Discerning,
Developing and Directing the Resources God Provides for the Task God
Sets Before Us
Text of the Charge delivered to Provincial Synod by the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, 27 September, 2016.
Job
3:1-19, Psalm 88:1-7, Luke 9:51-56
Introduction
May
I speak in the name of God who creates, redeems and sustains. Amen.
Dear
sisters and brothers in Christ, members of Provincial Synod,
distinguished guests: greetings. Welcome to the Thirty-Fourth Session
of the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
I
extend a particular welcome to our guests—and especially to our
long-time partners in mission and ministry from Trinity Wall Street:
the Rector and our homilist, Dr Bill Lupfer, whom we will decorate
later in the service as Provincial Honorary Canon, his wife Kimiko
and their team, Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega amongst them. I also
greet our ecumenical guests and the friends and families of those to
be decorated with the Order of Simon of Cyrene, as well as those to
be licensed as provincial registrars and deputies.
Those
attending Provincial Synod for the first time, a special welcome to
you. I hope you will feel at home as you navigate the processes and
procedures of this mainly legislative assembly and that you will feel
emboldened to contribute confidently to proceedings.
Lungi,
Nyakallo and Paballo have a special way of putting me in my place. I
am grateful to God for who they are and for giving me the space and
time as well as the necessary critiques of how I perform my varied
ministries.
Thank
you also to the advisory teams, to the Synod of Bishops, the staff at
Bishopscourt, the synod manager, Fr Keith Griffiths, the Provincial
Treasury, the diocesan staff, the chancellors and registrars of the
Province, indeed to everyone who has contributed to this Synod. A
special word of thanks to two of my former staff members, Canon
William Mostert and Ms Pumeza Magona, for all their hard work in
getting us here.
Let
me also extend my and the Province’s particular thanks to Dr
Sitembele Mzamane, Dean of the Province, Bishop of Mthatha and
Vicar-General of the Diocese of Mzimvubu. You have shouldered an
enormous burden for this Province, and for that we give thanks to
God.
Since
our last Synod, Bishop Nathaniel Nakwatumbah of Namibia has retired
and, tragically, died too soon afterwards. The retired Bishop of
Grahamstown, David Russell, and the retired Bishop Suffragan of Cape
Town, Charles Albertyn, have also died. I want to pay a special
tribute to them. Let us observe a moment of silence and thank God for
their lives and witness in Namibia, Grahamstown and Cape Town, and
for their pastoral zeal and love for all God’s people.
It
is always a delight and a special honour to welcome new bishops to
Provincial Synod, and this year we have six with us: Bishop Carlos
Matsinhe of Lebombo, Bishop Charles May of the Highveld, Bishop
Monument Makhanya of Zululand, Bishop Luke Pato of Namibia, Bishop
Allan Kannemeyer of Pretoria, and Bishop Manuel Ernesto, the
Suffragan Bishop of Niassa. And of course, Bishop Dino Gabriel has
been translated from Zululand to Natal. Soon we will consecrate new
bishops for the dioceses of Niassa and Christ the King, and for
Mthatha after Bishop Sitembele’s forthcoming retirement.
We
thank God for the ministry of those who have served this Province as
bishops and who have retired since the last meeting of Synod: Bishops
Dinis Sengulane of Lebombo, David Bannerman of the Highveld, Rubin
Phillip of Natal, Jo Seoka of Pretoria and Peter Lee of Christ the
King. We also thank Bishop Mark van Koevering of Niassa, who resigned
to return to the United States, for his decades of dedicated service
to the people of Mozambique.
The
Incarnation and the Use of Resources
Let
me start the substance of my Charge with a poem by Rudyard Kipling,
which comes from one of the Just So Stories:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
In
saying the Daily Offices and Mass in the chapel at Bishopscourt from
Monday to Thursday each week, I try to bring the joys and challenges
of this office before God as I seek to discern the will of God and to
develop a response which is spirit-filled, yet not timid or woolly,
and directs others to Christ within a theological theme. But when I
am dealing with the things that come across the archiepiscopal desk
each day, too often I fail to ask: What is happening? Why is it
happening? What ought to be happening? Who ought to be doing it? I
need constantly to struggle theologically with the questions I ask
again and again: What does it mean to be the body of Christ in such a
time as this? To what discipleship are we called? What does the cost
of this discipleship entail?
