Edinburgh Diocesan Synod met on Saturday 15 February at St Paul’s and St George’s, Edinburgh. Clergy and elected lay representatives gathered to consider the work of the various diocesan committees and the charges supported, be updated on the 2024 Accounts, hold elections, and consider General Synod business.
There were also presentations by the Net Zero team, Abraham’s Children in Crisis – the charity chosen by the Bishop for his 2025 Lent Appeal – and the Dean, the Very Revd Frances Burberry.
The Bishop’s Address to Synod was one of the first items on the agenda and is reproduced below:
The announcement of my retirement won’t have come as any great surprise. After all, for the past year, everywhere I’ve gone, people have been telling me, ‘I hear you’re retiring.’ Eventually, I took the hint.
Nothing lasts forever. The important thing is to enjoy it whilst it lasts and to give yourself wholeheartedly to it. I hope I have done both. Certainly, I look back on my 13 or so years with huge gratitude both for the experience, diverse and colourful as it has been, and for the trust you, the diocese, have given me, backed up always by prayer, kindness and respect.
A lot has happened since I was elected in 2012, both in the world and in the church. Although we might expect a certain ‘staying power’ in our bishops, it’s not unreasonable to expect also an opportunity, every so often, to consider again who God might be calling to be our chief pastor for a new season. So, this is a very significant moment for any diocese.
I hope you will do all you can to prepare for this moment, in particular through prayer. It is a time to listen to God, and to discern where the wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing. For we should recognise that a successful episcopal election depends far more on the superabundant grace of God than it does on the qualities of the person elected – important though those qualities may be. The gospel reading at this morning’s Eucharist, the feeding of the four thousand, speaks eloquently of how God can take the little we have to offer and transform it into something far more than we can ask or imagine. And that even when all have been satisfied there is something left over; that sometimes we can offer far more to others because we are broken in pieces and shared. That sometimes, amazingly, there is more of us left at the end of this process than at the beginning.
Our Dean will have a lot more to say about the mechanics of Canon 4 later today. She is very well qualified to do so, given her participation in the two most recent election processes, in Argyll and the Isles and Glasgow and Galloway. The formal process may only begin after the bishop has left, but there’s a lot that can and must be done before then and I encourage you to play your part in this.
This is clearly not just a matter for the diocese; the Province too has a part to play. To this end, the College of Bishops has deputed Bishop Andrew of Brechin to oversee the electoral process and has asked Bishop Mark, of Moray, Ross and Caithness, to be your acting bishop. As Primus, he is regularly in Edinburgh and so will be able to liaise with the Dean to ensure that pastoral care and episcopal cover is provided.
As for me, I shall do all I can to support the necessary planning, both with Dean Frances and with Bishops Andrew and Mark. I recognise that this will mostly involve simply keeping out of the way. And I shall also be getting ready for the end of my active ministry. Clare and I have a house in Balerno, where we shall live. In July I hope to have a short holiday and begin to wind things up in the office. Then, there will be a last push through August and a final service on the 24th at the Cathedral. That’s when the downsizing will begin in earnest, with the intention of being out of the Bishop’s House by the end of October.
Eight months is a long goodbye, and there are many things to engross me still. I shall be visiting Jordan at the end of March, together with Bishop Kaisamari of Espoo and other bishops of linked Lutheran and Anglican dioceses. Then there is Easter, the Big Day, Pentecost and General Synod. But already I’m startled and excited by the empty spaces in my diary for September and beyond, and I’m wondering what it will be like to set off, like Abraham at the age of 70, with no clear idea of where I am going. Or to be like one of those baskets, after the feeding of the four thousand, full of leftover pieces, with no obvious usefulness but redolent of miracle! I would be grateful, therefore, as you devote yourself to pray for the future of this diocese, if you could find a moment to pray for Clare and me too, as we shall for you.
I step back full of confidence in God and knowing that the Diocese of Edinburgh is a community of life and promise, of good and visionary leaders and congregations devoted to God and neighbour. There are strong candidates to be my successor within the diocese and, no doubt, beyond it too, and I am sure that the Preparatory Committee will find no problem in delivering a shortlist to the Electoral Synod.
Your new bishop will minister in a world which is increasingly troubled, and in which our own faith in Jesus Christ will be used and misrepresented by selfish, cruel and ignorant people. Your new bishop will walk beside you as together you discern God’s will in a changing environment in which old expressions of church, familiar patterns of governance and polity, may need to give way to new. On the other hand, they will also be part of a church which is already welcoming an increasing diversity of membership, and discovering that God hasn’t given up on us – a church no longer hankering for what was but ready for what shall be.
In the past few weeks I have been part of conversations in the College of Bishops and the wider Province which encourage me to believe that the Scottish Episcopal Church as a whole is ready to welcome God’s future with confidence and courage. Hard work, challenge, attention to detail, sadnesses as well as joys, yes, of course, but all this lived out within the dynamic call of God to follow Jesus Christ on the Way. A costly way, but one walked trusting that the Creator Spirit will always ‘rekindle in [us God’s] gifts of grace… to bring to completion all that [God’s] calling has begun.’*
+John
* Words from the liturgy for the Reaffirmation of Faith with the Laying on of hands.
