The Learning from Lambeth

OK — now I'm back at work, what is clearer to me as a result of Lambeth?

1. The sheer scale of our communion in global terms. It was immensely moving to meet colleagues from around the world — Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Darfur — and learn directly about the human and gospel dimensions of their lives. Most moving was the experience of being in a huge congregation saying the Lords prayer together in over a hundred languages. Quoting a Tanzanian brother, God’s Word speaks to each of us in our own language as the people we are, where we are. I was often reminded of Max Warren’s saying “It takes a whole world to know Christ.”
   So? Get to know and prioritize time for the world Church
2. The experience of African led Bible studies in community was fantastic. Some of the more academic English felt it wasn’t quite their cup of tea. It was mine. I am ashamed at the comaratively modest amount of time I have spent down the years in teams and groups studying the scriptures personally together. Business always seemed more important. If only I had seen that corporate study of the scriptures was our business, I might have prioritised things rather differently!
   So? Direct, personal, corporate Bible study could be given a greater place in the engine room of our decision making processes.
3. Indaba is a considerable discipline that takes a while to master, but it’s worth it. We are so inculturated into parliamentary methods and tactics, with winners and losers, as the way to make decisions. Indaba is slower, and requires a higher order of listening skills. Imagine, say, the last General Synod, without all the locker room intrigue, hysterics and theatricals. I am still haunted by a Japanese colleague, who had needed continuous translation, thanking the group in broken English for “the beauty of being listened to.” It brings no glory to God that the same would be very improbable feedback from many of our church meetings.
   So? Be more aware about the negative effects of parliamentary processes on people, and work for more patient, open, mutual, emotionally inteligent ways of deciding things together.
4. Rowan’s big Lambeth strategy seemed to be about committing to personal and corporate holiness, and alowing our plans to grow out of that. I have no grand overarching command and control strategy for Bucks. Here’s my strategy: Grace through Faith — strive to become the kind of people God needs us to be, and he will show us, on the ground, what needs doing and, more importantly, how to do it. As we step out, with authenticity, in faith we grow; as we shrink back, our visions get bogged down in fear and trivial pursuits. Therefore, as well as looking outward, centering our team processes in Scripture and being rigorously self-critical of our methods, we will be richly rewarded by God as we prioritise faith over fear, realism over fantasy, personal and spiritual excellence over mediocrity.
   So? We need more Faith, more realism, more holiness!

Indaba process parting shots

Before the final plenary, I just wanted to capture one or two comments from my final indaba group. Whatever document there is to be will have been produced now, and it will not please everyone. I would guess the only way forward will be to try and grasp things on a meta level; to affirm what we do know. We are committed to staying together as a global communion, and to working it out locally. Other optons include split or centralise and keep the lid on the discussion. Neither of those options strike me as fantastically discipled or honest. Nous verrons.

So, in closing off the indaba process disquiet was expressed about the lack of closure (something I can live with in an open ended process). What comes out of this conference is us, as renewed disciples. The authority of the output will come from the fruit of the Spirit, and the capacity of this commitment to being together to spread virally. Powerplays and politics won’t build the kingdom anyway.

The fact is, one brother pointed out, we are exactly where Rowan promised we would be in the letter of invitation we all received. We have decided, said another senior brother, to sit closer to God and give each other space for true understanding and honest resolution. It is a recall to basic gospel principles. Jesus didn’t start a political movement or issue books of rules — he made friends.

Finally, in a gracious moving contribution which expressed serious reservations about the Covenant process and its possible development, another bishop celebrated the glory of learning how to be the friends Jesus called us to be, and said that the great gift of this assembly had been the beauty of istening to each other.

So the next time people come out of your PCC or synod meeting saying it was glorious, and its true beauty was that of listening lovingly to God in one another, youll know that the spirit of this assembly has begun to infect your PCC or synod! After 30 years of Church meetings, more of that going on, in itself, would be a pretty damn amazing outcome...

Lambeth: The answer?

