General Synod digest: Mission and Pastoral Measure ‘to provide conversations and consultation’
Jonathan Baird (Salisbury) said that there was “one impressive thing about this report: it has rather attractive coloured photographs.” He noted that 1600 people had responded to the consultation, about the current Measure’s horrors. “Such horrors continue to haunt us.” He and other members of the reference group had been “unable to address” two central matters: the “nigh universal collapse of trust in the Church” and “the misuse and abuse of episcopal and diocesan power”.
He spoke of the “chronic imbalance of resources between bishop and parish”; there was “no defence against the parish being steamrollered” and “no way to stop the latest ill-advised scheme being forced through”. He referred to “the wreckage of Truro, Leicester, and Winchester”. Parishes needed “early redress and fairness”, including legal support and stronger powers of self-determination. The report was a “charter of surrender”, and he urged the Synod not to welcome it “to avoid the ecclesiastical nuclear winter of Wales, Scotland, and the Methodist Church”
“
