Updated Friday
The Questions and Answers for this coming weekend’s meeting of General Synod are now available. Question Time is on Friday evening. As usual the questions and answers will be taken as read and the allocated time in the agenda devoted to supplementaries.
Questions Notice Paper
Q3 additional information
Q54 additional information
Update
There is a list of members who have indicated that they wish to ask supplementary questions here.
21 CommentsUpdated to add second Martyn Percy article
Jonathan Draper Modern Church Limiting Factors: the ‘Myriad’ initiative and the future of the Church
Martyn Percy Modern Church The Great Leap Forward (Part One) The New Politics of Ecclesionomics for the Church of England
The Great Leap Forward (Part Two) – The Church of England’s Growth Fetish
Ian Paul Psephizo Should everyone be church-planting missionary disciples?
Andrew Lightbown Theore0 Talking of vision; talking of strategy
Stephen Parsons Surviving Church Ten thousand new congregations. Will they save the Church of England?
Barnaby Perkins All Things Lawful And Honest It’s the limit.
Anne Dannerolle ViaMedia.News LGBT Stories – Can Conservative Evangelical Churches Ever Change?
47 CommentsDean of Hereford: 7 July 2021
The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Canon Sarah Brown for election as Dean of Hereford.From: Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street
Published 7 July 2021The Queen has approved the nomination of The Reverend Canon Sarah Brown, Canon Missioner at Peterborough Cathedral and Bishop’s Advisor for Women’s Ministry, for election as Dean of Hereford, in succession to The Very Reverend Michael Tavinor following his retirement on 28th February 2021.
Background
Sarah was educated at the University of Nottingham and trained for ministry on the Eastern Region Ministry Course. She served her title in the Benefice of Welford, Sibbertoft and Marston Trussell in the diocese of Peterborough and was ordained Priest in 2009.
In 2011, Sarah was appointed Team Vicar with Daventry Team Ministry in the diocese of Peterborough and in 2013 became Rural Dean of Daventry. Sarah was made an Honorary Canon of Peterborough Cathedral in 2015.
In 2018, Sarah took up her current roles as Canon Missioner at Peterborough Cathedral and Bishop’s Advisor for Women’s Ministry.
There is more on the Hereford Cathedral website.
5 CommentsTimothy Goode ViaMedia.News LGBT+ Stories – The Trauma of Abusive “Healing” Ministries
Peter Collier Church Times The Lambeth Working Group has lost its way on CDM reform
“The proposals before the Synod appear to have missed what our independent group was saying”
Silvia Falcetta Openly English marriage law locks out same-sex couples from religious weddings
Archbishop Cranmer ‘Key limiting factors’: the end of stipendiary parish ministry
The Church Times has two news articles on this topic:
Synod to discuss target of 10,000 new lay-led churches in the next ten years
Archbishop of Canterbury endorses urgent plan for church-planting
And Archdruid Eileen has this: “Free From Limiting Factors” – 10,000 new Laboratories
The Bishop of Liverpool, Paul Bayes, has announced that he is to retire in March 2022.
In a letter to clergy, churchwardens and other ministers, the bishop writes:
15 CommentsI’m deeply grateful to God for the years spent ministering alongside my outstanding colleagues and friends here in Liverpool Diocese. I look forward to the next few months as we work to sustain our parishes, schools, fresh expressions and chaplaincies as communities of worship and mission through the pandemic and into God’s new future.
Across the whole Church of England we are on the way together into that same future. I shall continue as best I can to contribute to a faithful, open, joyous, light, inclusive and just Church — a community that is true to the poor carpenter who made it; one that honours those on the edge of things; one that conveys the amazing reality of our loving and living God to England as it actually is.
But for me the time has come to prepare for a new chapter in life and ministry, and to contribute in a different way. Accordingly I have informed the Queen and the Archbishop of York that I intend to resign the See of Liverpooand to retire at the beginning of March next year. God willing, my farewell service in the Cathedral will be on Saturday February 12, 2022.
From next March I hope to spend more time in prayer and reflection and stillness, in resting and writing and reading and thinking. Please pray for Kate and me as we prepare for this change, and for the Diocese as it sustains its ‘long obedience in the same direction’, a community of people living in Christ and seeking the good of the world.
