August 1, 2008

The Eucharist this morning was led by the Church in Pakistan. Part of the gathering time, we see a DVD of life in the church for those who are leading. Pakistan is a beautiful land with beautiful people and they live with daily threats. Next time you are tempted to just stay home from worship for a trivial reason, think of those who persevere in going out to worship in the face of daily persecution.

The Bible Study was John 15:1-17. We started by asking how the passage is translated in other languages. We learned there are no grape vines in Myanmar, but they have mango trees. In Congo, they have banana trees. We are of course reading the Scriptures in the context of this meeting, so we tried to imagine the Anglican Communion as a bunch of grapes! There was a terrible pun about whining in the Communion. We spent some time with verse 11. In what ways does Jesus make our joy complete? Do we let people know about that joy?

The Indaba group focused on the “The Bishop, the Anglican Covenant, and the Windsor Process”. There are two important groups at work that many people seem to have been unaware of – the Covenant Design Group and the Windsor Continuation Group. The Covenant Group has written a proposed covenant (which you can find on the Anglican Communion web site under St. Andrew’s Draft of the Covenant). In it, they make some proposals about our life as a Communion rather than a loose federation of churches. What is outlined in the opening part seems to have a level of support from the Bishops. The third part and the Appendix have very little support. This became clear as our Listening Group read through the various Indaba group reports. We will find out more on Saturday when we feed this back to the Plenary Session. The Windsor Continuation Group has been developing plans for the time between now and the Covenant coming into effect. (There is a HUGE assumption that it will do so!) Part of this is a moratorium on three things: the ordination of any more active gay/lesbian bishops, the blessings of same sex relationships, uninvited cross border invasions by outside bishops. It seems that his moratorium is proposed to last until the covenant comes into effect. There is uneven support for this idea. I will know more tomorrow when we see the Indaba group reports.
There are many concerns about all of these proposals. More concerning to me is the lack of accurate information about our church. I seem to be repeating myself explaining that we currently have a moratorium on these from our end, but we are still visited by unwelcome primates. (It makes for some carefully chosen words in my Indaba group, since one of the “Invaders” is in my group!)

The afternoon session was the next hearing of our reflections. Most people can identify with the comments in our reports. There some bishops who are clearly used to having the last word and seem quite annoyed when we say, “But that was not the opinion of the Indaba groups.” This process is quite difficult for those who want parliamentary procedure and debates on resolutions. Most of the Bishops are very much enjoying this time for listening and sharing concerns. Late in the afternoon we had an extra Indaba Group to allow more time for processing the ideas of the Covenant.

Evening worship was led by the Churches of South East Asia. They had wonderful photos of some of their congregations gathered for Baptism in the nearest rivers. They have a serious strategy for making disciples, bringing adults, youth and children to Christ.

The other Canadians went off to party tonight. The Listening Group got quite silly after 10pm so we quit!

(I think I was so tired I didn’t realize until today that I wrote this and didn’t post it! Sorry!)