It’s great how some words are used that you just don’t come across in the rest of life. The church is great at that – we use all kinds of words that are just so particular to what we do. It’s like this word ‘Prorogation’. That is the final item on each Synod agenda. Google tells me it means
To discontinue a session of (a parliament, for example).
Enter a caption
So the Archbishop of whichever Province the Synod is meeting in dismisses us, as the Headmaster would dismiss school at the end of the academic year. Hurrah – the holiday begins! Except the truth is that we are all returning to whatever it is that we do when we are not here.
The final Session of this Group of Sessions was concerned with the Annual Report from the Archbishops’ Council and then the voting through of the budget for 2018. All that happened without too much fuss and after farewells – hilariously and lovingly delivered by Archbishop Justin – to the Bishop of Bristol, Mike Hills, and the Bishop at Lambeth, Nigel Stock, we left the Chamber.
It has been a significant Synod. Before I make the positive comments there is one thing that concerns me. Part of the real joy at York has always been the Fringe Events. These are meetings that take place in between the sessions. They are important because in them issues are aired, projects are promoted, voices are heard that couldn’t happen in the debates. There is always a rich selection and I have always tried to go to quite a few. The practice was that as the Session ended you made your way to the room where the Fringe Meeting was taking place. A buffet meal awaited you and a glass or two of wine. You sat down with your food at round tables, got chatting to people, perhaps folk you didn’t know and then after a while the event proper began. That has all changed. It is perhaps finance, perhaps the administrative burden it creates, I don’t really know but now we all go to get our meal in whichever dining room we have been allocated to, down our food and then head off to the event.
It sounds ok on paper but it has taken a lot away from the Fringe of the Synod and I think that has made it much ‘fringier’ much more peripheral and I’d be interested to know whether fewer people availed themselves of the opportunity to talk and learn and pray together. If that has been a consequence Synod and the Church is the poorer for it.
After all it was the fringe of the garment that brought healing to people as Jesus passed them, as they encountered the Apostles, its the fringe that is often the most exciting place to operate in our parishes, in our institutions, it is on the fringe that we encounter Christ.
Moan over – this was an amazing Synod. I think that an indicator of what might be happening was the passing of the Amending Canon on Vesture this morning. When that first came forward as an idea I was ready to resist it. As a catholic never-knowingly underdressed I was ready to lie down before the evangelical tanks! But instead we have arrived at a place of real accommodation and understanding. I can wear my chasuble for missional reasons, my sister can wear what she feels is important for mission where she is, my brother for where he is. We have agreed that there are times and ‘life events’ in which what we wear is significant and there are situations and new ecclesial gatherings where something different is needed. I think we have all been brave and imaginative and the voting reflected that. Catholics and evangelicals, as well as everyone in that broad middle, voted together. The numbers clearly show that, that we were voting as one Synod regardless of our attitude to brocade in church!
It might have been that new understanding of ‘radical Christian inclusion’ that allowed us to do this, as it allowed us to reject the curing of homosexuals through Conversion Therapy, as we voted to really welcome trans people into our congregations. Thanks be to God, the God of surprises.
So, I leave, encouraged and again amazed at what can happen when we allow the Holy Spirit, wind and fire, to blow into our locked and protected spaces and liberate us.
Holy God,
bless your Church
that our hearts my be set on fire
in worship, witness and mission
in the name of Jesus, your Son.
Amen.
Andrew Nunn's reflections from General Synod 
You must be logged in to post a comment.