The Church of England General Synod next meets from Friday 26 February to Monday 1 March 2021. The draft timetable for the meeting was published today, and is copied below the fold.
GENERAL SYNOD: FEBRUARY 2021
DRAFT TIMETABLE
Friday 26 February
2.00 pm – 7.00 pm
2.00 pm – 2.15 pm Opening worship
Introduction and welcomes
2.15 pm – 3.00 pm Business Committee Report
3.00 pm – 3.30 pm Presidential Address
3.30 pm – 3.50 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
Legislative Business – Special Agenda I
3.50 pm – 5.35 pm Draft Safeguarding (Code of Practice) Measure – Revision Stage
5.35 pm – 6.00 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
*6.00 pm – 7.00 pm Question Time
7.00 pm Close of Business
Saturday 27 February
9.15 am – 1.00 pm
9.15 am – 9.30 am Opening worship
9.30 am – 11.00 am Implementation and Dialogue Group Report
11.00 am – 11.20 am Adjournment/Screen Break
Legislative Business – Special Agenda I
11.20 am – 12.20 pm Draft Legislative Reform (Church of England Pensions) Order
12.20 pm – 1.00 pm Report of the Standing Orders Committee
2.15 pm – 7.00 pm
2.15 pm – 3.15 pm Safeguarding
3.15 pm – 3.35 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
Legislative Business – Special Agenda I
3.35 pm – 4.35 pm Draft Legislative Reform (Church Commissioners) Order
4.35 pm – 5.00 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
5.00 pm – 6.30 pm Responsible Representation: Crown Nominations Committee Elections Review Group Report
6.30 pm – 7.00 pm Deemed Business
Sunday 28 February
1.45 pm – 7.00 pm
1.45 pm – 2.00 pm Opening worship
2.00 pm – 3.30 pm Vision and Strategy
3.30 pm – 3.50 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
3.50 pm – 5.10 pm International Religious Freedom
5.10 pm – 5.30 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
5.30 pm – 7.00 pm Mutuality in Finance
Monday 1 March
9.15 am – 12.30 pm
9.15 am – 9.30 am Opening worship
Legislative Business – Special Agenda I
9.30 am – 10.30 am Draft Safeguarding (Code of Practice) Measure – Final Drafting and Final Approval
10.30 am – 11.00 am Adjournment/Screen Break
11.00 am – 12.00 pm Draft Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) (Amendment) Regulations 2021
12.00 pm – 12.30 pm Appointment of the Chair of the Pensions Board
Appointment of the Chair of the Dioceses Commission
1.30 pm – 6.30 pm
Legislative Business – Special Agenda I
1.30 pm – 3.00 pm Clergy Discipline (Amendment) Rules 2021
3.00 pm – 3.20 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
3.20 pm – 4.50 pm Report from Archbishops’ Commission on Housing Presentation and debate on a motion
4.50 pm – 5.10 pm Adjournment/Screen Break
5.10 pm – 5.30 pm Farewells
5.30 pm – 6.30 pm Deemed Business
*6.30 pm Prorogation
Deemed Business:
Church of England Funded Pension Scheme Rules 2021
Code of Practice under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003
Payments to the Churches Conservation Trust Order 2020
Approval of form of electronic service register under Canon F 12
* not later than
Please note that all timings are indicative unless marked with an asterisk
Deadline for receipt of questions: 1200 hrs Tuesday 16 February
Guess it’ll be something of cloud cuckoo land again!!
I note that 28th Feb 2021 will be Lent 2. Lent 2 in 2020 was the final Sunday before public worship was cancelled, churches locked, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, supported by the House of Bishops, declared that church buildings and public worship are non essential. They have fulfilled that nihilistic view, as many churches remain locked and the laity deprived of communion and all other benefits of being together in one place. Despite the efforts of many high profile members of the House of Laity, churches remain locked, and in those which have reopened, the chalice has not been… Read more »
Having agreed in February 2019 for the February 2021 group of sessions to be held over a weekend (in the words of the Chair of the Business Committee, Sue Booys, when introducing the debate, being “mindful of the continuing need to make Synod as accessible as possible for those who are occupied during the week at work and caring for their families and our hope to encourage new and younger members alongside the current wisdom of this Synod”), it is ironic that this first such experimental meeting is to be held online. A matter of concern is that only 60… Read more »
The sensible approach to supplementaries in a Zoom session is to give people 24 hours to submit them by email afterwards, with 1 week for replies rather than trying to do them during the session itself.
Synod agendas seem characterised by what isn’t there:
– nothing about churches being closed
– nothing about the Eucharist and how it can be delivered
– nothing about the corrosive response to LLF
– nothing about conversion therapy
– nothing about Brexit which will have crystalised by then
– nothing about poverty or homelessness which are serious and growing problems
But clergy pensions, discipline and housing are apparently more important than all of those.
And on the subject of closed churches and lack of communion, the Archbishop of Canterbury is interviewed in the Times tomorrow (Sat 19th). His comment on attending church at Christmas: ‘go online. If you’re vulnerable, if you’re more at risk, then it’s going to have to be online’ Going to have to be! That sounds like another unenforceable edict and ignores the fact that the most vulnerable are over 80 (according to Professor Whitty) and are least likely to have access to online worship and most likely to be regular communicants. They are not children. If a church near them… Read more »
Many years ago when Dick Lucas was vicar, he was valued by CICCU when I was at Cambridge (and I met him on a number of occasions), for his sensible conservative but open exposition of scripture, which now, as a liberal Catholic, I still value. This statement from Wm Taylor et al. denies the generosity of the gospel and sets his parish apart from the C of E as something as becoming a schismatic fundamentalist sect. Why has an evolving view of sexuality become such a touchstone? Those who follow this supposedly OT view need to be consistent. The Levitical… Read more »