Down to business

After the bishops’ three-day retreat, the Lambeth Conference today shifted gears. The day began with a grandiose, uplifting, and moving celebration of the eucharist at Canterbury Cathedral. Only official photographers were allowed to take pictures inside the cathedral, so the credit for the one above goes to the hardworking folks at the Anglican Communion News Service.

The first of what will be one of the few plenary sessions of the conference took place this afternoon. The highlight was the archbishop of Canterbury’s excellent presidential address, during which he told his fellow bishops that the greatest need in the Anglican Communion right now is for transformed relationships: “We need to get beyond the reciprocal impatience that shows itself in the ways in which both liberals and traditionalists are ready—almost eager at times, it appears—to assume that the other is not actually listening to Jesus.”

One way in which the conference’s designers hope to encourage better dialogue and relationships among the bishops is through “indaba,” a Zulu word meaning gathering for purposeful discussion. Instead of gigantic (and potentially adversarial) plenary sessions where a relatively few articulate and verbose bishops line up at microphones, the bishops at this Lambeth Conference will instead gather daily in indaba groups of about 50 and discuss less formally a variety of issues confronting the Anglican Communion and humankind as a whole. Central to the idea of indaba is that everyone’s voice is heard, something that was impossible under the old model.

Each indaba group is assigned a rapporteur, and it’s our job to be “active observers,” to interpret and record the bishops’ discussions each day and produce a concise reflection that go into the mix of a larger reflection document that will emerge at the conference’s conclusion. The conference designers are keen to stress that this document will not be a communiqué, encyclical letter, declaration, collection of resolutions, etc. It will instead be an attempt to gather into one the overall reflections of the bishops over these two weeks.

We’re 16 rapporteurs in all, and we reflect the diversity of the communion, coming from Congo, Kenya, El Salvador, South Africa, England, Australia, the United States, Cuba, and Canada. It’s almost like being back at Bossey. The archbishop of Canterbury himself stopped in during one of our training sessions to personally thank us for the work we’ll be doing, and to impress up on us its importance to the overall reflection process of the conference. “An early church father one said that bishops are the glue that holds the church together,” Archbishop Rowan told us. “Well, you rapporteurs may be the glue that holds the bishops together.”

The first meeting of our indaba groups is tomorrow, and it promises to be rather hectic, so don’t be surprised if a day goes by without an update. I might be rather tied up trying to make some bishops more adhesive.