With the advent of the rains for which some have been praying, there’s a sad feel around everything today. I’ve noticed one or two on the edge of tearfulness, as Bible Study groups meet for the last time. There is some concern about whether we’ve got The Answer. This is particularly so among the English. As people of the middle ground, we like to think we’ve got the answer to most things, and very irritating it is, sometimes, for the rest of the world! The reflection document will be an interesting read — all the drafts are publicly available on the conference website, I believe, so anyone who wants can see how it’s shaping up.

One comment haunts me. A wise Jamaican suffragan said “What we gotta fix is our attitudes.” The highlight of the sparsely attended and very tedious sexuality hearing was a Tanzanian brother who pointed out that Homosexuality is in no way a gospel issue, but one of “ethics and leadership.” The anger that stewed and bubbled around this is to do with our own cultures and contexts, our fears and anxieties, not the topic. This conference has demonstrated how much greater our community in Christ is than those who would tear us apart.

And, make no mistake, there are ambitious and egotistical lobby group people out there, exploiting the situation hard, lobbying, manipulating — wittingly or unwittingly doing the Devil’s work. Someone spoke yesterday of some man with a blue press tag in the Keynes concourse, not gathering information, but lobbying hard and handing out party literature. This is the work of the Devil. You know it by its fruits — mistrust, irreconcilable anger, strife, emulations. The hallmark of the Enemy’s activity is accusation, half-truth, innuendo, sectarianism — all the works of the flesh named in Galatians. We cannot stop the Enemy’s activity, but we can identify it by its fruits and be wise about its source.

So we gotta fix our attitudes. God has been informing and healing them, and we have been able to taste here a bit of what it would feel like to be a healed community. Another phrase in my mind is from the part of the Joseph story in Genesis where he says “God let these bad things happen to you, but for good.” The rabbi drew it to our attention, and it’s a curiously compelling soundbite that has intrigued me ever since I first bashed through the story in Hebrew, word by word, as a student at Cambridge.

Is that the answer? It’s one answer. I’m just off to say goodbye to my bible study group, which will not be easy without tears. Liberal, Conservative, black, white, one in Christ. It won’t be easy. It’s gotta be done. We couldn’t fix our attitudes; but God did — now it’s over to us. Go home and think different. Model love. Be led by the Spirit. See how that changes things.

Hard engineering by Indaba

Today brought two indaba sessions on the Covenant, a subject which I have to admit I have always seen as rather top-shelf. Our group included a senior leader in the covenant process, so it was a real test of whether the indaba method can produce serious work on hard and technical subjects.

Pretty much everyone spoke, and it was noticeable that they were listening carefully to each other and interacting. Nobody could simply switch off the subject. Although there were strong and well established views among some group members, one or two speakers gladly owned up to shifts in their positions induced by listening to other peoples’ contributions. There was no grandstanding, name calling or “point of order” timewasting. The expert input in the group was treated with tremendous respect, but not put on a pedestal. One new creative way forward was generated within the group, to go back into the process. We were well led and enabled, but the leader did not have to exert any heavyweight refereeing skills. I have to say the sessions were tiring, but far more engaged, drawing in a far wider group of people, than I expected.

As to the result we could all see the purpose of having a covenant as a positive basis for communion apart from history or habit. We felt the appendix that has been designed to give it effect seemed far too legalistic for most of us. Some Churches would find it profoundly incompatible with their order. We could see why some felt it was very important to have something hard. We were as yet undecided as to what or how, but there was a clear sense of the theological, social and legal parameters within which the drafting group would thus have to work.

A success? I think everyone felt they had been taken seriously, and once we could see where the real sticking points were, it was remarkable how the group almost instinctively collaborated to develop a solution, rather than cobber others with their individual positions. It was also interesting how people did not tone down their expression to the mediochre, but showed great freedom and clarity around their deepest convictions. I was also impressed by the way in which, when Scriptural inputs happened, people showed great humility and desire to be corrected if there was anything they had misunderstood in the text — a great desire to get beyond soundbites, and use the knowledge of the group. Nothing in the democratic nature of the group compromised respect for our expert contributor, especially because his graciousness and willingness to engage in a non-defensive way were notable. Negatively, I'd have to say this way of working takes more getting used to than I thought it would, to get the best out of its possibilities. I’d be fascinated to see this kind of technique used in other Church contexts, now we have begun to get the hang of how it works.

