Friday, September 28, 2012

What's Wrong with This Agenda?

Thinking Anglicans have kindly published the agenda for Novembers General Synod:

GENERAL SYNOD: NOVEMBER 2012
Timetable
Monday 19 November
2.15pm – 7 pm
Worship and formal business
Report by the Business Committee
Anglican Consultative Council meeting: presentation and questions
Anglican Communion Covenant: Report on the Reference to Dioceses
Questions
[brief evening worship]
Tuesday 20 November
9.15 am – 1 pm
9.15 am Holy Communion
10.30 am Legislative Business:
Draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of Women) Measure and Draft Amending Canon No.30
2.30 pm – 7 pm
Legislative Business:
Draft Bishops and Priests (Consecration and Ordination of women) Measure and Draft Amending Canon No.30 – continued
[brief evening worship]
Wednesday 21 November
9.30 am – 1 pm
Worship
Diocesan Synod Motion: Southwell and Nottingham: Amendment to Canon B 12 and Regulations
Private Member’s Motion: John Freeman: Living Wage
Dates of groups of sessions in 2013
2.30 – 5.30pm
Farewells
Youth unemployment
Farewell to the Archbishop of Canterbury
Contingency business:
Report of the Standing Orders Committee

A question: would you guess, from looking at the above, that it's the agenda of the main decision making body of a church which is consistently declining in numbers, is facing a game-changing drop in its levels of staffing, and has committed during the current Synod to prioritising church growth and mission?

No, me neither. If there's any synod members out there who are looking at this and scratching their heads too, perhaps you could use the question time to remind Synod of our membership stats, or to ask at what point we are going to take the same steps as the Church in Wales and start to refit the CofE for the 21st century. Otherwise the final task of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury will be to turn out the lights.

3 comments:

  1. This General Synod session was an extra one to deal with the Women Bishop's legislation postponed from July for a rethink. So you wouldn't really expect it to have a full outward looking agenda. At least it's not all inward looking. There is youth unemployment on the agenda. Like it that it comes just before 'Farewell to the ABC'!

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  2. That's a fair point, I hadn't fully clocked that. But still....

    Maybe Rowan could take on a couple of English postgrads to proofread his memoirs.

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  3. ... and there's John Freeman's "Living Wage" PMM. Now if that was top item on the agenda, we'd have something to have a song and dance about: C of E cares about how much people are paid. But the reality is that most Christian organisations seem committed to either paying the minimum wage or using unpaid labour rather than leading the way in exceeding it...

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