Lambeth Conference won't look like past gatherings, design team member predicts
Episcopal News Service. May 25, 2007 [052507-02]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Lambeth Conference 2008 will be a significantly different gathering from the 1998 and 1988 sessions of the once-a-decade meeting of the bishops of the Anglican Communion, according to a member of the Conference's design team.
The design for Lambeth 2008 "is not driven by production of reports and enabling resolutions building out of the reports, and that's a significant departure from previous designs," the Rev. Dr. Ian T. Douglas, a member of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council and of its delegation to the Anglican Consultative Council, told the Episcopal News Service. "The focus here is on transformation, the building of communion and the engagement with each other, the goal of which is to equip the bishops to be more effective and faithful servants to the 'Missio Dei' [God's mission]."
The 2008 Conference has been in the news this week since the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, announced May 22 that a small number of bishops have not been invited to attend.
New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson and Martyn Minns -- the latter chosen by the Anglican Church of Nigeria to be the "missionary bishop" for its Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) -- were among the bishops whom Williams did not invite. Only serving diocesan bishops, suffragans and assistants, as opposed to retired bishops, were invited.
Douglas was first named to the Conference's eight-person design group when the intention was to have both the Lambeth Conference and an "Anglican Gathering" at the same time in South Africa. Budget issues forced the postponement of the gathering and movement of the Lambeth Conference back to England, Douglas told the Executive Council in November 2006.
However, the Archbishop of Canterbury kept the design group together so that the gathering's "vision and passion" could guide the Lambeth meeting, Douglas said at the time.
"As it has been pointed out, spending that much time and money to come together to draft reports that collect dust on a shelf or pass resolutions that are simply used to divide us one from another might not be the best use of the gifts that God has given us at this time," said Douglas, who is the Angus Dun Professor of World Mission and Global Christianity at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "But coming together to encounter one another and God's word, engage the hard issues at a deep level of conversation, and then be equipped to serve God's mission in the world, I think, does offer hope, possibility and new life for the leadership of the Anglican Communion."
The Lambeth Conference, so named for Lambeth Palace which has been the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury since 1200, will take place July 16-August 4, 2008 at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England.
Douglas explained the anticipated design for the 2008 Conference during the November 2006 meeting of the Executive Council. The basic design has remained the same.
The last two Conferences featured four issues-related groups that developed resolutions for the entire group of bishops to consider. Instead, in an effort to equip the bishops as leaders in God's mission, the 2008 Conference will begin with groups of eight bishops from different provinces meeting in what are being called "ndaba groups" to begin the practice of encountering God's Word and encountering each other through sharing their stories and God's story, Douglas said.
The word "ndaba" is Zulu, which Douglas said can be translated as a gathering for conversation for the sake of conversation.
Groups of five ndaba groups will be combined for discussions of issues. Douglas told the Executive Council that some of those issues could well include the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), global economic justice, environmental concerns, interfaith dialogue (especially between Christians and Muslims), how to include voices not normally heard at Lambeth (such as women, young people and other parts of the laity), Anglican biblical hermeneutics, Anglican identities, the Listening Process, and "human sexuality writ large."
The bishops will also receive "very practical and hands-on opportunities" for learning about a range of mission and ministry issues, from how to develop a communications strategy for their diocese to the latest epidemiological information about HIV/AIDS, he suggested in November. Those opportunities will come by way of "self-selecting" groups, he said.
"If we can help bishops encounter one another and encounter God's word, engage the issues in a deep, meaningful way, and then be equipped and resourced to serve their vocation as church leaders, then that will be very important for the current and future Anglican Communion," Douglas told ENS.
He acknowledged that the 2008 Lambeth Conference will take place during a time of tension in the Anglican Communion.
"Now, I am not naïve. I know there will be people who will come with specific concerns and agendas," he said. "The hope and expectation is that Lambeth can be a time of encounter and deep listening across our differences for the sake of discovering the larger communion that God has already given us as Christians and as Anglican Christians in the world."