Hitting the wall or breaking through?

Things could well be getting what our Caribbean friends call Crucial. Yesterday afternoon’s meeting to share creative ways forward felt rather stuck, with three potential ideas nobody seemed to much want developed in detail. It was OK, but essentially consisted of the same old win/lose thinking from the same old people, the vast majority US or UK. It’s a grim thought but without the indaba process we could have been spending two weeks like this.

This experience does at least establish that we can’t make anything different without thinking different, which was pretty obvious, I suppose.

We’re not quite there yet I realise. Bad experience of old methods certainly vindicates the organisers’ decision not just to re-run the 1998 process. Another bishop said to me today that, actually, to get 650-odd incompatible people from 130 countries to listen to each other and communicate together, breaking bread as Christians, and praying through their problems without rancour or the smack of top-down authoritarianism, is in itself a reasonably unusual thing to happen in today’s world.

The indaba process seems to have been honoured. I was talking to our listener today, and he was telling me about comparing notes between the indaba groups for sympathetic resonance, then crystalising the widest held strong convictions into the document. It’s not every English bishop’s cup of tea, but it certainly gives voices to the voiceless, and may well beat Westminster Custard Pie fighting as a basis for real progress.

Here, for example, is a blog entry from George Packard, that is more wonderful the more I reflect on it:

If the Anglican Communion would just turn over their troubles to my 40 member indaba group everything would be fine. We had a break through as an American female bishop likened our church to siblings arguing in the back seat of the family car. There was a murmur of final understanding since there had been a wonder if those Episcopalians were coming unglued. No, just poking each other the way kids do. "But we stay together and that's what makes unwanted boundary crossings by South American and African bishops so confusing." She said.

I was re-playing that fateful day in Minneapolis in 2003 in my mind when we confirmed Gene Robinson's consecration and how no one gave much of a passing thought to how this news would impact anyone in this room. Some have been beaten and called members of "the gay church" in cultures where sympathizers like that were stoned, others have died...not because of Gene but because dioceses have rejected the HIV-AIDS assistance from the American church's tainted money.

The conversation--for the Americans and the Canadians--had real remorse in it: we acted without care for the greater family and we were deeply sorry. I'm not saying the consecration wouldn't have happened but the hurt of disregard for them--which was plain and evident--would not have been there.

Then Bishop Michael of Sudan continued as he said that his church was only getting used to thinking about homosexuals now with that he composed a prayer right on the spot emphasizing his point. After the entreaty to "Our dear Lord" it was as sensitive a summary of their uncertain lives in his land that I had ever heard. We were silent. (I wonder if this Lambeth is about where had hoped the 1998 meeting would have been in the appreciation of basic gay lives and rights.)

The bishop went on to say that we had to give he and his people some time; elevating gay persons into leadership positions of authority was confusing to him and his congregations. "Can't a baptized person get into heaven without you making him a bishop for awhile?" He had us there. As he was speaking I wasn't sure if the nods were in sympathy or agreement. It seemed like both and it came about as there was an acceptance of North American remorse.

The atmosphere in the room had changed. Said our facilitator, "We seem to arrived at a special level of trust." And that seemed to hold true for the heretofore stilted conversations about the Covenant too, that code of conduct we have all been dreading. Now, there was a growing consensus around the things which make us an affirmed, communion of churches in search of a grace-filled process which would come to the rescue when we get out of sorts with each other. It had been the meanderings in recent years for the right venue to discuss this which has been so maddening.

The vast majority of us in the middle, if you like, are now looking to the people who have more absolute ideas, left and right, to raise their game. If a few of them manage to do that, as well as having invented another way of decision making that takes every voice more seriously than our run of the mill synods and councils, we could achieve a significant breakthrough.