It
was against the backdrop of this wrestling that I was excited
recently to rediscover Kipling’s poem at the end of the story, The
Elephant’s Child. Asking Kipling’s questions—“What and
Why and When, and How and Where and Who”—has been a useful
tool for discerning the way forward. The Synod Advisory Committee—and
the reality of our church’s finances and resources—have directed
me to a further area. That is the what, the why, the when, the how,
the where and the who of exploring a conversation between
Incarnation, which concerns theology, and available
Resources, which concern economy. In this Charge, want
to begin a journey in which we move beyond throwing out biblical
statements such as that God and mammon cannot co-exist and instead
explore the subject through the lenses comprising our Synod theme,
namely how we can, first, Discern, secondly Develop,
and finally Direct the resources that God places before us for
God’s mission.
I
want us to look at what resources might be available within ACSA.
Where are they to be found, how are we using them and why, and lastly
who are they serving? The Charge, some of you will be pleased to
know, will include some accounting for what has happened since the
last Synod, including what you have told me in your reports and my
own observations from when I have travelled around the Province. Of
course I will also add and direct you to look beyond ACSA to broader
societal matters.
Whether
we are talking about the economy of our church or of our different
nations, it is instructive to look at the roots of the word
“economy”. It is based on the Greek words oikos, meaning
household, and nomus, meaning patterns of behaviour, literally
translated as rules. So when we ask what our attitude to the
resources God places before us should be, we are asking what the
rules that govern the allocation of the resources in our church
household should be. As Anglican Christians, what informs us in the
use of our time, money and skills? What biblical ideals should govern
the use of our money, and how? What is the goal of the accumulation
of resources?
Two
years ago, I was struck by vendors in Turkey who lured you into their
shops, saying, “Hello, Sir, let me help you spend your money.”
Who and what guides you as an individual in how you deploy your
resources? When one of our children was younger, they occasionally
returned home from church with the money we had given for the
collection plate. When we asked why they had returned home with God’s
money, the reply was: “The preacher spoke for so long that I went
to sleep and had to go out during the offertory to wake up.” In one
way or another, it would seem the preacher misguided this particular
child.
Anglicanism
is often described as having a strong focus on the incarnation and I
have placed repeated emphasis on it since my installation eight years
ago. Simply put, by incarnation I refer to God in Jesus entering the
everyday experience of human living to point us to God’s reign and
to prepare and invite us through our everyday lives to enjoy the
blessedness of this reign. My writing
and advocacy on the theme of the incarnation and politics is born out
of the struggle of God’s people with political systems in Southern
Africa that demeaned all of us and which were not designed to address
the concrete needs and experiences of our daily lives or to respond
to God’s call to human flourishing.
Last
year, in my capacities as Chancellor of the University of the Western
Cape and Chair of the Church Leaders’ Consultation and the Church
Leaders’ Forum of the South African Council of Churches, I was
called with other church leaders to meet students protesting under
the banner of the #feesmustfall movement. On the surface it
seemed they were advancing a political cause, but when we went deeply
into the issues over the course of many meetings, some late into the
night at Bishopscourt, I came to appreciate the legacy of the
inequality of South Africa’s political and economic system.
That
system has given birth to an intergenerational economic inequality,
in which those who are likely to flourish in our society are the sons
and daughters of the elite, and those who will struggle to break out
of a vicious circle of poverty are the daughters and sons of the
poor. One of the initiatives I have supported is the University of
the Free State’s campaign to reduce student hunger. We listened,
shocked, to the stories of students who had secured loans for tuition
and accommodation off campus, but who either did not have the money
to buy food or had used it for computers and clothing. The question
before us is: what does the incarnate Christ say about the economy,
about student debt, household debt, diocesan and parochial debt in a
world which in which there is also bounteous providence?
Incarnation
is thus an invitation, as the theme of our Synod states, to begin a
journey to discern, to develop and to direct our lives to be more and
more like that of the incarnate Christ. The invitation is costly and
Jesus’ disciples struggle with it even after they accept it and are
honoured to be in his presence. Let us too accept and let’s begin
our journey by looking at what today’s lessons tell us.
