Synod

The big day is here. Or in about 48 hours time, depending on which big day you are talking about. Today's big day is this long awaited and very significant synod. I would not generally have time to blog in the middle of chairing it, but the other 120 members are busy at the moment and I have time to myself sitting in the chaplains office here at St. Hilda's Collegiate School where the synod is being held.

People are in Bible study and then they will discuss a draft proposal for the revision of our diocese, developed by me over the last six weeks. The proposal is mostly concerned with structural matters and I am not so naive as to believe that the long standing problems we face can be solved with a bit of reorganisation. The Anglican Diocese of Dunedin is caught in the eddies of the great social and spiritual tides sweeping through Western Civilisation and to swim in them we will have to make spiritual and social changes ourselves.

As it was for St. Francis the house of God is all tumbling down. We are called to the great task of rebuilding and, as for Francis, this is more than a matter of bricks and mortar but, again like Francis, the place where we begin will be with the bricks and mortar: the most obvious and easiest part of the job. As in a Grand Designs episode, to restore this particular handyman's dream we need to start by shoring the old girl up to stop any further decline and to provide ourselves with a stable and workable basis on which to build our future developments.

People will soon report back to me their thoughts on my draft plan. The next step will be for the parishes to discuss it at a local level. Then a small group appointed by the diocesan council will produce a final plan and oversee its implementation. Simple. Almost as simple as blogging from my phone, which I have just discovered I can do, as part of my preparation for the other great day, the one which starts at 6:00 on Monday morning when Verna arrives to take us to the airport.

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