The Archbishop delivered the Presidential address to the meeting of the General Synod in York today. The address follows in full
As we begin the last group of sessions of this Quinquennium and inevitably find ourselves looking back as well as forwards, some of you know that this will be your last General Synod, and some of you are wondering whether it might be, I want to say something about the big issues that have been woven through all our deliberations for the last five years, but also point towards what awaits us in November and how, together, we might continue to build a flourishing, sustainable Church that is able to minister to every part of our nation and to every person in it.
So, let’s start with the Vision and Strategy that began to emerge in 2020.
This vision was always about putting Jesus at the centre. To recall us to him. To be a Christ centred and Jesus Christ shaped Church. To remember that this is God’s Church, not ours, and it was therefore, first and foremost a call for a spiritual and theological renewal of our life in Christ.
A spiritual renewal, whereby we commit ourselves afresh to being a people of prayer (and therefore a prayerful Synod), but also a theological and ecclesiological renewal where we pay attention to knowing and learning from Jesus and to re-vision and shape his Church as his body, where every part is precious, vital and has a contribution to make.
And notwithstanding, the odd accusation of Nestorianism – ask me later if you missed that particular episode – this focus on Jesus and gathering around Jesus and learning from him has been well received and led directly to two other objectives
that have also gone down rather well and are in clear, but uneven, ways starting to bear fruit, namely: to be a church of missionary disciples; and to be a church which is younger and more diverse.
To be a Church of missionary disciples built on the work of Setting God’s People Free, initiated by this Synod. It acknowledges that because of our baptism all Christian people are called and sent by Jesus Christ and have a share in Christ’s ministry.
To be a church which is younger and more diverse was, first of all, the heart cry of the hundreds of people who were consulted as the Vision and Strategy came into being, and reflects the longing of God’s church in this land to include everyone in, whatever their age, background or circumstance, but recognising that there is a particular need and responsibility to share the gospel with children, young people and families and to ensure that one of our very greatest treasures, our Church schools, are part of our vision and strategy going forward.
Now, this growing younger part of the aim, I know we’re not used to saying this in the Church of England or the General Synod, but it’s actually going rather well. There is evidence from many parishes and some dioceses that change is taking place and that more children and young people are coming to know Jesus and be part of his Church. Sisters and brothers, we rejoice in this and must build on it in the next quinquennium.
The diverse bit of being younger and more diverse, well this proving a little more challenging.
We have wrestled with the profound challenge of Lament to Action, been inspired by the pioneering work of the Racial Justice Commission, and seen Project Spire envision a work of healing, justice and repair. Yet honest reflection requires us to acknowledge that our response has not always been equal to our aspiration, and that the work of justice, repentance, repair remains unfinished. We are not yet a Church where our deep abiding in Christ means that our unity in Christ really is ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’
There is also much work to do around matters of ‘so-called ability’ and ‘so-called disability.’ Idealised and perfected images of the human body that come from the Greek and Roman world and not the gospel of Jesus Christ have often been prominent in Christian narratives. We still need to learn that the Christ in whom we abide is the one whose risen body bears the scars of his passion and his suffering love. And will do for eternity. Indeed, these are the only human marks that can be found in heaven. By his wounds we have been healed, and it may well be through our wounds that we will discover how to be whole. On this subject, can I encourage you on Sunday after the Eucharist to spend time looking at the exhibition in the Chapter House entitled, ‘Called as we are’. And I particularly look forward to the important debate on neurodiversity later today.
In this Synod we have also begun to address important and significant work on class and working class vocations and estates ministry. I pay tribute to those who – with this and other matters of inclusion – have cajoled us into paying attention to the things some of us so easily forget. And there is more to be done.
However, without doubt, the most contested matter of this past Quinquennium have been the debates around human sexuality. Although we do agree that there is absolutely no place in our church for homophobia and that everyone is welcome, and although Prayers of Love and Faith are now commended to be used in Church in certain circumstances, we don’t agree on exactly how our welcome to LGBTQI+ siblings should be expressed, nor how clergy in same-sex marriages can minister in our church.
You have heard me say this many times, and I don’t apologise for saying it one more time – I am deeply pained by this. But I know so many of you are as well, whatever position you hold on these issues.
If we are to be a Christ centred church, and if that means that we are his body, then we have to carry on holding onto each other and cherishing each other, especially the parts of our body which may feel neglected or excluded; I remember – and will always remember – Simon Butler’s speech in a previous Quinquennium, quoting Jacob’s words as he wrestled with the angel, that he would not let go until he had been blessed. To my LGBTQI+ friends and my conservative friends in this Synod and across the Church and in all the communities we serve, I say again that I want to be part of a Church which holds you, and a church which holds me, and a church where we all can flourish. And as long as seeking to be a more diverse Church remains our aim, and with our new working groups beginning, let us do all that we can to find ways forward, and to do it graciously in the ways that I think we have started to learn through some of the difficult debates of the last few years, seeing and cherishing the face of Christ in each other.
