The Bishop of Coventry’s Presidential Address to the Diocesan Synod, June 2019
Dear Members of Synod, I am delighted to open my address with a greeting from our dear Friend, Bishop Paul, Bishop of Kapsabet in the Anglican Diocese of Kenya, our Companion Link Diocese.
[For the text of Bishop Paul’s letter, please scroll to the bottom of this document]
Bishop Paul speaks of the ‘link and companionship between the diocese of Kapsabet and the diocese of Coventry’ as ‘a gift from God for the extension of His Kingdom’. He ends with a verse from the final chapter of Job, which tells how, after Job had prayed for his friends, ‘the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before’ (Job 42.10).
Links, companionship, friendship between Christians is a very special gift that is all too easy to take for granted. Even more so between Christians in different countries. The Church of God knows no boundaries across time and space. We are an international community bound together as people of different races, cultures and histories by the one Spirit of the one Christ whom we share as Lord and whose body we form, and through whom we have access to the Father and share in the very life of God.
In a country where divisions between people appear to be especially stark and which, whatever happens on 31st October, is trying to discover its place in the world; and in a world where tensions are high between nations and where wars of words and trade threaten us with the prospect of wars with bombs and bullets, the universality – the global – reality of the Church is, indeed, ‘a gift from God for the extension of His Kingdom’. The Church in Europe in the first half of the twentieth-century failed to live up to its calling to witness to God’s kingdom of peace and work beyond national interests and to set its sights on the interests of, as Bishop Paul puts it, ‘the will and the purpose of God’.
The Church in Britain in this and coming decades of the twenty-first century has a remarkable opportunity – again, whatever happens on 31st October – not only to reform and renew the national psyche, and to heal the hurts and damage to our common life that the past years have inflicted, but also to reimagine our place in the world, to restore damaged relationships with our European partners and to find new ways for Britain to be a blessing to the nations.
In a few minutes time our future Prime Minister will be presenting his vision for the nation in a televised debate with other contenders. We will all have different views on who that person should be, and I know not how many of us will have an opportunity to express those views in the forthcoming election of the new leader of the Conservative Party. We can all, though, commit to pray both for that process and the person it chooses to be our next Prime Minister, praying that, for God’s purposes of peace, and God’s will for the good of all, he will lead this country in the paths of the kingdom of God, the paths of justice and peace, the paths of truth and reconciliation, the paths of healing and hope.
And let us as Christians follow the lead of St Paul and call our country to raise its moral sights beyond our own interests and look to the interests of others, that this country may wear the mantle of being a world power with such commitment to the good of humanity, the eradication of poverty and the disarming of the forces of war by the stronger powers of peace, that we become known again as a great power.
And now to focus on some of responsibilities we face this evening. Bishop Paul describes the ‘model of weaving the family, the Church, the school and the community’ as ‘the way to go as we present the gospel in our contemporary world’. That is exactly what we are trying to do through our Whole Diocese approach as we support, empower and seek to integrate the particular gifts and opportunities of various spheres of ministry – church communities, schools, chaplaincies and cathedral. So I am delighted that we will be hearing from two of those – as I’ve called them elsewhere – ‘spiritual houses’ together with a presentation about our Serving Christ programme.
We will also hear more formally about our schools through the DBE report before that item. And prefiguring all of that we will morph into an AGM of the DBF so that we can receive its Report and Financial Statements. On hand to answer questions that might arise is our Director of Finance, Julie Bellamy, who will be facing this particular test for the first time. Rigorous you may be as Synod but I know you will be kind, and I am sure you will want me to thank Julie and her team – and the Chair of the DBF – for the extraordinary amount of work represented in those sheets of paper. We are very blessed that David Oglethorpe has been succeeded by a someone with such skill, dedication, parochial experience and Christian commitment as Julie.
Later in the agenda, we will have a chance to engage with a new piece of work which, following Morris Rodham’s departure, Linda Wainscot is heading up for us: Growing Faith in Coventry Diocese. I will leave Linda to introduce it more fully at the appropriate time but let me say now how important this new work is for the – as Bishop Paul puts it – weaving of family, Church, school and community together so that we can more effectively ‘present the gospel in our contemporary world’.
You heard me mention Morris! He is not here, of course, he has risen to the mountains and tomorrow will be licensed and installed as priest-in- charge of the parish of Patterdale in the Diocese of Carlisle. Our prayers are with and for Morris as he formally begins this new ministry.
Much of the ministry that he exercised among us these last years will be picked up by Barry Dugmore who will be joining us as our new Archdeacon Missioner on 1st October. I hope many of you will be present for Barry’s Installation in the Cathedral during Evensong on 6th October, so that you can have a chance to meet and greet him and Suzanne and their family. Whether you can be there or not, I look forward to introducing Barry to the Synod at our November session.
Clive Hogger worked very closely with Morris as Assistant Archdeacon and covered much of his work during Morris’ sabbatical in 2018. Clive has also supported Sue Field since Sue’s arrival in the Diocese in March last year. Earlier in 2017 Clive worked alongside Sue’s predecessor, John Green, preparing to fill his shoes as Acting Archdeacon Pastor, which he did admirably when the time came. Having served the Diocese with great commitment for these last two years, Clive will be stepping down as Assistant Archdeacon at the end of the month and will return to his parishes in Coventry city.
Clive has shown great agility of mind, quickly learning new roles, dazzling Bishop and Diocesan Secretary alike with his newly acquired legal knowledge and great skill at addressing some often very difficult areas of our common life. I am sure you will want to join me in expressing thanks to Clive for the great dedication he has shown to this ministry of service to the Diocese and also our thanks to his wardens and PCCs for their patience and cooperation over these last two years.