The
first lesson, Job 3:1-19, depicts the “new” struggle of someone
who had accepted the invitation of actually translating that
acceptance into actual practice. You might want to paraphrase Job’s
account by asking: why does a righteous God allow a just servant to
suffer? Faced with individual and private suffering, Job vents his
thoughts, “let no joyful voice come therein”. There is no happily
ever after. Job is restless and does not understand why evil and
suffering should beset him as a God-abiding person. He finds his
context and personal circumstances too burdening. To borrow the
language we used earlier to define the economy, he asks: Why are the
rules of the household so unfair, full of suffering and evil? Where
is God in all of this?
The
psalmist echoes this lament. Like Job, the psalmist feels cut off
from God. Unlike in Job’s case, the feeling of sadness is due to
his weighty ills.The psalmist’s soul is full of trouble. Remember
the refrain, “Why are you so full of heaviness my soul, why so
unquiet within me?” In this psalm, the psalmist expresses raw
feelings, seemingly on the brink of collapse. There is no sense of
Job’s discernment of the hand and presence of God in evil and
suffering, only personal trauma and clouds of darkness. I have to
confess that while preparing this Charge I was worried that the
melancholy of these first readings was too depressing for the opening
of Synod, and I was tempted to drop the day’s lections and choose
readings which reflected more sunshine. But I stayed with them,
trying to discern what God might be saying to me, to members of Synod
and to those who might read this text.
Discernment
does not have to be morose but neither can it be shallow nor an
escape from reality. I find the concept of lament, as expressed by
Denise Ackermann, helpful in this context. Denise has written that
lamenting “...is a refusal to settle for the way things are. It is
reminding God that the human situation is not as it should be and
that God as the partner in the covenant must act.” In exploring
lamentation, we trust that the incarnate, second person of the
Trinity, God who took human form, is always with us as we discern his
way in struggling with the contemporary issues of our day. We must
thus act courageously, “recklessly confident” that nothing will
separate us from God’s love.
Turning
to the Gospel, as the Lucan Jesus zigzags through the villages to
Jerusalem, he is rejected even by those he went out of his way to
embrace. The disciples can’t deal with this rejection and want to
respond by deploying God’s power to destructive ends. But Jesus
forcefully directs them away from such a course, pointing them to the
bigger picture and highlighting that short-term gains come at a
long-term cost. His action underlines the importance of his disciples
accurately discerning risks, discerning the correct interventions to
make, relying neither on bullying nor fear-laden behaviour but on
developing God’s ways.
Discerning
During
the Lenten observances of our life’s journeys, we are called to
discern God’s ways. Job and the psalmist give us a model for
penetrating the issues more deeply. They lament. The disciples on the
other hand demonstrate how often we shy away from probing the
messiness and madness of the world around us, but act impulsively to
avoid it. We are particularly prone to this in our technological age.
We—and I count myself here too—often tend to ”press the send
button” before discerning whether our intervention builds the
kingdom or is self-seeking or egoistic.
But
I have to tell you that when I read the reports, the measures and the
resolutions that will come before us at this Synod, I am heartened.
As your Archbishop and Metropolitan, I have the privilege of
regularly travelling through the Province, and with the broader view
this gives me I discern that as we—like the Lucan Jesus zigzagging
his way to Jerusalem—traverse the mountains and hills, the valleys
and the plains, the wealth and the filthy poverty of our Province, we
can thank God that we are alive at such a time. Although there are
risks, although there is pushing and pulling, although there are
those who, like the disciples, are tempted to want to escape from our
protracted and complex problems by seeking Elijah’s chariot of fire
to take us away, we are nevertheless growing; we are wrestling, we
are fighting, we are laughing, we are planting, we are learning and
teaching, we are healing, we are communicating, and above all we are
determined to be people of the Way.
Although
when I address specific situations in this Charge I am usually
referring to our own Province, we should also give our attention to
the pain in other parts of our continent. In recent months I have
visited both Kigali in Rwanda, for a meeting of the Council of the
Anglican Provinces of Africa, and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, for the inauguration of the new Archbishop of the Congo.
These visits were part of an intentional outreach to develop closer
relations with our sister Provinces across the continent. In Kigali,
where I visited the city’s genocide memorial, I could not help but
be struck by how well the city works. There is effective policing,
the place is clean and there is a commitment to service. But I got
the distinct impression that the efficiency could be the result of an
obsession to run away from the country’s dreadful past, from the
messiness of a system that did not work. That made me all the more
grateful for the national electoral systems in our Province which do
work in mediating political conflict, seen most recently in the South
African municipal elections.