So, yes, we are agreed that in seeking to become a Christ centred and Jesus Christ shaped church, we are called to be a Church of missionary disciples and we are called to be younger and more diverse. It is the third objective that has probably proved most controversial, a church where mixed ecology is the norm.
Through no fault of the listener, I fear that this rather clunky phrase has often been misheard and misunderstood.
Somehow, and this was never the intention, some people in this chamber and in the wider Church heard the phrase, mixed ecology is the norm, and thought it meant that new forms of Church were better than old ones and that the Church of England no longer put parishes at the heart of its ministry.
This is not the case. And was never meant to be.
Rather, the intention was to draw attention to the biblical truth, that the Church is an ecosystem and, like all ecosystems, thrives on diversity and shrinks when that diversity diminished.
This truth is also reflected in, and observable throughout church history. The Church of Jesus Christ has always clothed itself in the cultures and languages it encountered and grew, developed and adapted because of the refining fire of the questions those cultures posed. We read about this in the New Testament itself, both in the way doctrine developed and the way the gospel was preached and in the different ways the Church grew and evolved. Grew and evolved and yet remained the same. United in Christ, built upon the faith and witness of the apostles, but finding different expressions as the gospel travelled across the world and as – from Pentecost onwards – the church learned to ‘speak local’. Different in Jerusalem to Antioch, to Corinth, to Athens.
And so, this continued in the missionary expansion of the church across the world and still continues to this day. And in each of the great seasons of evangelisation. Different, and the same. Different, and the same, because of the apostle Paul. Because of Augustine and because of Paulinus. Because of Cranmer. Because of Martin Xavier. Because of Martin Luther. Because of Mary Ward. Because of John Wesley. Because of John Henry Newman. Because of Mary Sumner. Because of David Watson. Because of Bubble church in Balham. Seeds of Hope in Ipswich. The Don Urdu Fellowship in Doncaster. Mustard Seed here in the Diocese of York. Because – let’s call her Carol – whose father died recently and whose son is in prison turned, in these last few weeks, in her desperation and sorrow, to Jesus and to his church and Carol was confirmed here in the Diocese of York in the East Riding last night. And Linda was licensed as parish priest of the Rural Ainsty group of parishes on the edge of York on Wednesday night. And the church was packed as a new beginning after a four year vacancy was celebrated with hope and trust.
And you can hear more about what we are doing about this in the north at our Faith in the North fringe on Monday and there’s some copies of a new worshipping communities good practice guide, Starting Something New available downstairs. And since none of this happens without prayer, without a crying out to God that the Holy Spirit will bless the church and bring in the harvest, the Bishop of Manchester and the Bishop of Lancaster invite us to join them for 1/2 night of prayer tonight.
So, not a different gospel. Not a different Church. But the ever-expanding ways of expressing in the ever-changing cultures and languages of the world, the never changing gospel of Jesus Christ.
“I have made myself a slave to all,” says Paul, “so that I might win more of them.” To the Jews I became as a Jew… To those under the law I became as one under the law … To those outside the law I became as one outside the law… To the weak I became weak… I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.” (1 Cor. 9:19-23)
‘Mixed Ecology is the norm’ was intended to say let a thousand flowers bloom. Let us try new things. Let us translate the gospel into new languages and new cultures in the smorgasbord of cultures that make up contemporary Britain. Let us build a healthy ecosystem of Church. Let us value those bits of the church that have often been neglected. Schools, chaplaincy in all its many forms. Let us do it all for the sake of the gospel so that we and others may share its blessing.
But what we didn’t say clearly, is that not only is this not in any way in competition with parish ministry, or a threat to it, but that most of it, in fact, almost all of it, flows from healthy parish ministry. And this has been the case: each year in Statistics for Mission we see that it is parishes that have already started over 1,000 new worshipping communities and it is primarily from parishes that 10,000 new worshipping communities can flow.
Within the Catholic and Reformed good ordering of the Church of England whereby we are – though we often forget it – first of all 42 dioceses rather than this thing called ‘the national church,’ it is the parish that is and remains the basic unit which makes up and constitutes the diocese and where each parish priest shares their ministry with the bishop in a cure of souls which is ‘yours and mine.’ Therefore, we have always known -though not always said – that it is only by enabling parish ministry to flourish that these new things, which we also need, can come to birth. And dioceses are increasingly prioritising the parish. In 2025 almost 60% of national DIP funding focussed on the outcome of a parish system revitalised for mission, 3 times more than any other outcome.
This vision for parish ministry, which my colleague Eleanor, the Bishop of Hull, who confirmed Carol and others last night, recently described as a vision which embraces and includes ‘every blade of grass and every beating heart’. This is the heart of our Vision and Strategy: a Christ centred and Jesus Christ shaped church in and for every community in this country, where every community and every person has a chance to hear the good news of Jesus and a Church to join.