How Anglicans use the Bible

I have not met anyone here of whom it would be true to say simply that they do not believe in the Authority of Scripture. How we believe in what kind of authority are other questions. Here are some indications of the ways a group of us form five continents, in Indaba, saw our distinctively Anglican use of the Bible. How are we, as Anglicans, “formed by Scrpture?”

• The Word of God is a person, not a text. In Islam, for example, the Qu’ran is a privileged untransalteable text. For Christians Scrupture has authority as it is interprteed and applied, not as a simple absolute. We are very resistant to idolatry; idolatry of the book, idolatry of reason, idolatry of tradition. All three are resources for the Spirit, not totems or weapons against other children of God. We need to interpret the Scriptures through the icon of Christ.
  
• We take the text very seriously in itself, in all of its subtlety, richness, occasional divergence and uncertainty. We begin with what it means in its own terms and historical context. So we establish the Sctipture we transmit and guard, distinguishing it carefully from our response. For example, in the Early Church women were to wear hats and be submissive so as to win their husbands for Christ. How would a woman in any of our various contemporary cultures behave so as to reflect Christ to her spouse and wn them? Absolutizing wearing hats in itself is a superficial and inadequately contextualized response to this text.
  
• We then go on to take an honest view of our real world circumstances. Scripture speaks directly to each person, as who they are and where they are. Therefore we need to be aware of our own cultural spectacles as we read, before we try and inculturate any meaning we believe we can derive from the text. The Holy Spirit inspires a process of recognition and sympathetic resonance, by which Christ speaks to us where we are, and as the people we are.
  
• Our Church community and communion that hold us accountable to the Scriptures, as this process is prayerfully pursued in fellowship. If you want to know what we believe, and how the Scriptures form us, worship with us.
  
• There has tendency in the post-enlightenment West to erect Reason into an absolute, or even idol. Even Conservative Anglicans sometimes mine the scriptures for soundbites or notions, then extract them from their context and absolutize them in a way that can even compromise basic principles of Christian discipleship. Sometimes (as in prosperity theology) one element is isolated against others in a distorting way. It is the whole counsel of God we must seek, distinguishing clearly between the use of our mind as a tool for discernment, into which God can speak, and any tendency to engage in merely rationalist discourse, Conservative or Liberal.
  

Indaba — Sorted. Respect Due.

Since logging my last entry at coffee time, my indaba has met and, almost eerily, exactly these concerns have been raised, shared and actioned! A comment was made that our indaba group was feeling like a study group, and our (smaller) study group like a deep and genuine indaba!

We have responded by giving ourselves permission to consider broader concerns around the set guidelines, and also tying our Bible Study groups into our indaba. We will try starting with input from Bible Study group leaders, to which we can feel free to divert serious attention.

That way, we free ourslves up a bit for some of the harder conversations we have been having partially, but need to have more fully, so that we can leave here stronger. We also allow Scripture to shape and fill our deliberations more consciously and fully — an excellent idea, say I.

This indaba is now working on a meta as well as content level. That was quick! I’m slightly surprised, rather refreshed and greatly encouraged.

Indaba — a luta continua!

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?

The Kingdom as Hawaiian Luau

Lambeth is a vibrant microcosm. I don’t believe I have ever spent so much concentrated quality time with so many people from such varied cultures at once. Western as I am, I just want to get down to work. The vast majority here, culturally, understand the wisdom of taking time to develop basic trust and understanding about others in their own terms. Without this cultural interface what follows is doomed. The US has an issue over human sexuality, then exports it to Africa, to be morphed onto completely different anthropologies with almost zero ambiguity about the subject. When you analyse what people think they are talking about, they are often at complete cross purposes. It’s amazing they achieve anything really.

The traditional way of talking across the communion, involves the English and Americans doing their thing, with an occasional surprise mugging organised by UK or US dissidents. Indaba has to be better than that. There’s a real challenge about how the indaba process can work for us. It probably needs to evolve into a less timed, micro-project based mode.

