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HotlineWelcome to the 2004 edition of Assembly Hotline. You'll find here a record of the main events and some of the background to the meeting of General Assembly at the University of Glamorgan from July 3rd - 6th, 2004. Select the day's business you would
like
to see from the menu below: Sunday afternoonModerator-elect
Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas
Diversity, he told Assembly, was a key issue for people of faith. Churches were about difference – the joy and blessing of difference. Pentecost (the Christian answer to Babel) was about the celebration of difference. Diversity was particularly important in Wales, where there is no established church. Disestablishment, he saw as a gift from God because it allowed Christians to understand that the Church was a voluntary organization among others. His hope was that England might one day receive the blessing of a secular society and disestablishment. As examples of the blessing of disestablishment he recalled a service to mark the opening of a session of the Welsh Assembly, held at the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Cardiff Bay rather than the more usual cathedral service. The gospel was read in Greek (there was a Greek Orthodox church nearby), the psalm in Hebrew, and there was a reading from the Koran. The Duke of Edinburgh was heard to comment: "You’d never get away with this in England." And yet the church was intimately involved in the affairs of the nation. When an issue had arisen over asylum seekers in Cardiff Prison, a government minister had asked a local bishop to go and investigate – the result was a change in policy. He was proud of what Wales was trying to do within the new devolved structures. It was, he concluded the historic role of Wales to explain to the English that we are all Europeans, human beings and children of God! Equipping the saintsThough there are many optimistic stories around the Church, there are also many congregations of another kind entirely, where there is little sense of the possibilities the future might hold. How many of our churches might well be renamed Laodicea. So began John Ellis, Convener of the Ministries Committee, in moving Resolution 27 on Equipping the Saints, a comprehensive report intended to spark a major debate on leadership within the church and the refocusing of church life on the community around. Lest anyone believe that his point was entirely negative he quickly assured Assembly that it was the Committee's belief that there could be change. The simplified picture of the Church presented by the committee identified three groups. A large outer circle represents the whole of the membership. In the centre is the relatively small group of set-apart ministers. Around that centre is a third crucial group the Committee tentatively term 'apostles' - committed mature Christians who place their faith at the centre of their lives and live accordingly. The problem in the case of most of our churches is that the intermediate group is too small, resulting in far to great a burden on the set-apart ministers. The task is to grow the intermediate group, preferably until it approaches the size of the membership. Our need is for flexibility in the forms of leadership within the church and the focus needs to be not on ourselves but on equipping Christians for their service in the world – equipping the saints. There were a number of contributions to the debate, some of them opposed to aspects of the resolution and the report, but the resolution was overwhelmingly carried. Its recommendations will now be debated by local churches, districts and synods over the rest of this year, with a view to making responses before December 31st. Read the full text of the report Equipping the Saints here and the resolution relating to it here. Sunday morningCatch the Vision I
It was not a question of managing decline but rather of calculating carefully before taking action. The truth was that Christian faith had been pushed to the margins of society – not necessarily the wrong place to be if we recognize that we worship the God of the margins. As a church we are far from dead; rather, we are changing. How do we respond, for instance, to the fact that we now have one third as many adherents as members, or to the change of emphasis from Sundays to a range of weekday activities. And we need to remind ourselves that we are still a significant force in the community. Living on the margins means that churches are forced to experiment with new ways of being. At the same time there is good evidence that even in the most daunting of areas traditional forms of being church can work well provided that the necessary resources, including full-time focussed ministry, are made available. There are many stories which illustrate the fact that our churches can engage in mission and make a difference for Christ’s sake. There is no one pattern to be enforced but rather a glorious miscellany as the Holy Spirit leads churches into new paths. The full text of David Cornick’s speech to Assembly can be found here.
A day of repentanceThe Revd Paul Breeze introduced a resolution from the Yorkshire Synod calling on local churches and members to observe Sunday 3rd October (or some other suitable Sunday) as ‘a Day of Repentance and Rededication in which they may repent of their shortcomings and recommit themselves to Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh.’ There was, he said, a need to repent as a denomination for the times we have failed each other and communities we serve and then to rededicate ourselves afresh. A surprising range of people spoke in opposition to the resolution, mainly on the grounds that it singled out an aspect of Christian life which should be present throughout the year, and it was eventually defeated. Youth and Children's Work
Introducing the Committee's resolution to Assembly (Resolution 38) Kathryn Price spoke of the lack of enthusiasm the Committee had found for a programme for a new Ginger Group and described the committee's alternative proposals for the future. The committee looked for stronger communications between those involved in youth and children’s work through the rebuilding of networks of people, together with better keeping and use of information on the skills available around the church. In future it was proposed that every year's work would have a particular theme, with a rolling five year programme covering Belonging, Worship, Discipleship, Evangelism, and Action. There would also be a renewed emphasis on ensuring that all those working with children and young people are adequately trained for the task. A wide range of speakers expressed their support, including a number who said they had felt reservations when they had first encountered the resolution. Resolution 38 was overwhelmingly passed. |
HighlightsSearch HotlineModerator's AddressRead the address, Any Questions?, given by the Revd Sheila Maxey to Assembly on Saturday July 3rd Catch the VisionRead David Cornick's speech Photo diarySidelights on Assembly in pictures Have Your SayJoin in the discussion about this year's General Assembly ProfileThe new Moderator |
The
Moderator of General Assembly for the year 2005-2006 will be the Revd Dr
David Peel.
Diversity was the theme of an address by Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas which
combined wit, erudition and an easy familiarity with scripture. His texts
ranged from Genesis to the Book of Acts and the message was that human
diversity, for all its pitfalls, was a gift of God.
In the first of three sessions on the Catch the Vision process, General Secretary
David Cornick described the hard realities which the Catch the Vision
steering group had sought to confront over the past year. The gentle decline
in membership over the past years meant that we could be a church with
nearer to 42,000 membership, rather than our present 84,000, in 20 years. We
faced the prospect that we would have too few members to keep the present
machine oiled. 
Youth and Children's Work Convener Kathryn Price described two
difficult years in the life of the Committee, with 16 months passing
without a Youth and Children’s Work Secretary, meaning that others had
been forced to take on even more work. Added to that had been the
‘rollercoaster’ of the decision-making process over the National Youth
Resource Centre at Yardley Hastings. But there had also been many high
points, including FURY camp, the launch of Good Practice 3 and the
redesign of the Children’s Charter (which was now available for sale).