We may therefore in the next quinquennium want to reestablish our bearings, pointing more clearly to the true north of our life in Christ lived out in and for the communities we serve with greater clarity about the place of the parish within the ecosystem of the Church.
We will need a persistent focus on raising up new ministers, lay and ordained, and will in all these things need to pay ever greater attention to how our money is directed.
The Church Commissioners do an amazing job in producing such a return for us each year. We owe them a debt of gratitude. Some of this money goes on various matters they are required to support. But a very large chunk of it goes on priorities where we have influence and agency.
I really want to welcome the work that the Bishop of Bath and Wells and the Bishop of Manchester and others are doing to look at how funding is distributed.
I hope that in the next triennium additional money can be given to enable parish ministry to thrive in the poorest and most deprived parts of our country, which will often include areas of rural as well as urban deprivation. Of course, this will mean less money for other things. But I also believe that the intergenerational equity which is such a core principle of the Church Commissioners, that is handing on intact the endowment that we received from the past to those who follow us in the future, might also be extended to the life and health of the Church itself. Therefore, we cannot neglect the poor.
And if our shared priorities have set the direction of this quinquennium, none of that will matter if we don’t continue to pay attention to Safeguarding. Oh, how we have had to deal with these things – our failures, and our ongoing efforts to find the best way forward for addressing them, learning from them, and ensuring they are never repeated, how they have weighed heavily on this General Synod.
Painful and sobering though this has been, I believe we are coming out of this quinquennium in a better place than when we went in, because it is the truth that will set us free, and we have had to come face-to-face with the truth of our failings and recognise that we need help.
I am really grateful for the work of INEQE and its scrutiny of our safeguarding. I’m grateful to the Charity Commission. We do have a duty to keep people safe. And we do it because Jesus invites everyone, and especially the little and the lost, to his table.
I am enormously grateful to victims and survivors, many of whom I’ve spoken with, who despite the traumas they have experienced and live with, continue to help us and hold us to account. You’ll have seen details of the Jagged Edges exhibition in the Spring Lane building. Can I encourage you to visit that before you leave. Each through a different medium – lino-prints, music, poetry – three survivors have approached the passion narratives to co-create a Stations of the Cross, drawing profound connections between the shared narrative of Jesus’s suffering and the lived experience of individuals harmed in Christian churches. I am hosting a fringe alongside the survivors on Saturday evening – please do pop in.
Finally, I do get a bit exasperated when people think the Church of England’s Vision and Strategy is something I authored. One of the few gifts of Covid was that as the whole world went online in 2020, we were able to do a huge consultative exercise, particularly with many younger and usually neglected voices who contributed so much to what emerged.
But I do confess to being the author of the three words which were meant somehow to capture the spirit of what we believed God was calling from us as a church, namely, simpler, humbler, bolder.
I stand by these words. They are what I long for, for our church and for myself.
We still have some way to go to make the Church of England simpler, but I believe we will best do this by good governance, by transparency, by accountability. And I am so grateful for Archbishop Sarah’s appointment as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, because I believe her gifts, skills and experience are what we need to make this journey together.
But also, humbler. As I’ve said several times over the past five years, when I began to pray that we might be a humbler church, I never realised that this prayer would be answered by our being humbled. But we have. And although it is hard and painful, it is also I think what we needed so that we can really put victims and survivors at the centre, be honest about where we have got things wrong and where we need to get better.
But for most of my ministry what gets me out of bed in the morning is a longing to share with others the good news of Jesus Christ that I have received.
Jesus is good news for every person and such very good news for our perplexed and anxious world.
And I do want us to be bolder in this. Bolder, not by shouting louder, but by loving more – and by sharing the joy, beauty and challenge of the gospel; the kind of joy that comes when you hear the beat and rhythm of some music you love, find your feet tapping, your face breaking into a smile, and then, before you’ve even consciously realised what you’re doing, you’re rising up and joining in the dance yourself. Oh, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Medicine for the soul and rhumba for the heart.
These are many things we will continue to attend to in the next quinquennium. Making the Church safe. Including the excluded. Paying attention to our responsibilities. Supporting parish ministry. Enabling new ministry to develop – new priests and new ways of being church. Seeing how the imperative of our life in Christ requires us seek the unity of the Church and requires us to be peacemakers in the world, not least in our support of persecuted sisters and brothers in the Holy Land, something we will be discussing in this group of sessions. And in all this, holding each other accountable under God.
These are not things we do instead of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Dear friends, they are the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the one who always seeks out the lost. Welcomes home the sinner. Puts little children first. Reserves his fiercest judgement for those who would presume to judge others. Who is always merciful and kind to those who have got it wrong. Come to him all you who are weary and overburdened. You will find rest for your soul.
May that be our hope, and the calling we live out as we journey on until that day when the rhumba in our hearts is joined with the heavenly Brighouse and Rastrick Colliery Band multitude of praise around the heavenly throne, Angels and Archangels, saints, apostles and martyrs and the whole company of the redeemed.