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 reaction in a diocese when a bid is not approved; so much work goes into writing these, and of course some people are better than others at bidding. It reminds me of when I chaired a panel giving funding to libraries to preserve and catalogue books and papers in danger of deteriorating further. Some places wrote perfect bids. They even employed someone just to write them. Others, with unique materials to save, couldn’t produce such wonderful bids. So we worked with them, and we made allowances where necessary.

Another topic which kept coming up was racial justice, including Project Spire, featuring from the Archbishop of York’s opening presidential address onwards; Project Spire involves £100 million agreed as coming from the Church Commissioners to invest in projects with “communities affected by historic transatlantic slavery”. Some members of Synod still challenge the evidence of the need for this, and there was much unease this time around about the reduction in funding for both racial justice and disability; we kept hearing that the racial justice funding had only ever been intended to be for the short term, but also that there is money, just in a different area of the budget. I am not sure what to believe here, but I am disturbed that the Lead Bishops for racial justice had not been consulted in advance. Racial justice and disability are such important areas yet appear to be so easy to cut.

Alongside the central funding/local funding split, there’s a related one which is between national and diocesan. What should be the same over the whole Church of England, and where should dioceses have flexibility in applying national policy in order to take into account their local context?

When we apply this national/local distinction to Living in Love and Faith (LLF), there has been an attempt to find out how views differ between dioceses, by having diocesan consultations with diocesan synods. We heard more about this in a fringe meeting. It has not been a smooth process, as dioceses have decided to adapt the set questions, or even not to hold a consultation. Only 17 have so far held one. This was never intended to be comparable to what happened with, for example, women bishops in 2014, where dioceses were given a set motion on which to vote (all voted in favour). Instead, in these ‘consultations’ dioceses were asked how far they had engaged with the LLF resources, and whether parishes would use the Prayers of Love and Faith (PLF); this is a particularly difficult one to measure unless everyone is asked the same thing.

London was asked “If the bespoke PLF are introduced alongside this form of pastoral reassurance, do you think your church would: opt in to pastoral reassurance/not opt in to pastoral reassurance as not needed/not opt in to pastoral reassurance as not sufficient/I don’t know.” The problem with that is simply that “this form” is not clear at all yet; the ‘Delegated Episcopal Ministry’ in which bishops agree to delegate their authority, for example for a particular ordination service, appears to have very few supporters.

Oxford was asked “What is your view of the current pastoral reassurance provisions for those unable to accept PLF?”  It wasn’t clear what “current” means, and this was raised at the meeting. This clarification was added: “For the purposes of this questionnaire, Pastoral Reassurance means: 

•Bishops’ Statement 

•Independent Panel 

•Local Schemes for provision of ministry 

•Ongoing conversations nationally”

The fact that only 79 people answered the question – rather than the 92 or 93 answering the earlier questions – may suggest that this wasn’t clear enough. For the record, 47% were Firmly Against or Against, with 28% In Favour or Strongly in favour. I am wondering there why one was a “Firmly” and the other a “Strongly”. And there is no way of knowing whether those who are not happy with the various aspects of Pastoral Reassurance are always the ones who aren’t happy with the proposed provisions; it’s perfectly possible that those who welcome the PLF don’t much care for the specifics of Reassurance suggested for those who disagree. Oxford was asked for “your view of the use of Prayers of Love and Faith” but did that mean the current use in existing services, the proposed standalone/bespoke services, or both? For the record 43% were some sort of “Against” and 46% “In favour” of whatever they thought they were voting on.

Back to the national, although I suspect some churches don’t use the Calendar, I found surprisingly interesting the item of Liturgical Business at this Synod. This was to add two new items to the Calendar, which give us opportunities to work alongside other Churches who have already introduced the Festival of God the Creator or a Commemoration of the 21 Martyrs of Libya. There were powerful comments made on how we construct sacred time and how the liturgical year relates to our individual journeys of faith. This was the item which did most for my own faith.

Martyrdom brings me to another central theme: war. It featured in Brigadier Jaish Mahan’s moving address on living with a land war in Europe and the complexity of the Middle East; in the various stages of legislation being passed so that chaplains will be licensed by the Archbishops rather than having to go through the process each time they move diocese; and in the address from the Archbishop of Jerusalem with his chilling image of food distribution in Gaza as “the Hunger Games”. Requests to have an extra agenda item on the Middle East were resisted; that was disappointing.

There was so much more at this Synod, and I haven’t even mentioned the breakfast, lunchtime and evening Fringe meetings (Synod never stops), but that will do for now. Do ask me about anything I’ve missed. And now we wait for February; unless there’s a last-minute decision to meet in November. I wonder why we can’t just have a Zoom Synod for any legal items which need to be considered; February is a long time away and leaves only one more Synod before the 2026 elections.