I
was also distressed at how political leaders in the Great Lakes
Region of Africa don’t seem to want to give up power. President
Museveni in nearby Uganda has been in power for 30 years. In sad
demonstrations of undemocratic behaviour, others have sought to
follow him by staging pseudo-referendums or manipulating their
constitutional processes to abolish or ignore presidential term
limits. As a result, in Burundi we have seen gross human rights
violations, including disappearances, assassinations and other
killings. It would appear that President Kabila in the Congo wants to
become the newest person to go down this road. Of course in our own
region, presidents Dos Santos in Angola and Mugabe in Zimbabwe lead
the pack, having ruled since 1979 and 1980 respectively. We hope that
President Zuma won’t seek to emulate them; fortunately in current
circumstances it would appear that his party would not have the
stomach to try to force through such a change.
Not
only in our own Province, our region and our continent, but across
the world we hear the cries of those of God’s people who are unable
to live their lives as abundantly as God desires. The Anglican
Communion’s fourth “Mark of Mission” enjoins us “to transform
unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and
pursue peace and reconciliation.” In response to the cries of the
people and to our call to mission, let those of our parishioners
who are well endowed and well connected become voices which broadcast
widely the lamentations of the Jobs and the psalmists of our time.
The incarnation invites us to a deeper dialogue with our governments
over ways in which they and we can uproot and destroy structures
which facilitate societal evils.
A
number of our bishops have been attending courses on sustainability
in the use of the church’s resources and exploring various
commercial models to ensure this sustainability. We are grateful to
Trinity Wall Street for their support of this initiative for the
church in Africa. Each one of you is involved in the economy in one
way or another, so each one of you has a contribution to make from
your own experience: what are the questions you ask of yourselves and
which we should be asking? What should direct your, and our, use of
money? We have many skilled and under-employed people. We have plenty
of land and parish buildings. Can we find ways in which we can deploy
these to empower the unskilled and unemployed? We have many people
who love this church and give of their time and talents. What should
we do to guide them to give more without counting the cost and
without, in some instances at least, wanting power to control. Can we
develop a sustainable Christian model for financing—even a
Christian bank—which operates on the basis of equitable and just
principles, less speculation and fair taxes? Many of the poor I meet
in the Province give all they have to the church but cry, “When
will development bring justice and wear a compassionate face?” Can
it? we ask. I came across a colleague from the Philippines who
answered impulsively, like the disciples to Jesus: No, it cannot and
it will not. Our faith does not allow us to live with that answer.
Developing
Developing
is acknowledging that we are not static. We need to become more and
more like the incarnate Christ, who came not to be served but to
serve. Our Mission Statement as a Province invites us as disciples to
transform the legacies of apartheid and to grow communities of faith
that form, inform, and transform those who follow Christ. In the
global context, development has sadly become synonymous with the
insatiable quest of the privileged for unguided, untrammelled growth
at the expense of the poor and indigenous and on the basis of
uneconomic land use. In discerning how we as ACSA need to develop and
grow and use our resources, we are called to develop what I call a
“spirituality of enough”, one which promotes equality and
sharing.
Let
me share some of the development which has happened in our Province
over the last three years and of which I am most proud:
Since
the last Synod, through the work of the Anglican Board of Education
our Province has partnered with others and opened the Mabooe
Archbishop High School in Lesotho. The CEO of ABESA joined me, the
Bishop of Lesotho and others for the opening. We need, as a Province,
to continue to support the school, which needs more classrooms.
Encouraged by this education mission, individual parishioners in
Lesotho have renovated their schools and are building local churches
near the schools. The Vuleka St Joseph’s Archbishop School was also
officially opened in Johannesburg, where we are grateful to the
Diocese for its facilities. The Diocese of Swaziland has a large plot
and is drafting a proposal to open a school too. The ABESA report to
Synod is well worth reading. The AWF in Grahamstown has a bursary
scheme for indigent learners, as does the Provincial AWF for women in
the ordained ministry.
