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my bishop spotting ability while improved considerably in the last four years of synod membership didn t allow me to detect any taking this option neither the dress down style of york synods nor our inability to see who is taking part by zoom helps here compared to some of the voting figures for july 19 was mildly impressive in several counted votes the number of bishops was in the low teens although for the motion on redistribution of funds 32 of them were there and voting when i was on synod back in the last century there were frequent calls of is there a quorum in the house of bishops i recall that happening during the wimbledon men s singles final shown in one of the hall of residence lounges in the days before ipads and smartphones i was there i can bear witness to preponderance of bishops in front of the tv i don t know what the system was then but today there s a rota to ensure there is always a quorum in the house but for the voting on the clarke pmm that s not the point what i want to know is where are the bishops i know we all need to go to the loo and find refreshments and that not everyone is in the debating chamber at any point but really a motion about the house of bishops but only 19 of them vote there are in theory 53 bishops on general synod not all are diocesans some are elected from the suffragan and area bishops and they can vote but some sees are vacant with an acting bishop and those acting bishops can attend synod but currently have no voting rights there are moves afoot to change this the house of bishops minutes for may 2024 include as part of their own work on increasing the transparency of the house the intention to remove the current legal prohibition on acting diocesans from voting in the house in my view the clarke pmm was not necessary because the bishops have already got the point that the house is not sufficiently open to scrutiny and the 22 pages of minutes from may show that there s listening happening already and how has that work on allowing acting diocesan bishops to vote been going apparently it is going by march 2025 the house of bishops minutes give us 9 2 1 noted the importance of progressing the work on ensuring that acting bishops could vote in the house and general synod the bishop of dudley was progressing this with lawyers i don t know how or why the bishop of dudley was given this job but bearing in mind the repeated request of conservatives in the living in love and faith debates to see the legal advice i d like to know a bit more about this but the minutes from may 2025 don t mention the lawyers they pass the responsibility on to the houses of clergy and laity maybe that s what the lawyers said this is what we now have 5 4 the bishop of dudley briefed the house on work being done to allow acting diocesan bishops to vote in both the house and the general synod acting bishops were approved and lawfully entitled to exercise episcopal functions in their diocese but are not lawfully members of the general synod or house of bishops and therefore they as individuals and their diocese are left without a vote during often lengthy vacancies changing this required an amending canon this could be done swiftly with the support of synod but could become a partisan debate he was therefore engaging with the houses of clergy and laity to explain the issues and take matters forward an amending canon was that the legal advice i think i could probably have given that advice myself so until acting diocesan bishops can vote we are not going to get anywhere near 53 bishops voting meanwhile back in the house of bishops the may 2025 minutes show that they addressed the clarke pmm within the context of a paper they had received called making the house work better as is the usual format of house of bishops minutes these days what we can read are isolated comments from unnamed bishops for example someone noted that the house should take the pmm seriously someone else there was a case for a review providing it was multi disciplinary also that the house needed to focus on building accountability and transparency the bishop of london who had presented the paper noted the work would proceed as set out in the paper but here s the problem the paper was written for the bishops so we have no idea what constitutes the work the agenda for the july house of bishops meeting includes a ten minute item review of culture and governance of the house of bishops update so maybe more will become clear when the minutes for that meeting are eventually approved and published there are all sorts of other comments about the house in the may 2025 minutes the bishop of london s observation that the house doesn t always find the right balance between working formally as a legislative body as a house of synod and working more informally as an episcopal leadership providing prayerful discernment a comment on llf attributed to the bishop of leicester that the house was increasingly facing the choice of whether to lead or be led and another comment this one attributed that the function of the house had changed as a result of the living in love and faith process and the pandemic what i think has changed is something else the house of bishops had for whatever reason reached a stage in which they felt that expressing collegiality could only be done by voting the same way in the 2017 take note debate which kicked off the llf process all the bishops voted in favour of taking note of their widely criticised report gs2055 marriage and same sex relationships after the shared conversations which offered a vague radical new christian inclusion to lesbian and gay christians all but one and he had simply pressed the wrong button since then the chains have loosened again now we are all aware that the house of bishops contains a range of views just like the wider church it serves and somehow that is hard for some people to hear personally i don t have a problem with it they are individuals people and i am glad that they feel able to say what they think in their meetings as a house the negative side of it however is when church members say that they want or even that they can t flourish without a bishop who thinks as they do people are complex bishops are complex there s never going to be a bishop who in their views on sexuality poverty the trinity establishment marriage racial justice and the theology of atonement is just like you share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading posted in general synod living in love and faith tagged house of bishops 2 comments july 2025 general synod money talks posted on july 19 2025 by fluff35 i returned home from synod on tuesday evening i wasn t drafting this while i was there as there was just too much else going on and once i was back i had lots to catch up on from other parts of my life but maybe that s to the good as i ve had more time to process it all so here we go and i m sorry it is so long but there was a very full agenda even without the fringe meetings most of which i won t talk about here i ll come to the specifics of some debates later not in order of scheduling but as they fit into my reflections so skip ahead if you like but first some general thoughts when i go out to various deaneries around my relatively wealthy diocese the main concern expressed to me is their experience of more and more vacant or only partly