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ACNS 4076     |     ENGLAND	|     17 NOVEMBER 2005

Archbishop of Canterbury's Presidential address at General Synod

16th November 2005

To begin by asking this audience, 'Why are you here?' may sound just a
bit negative (shades of the wartime challenge, 'Was your journey really
necessary?'). But it's meant as a serious and an open question. Why were
you elected to this Synod? What do you and your electors hope for from
your presence here?

Well, presumably, you were elected because enough people believed that
you would defend and advance their vision of the Church, their sense of
the priorities that confront us. And those who voted for you also voted
because they believed that Synod was important enough to take time with
- important enough to ask someone to sacrifice their leisure and energy
over a substantial chunk of time. Both of those things ought to tell us
that Synod is, in the eyes of at least some, a body that takes
responsibility for the Church's vision of itself.

And that's why you're here. You're here to take responsibility for a
vision. You have been elected, perhaps, to serve a particular kind of
vision within the spectrum of our Church. But once you're here, you are
also committed, just by being here and praying together, to listen and
look for a vision that is that of the whole Church, a vision that is in
accord with God's purpose for his people. Synod is, in the full, ancient
sense of the word, a Catholic body, or it is nothing. It is an organ of
the Church's constant search for a fuller grasp of the all-encompassing
mystery in the middle of which it lives and prays.

Synod may be a legislative body; it may be a sort of parliament; it may
feel variously like a debating society, an amateur dramatic society, an
interminable revising committee or a scene from Groundhog Day, but
before and beyond all of this, it is part of our Church's way of
discerning God's purpose for us, and it is utterly meaningless if we
lose sight of that. You are here to serve and to nourish a vision, to
try and find for the Church of England a sense of its mission that is
strong and deeprooted enough to be owned by the whole of our community
and owned as part of the work and witness of the entire worldwide
church.

That means specifics, of course, not only aspirations, and I'll come
back to what some of those might be in a minute. But I'd like to repeat
something I've said before in this setting, asking your forgiveness for
saying it yet again. To the extent that Synod is a gathering of
Christians who meet for (among other things) prayer and reflection on
Scripture, Synod is a sort of Church. And the ethos, the 'feel', of the
synodical meeting can contribute, positively or negatively, to the feel
of the whole Church. An inward-looking Synod, an anxious Synod, a
suspicious, ungenerous or legalistic Synod, will have an impact on the
kind of Church we become in the next five years. A Synod that is capable
of patience where needed and impatience where needed, that is primarily
concerned with honest and joyful sharing of what it has been given as
part of Christ's Body - that too has an impact.

But of course it is a part of Christ's body; and St Paul's thoughts
about the members of the Body are of great relevance here. Synod serves
the Church's mission, but seldom carries out that mission directly in
the way that local communities do. The day we go out to evangelise on
the streets of Westminster we will become a very different body. Whether
we are thinking about interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, the 'fresh
expressions' agenda, church schools, community regeneration and the
Church Urban Fund, or the simple and central work of continuing pastoral
care from birth to death, what makes a difference in the Church's work
is largely there on the ground, in the local gathering of believers. It
is essential to recognise the quality and depth of so much that is done
and never to forget that this is what we are serving; the vision we try
to hold, we hold for that work to go on and to be better supported and
resourced. We live in an age cursed by over-management and
over-regulation, by a confusion about where decisions are best made, and
Synod is not exempt from the general curse. We need a sober realism
about what our importance is: the dignity of serving the Church's
mission is great; we shouldn't have to entertain exaggerated ideas of
this Synod as the engine of all change.

So: we are here both to hold and to shape a vision for the Church, to
seek for ways of making more things possible for the Church in its
local, face-to-face ministry and mission, and at the same time to look
for ways of talking and acting that will somehow express what is
universal and basic in our faith. We have to beware of 'poisoning the
wells' by doing our business with suspicion and hostility or lack of
mutual respect. We have to remind ourselves that the Church's central
focus is not on its own housekeeping, necessary as that is, but on its
communication of a revealed truth and hope to the world. Given the
actual business that lies before us in the next five years, how does
that translate into practical priorities?

Here are a few thoughts on specific matters.

