postponed.

The afternoon saw the Pensions Debate.  The changes to the scheme that were being proposed had been well developed over a number of months and had been accepted by a sizeable majority of serving and retired clergy in  a recent consultation. 

An attempt was made to reinstate the automatic link between Stipend and Pensions.  When it came to the vote very few people supported the amendments but it was agreed that when the situation changed these proposals would be reviewed.

In a little bit of theatre a Private Members Motion on the possibility of military action against Iran was canned.  A number of members, including Bishop Peter, was hoping to speak and so they were disappointed.

As a result time was freed up to deal with some of the Standing Orders debate which was dealing with the consequences of our agreement to move towards electronic voting after July next year.

A presentation on the arrangements for Lambeth 2008 took us up to evening dinner.  Imaginatively, the visitors to Lambeth next year will be farmed out amongst the Dioceses and be given the opportunity to experience the Church of England at first hand before travelling to Canterbury.

The evening saw a presentation and debate on the Liturgical Commission’s new report on Transforming Worship. It would, perhaps, have been better to experience transformational worship than to have a presentation. This has been commended to the Dioceses.

Sunday 8th.

Today was dominated by covenants.

The service in the Minster was not as exciting as it has been in the past.  The Archbishop of York’s sermon (which concentrated on the story of Naaman) was a little difficult to key into and the logistics of communion were dire - almost funerial.  His main message was to look at the ordinary rather than the spectacular when dealing with God’s imperative.  Sometimes it is in the ordinary we will find the answer.  Having said that the singing of Psalm 150 at the end, which is normally mind-blowing was spectacular even though the choir took a different route and they cut off early!

After the WATCH (Women And The CHurch) meeting where we heard Bishop Christina Odenburg (former Bishop of Lund) talking about the experience of their church and the acceptance of women to Episcopal appointments, we were straight into the main business of the day.

The thunderstorm hit us just as we were about to embark on the first speeches.  The Archbishop of the West Indies (Dr Drexel Gomez) is the chairman of the drafting committee for the Covenant.  This is the result of broad acceptance of the need for a covenant following the Windsor Report which tried to work out how we can keep the Anglican Communion together when different provinces are doing their own thing about women bishops, gay weddings etc.  The report tried to address the issues of common purpose and right behaviour regarding provinces who wish to deviate from what had previously been thought to be “orthodox Anglicanism”.

As the crescendo of thunderclaps echoed round the chamber Dr Gomez exhorted us to engage with the process of developing a covenant to act as a framework for the stability of the Anglican Communion.  The Bishop of Chichester then took us through the logistics of the process and the potential consequences of not signing up to the process.

During a far-ranging debate members expressed support on the one hand to disbelief in the need on the other.  Several people felt that we don’t need a covenant - and definitely not one which might hand power to the Primates.  Attempts were made to reassure them that the vote today was purely to do with process and that there would be opportunities later to debate the final text.

One amendment tried to wreck the whole thing by narrowing the motion down to a very restrictive approach.  Another tried to limit the freedom given to the Archbishops in their draft response to the draft covenant. A third amendment tried to water the whole thing down.

In the end the original motion was passed unamended but the tension in the chamber was palpable.  It would have been anyway but was heightened by the dramatic backdrop of Thunder & Lightening

A fairly inconsequential, but lively, debate took place on the progress towards an Anglican-Methodist covenant.  It was made difficult by virtue of the fact that the covenant referred to here is a totally different animal to the other one.  This covenant is about finding ways to converge two cultures with slightly differing theologies grown up over time.  The other covenant is a rescue plan for a series of Provinces to stay together.

The voting for God motion later was a response to a new review of Ethic Minority engagement.  The personal testimonies from a variety of ethnic minority members of Synod were very moving.

Monday started with a presidential address from the Archbishop of York (Canterbury being off on sabbatical meant that Sentamu was shouldering the entire preaching burden.  His text was that of not being afraid.  He said that despite all our local difficulties we should make sure that our future is not governed by fear.

This was followed by an experiment where the Church Commissioners gave a presentation of how well the Commissioners are doing followed by an interactive question and answer session.  The First Church Estates Commissioner (Andreas Whittam Smith) is both impressive and dull at the same time.  A consummate professional he realy knows his stuff and answered every question asked of him without notes.  However, his whole manner makes Geoffrey Howe look exciting.  (If you remember it was the latter of whom it was said that arguing with him was like being savaged by a dead sheep).

The Third Church Estates Commissioner who supported him was equally enthralling.

This was followed by a Diocesan Synod motion on whether we felt that the time was right to have some form of review of the Church Commissioners.  This was defeated despite an attempt to focus the review on some key areas which the Church Commissioners had already suggested might be appropriate.  I think that Synod didn’t quite have the appetite at this time, given all the other things that are going on.

In the next debate, Stephen Lynas had tabled some amendments to the motion on Disability Issues and was sufficiently persuasive to get them accepted.  As a result a Lead Person will now need to be appointed in each Diocese to deal with Disability Issues.  It was stressed that this was to cover all issues (i.e. not just physical).

After lunch the big debate today related to the way that we appoint our Senior Clergy.  This was a very interesting debate as the motions had been tabled some while ago based on the Pilling Report (Talent & Calling).  However it was overtaken by events and 11 of the 34 recommendations stood the chance of being superseded by the Green Paper prompted by the new Prime Minister suggesting that he wished to limit the involvement by him and his successors in the appointment of Bishops etc.

A new proposal (i.e. different to that which we were expecting to debate) aimed at reflecting the impact of the Green Paper was placed before us.  A couple of modest amendments for the equally modest Bishops of London and Chichester were accepted which tried to sharpen up the new motion were accepted.  A handful of other amendments which tried to limit the freedom of the Church Authorities in their dealing with the Government were rejected.

We completed Standing Orders.

The Church Army’s Chief Executive, Mark Russell, gave a splendid presentation of the work of the Church Army before we headed off for supper.

The evening saw us deciding to urge the National Church Institution’s Investment bodies to provide support through the activities of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) for Christians to enable them to invest ethically.

With the exception of the farewells to various Bishops and others the last day was quite drab.  The budget went through without major contention and the Marriage changes were approved without drama.

The farewell to Bishop Peter Selby (following the announcement of his successor, John Inge) was very well done by Archbishop Sentamu.  He said that Bishop Peter was one of the few members of the House of Lords who went to Prison (admittedly as Bishop for Prisons).  He also said that he probably preferred being in Prison to the aforementioned other place.

The members of Synod also said farewell to the Bishop of Coventry, the Bishop of Sodor & Man and to Michael Chamberlain, Chairman of the Board of Finance.

With all things done that could be the inmates left the campus.