Western societies are amazingly impersonal, superficial, hurried, materialistic. They also exhibit a very low capacity for people to relate to one another, with their high rates of family breakdown, crime, depression and anomie. Lambeth is a marvellous opportunity to learn from people of different cultures more about how relationally rich societies tick. Faith binds us together, and gives us a key to unlock our differences and fundamental unity in relation to reality bigger than ourselves.

Earlier today, someone told me about Hawaiian virtues of which I had not heard:

Pono — You may not agree, but you need to be in a right relationship with people. This is partly acknowledging a higher accountability than your feelings, interests and perceptions. The UK norm is to prize agreement in an organisation above relationship.
Mana — Holiness, recognised in people and creation. This sounds rather like the Quaker discipline of “looking for what is of Christ in the other person.” Our Western approach treats the earth like a thing, and flattens or rationalises any sense of wonder and reverence for people and things.
Malama — Unselfishness, or, more positively, care for the other person. We seem by comparison selfish and narcissistic. Old people often feel dumped, selfishness is turned into a virtue, and care is often bureacratised.

There could be a sermon in this sometime. Imagine a world where people worked to understand each other in their own terms. For now I just want to log it as one of the learnng concepts for me from this rather extraordinary learning time.

Indaba daba doo?

Amidst slightly extraordinary suggestions by print journalists to their editors that they are revealing things exclusively, I can exclusively reveal that their revelations are there days ahead on various blogs by people who, unlike most of the hacks most of the time, actually know and understand what’s going on.

But here’s the doozy. Indaba only works once the process is aligned with the purpose. In the early stages it has understandably been necessary to be quite directive about set up, and to give timed exercises to get everybody interacting equally. Now the process needs to open up and change gear, so that voices arise with greater freedom, spontenaity and clarity. I suspect this change of gear will be quite challenging for right handed western males. I heard English bishops bemoaning yesterday about the shortage of preparatory papers. Imagine we had all arrived with our briefcases bulging with position papers. How discriminatory is that against brother bishops who don’t have laptop minds and a certain kind of education? How much of a distraction from the actual job of listening and interacting in real time with the flesh and blood human beings in the indaba? An Indian brother told me that the English love to have all the answers in their briefcases before the discussion starts, but we agreed this isn’t that kind of discussion, and working exclusively in that mode has partly created the mess we're in. We need to learn how to listen to fresher, more raw, less prepared voices, which are often more passionate, focussed on God, and formed by hard discipleship faithfuly undertaken.

So we have to start doing indaba in an indaba way, not a Western parody of it.
Over to us, brothers & sisters, to see if we can manage that...

Indaba or quits

My conference clock is normally set to “two days, big sevice, back home to the kids.” I did that and... woke up to find myself at the beginning a two week conference! This is a marathon not a sprint.

First indaba group today on the basis of a bible study group which has been wonderfully affirming, with a group who have become firm friends. It was pretty inevitably a basic acquantance with each other and the process. There is a basic level of information about our contexts without which we cannot meaningfully interact about big ecclesiological questions, far less make big decisions. Skating over this thin ice in 1998, they fell in, and some were vulnerable to being hijacked by lobby groups. For example, someone this morning in another group was baffled as to why the Bishop of London hasn’t simply fired Martin Dudley. He was just reading the way such a matter would be handled back home into a context of which he knew nothing. Without taking time to elucidate basic information about everyone all round, it would be sheer craziness to try and enact decisions affecting each other. Conclusions matter, but without clarity about the basic realities facing everyone, what you have assumed wrongly about others you know not will get you every time.

We all come with our own preconceptions about how to make decisions, and we really do have to learn how to lay them aside. Even the English. We all need to discipline ourselves to engage fully with the process as set up. Some siblings are managing this better than others.

Indaba DIY instructions

Got problems? Do try this at home. Here are the official instructions for the Indaba groups that meet next week, based on reflections by Archbishop Thabo Makgoba.

