Thursday, January 15, 2015

CofE Discussion papers and forums: a map of the blizzard

The blizzard of discussion papers from the CofE this week has been helpfully summarised over at Thinking Anglicans, I hope they don't mind a bit of cutting and pasting:
(updated Saturday, this is now a complete list of papers & links)

Paper 2 (Tuesday) is Developing Discipleship.
There is an accompanying blog and a video interview with the Bishop of Sheffield
There is an online forum to discuss this paper.
Paper 3 (Wednesday) is Report of the Simplification Task Group.
There is an accompanying blog and a video interview with the Bishop of Willesden.
There is an online forum to discuss this paper.
Paper 4 (Thursday) is Resourcing Ministerial Education in the Church of England.
There is an accompanying blog and a video interview with the Bishop of Sheffield.
There is an online forum to discuss this paper.
Paper 5 (Friday) is Resourcing the Future of the Church of England
There is an accompanying blog and a video interview with John Spence.
Paper 6 (Friday) is Church Commissioners and the work of the Task Groups.
There is a blog and a video interview with Andreas Whittam Smith.
There is an online forum to discuss the above two papers.

Useful in Parts has done a monster job of extracting the proposals from each of the discussion papers:
The online forums are a canny idea, there's always plenty of discussion on blogs about what the CofE is up to, but there hasn't been a CofE moderated forum for the same discussions. I'm also intrigued that at least one of the contributions links these papers to the next set of General Synod elections. The prime issue for the current Synod intake was women bishops, I think it's helpful to know the agenda that the next Synod will be working on. 

2 comments:

  1. Well this has been a busy week hasn't it? Having ploughed through the various reports some of the proposals I was intrigued by were:

    Talent Management Report - on performance management/MDR "Currently there is some difference in focus between Lambeth and Bishopthorpe" (p25)

    Renewal & Reform Programme - comments to February 2015 Synod on the various reports proposals to the effect of a) please don't suggest detailed amendments b) plus remember summer elections will produce a new General Synod in November.

    Resourcing Ministerial Education - Ordinations in September only and candidates over 50 selected locally by the bishop & diocese will pay for their training

    Resourcing the future - Diocese must commit their own funds if applying for national funds, wealthy Diocese more so

    Commissioners funding - if they over-distribute from their capital to fund the proposals a risk is that instead of having a substantial endowment and few members - the Church might have neither

    Meanwhile - I've just finished the summary of the last report - the Commissioners funding report.

    So for those who are time poor here are some links to my summaries of the various reports. I've tried hard to summarise in a non-partisan way I hope people find useful.

    http://bit.ly/1A5p2zW Talent management
    http://bit.ly/1CfbYat Renewal & Reform Programme
    http://bit.ly/1yg90mU Developing Discipleship
    http://bit.ly/1KMYkRX Simplification
    http://bit.ly/1IO8IH8 Resourcing Ministerial Education
    http://bit.ly/1BJ81wI Resourcing the future
    http://bit.ly/1yylk2d Church Commissioners' funds & inter-generational equity

    And if you want to compare & contrast with Dioceses Strategy ... http://bit.ly/1tczcgA

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    Replies
    1. I would worry that Synod won't have time to digest all of these in short order, hopefully they are the first word on the subject, and Synod will have time to get its teeth into the detail and think these through in full. Dealing with one of these per Synod might give it a chance, but all in one go needs some serious thinking about processes.

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