General Synod 2007: In Plenary

By Michael Thompson

“This fellow eats with sinners and tax collectors.” Luke 15

As our General Synod approaches, the issues before our church come into sharper and shaper focus, and the volume of the commentary – both the sheer amount of it, and its loudness, grows. In a fractured world, there is before us the specter of a fractured church. All it will take for that to be realized is for us to persist in seeing each other as “positions” instead of persons. And in particular, to see each other as “outside” and “inside”, or “onside” and “offside.”

We are not the first generation to be tempted in that direction. In the time of Jesus, there were hard boundaries, boundaries that defined a person as clean or unclean, as included or excluded, as “us” or “them.” I have absolutely no doubt that if we come to General Synod looking for reasons to impose such boundaries, to build such walls, we will find them.

But if we come to General Synod looking for persons, and if we can imagine for a moment that our walls and boundaries are not God’s dream for us, then something else, something quite powerful and transforming, can happen. We can meet each other, not as members of some sub-culture, either safe or suspect, but as members by baptism of a single Body, grafted into a single Life that lives for the sake of the world.

When Jesus sits down with tax collectors and sinners for a meal, he is offering a parable of the Kingdom, as surely as when he tells of the prodigal, the unjust steward, the mustard seed. He cuts across the grain of “how it is” and offers a hint of “what it may become.” And when we gather around any of the tables to which Jesus invites us, we might find ourselves surprised, might discover that this parable, in which we are now part of the cast, is as difficult and angular now as it was then. It brings to mind Robert Frost’s poem, Mending Wall, a meditative exploration of our need to separate ourselves from one another – “Good fences make good neighbours” and on “Something” (we might be so bold as to say “some-One”) who doesn’t love a wall.

In his poem, Frost muses, “If I were to build a wall, I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out….” And later: “Something there is that does not love a wall, / That wants it down.” And so he veers into the path, not just of a homely truth about a particular and pointless wall, but of a Truth embodied in the living Word of God as he sits with tax collectors and sinners.

We could make a list of notorious walls – the Berlin Wall, the security fence that carves Palestine into bantustans, the security fence along the U.S. border with Mexico. Older walls – the Wall of Hadrian, preserving an enclave of Roman civilization against the untamed Celts, the Great Wall of China. And older walls – of Jericho, of Jerusalem. All dividing the world into a safe and sane “us” and a volatile, inscrutable “Other.”

And the message of all these walls is that we are dangerous to each other. We are competing for some scarce something that we have and they want. Energy, water, wealth, truth, status. Whatever it is that builds walls, it divides us from one another – renders us suspicious, hostile, anxious. In the absurdity of post 9-11 North America, we trade away the very thing we claim to value – individual freedoms – in order to preserve them. We have lost our minds, or at least the part of our minds that can reflect critically, seek understanding, resolve complex issues and make reasonable choices. The reptilian “limbic” brain with its “fight or flight” is no invention of post-modernity. It has been with us always. It builds walls and arms us behind them. It makes hostility of difference, threat of diversity, makes an enemy of the Other.

There are two possible responses to Jesus’ table fellowship with Others. One is to probe his acts for meaning – for how they might effect some long-desired transformation within and among us. Some who stood by made this response, became disciples, followers, re-learned their humanity from its most competent practitioner. The other response is to bend the wall around him, so that he becomes not “us” but “Other”, and as “Other,” enemy. No student of history could ever imagine anything but a sticky end for Jesus, an undefended Other unprotected in the midst of a threatened and hostile “us.” And a sticky end it will be, it will always be, for those who serve the “Something” that, the Someone Who “doesn’t love a wall.”

But on the third day, a stone moves in that wall. Something, Someone is happening, breaking through what must be to assert what may be, lifting us out of our ghettoes (chosen or imposed) into an unwalled Kingdom. And if, in this meantime that really is a mean time, we must have walls that protect, and therefore must risk walls that assail, we can no longer, after this Jesus lives and dies and is alive again, believe that walls are the best we can do. There is another way. Because of that way, we – tax collectors and sinners? – gather at Jesus’ table. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.

Sometimes the purpose of our ministries is clear, transparent, and agreed, though even a simple maintenance bee can surface diversity – even conflict. One thing is certain about this General Synod. There will be disagreement as well as common cause, and strongly held positions (and the persons who hold them) will come into conflict. I am quite certain that some thing or another than I hold dear will be called into question, that I will be called to participate in something uncomfortable or even disagreeable during common worship, that someone will have as hard a time understanding me as I have understanding another. From across Canada, from the increasingly diverse communities in which our churches serve, bearing startlingly different, even divergent convictions about the nature and the mission of God, and about the manner of our contribution to that mission, we will gather in Winnipeg. A community of persons, meeting.

Something that doesn’t love a wall, some One Who doesn’t love a wall, is calling us together. In our parish churches, in our parish councils and vestries, in our congregational meetings, in our regional councils and deaneries, in our synods and synod councils, that living God who calls us together has been calling for a long time.