Indaba is a Zulu word for a gathering for purposeful discussion. It is both a process and method of engagement as we listen to one another concerning challenges that face our community and by extension the Anglican communion.

An Indaba first and foremost acknowledges that there are issues that need to be addressed effectively to foster on-going communal living. Originally, in the Zulu context, these might be stock theft, poor service delivery but in the case of the Anglican communion it might be questions related to the way we handle the Bible, sexuality, post colonialism, autonomy concerns and the many missional challenges. It is these issues that need to be brought to the “table.”

In Indaba, we must be aware of these challenges (issues) without immediately trying to resolve then one way or the other. We meet and converse, ensuring that everyone has a voice and contributes (in our case, praying that it might be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit) and that the issues at hand are fully defined and understood by all.

The purpose of the discussion is to find out the deeper convergence that might hold people together in difference and come to a deeper understanding of the topic or issues discussed. This will be achieved by seeking to understand exactly the thinking behind positions other than my own.

Cautions. Indaba works best when participants do not go nto the discussion with a hidden agenda nor prior solution. When you bring the issues, ohers add with their own voice nd a greater truth is revealed and in the process people grow, learn and understand not only the issue, but each other.

For Indaba to work, Indaba on day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 etc. must be seen as interrelated even if their themes differ. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

At the end of each Indaba session the discussion will be summarised seeking to honour each of the different voices that have been heard. These written summaries will help to shape the communications coming out of the Lambeth Conference.

How else, thinking about it, should faithful Christians seek the will of God in the face of difference? It’s close to the Benedictine tradition of holding a Chapter. It’s a way of ensuring that everyone has a voice, bullies are reined in and the giftedness of God in each is honoured.

Underlying this process and informing it at Lambeth is a sustained discipline of Bible Study, so that we talk in the light of the Scriptures. The authority of any conclusions come from the whole leading of Gos, rather than a ruling from some fantasy El Supremo or a vote following a Westminster style punchup. Why can’t we trust the Holy Spirit to speak through Scriptures, prayer and corporate wisdom quite as clearly as through conventional politics?

Blogging Lambeth

Whilst packing toothbrush and kit, I’ve been trying to work out how to blog from Lambeth. On the face of it, it’s simple; but I wonder how, remembering what this thing is and how it works. Large swathes of the conference are open, like fringe and public events. They’re easy, and the press will cover them anyway, as will various bloggers including me. I’ll post a blogging bishops feed column to collect an overview of what’s being said publicly from all sides. Blogs with no detail have no feed — but clicking should take you to them.

But what about the Indaba and Bible Study groups driving the conference?

1. Indaba demands Full Participation. It’s more important to participate than to blog. The precondition of being a reporter (which I’m not) is critical distance. Whatever happens, I can’t be part of it without ful engagement.
2. Indaba is an emergent process. the vast majority of particpants have never done this before. Good. We’re in God’s hands. It means predictions “based on last time” are least probable of all to come true. Like all cross-cultural dialogue it requires sensitive reticence in its early stages. Provisional, unfinished work has to be allowed to stand and be shared for what it is, as provisional, or you end up with speculation dressed up as conlusion which then becomes output. We may not achieve certainty this side of heaven, but if we work at it, we may achieve higher levels of clarity.
3. Indaba is driven by Trust. Some personalities think out loud in the public square, and need room to do this without anything they say being captured and pushed out on the internet.
4. Indaba requires working space. Some personalities and cultures are very reflective and process things carefully inside before bringing it to a group. It does not facilitate openness for anyone to feel they are being bugged. It is also the case that a few bishops come from parts of the world where it wold be simply dangerous to their personal security to tell tales out of school about their work and context. It’s important they feel free to be themselves and tell it like it is, with real confidence they can do so without being plastered all over the internet by some silly blogger.
5. Indaba is an expression of respect. This means radical openness — trying hard to listen to others and understand them in their own terms before pitching in one’s own reaction. Mark Twain pointed out that what makes people dumb is not what they don’t know, but what they think they know, and it’s wrong. Coming from a generally sperficial, low-respect, cynical culture doesn’t help.
6. Indaba is an expression of faith. +Ossie Swartz was reminding us in Oxford Cathedral on Saturday, God wants to turn fear and hysteria into positive energy for the kingdom. We have to decide whether we want to be undertakers, or whether we see ourselves as on the egde of a very special thing God may be doing. I have been, quite honestly, pretty amazed by the cynicism of some commentators already — “all they’re going to do is have a prayer meeting and study the Bible — what’s the point of that?” The more I think about it, the more power there is in shared listening to God in the Scriptures and in prayer. In spite of nostalgia, fear and the dangers of syncretism we live in this world, in this generation, because God has called us to do so. It may be evil and adulterous, but it always was, and it holds out possibilities as well as threats. We cannot solve problems on the level that produced them. As ever, without faith it is impossible to please God.
   
