With seven days of meetings running from 6.30 A.M. to 9.00 P.M., the patience and stamina of delegates seemed likely to be tested to the maximum. With a strictly controlled agenda and the rather directive stance taken by the Council of General Synod in presenting its own motions on some of the most contentious issues, it was also questionable how much time and opportunity delegates would ultimately have to work through the implications of very significant decisions.
“Seven days of [planned and orchestrated] meetings running from 6.30 A.M. to 9.00 P.M.”
Sounds like a poor way for Christians or others to make major decisions. It’s not as though the big issues arose yesterday and are keeping everyone in crisis-overload mode.
If you became a corporate CEO or senior government official and found that your would-be “handlers” had already scheduled 90% of your waking hours, seven days a week, you would almost certainly:
(1) reexamine the priorities underlying such programmed busyness;
(2) free up time for reflection and for dealing with the unexpected;
(3) ask yourself why your handlers wanted you so busy in those ways; and
(4) consider getting some new handlers.
Irenaeus, I am so with you.
The other day I had the occasion to revisit the GC06 legislative summary pages. (It was for the thread about the RCRC membership, where I posted some related resolution links)
It was shocking to be reminded of the absolute VAST amount of legislation our bishops & deputies were supposed to wade through. I just kept wondering: Is this truly a church or merely a political body?
I’d estimate that 90% of it could have been jettisoned. It was all so frivolous & worldly. I was reminded of two NT exhortations / warnings:
James 4:4
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
From 1 John 2:
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Our church, and the Anglican Church of Canada seem to have sold out to the world, concerning themselves with its affairs, more than the work of the Gospel.
Sounds like something I read in Petroleum News Southeast Asia a long time ago: “Our feet are tired, our stomachs upset; our desks are ladened with work abandoned…our personal lives are in shambles, and, at the bottom line, our billfolds are empty.”
Time for thought would imply that the delegates could and would, therefore risking the elite decisions alreay reached by the handlers. Couldn’t have that. Truth might emerge and oppose the foregone conclusions of aged retired archbishops on pension! Might even not follow the lead of the EKUSA/TEC and then have to make up to the Anglican Communion. Thinking seriously? … get serious!