Everyone knows the threats that face us, internally and internationally,
over divisions in the Communion. We are painfully aware of the quarrels
over sexuality, and the tensions and complications around how we handle
the question of women's ordination as bishops. I suggest two
considerations for us. The sexuality debate is infinitely complicated by
high levels of mutual ignorance and anxiety between 'North' and 'South',
and by perceptions, not always unfair, about the uncritical use of power
and influence by older and wealthier churches. If every member of this
Synod made a commitment to make contact with someone in another province
who is not likely to share their view, we might at least move away from
demeaning caricatures on both sides. Similarly, in regard to women
bishops, I suggest that we make some individual commitments. When my
diocese in Wales was discussing women priests a decade ago, we arranged
prayer partnerships between people on opposing sides, on the basis that
we should need some ingrained habits of shared prayer and patience if we
were going to carry on a common Christian life after a divisive vote.
Are Synod members ready to undertake such a commitment and to commend it
to the Church at large? And, in relation to the detail of the discussion
on women bishops, let me simply say that I still passionately believe it
is wholly worthwhile to seek for a structure that will allow what I have
been calling 'interactive pluralism' in one or two recent lectures on
politics - sorry about the jargon - that is, a situation in which
difference is publicly acknowledged and given space, but not regarded as
an excuse for 'ghettoisation' or exclusion from a serious degree of
shared work, shared resources and mutual responsibility.
We have already made commitments to encourage new expressions of the
Church's local life, and what has been done in a short space of time by
Steve Croft and others is immensely encouraging (we already know of some
300 new initiatives, and calculate that about 20,000 people have been
contacted through these initiatives; and this is only a small part of a
picture whose details are being further uncovered every day). In this
area, I suggest that Synod reminds itself annually about what is
happening here, by some sort of report or, better, celebratory event, so
that it may measure its work against the background of these new signs
of what God is doing. Some of our legislative programme is about what
could be called a principled and careful loosening of structures to
assist the process. For this to be effective and to have integrity, we
need opportunities to be clear about the difference between some of the
basic principles of order in the Church and the fairly varied ways in
which they are worked out. There are solid theological reasons for
holding to our threefold ministerial order. But I suspect that we shall
need a good deal of imagination to find appropriate ways of incarnating
this order in new settings. A deacon is a great deal more than an
apprentice priest, a sort of ministerial probationer. A priest is
someone gifted by God with the authority to gather and give voice to the
common prayer of God's people - not a leader or manager on a secular
model, not even just a teacher. A bishop is not simply a territorial
co-ordinator or even just a sacramental focus, but the person who makes
a community of ordained and lay ministers of the gospel work effectively
in mission. So if this Synod is going to give the support it should to
the continuance of the Mission-Shaped Church agenda, let it be willing
to use its imagination about ordained ministry.
This reinforces the need for Synod to model for the rest of the Church
the need for Christians to be a learning community. We had yesterday a
chance for a seminar on the nature of the bishop's ministry which I
sense was well-received. I should be delighted if Synod could use this
model rather more, and spend time in common reflection without votes, so
as to let itself be informed and even inspired. I spoke earlier of how
the very fact of being here commits us to finding a vision that is not
solely ours or that of our 'constituencies'. This kind of common
engagement would say powerfully to the Church at large that we do not
solve our problems by slogans, and that we cannot assume we already
understand our opponents' views better than they do themselves. And if,
as I devoutly hope, the Church of England, in common with the Communion,
is committed to improving theological education for the whole people of
God, we as a Synod need to show that theology doesn't kill you - indeed,
that it can be a source of life and health. And in our hectic,
conflict-driven, short-attention culture, wouldn't this be one small
contribution to being a transforming counter-cultural presence?
How do we carry through what we say? Synod has always been pretty expert
at articulating ideas and principles, on a huge range of subjects. It
would do us much good if we could, when we discuss public affairs, once
again model something for the Church at large by making sure that we
identify what action we can take that will change us as part of the
solution to what we have spoken about. There is an obvious example in
the debates about environmental crisis: We do largely agree when we talk
about it that it is probably the most urgent public moral issue of our
time. But what is pressingly urgent for us as a Church is to make sure
that we are doing those specific things in our own common life that make
whatever difference we can make; which means auditing our environmental
policies and practices at every level and resourcing people who can
identify further changes. But this is a more general challenge, if we
are to have credibility as a moral commentator. Continuity isn't always
something that Synod, or the Church overall thinks about; but in fact
our past discussions and decisions can build up into a huge library of
well-meaning hot air if we don't review implementation regularly and
exercise some self-denying ordinances about discussion that doesn't have
such change in view for ourselves.
A last thought about the immediate future. Some of what I've said
assumes that we shall have a creative and flexible and intellectually
well-resourced body of clergy and laity. The hopes for such a laity
without such a clergy are slender: can we be confident about clerical
vocations? Well, God will always call those he needs for his work; the
question is not about that, but about our own readiness to help in the
discernment of the call and to give it voice. We are blessed by the
readiness of older candidates to come forward and no-one denies their
indispensable importance. But there is a challenge to do with how we
really speak the language of a different generation, and it's often been
said that we have let slip the priority of encouraging younger people to
come and share in the work of ordained ministry. So, let's take it for
granted that part of the new evangelistic initiatives we have taken
responsibility for is the effective communicating of the good news to
the young; then it makes sense to fill that out further by saying that
it should include a challenge to think about the public ordained
ministry. What would happen - a daring thought - if we set ourselves a
target in this respect -whether through Synod, Archbishops' Council or
the House of Bishops or all of them? If we said that by the end of the
next five years we wanted to see a twenty per cent increase in the
number of candidates for ordination coming from amongst the under
thirties? Numerical targets are risky things, and they may be a way of
inviting embarrassment - yet they may also be a way of expressing trust
in God. What do you think?
There are many more matters on which we could reflect in this way. If
the list I've given is dominated, in spite of everything, by concerns
about the internal business of the Church (and it is, rather), that's
partly because it is there that we can and must begin to change. But I
hope that it may have given a few clues about how being a certain sort
of Synod might help us be a certain sort of Church. Whatever we might
like to think, there is no one sure-fire recipe to reverse the trends in
the life of our Church that we might deplore; if our electors sent us
here to do this, I'm afraid we are going to disappoint them. But I'd
like to think that perhaps they also sent us here in order to serve
something greater, to put ourselves at the disposal of the Kingdom of
God. On the whole Synods don't renew churches - neither do archbishops,
for that matter. God does, and he does so by the most extraordinarily
unpredictable means and people, and our ingenuity and skill is sometimes
best exercised by seeing how we can get out of God's way when he is
moving. That depends a great deal on our working as a Synod in a way
that suggests we really do believe that God exists; and what I have said
is no more than a modest set of ideas for what this might entail.