7. There’s a real world out there, far more important to God than Ecclesiastical navel gazing. This requires a sense of realism. “It’s not that the God of the Church has a mission, but the God of Mission has a Church.”
   

Lambeth Conference Nightmares?

The whole Lambeth Conference process is about faith, and living by faith is a risky business. Meeting 15 bishops in Saturday, only one had actually been to one before so we're pretty much all Lambeth virgins. That may help us think different; what some would see as the greatest weakness of the process may actually save the day. Watching Alan Becker’s amazing flash animation, Animator vs Animation, imagine just how it could all go wrong...

h/t Hilary Unwin.

And just to say what could go right, given the anger and frustration of some commentators that we can’t pass imposing resolutions and play power games down at the cashpoint like last time, here are some pointers to the real power and possiblity of an indaba process from E. B. Brooks:

What kind of entity (notice that I am not calling it a structure, yet) would be about setting free, instead of creating boundaries? What kind of entity would be about improvisation rather than writing a script? What kind of entity would be about leading to the next level rather than justifying the current level? What kind of entity would be about the actors, rather than the stage, the set, or the director?

Fruit of the Spirit or Lambeth Walk?

Every few weeks I get a Sunday morning where I can just go to Church as a punter, with Lucy. Rosie the Vicar has been preaching about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, and got to three really interesting, counter-intuitive ones this week:

1. Faithfulness, as opposed to self-centredness, cynicism, ambition and political opportunism
   
2. Gentleness, which always seems weak and weedy in a world of hard-nosed assertive achievement. Pride, anger, ambition are far more fun. It’s all that some hacks can pick up on their radar, poor dears.
   
3. Self-control, flies in the face of hedonism (eat, drink and be merry) and hi-ego self-actualization. Ironically, the only real way to self actualise is to defocus on self and get a life.

Of course, like all fruit, you can’t command them to happen from the outside in. You just have to focus on the Spirit, then let them grow from the inside out. We are stuck with a persistent nagging lower nature. This expresses itself in “works of the flesh,” sometiems about sex and booze, but far, far more often among the religious, the Synodical sins of enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy. Far more people out there can’t see Christ in us because of the latter than the former.

The success of Lambeth this year is all about whether we bishops can prioiritse God through the indaba process, based on listening, where everyone has a voice. Alternately we simply stick with what we’ve always done before. The people with big mouths and hot heads exercise them freely. The same old bores listen basically to themselves on the big stage. Everybody else shuts up as usual and tries to enjoy the sideshows. Some people love it, because the process does not challenge their basic lack of self-awareness, makes them feel rather grand, and feeds their self-importance. In this (still) overwhelmingly male gathering, it has to be said this is a bit of a little boys’ thing, too. The characteristic result is a bunch of grandiose pronouncements, mostly about about other people, which end up on the shelf, as ammo for strife and dissension.

Well, it’s up to us. That’s the challenge. The resources to meet it can’t be commanded behaviourally, but need to be growing inside from the Spirit — and allowing that deeper, more personal process, to happen is the real challenge.