The
College of the Transfiguration, ANSOCs, our Anglican schools and
chaplains and other diocesan initiatives continue to develop and form
people of the way who respond to the calling to God’s mission in
the world. The Mothers’ Union, the Bernard Mizeki Guild and others
continue to offer socio-economic programmes to alleviate poverty and
give skills to unemployed youth. Green Anglicans continue to develop
ecological awareness among young people in particular and to promote
the greening of our Province. Hope Africa has partnered with a number
of dioceses in theology and development, not in theory but in praxis.
I am grateful too to Growing the Church for its role in growing
disciples and to the Liturgical Committee for directing the process
of liturgical renewal in our Province.
Since
the last Provincial Synod there have been other innovations which
have advanced our mission and witness. We will launch some during
Synod, such as a video giving glimpses of the life of our Province,
produced courtesy of Trinity Wall Street. We will also hear inputs
and reports on many other initiatives, including progress on a new
Prayer Book, an updated Provincial website, a youth academy and
progress with the registration of COTT. The newly-established Canon
Law Council is working well, as is evident in the quality of measures
and motions before us at Synod. We are grateful for the work of this
Provincial advisory team on matters canonical, especially the
contributions of the Revd Matt Esau and Provincial Registrar Henry
Bennett. In this our 167th year, we are still growing,
learning, discerning and developing into apt disciples of the 21st
century.
In
partnership with the mining community and interfaith leaders, we have
also started a series of what we call “Courageous Conversations”.
This initiative is aimed at making an impact on the lives of ordinary
people around the mines without compromising either the pastoral or
the prophetic voice of the church. We have contracted the Provincial
Public Policy director, Canon Desmond Lambrechts, to study and
implement programmes and advocate policy changes that can generate
responsible mining activity. This has brought about a mechanism for
collaboration on issues such as health, development and advocacy.
I
have recently returned from two weeks in Hong Kong, where I took part
in the first Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and
Management, an initiative of the World Council of Churches, the World
Communion of Reformed Churches, the Council for World Mission and the
Lutheran World Federation. These four major international Christian
groups convened the conference I attended to study how to achieve a
new “economy of life” which benefits all. We looked at how we
could find an alternative to the current global governance of money
and financial systems, replacing it with a system that would be less
exploitative and would distribute resources and income more
equitably. This sounds impractical, but as stewards of God’s
creation we know that nothing is impossible with God. I will be
exploring with the Synod of Bishops at our leadership and formation
week next February a theology and ecclesiology of generosity—the
incarnation as hermeneutical conversation of theology and economy.
This may well be one way of discerning what our prophetic voice might
be in matters of economy. It could help us develop liturgies and an
Anglican social teaching on the economy, possibly leading to a course
at COTT on theology and economy.
In South Africa today, faith leaders across
the spectrum are saying that we as a nation have lost our moral
compass and that this has happened partly because we have been too
quiet for too long. We have had little to say about the Treasury’s
willingness to bail out SAA and badly-run state-owned enterprises,
but not poor students mired in debt. In other parts of our Province,
we have little to say about reported corruption in Angola and
Mozambique, or about housing developments on the Namibian coast which
locals cannot afford. Apart from Green Anglicans, few speak out about
plans to develop nuclear energy at a time when great strides are
being made in the storage of solar power. As prophets we are
economically illiterate. Yet the economic ordering of society and the
question of how we develop our material resources is central to the
crises that afflict us.
In
South Africa, the current ordering of the economy lies at the heart
of the political crisis that is beginning to paralyse government.
Inherited patterns of privilege and wealth, overwhelmingly associated
with one racial group, have created an economy which spits in the
face of Gospel values. Because of this injustice in the distribution
of resources and economic power, there is a group in the ruling party
which is carrying out a programme which it justifies on the grounds
that it is necessary to redistribute the country’s wealth. However,
the programme redirects resources not for the benefit of the poor but
to a small elite group of individuals with links to a small number of
politicians and officials. Private interests are capturing the public
purse. Inflated tenders awarded to cronies drive up the cost of
providing services. The worst-run state-owned enterprises are
gobbling up billions of the public’s money, draining the fiscus and
stalling the development of the real economy. The cost of nuclear
procurement plans—the case for which has not been proven—threatens
to become an albatross around the necks of our children,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, plunging them deeply into debt
for decades to come. We are told that 16 million South Africans
depend on social grants. If we allow the looting of the resources and
wealth of future generations to continue unabated, there won’t be
any money to pay those grants in future and millions will lose their
only means of existence.
