A BRIEF, brisk debate on the Business Committee’s report kicked off the substantive business of the General Synod on Friday afternoon.
Robert Hammond (Chelmsford), who chairs the Committee, said that meeting over the weekend was being trialled at this group of sessions in order that lay Synod members didn’t need to use a lot annual leave as previously. Reminding members that the Committee didn’t approve the wording of motions, he said that six diocesan and personal members’ motions had been timetabled to make up for his or her absence in previous sessions.
A considerable amount of time had been put aside to debate safeguarding, but there may very well be no substantive debate on the Jay report (News, 23 February), because it had not been published when the agenda had been agreed.
Learning from the marathon multi-day Living in Love and Faith (LLF) debates in previous years, the LLF item on the agenda had also been given loads of time, Mr Hammond said. He also regretted the increasingly “poor behaviour” of members in debates during recent Synod meetings, and warned that the panel of chairs were desiring to crack down on this.
Stephen Hogg (Leeds) said that he was upset at the shortage of progress on, and absence from the agenda of, the Church Governance Measure, whose revision committee he chaired. He asked whether the Business Committee had resisted others’ kicking the Measure into the long grass, and suggested that the Committee needed to be more proactive to be certain that the desire of the Synod was not frustrated.
Speaking about safeguarding, Martin Sewell (Rochester) asked what the “Plan B” was if the Synod didn’t accept the provisions within the safeguarding paper.
Geoff Crawford/ChurchTimesBusola Sodeinde (London) praised the Code of Conduct as a result of be debated on the Synod
A member of the Archbishops’ Council, the Revd Dr Ian Paul (Southwell & Nottingham), said that avoiding reality was an “art form” within the Synod. “We are standing on the point of a precipice.” LLF had unleashed a civil war within the Church, while church attendance had collapsed. Ministry could entirely fall away in large parts of the C of E, but that was not on the agenda this week; he said that eight further hours of LLF debate would produce only more division, and amounted to “fiddling while Canterbury burns”. The Church can be left a “heap of ruins” for the subsequent generation unless it grasped the nettle and abandoned LLF.
Busola Sodeinde (London) praised the Code of Conduct as a result of be debated by the Synod, and thanked the staff who had helped to shape questions and amendments. No one have to be subject to private attacks, she said.
Canon Andrew Dotchin (St Edmundsbury & Ipswich) asked Mr Hammond whether it was possible to squeeze into the agenda a chance for the Synod to echo the House of Bishops’ call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the hostages.
Dr Andrew Bell (Oxford) identified that the variety of questions submitted had greater than doubled since 2018, taking on an increasing number of of the Synod’s time. Questions were becoming more adversarial and answers more evasive, exacerbating the necessity for supplementaries, he suggested. He appealed to the Committee to think about tips on how to reverse these trends, and to drag forward the deadline for submitting questions.
Adrian Greenwood (Southwark) praised holding the London sessions over a weekend, and urged members to embrace this as a recent normal moderately than “grumble and moan”.
The Revd Graham Kirk-Spriggs (Norwich) asked how members could support the Business Committee in its difficult work.
Luke Appleton (Exeter) was saddened that business was being conducted on a Sunday, but was grateful for more “appropriate” items on the Lord’s Day.
The Synod took note of the report.