Here is the official Methodist press release: Conference confirms resolutions on marriage and relationships
Following prayerful consideration by the whole Church, the Methodist Conference has voted to confirm provisional resolutions on the principles or qualities of good relating, understanding of cohabitation and same sex marriages conducted on Methodist premises or by Methodist office-holders.
A report on marriage and relationships, ‘God in Love Unites Us’, was received by the Conference in 2019 and the local District Synods were asked to consider the provisional resolutions and report back to this year’s Conference which is being held this week in Birmingham. The Conference received a report on the results of the local conferring which showed that 29 out of the 30 Synods confirmed support for the provisional resolutions.
The Revd Sonia Hicks, President of the Conference, prayed ahead of the main debate on Wednesday morning in Birmingham, asking that the Conference’s “words may be imbibed with your grace, with tenderness from on high.”
A range of views were expressed on the resolutions, in particular on cohabitation and same sex marriages. The Revd Dr Jonathan Hustler, spoke to the Conference acknowledging the “depth of feeling, pain and anxiety that there is” with a commitment to work across the Connexion with District Chairs to heal divisions.
Speakers called for unity going ahead irrespective of the decision. Other speakers spoke of the acceptance of diversity that younger Church members have for each other with younger speakers relating their own lived experience as Christians from the LGBTQI+ community. Another representative asked that the Church does not ostracise those who oppose the introduction of same-sex marriages in the Church, saying the great majority of these people are trying to be faithful to Scripture as they see it.
The Methodist Church included other denominations and Methodist Churches across the world in the process of listening and consultation, with written submissions from ecumenical partners to the ‘God In Love Unites Us‘ report and workshops with global Methodist partners.
Following the vote on the provisional resolutions the Revd Sonia Hicks said: “The debate today and our wider conversation has been conducted with grace and mutual respect. As we move forward together after this historic day for our Church, we must remember to continue to hold each other in prayer, and to support each other respecting our differences.”
Church Times news report: Methodists agree to same-sex weddings in church
…The Conference, meeting both online and in-person at the National Conference Centre in Birmingham this week, voted 254 to 46 in favour of a resolution by which “the Conference consents in principle to the marriage of same-sex couples on Methodist premises throughout the Connexion and by Methodist ministers, probationers or members in so far as the law of the relevant jurisdiction permits or requires and subject to compliance with such further requirements, if any, as that law imposes.”
This involved redrafting the Methodist marriage canon to replace the premise that marriage is between one man and one woman. The relevant standing order now states: “The Methodist Church believes that marriage is given by God to be a particular channel of God’s grace, and that it is in accord with God’s purposes when a marriage is a life-long union in body, mind and spirit of two people who freely enter it.
“Within the Methodist Church this is understood in two ways: that marriage can only be between a man and a woman; that marriage can be between any two people. The Methodist Church affirms both understandings and makes provision in its Standing Orders for them.”
BBC Methodist Church allows same-sex marriage in ‘momentous’ vote
Guardian Methodist church to allow same-sex marriage after ‘historic’ vote
Daily Mail Methodist Church becomes biggest religious group in Britain to say yes to same-sex marriages
The Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England has issued this Statement on the Methodist Conference Vote on Marriage Equality 30 June 2021
The Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England rejoices in and welcomes the news that the Methodist Conference has consented in principle to the marriage of same-sex couples on Methodist premises and by Methodist ministers. The resolution was passed by a very large majority (254 to 46) after a long and impressive debate marked by a generous and kind spirit from both those in favour and those opposing the motion.
This means that the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which covers all of Scotland, Wales and England, will become the largest UK denomination that fully accepts marriage equality and will welcome LGBTQIA+ couples to marry in their churches.
The decision was taken, after many years of discussion and debate, on the basis of the Report of the Marriage and Relationships Task Group 2019, God in Love Unites Us, which was discussed extensively at the 2019 Methodist Conference and commended for study and prayerful discussion throughout the Church through 2020.
The Campaign congratulates Dignity and Worth – our sister organisation in the Methodist Church – for their tireless work for this outcome.
We call upon the bishops of the Next Steps Group to ensure that proposals for marriage equality in the Church of England form part of their report in due course.