Douglas said that "bishops who choose to come to the Lambeth Conference are coming because they want to be a part of perhaps something larger than their own local experience in their diocese."
"They're coming to learn from each other and share with each other, and there will be some articulated norms as to how people will be in communion and how conversations will be facilitated," he said.
Douglas cautioned that there are misconceptions about what any Lambeth Conference is intended to be, especially the 2008 gathering. He said it is important to understand that the invitations to come to a Lambeth Conference have always been the domain of one person -- the Archbishop of Canterbury -- and that they are personal invitations to individual bishops.
"As a result, it's a gathering of bishops in communion with the See of Canterbury," he said. "That gathering of bishops is nothing more, nothing less than that. In other words, it's not some grand episcopal synod that is to effect policy for a global, unified singular Church.
"Having said that, I also emphasize it's very important for bishops to come together to take counsel as the recognized leaders of Churches of the Anglican Communion. So, I neither want to minimize the importance of it nor do I want to make Lambeth Conference something that it has never been designed to be. We need to be careful neither to make it a global episcopal synod or just another gathering of faithful Christians."
Williams, noting in his letter of invitation that the Conference "has no 'constitution' or formal powers," wrote that "the Conference is a place where our experience of living out God's mission can be shared."
"It is a place where we may be renewed for effective ministry. And it is a place where we can try and get more clarity about the limits of our diversity and the means of deepening our Communion, so we can speak together with conviction and clarity to the world," Williams wrote. "It is an occasion when the Archbishop of Canterbury exercises his privilege of calling his colleagues together, not to legislate but to discover and define something more about our common identity through prayer, listening to God's Word and shared reflection."
Douglas said that the tendency to think that invitations to Lambeth Conference are addressed to the member churches of the Anglican Communion plays into "a perception that the Lambeth Conference is some kind of legislative, global, decision-making body."
"I think that's an erroneous understanding of what the conference has been and particularly will be in 2008," he said. "Rather it's an important gathering of bishops to take counsel together, worship together, talk together to see how together they can better serve God's mission in the world. Thus, those who would want to make the Lambeth Conference some kind of legislative grand line in the sand, I think, are mistaken as to what the Conference historically has been and particularly what the 2008 Conference will be."
While some observers expected Williams to issue the Lambeth invitations after he meets with the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops in September, Douglas said there is no link between the two events.
"Some have assumed that there is link between the Primates' communiqué [issued from Dar es Salaam] addressed to the bishops of the Episcopal Church with the September 30 deadline and invitations to the Lambeth Conference," Douglas said. "If you look at the Windsor Report, the communiqués from the Primates Meetings both in Dromantine and in Dar es Salaam, and the resolutions of the Anglican Consultative Council, in fact, that link has never been made."
Douglas said he was glad that the invitations had been issued this week because it is very important to the group's planning to know how many and which bishops will be attending.
The Lambeth Design Group still has work to do before the Conference convenes, Douglas said. The group has met three times or more a year since late 2003 with each meeting lasting from Monday through Friday. There are at least three more meetings planned.
"The design is done," he said. "We have a lot of logistical questions we need to address."
Those questions range from working with the Lambeth staff to arrange rooms and transportation to looking at the topics for the expanded groups and the content for the self-selecting groups.
"We have a whole lot of filling in the blanks, if you will," Douglas said.
The other members of the group are Ellison Pogo, KBE, archbishop of Melanesia and bishop of Central Melanesia, Church of Melanesia; Ian Ernest, archbishop of the Indian Ocean and bishop of Mauritius, Province of the Indian Ocean; Colin Fletcher, OBE, bishop of Dorchester, Church of England; Thabo Makgoba, bishop of Grahamstown, Anglican Church of Southern Africa; Miguel Tamayo, bishop of Uruguay, Province of the Southern Cone, interim bishop of Cuba; James Tengatenga , bishop of Southern Malawi, Province of Central Africa; and Ms. Fung-Yi Wong, registrar, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui.