The Archbishop's Council, said by some to be the most significant change in the Church of England's administration since 1919, was scheduled to meet for the first time on Jan. 21. The formation of the council is one of several moves during this decade aimed at reshaping the church's management structure for the future. Critics of the council see it as "reshuffling of the furniture," said an article in the Church of England Newspaper.

The Rt. Rev. Michael Turnbull, leader of the commission that designed the council, said his two primary concerns were that the work of the council would "lose sight of the spiritual dynamic which was central to all our discussion on the commission and which we tried to convey in our report" and that in attempting to satisfy diverse opinions, the final structure would be "so finely balanced ... that it would cease to have the cutting edge which we originally intended."

In its research, the commission looked for and found defects of the existing central structures. One area of concern was that "there was no single body with overall responsibility for coordinating those aspects of church policy which were necessarily the subject of central planning," which he described as "a cat's cradle of autonomous bodies with distinctive but sometimes over-lapping functions."

Geared to share a common vision and to communicate well with the dioceses, the Archbishop's Council is designed to listen to diocesan concerns and empower local leadership where that is most effective.