Each day this week Anglican Futures will give a short summary of what happened at Synod for those with little time to spare.
After the emotion of the first two days, Day 3 was very obviously less contentious.
1) Synod was addressed by two visiting archbishops - The Most Revd Urmas Viilma, Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia and the Most Revd Anne Germond, Acting Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
As these two archbishops described their churches and their priorities, a great gulf opened up and was as if the leaders of the Church of England were presented with a choice as to which future they would pursue.
Find out which would be wiser in the Anglican Futures blog - Welcome to the Future
or watch the speeches here.
2) Revd Alex Frost brought a Private Members Motion for debate calling for "a national strategy for the encouragement, development and support of vocations, lay and ordained, of people from working class backgrounds."
Synod members took the opportunity to share their experiences of growing up in, and ministering in, working class environments.
Revd Alex Frost summed up the debate, saying, "If we want to we can change the culture, we can embrace what we have, we can change the education but embrace what we have, we can change the finance we're not short of a bob or two, we can do that if we choose to do it."
The motion passed with what appeared to be a unanimous show of hands.
3) A debate on the "missional potential for churches of sport and wellbeing," saw the Bishop of Derby asking for lots of stories about how sport and well being projects, "bring transformative service to their communities and open up opportunities to share the gospel." She got her wish - and along the way the motion was amended to give it a more evangelistic edge and to call for more resources in this area.
There was one voice of dissent - that of Rev Charlie Bell - who explained it was not just because he finds sport "intensely tedious" but also because he finds "the idea of evangelism by stealth rather distasteful." This was picked up and developed further by Bishop Libby as she responded to the debate, suggesting that it could come, "perilously close to coercion and manipulation and we must guard against it."
The motion was,however, carried by a show of hands.
4) After that things got more technical for an hour or so, with detailed discussion of the new Clergy Conduct Measure (which was "finally approved") and two Codes of Conduct relating to the reporting and managing of safeguarding allegations, which were also passed and now considered 'live.'
They can be found HERE and it would be wise for clergy and PCCs to take the time to become aquainted with the Code of Conduct for reporting allegations.
5) There was still time at the end of the day for a motion brought to Synod via Canterbury Diocese, which asked that confirmation statistics should be recorded at a parish level and collected centrally by including them alongside baptisms, weddings and funerals in the annual 'Statistics for Mission' return.
This gave members the opportunity to share encouraging stories of evangelism and discipleship, before passing the motion by a unanimous show of hands.
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