July 21, 2008

The other person in my hallway at Darwin is my alarm clock! I went out to walk/jog this morning in beautiful sunshine. The Eucharist this morning was lead by the Church of Korea. The Choir had stayed on to assist with the music and their beautiful national dress and the gentle music made a fine start to the day.

Bible Study was focused on John 6:14-21, Jesus coming across the water to the disciples. The first question was “What is it that the disciples ‘see’ that makes them afraid?” We then moved on to “What are the things that bring fear to Christians in your context?” Across the wide range of contexts, the answer was loss of a Christian future – whether because of persecution, indifference, no young people – all of us in some way feared for the future of our Anglican Church communities. We moved on to “What are the things that bring fear to us as bishops?” Fear for their lives and those of their people, fear of not discerning God’s will for the church correctly; fear of losing connection with the wider church if the Communion breaks apart. “What might change if we could encounter Jesus saying, “I am, do not be afraid” at this Lambeth Conference?” There is a good mood of hopefulness.

After morning tea, we had our first exposure to Indaba groups. Five Bible Study groups come together to discuss topics. Our room was too small so we had to sit in a circle that had an inner and an outer ring. Every voice is supposed to be heard, but some didn’t speak in the big group. The focus in the morning was “The Bishop and Anglican identity: How do I see myself as an Anglican Bishop?” The process brings the input from the small groups into the larger group and collects it. There is a scribe who puts it all together and comes back to the next session with a compilation. So in the afternoon Indaba we reviewed the statement from the morning and got into wrangling over words, but thankfully the facilitator left the words with a small group to tune up and moved on to the next topic – The Anglican Way: Signposts on a Common Journey. The signposts were, formed by Scripture, shaped through worship, ordered for communion, and directed by God’s mission. We chose four small groups according to each signpost. At the end of one hour, the discussion was lively and there was not yet consensus. The process is supposed to allow enough time for us to work through big topics like how we value Scripture so there was some frustration at the end. We will go back to it tomorrow morning.

The evening presentation was excellent. The speaker was Brian McLaren on Evangelism in a changing world. He has written some books. The one ++Rowan referred to in his introduction is “A Generous Orthodoxy” and McLaren himself referred to another one “More Ready than you Realize”. He looked at major paradigm shifts in 1500, 1750 and 1950CE, how everything changed at each point and how we are still in the current change but often do not see it. His theme was one you have heard from our Youth Ministry Team, “Our call is to form disciples, people who live in the transforming way of Jesus. He was a powerful speaker, keeping us all engaged even though he started at 8pm and went until 10 pm!