Calling for us to meet, enjoy, and delight in the friendships that are nurtured – can only be nurtured – in the Body of Christ, where difference is just difference, and Christ is all, in all.

Calling us to offer the world an image of that other way, of the stone that moves on the third day, “breaking down the dividing wall of enmity” (Ephesians 2.15). In our baptism, God brings us into the community of witnesses to a new humanity – “one new humanity in place of the two” (2.16). And this is our witness – that as persons we choose God’s gift of communion, not as the absence of conflict and disagreement, not as the absence of friction and irritation, but as the lived faithfulness that does not allow those things to outweigh the saving and reconciling work of Jesus.

Perhaps more than anything we will vote on (or avoid voting on), this witness is the work to which God calls the General Synod, this is the parable we are meant to tell by the nature of our meeting, of a common humanity in a dangerously fragmented world, held together not by a common mind or even common sense, but by a common Saviour who doesn’t love a wall.

Rev. Dr. Michael Thompson is Rector of St. Jude, Oakville, chair of the Communications and Information Resources Committee of General Synod, and a delegate to General Synod.

Monica Patten
Chair, Financial Management and Development Committee

The past three years in our financial life have been both challenging and exciting. I think it’s fair to say that the move to Hayden Street, the restructuring of Anglican Book Centre, the focus on residential schools and the attention we had to pay to our own systems for managing our financial resources all took time and energy – they might be seen to be on the “challenge” side of the ledger.

And of course, we faced deficits in each of those years, albeit declining ones. Skilled staff leadership and commitment helped us make progress in all areas of our work, and the continuing support from our family of dioceses inspired us constantly to look toward the future – a future in which I believe we will flourish and grow. That’s the exciting side of the ledger.

There was much more that happened in the past three years that was exciting and encouraging. Letting Down the Nets (LDTN), approved at the last General Synod, set out to support our move to long term financial sustainability for continuing ministries at all levels of the church. Over the past three years, LDTN clearly strengthened our shared commitment to stewardship and financial development and underlined the importance of relationships, strategic planning and collaborative work, especially between General Synod and individual dioceses. Much was accomplished, in no small part because of the dedicated work of a fine group of staff, consultants and volunteers.

The Anglican Appeal continued to be an important part of our resource development, drawing the attention of hundreds of Anglican donors to mission and ministry in Canada’s North and with our partners overseas. Just as the triennium ended some new ideas were developed for future implementation, all of which I am sure will contribute to even greater interest and commitment.

The work of the triennium now ending laid a solid platform for the next step in financial development.

And the next step is an exciting one. It will confirm what we all know to be true: we are people blessed by abundance -- abundance of spirit and commitment, abundance of financial and human riches, abundance of faith. And, building on the work of LDTN, Anglican Appeal and the recommendations made in a study commissioned by our financial development staff, we are poised to move forward with a strategy that will have several elements to it.

Our newly proposed Anglican Church of Canada Development Office, under the leadership of a skilled and experienced director (still to be identified,) will continue to build the collaborative work of the various fund raising groups in General Synod and its partners – a process already begun over the past few years. It will continue to uphold the critical work in planned giving and make sure that Anglicans across the country know how they can remember their parish, diocese or General Synod as they think about their own financial futures. It will build on LDTN and strengthen Anglican Appeal. It will learn from what others are doing including, as one example, the newly shaped call to mission in The Episcopal Church. And it will bring leading edge expertise into the area of financial development so that we can tap into new resources for all our ministries, at all levels of the church.

My hope is that, over time, we’ll put exciting ideas, issues and possibilities in front of Canadian Anglicans – compelling ideas they will keenly support as part of their commitment to spirit-filled ministry and mission.

I am so pleased that the Council of General Synod, at its spring meeting, endorsed the directions proposed by the Financial Management and Development Committee which I had the honor to chair though the past triennium. Plans for this new office, which will move us to the same type of structure that many other denominations and faith groups now have in place, will unfold over the next several months.

But I, like all of you, am fully conscious that challenges remain. As a whole church, we are faced with significant issues on several fronts that are at the core of our faith and identity. Our dioceses and parishes often struggle to make ends meet. There is competition for our (individual and family) time and money. We are told that our church is dwindling in numbers because of demographic shifts, secularism and consumerism. We are reminded by others and even by some within the church of the need to be more relevant, more inclusive, and more able to clearly articulate the power of God’s love and passion for justice. There are no simple and easy answers to the challenges that confront us. When we are together in Winnipeg we will struggle with many of them, hoping to find answers or at least directions, coming from many parts of our community.

The work of finance and development will continue to evolve as the works, ministries and challenges which God puts before the church continue to evolve. I believe we can contribute to finding the way forward, lifting up the possibilities and supporting the commitment and hope that we all share for our church’s future mission and ministry.