So, in summary: take personal responsibility for maintaining communion
as best you can in forming some new relationships, in the Church of
England and more widely. Pray with people you might not otherwise pray
with. Show that you are ready to learn from each other and from God, not
least in how you think and plan about our ordained ministry. Work for a
theologically educated church - a church that gives thanks to God and
sings praise with mind as well as heart. Keep asking what visible
difference (it doesn't have to be a huge difference, just a real one)
any discussion or ideal or plan will make for the Kingdom of God - and
if you can't answer, look again at the importance you're giving it. Find
a voice to challenge younger disciples into deeper faith and fuller
ministry. Above all, remember that you - we - are a community of people
committed to seeing and hearing Jesus Christ Our Lord in one another.

Renewing wisdom is found in odd places. For me, one of the most
penetrating spiritual commentators in the English-speaking world is the
Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig. I leave you with two extracts
from a recent book of his prayers and meditations; looking for words
with which to end, I found these were the ones that seemed to me to be
possibly the sort of thing that our Lord might want a Christian Synod to
hear.

There are only two feelings.
Love and fear.
There are only two languages.
Love and fear.
There are only two activities.
Love and fear.
There are only two motives,
two procedures, two frameworks,
two results.
Love and fear.
Love and fear.

God help us to find our confession;
The truth within us which is hidden from our mind;
The beauty or ugliness we see elsewhere
But never in ourselves;
The stowaway which has been smuggled
Into the dark side of the heart,
Which puts the heart off balance and causes it pain,
Which wearies and confuses us,
Which tips us in false directions and inclines us to destruction,
The load which is not carried squarely
Because it is carried in ignorance.

God help us to find our confession.
Help us across the boundary of our understanding.
Lead us into the darkness that we may find what lies concealed;
That we may confess it towards the light;
That we may carry our truth in the centre of our heart;
That we may carry our cross wisely
And bring harmony into our life and our world. Amen.

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