As
the South African Communist Party correctly points out, the answer to
the obscene inequality of our society does not lie in indulging the
rapacious greed of a tiny number of politically-connected
individuals—some of whom are associated with my Johannesburg
neighbours down the road in Saxonwold. No, for Christians,
challenging the skewed racial ordering of our economy must involve a
new compact in society, driven by the values of the Kingdom of God,
which creates a fairer and more equitable system. Perhaps Moeletsi
Mbeki has a point when he calls for a new coalition for development
between the very poor and the owners of capital on the basis that
they are the two key constituencies who support sustainable economic
growth. As religious leaders, we need to be intentional in building
relationships between ourselves and with business and government to
pursue these ideas.
I
call upon Anglicans and others to join efforts to clean up our
government and to reform our economy. As we discern, direct and
develop our resources within the church, let us become more
accountable and transparent about our own dealings and then be robust
in demanding the same truth and behaviour from our governments. I
call upon our liturgists, COTT, Hope Africa and other advisory bodies
in our church to develop liturgies and Bible studies that can help us
explore the creation and governance of wealth and pose sharp concise
questions to help us formulate a social teaching on money and the
common good. Perhaps God is calling us to denounce the kind of
development that is creating inequality and poverty, and instead to
learn to live simply.
Directing
Our
formulation of this Synod’s theme ends by inviting us to direct the
resources which God provides for the task set before us.
Last
year we held a Provincial Planning Meeting to look at our Provincial
Vision and Mission Statement. Both that meeting and Provincial
Standing Committee meeting which followed it affirmed our mission
priorities. They directed that we should prioritise communication and
the personnel needed in this area. The prophetic ministry of the
Archbishop and the Bishops needed to be enhanced within democratic
southern Africa. There was an appreciation by both these meetings
that prophetic ministry entails much more than criticism of the
state: that it should also encompass the exercising of our
theological imagination around what we hope each person should be
about in a democratic state; that it should create space for all
God’s people to tell their stories; and that it should include
advocacy for change not only through public utterance and
demonstration, but also through engaging in policy formulation.
Following in the footsteps of the incarnate son of God, prophetic
ministry entails understanding the obstacles of every village, being
prepared to be rejected, being determined not to count the cost,
finally to be glorified with Christ.
As
you will see, we will be trimming the budget and returning to the
five core mission support items of the Province. We are exploring the
concept of impact investment, which will hopefully not be a new name
for commodifying everything, speculating with the little money we
have and ending up slaves to debt, but will bring about a means of
caring for our disciples, our environment and being stewards for
tomorrow’s faithful.
Whilst
on the subject of care, and specifically of pastoral care, you will
know that we have a motion on the agenda from the Diocese of Saldanha
Bay concerning the pastoral care of Anglicans in same-sex
relationships. We will
discuss the motion first in Conference of Synod on Thursday, and I
hope we will discern carefully together the needs of both our church
and the broader church beyond this Province. I hope you will listen
carefully to and hear one another other as we develop the mind of
Synod, directed by the Holy Spirit already at work within us.
Conclusion
Let
me end where I started, with the incarnation, in which God took on
human form and in so doing became part of the contemporary world.
Through the incarnation, God invites us to a conversation, on a Lucan
journey, to discern as He does how best to realise our true humanity
and to be directed in our ways with each other in service to God and
in respect for His creation.
My prayer is that in evaluating our resources, we will not be
trapped by the temptation of aggrandisement and profit to follow a
prosperity gospel, but rather that, like Job and the psalmist, we
will lament that which breaks our humanity and develop a
spirituality and an ecclesiology of honesty and sharing. As your
Archbishop, in response to an invitation to a conversational
hermeneutic, especially with those who express disagreement, I will
seek to listen, discern, develop and where necessary direct. I come
to this Synod full of hope for our future, open and vulnerable like
Job, ready to share my laments and hear yours, conscious of the
disciples’ impatience and yet committed to the long journey ahead.
I am full of hope because God has placed before me, before all of
you—whether Synod members, staff, family, friends, colleagues or
the restless youth of our time—many resources to discover and to
dedicate to God’s service as we journey together and disciple one
another.
Let
us as a Province dare to discern, develop and direct the spiritual,
mental, and material resources which God places before us for the
good of all people and creation.
Let
no one be too full while another goes hungry. Amen.