funded posts for ordained ministers in their benefices this is not helped by the number of vocations to ordained ministry having fallen so that we are a long way even from replacing those who retire in hereford we were told by its bishop some benefices have been without a priest for 4 years in relation to this at the moment a number of contradictory positions exist and these kept coming up across very different presentations and debates at synod these include the narrative of lots of money in particular the success of the church commissioners investments up 10 3 in 2024 and funding an increase of 430 million in spending between 2026 and 2028 versus a narrative of crisis nearly all dioceses now in deficit the narrative of declining numbers of church members versus a new and not yet tested narrative of a quiet revival of new people especially young men coming in the narrative of doing more things driven by the vision strategy for the 2020s with its key phrases of becoming a church of missionary disciples mixed ecology and younger and more diverse because the answer is doing more mission and praying more i don t hear much from the other side of that but would suggest that the one who brings us to god is god st paul wrote i planted apollos watered but god gave the growth so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only god who gives the growth 1 cor 3 6 7 so what happens when the growth doesn t follow the planting and watering has the focus on numbers gone too far on that theme i know it s becoming standard to ask for more theology at least in the living in love and faith llf process but please can we have more theology of prayer once we reach the point that someone can say in churches where they prayed for half an hour a week for growth there was a 6 per cent annual rise in attendance i think we need to step back and reflect in the church growth presentation i felt very uneasy about the very mechanistic views some expressed which seemed to me more akin to magic you do the thing you get the result just like that and if you don t get the result this synod brought plenty of good money news for example about increasing clergy stipends and improving investment in housing for retired clergy this all relates to the increasing recognition that the main factor depressing the numbers of those offering themselves for ordination is not covid nor the new process of discernment they go through nor the discussions of sexuality but fears around clergy well being and then there was more money talk in the final synodical stage of the redress scheme for those who have suffered as victims and survivors of church abuse the scheme will be non adversarial person centred and trauma informed some present at synod seemed most worried about whether they would be blamed if they reported but nobody listened to them i was pleased that synod passed the amendment proposed by bishop julie conalty so that those who have already received some help under the interim support scheme will not have those payments deducted from any award made under the redress scheme this is about showing generosity an excellent point from revd jenny bridgman extended the image of the body keeps the score to the body of the church the body of christ as a church we carry the weight of what we now know happened on bodies and our proper use of them i was of course very involved in the penultimate agenda item the end of using issues in human sexuality in the discernment process the speech i gave made the point that despite not having been intended to be used in this way for candidates for ordination in some dioceses its malign empire has expanded into covering lay ministry as well so this is something that concerns all who minister in the c of e only a couple of members seem to have voted to keep the document in use everyone else having come together to bin it the motion was amended so that the guidelines for the professional conduct of the clergy will be used as an interim point of reference before the bishops offer us a new guide gpcc does not have an unhealthy fixation with sex but covers far more aspects of a person s integrity it s perhaps the first time progressives and conservatives have agreed on anything to do with our sexuality so that was indeed something to celebrate but it s too early to say that the use of private members motions like this one from revd mae christie proposed by paul waddell because she was moving house on the day it was scheduled is the way to go on llf it s for the house of bishops to make the calls this debate on binning issues was not the focus of this synod and one of my conclusions from last week is that the much reported battle between conservatives and progressives around sexuality really isn t where the main problems lie no that s back to money again of course it is this wasn t only about stipends and redress where your treasure is there will your heart be also matthew 6 21 was mentioned in debates maybe more than once it s hard to remember just how many times it came up because it was a very groundhog day sort of synod with four formal and many informal items on the agenda in which we had much the same discussion about money and whether the best way of deciding how to spend it is to put as much as we currently do into a central scheme to which dioceses make bids or letting the dioceses have more to put into local parishes the hereford motion passed by many dioceses and aimed at moving money from the central funds into the local was amended by the bishop of sheffield and the way the amendments were laid out meant that the other amendment from the bishop of bath wells was not able to be taken that was the one i had intended to support suggesting that 1 of the increase in value in the endowments should go to the dioceses to support ordinary parish ministry incidentally the sheffield amendment only just passed in the house of laity 87 yes 83 no and 9 abstentions that s a lot of bishops making or trying to make amendments so maybe this is the point to mention the ros clarke private member s motion asking the house of bishops to have an independent review of how they work i m on record expressing my unease about the secrecy of their processes but had i been called to speak i d have pointed to improvements there with them having resumed publishing their minutes and i would have reinforced the point made by another speaker that bishops are individuals not some monolithic structure of a house i think bishop paul bayes put that very well here writing in 2017 when there was also anger with the bishops on the private member s motion after some debate there was a motion to move to next business and i supported that because i couldn t see how anything more being said could be helpful next business only just passed as if the 16 abstentions had voted no then the debate would have continued that financial discussion is one manifestation of the division between smibb which stands for strategic mission and ministry investment board and the parish the bishop of blackburn challenged claims of such a division by saying that without the smibb funding outlined here his diocese s parishes would suffer and of course like most binaries it s never as simple as all that like its predecessor strategic development funding for which a full list of the projects funded is here smibb works by people putting in bids for funding i ve witnessed for myself the re...