July 22, 2008

I started out the day by doing yesterday’s blog! I was so sleepy last night after the speaker, I just went to bed. The Eucharist this morning was led by the Province of Central Africa. Three of the bishops concelebrated and Bishop James Tengatenga gave the homily which was excellent. The Gospel today was John 6:1-14, 25-59. Bishop James talked about looking for wonder bread!

Bible study followed this same Gospel and resulted in a great discussion about bread for life and the bread of life. In some of our dioceses, the people do not have enough bread (rice, corn) for a healthy life and the Anglican Church is the relief agency, providing food for life and the food of eternal life. One question was “How does the Eucharist bring life, both in worship and in ordinary life?”

In the Indaba group, we worked on our response to the questions about the signposts on a common journey. The signposts include Founded by Scripture, Shaped through Worship, Ordered for Communion, and Directed by God’s Mission. I was in the group on Ordered for Communion where we spent a lot of time trying to figure out if we really are ordered for communion or whether our structures get in the way. In the end our small group said we valued the Lambeth Conference because here we are having opportunities to talk face to face and to discern that there is common ground among us. We valued the Consultative Council since it involves lay people and clergy who are not bishops. We also placed a positive value on the world wide networks like Mothers’ Union, the Women’s and Family Networks, and programs like Companion Diocese. As I understand it, all the ideas from the 15 Indaba groups are brought together to make a working document for Bishops to take home.

We also started to work on Evangelism. I was in the small group on Evangelism with Young People. We have much to be thankful for in our Diocese! Our Youth are valued far more than some other parts of the world. I talked about our events and support to parishes and several bishops asked for my card to get in touch afterwards. Later this afternoon, we came to Self Selection Sessions for the first time. There is a list of events and we can choose which ones to attend. I chose the Youth one today. The Diocese of Leicester (pronounced Lester) has an approach almost like ours. They have what is called the Bishop’s Youth Council that is made up of representatives from each of the regions of the Diocese. They do planning for Diocesan events. Their next project is to get youth on their Diocesan Council. They were thrilled to hear we already had them. The Archbishop of Canterbury attended this session and made a commitment to work toward having youth on the Archbishop’s Council which greatly encouraged those who have been working hard at youth development in England. (Photo on the Lambeth web site)

This evening I attended a dinner and meeting about Missions to Seafarers. It was great to meet the other bishops who have Missions in their Dioceses – Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Korea, Australia, England, Wales, Middle East. Some of the problems are the same the world round because of changes in the nature of shipping and in port security. I missed the evening lecture and enjoyed learning more about the Mission. I also learned that our Manager, Maggie Whittingham Lamont, is very highly respected around the world as well as in our mission!

There is a good resource book called the Lambeth Reader which contains a collection of good reference papers. It was published by SPCK just last month and it may be available from them on line. I just got my copy of it today and it seems useful.

Blessings.
+Sue