Checking back on Ruth Gledhill’s
Times blog, and faced with a provincial meeting, and a self-select Canon Law meeting which I'm looking forward to as a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, I think Ruth’s put her finger on the real challenge just now:
So it appears, you can take indaba out of Africa, but you can't take good old democratic infighting out of the West. It's business as usual at Lambeth, and one way or another, these 650 bishops are determined to have a vote and make it count.
For those facilitating groups, the struggle is
how to free up the process to be all it could be. I notice in some groups there’s a bubbling up feeling we can make more of the process if we trust its inherent wisdom, rather than micromanaging it. As well as Ruth’s challenging and perceptive comment from the outside, I overheard something else at coffee time today, that made me think the change in gear among us that’s happening and needs to bear fruit.
Indaba means setting your own agenda, but taking real responsibility for it as well.
A principle that deserves serious notice and development?
Checking back on Ruth Gledhill’s Times blog, and faced with a provincial meeting, and a self-select Canon Law meeting which I'm looking forward to as a member of the Ecclesiastical Law Society, I think Ruth’s put her finger on the real challenge just now:
For those facilitating groups, the struggle is how to free up the process to be all it could be. I notice in some groups there’s a bubbling up feeling we can make more of the process if we trust its inherent wisdom, rather than micromanaging it. As well as Ruth’s challenging and perceptive comment from the outside, I overheard something else at coffee time today, that made me think the change in gear among us that’s happening and needs to bear fruit.
2 comments:
I'm fascinated by two things:
1 - How "Provincial" has changed from meaning "centre of power" to "middle of nowhere" in a few centuries.
2 - The need to have all those Stalag Luft style fences at the Lambeth Conference. I'd have thought that journalists didn't need quite that much protection.
I know that Bishops are feral beasts, but do they really need to go to all those lengths. Makes the whole thing seem like Nike-sponsored Ultimate Cage Fighting...
Matt
Liked the ultimate cage fighting reference. I once ran a do for 2000 people in a tent in the Oxford diocese and the (rather boring but true) requirement of our insurance company was that they would only cover the considerable gizmos various in the tent on condition it was ringed by continuous security fencing identical to this stuff, and patrolled at night by a security company. It cost us several hundred pounds to make both those things happen, but without it our gear would not have been insurable. I imagine much the same is true here.
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