G'day Wesley, Trevor and the Group
Thanks for your replies.
At 12:14 PM 21/11/03 +1100, Susan & Wesley wrote:
Hello Andrew and everyone,
Well it is good to see that we already have a volunteer for the 2006 Assembly, one who truly knows what being "Spirit-led" means. Andrew, I hope that you are not seriously mocking the sincerity and integrity of the members of the Assembly.
Not for one minute. That is a very important point. I'm not mocking anything, actually. Dare I say, unlike you.
If I seemed blunt, I was a bit shocked by some of the arguments used by those who *were* there. I think consensus is great, I think spending (by my arithmetic) more time in fellowship groups and worship sessions than in actual business is great too. I've seen it in action, at the last NSW Synod but one which I attended as a visitor and performer. We are doing something radical here.
But there are some teething problems. The business is important too. There is at least the suspicion that one faction has been successfully using these new structures.
What particularly shocked me was the bland assurance that if I'd been at Assembly I would have supported the decisions too. That is reflected in this post I think. Now that may even be true, and if so I think that it's even more important for us to understand what is going on here.
I'm not for one moment attacking the *motives* for the decisions. What I'm questioning is there *quality*. But this latest post has jumped away from my questions of whether the decisions were *correct*. And this seems *typical* of those who were at Assembly. They seem *unable* to understand how anyone could question any decision taken there.
A high level of consensus has been achieved. We have good mechanisms for achieving this obviously, and that's good. But this very thing now makes it difficult for these people to communicate with the rest of the church, who weren't there. We are talking different languages.
As for the rest, a simple reading of the ASC material will show that what is happening is a new process. Proposal 81 asked for concurrence on the mattters raised in '84'. The ASC has asked for a response, so that proposals can be prepared for the 2006 Assembly, not to 'ratify' decisions of Assembly 03. Clause 39 of the Constitution has not been invoked.
True. All of which *could* and *should* have been dealt with at Assembly. Proposal 81 was not perfect. But in the absence of any other, it should have passed. Perhaps what would have been even better would have been a proposal along the lines of what ASC has now done, perhaps not. So?
Regardless of where people are 'at' following Assembly, '84' and '81' were not 'colossal blunders'.
Perhaps we should agree to disagree over this. I think that there is evidence that at least some who once just wished they would go away now see them both as critically important to the life of the church. Which, as you say, the ASC resolution still falls short of affirming.
If it is true that Proposal 84 was in fact critically important, then rejecting Proposal 81 and putting nothing in its place was a colossal blunder, surely?
I hope I've never said that Proposal 84 was a colossal blunder, as you imply. A mistake, yes, but its problems are far more in what it does not say than in what it does. The fact that ASC has modified Proposal 84 seems to me to lend some limited support to this view.
From those decisions we are seeing the strengths of our Church and the places that need building up, and most of us are opening ourselves up to explore or re-explore the many and varied issues. We are being led by the Spirit [read: led by the Spirit, not 'having a good time'] into new places.
Andrew, I am sorry that you were not able to see what the 10th Assembly was *actually* like, not having to rely on judgement of others experiences.
And, I'm probably equally sorry that you see the need to bring this up, but I'm very glad you did. You seem confident that I would have a different opinion as to the *quality* of the decisions had I been there. And this seems typical of those who *were* there.
And that might even be true. But we also need to be able to debrief those who were there in terms that we who were not will understand and relate to.
More than twenty years ago I did an Outward Bound Australia course. More recently, I attended an Emmaus Walk. The two actually have quite a lot in common. At the closings of both we were warned against the danger of assuming that others would understand what we had experienced. And we were told that this gulf would take us by surprise even forewarned as we were. And all of this was correct, for most of us.
Assembly needs to face similar issues, and some others. Neither Outward Bound nor Emmaus was a governing body of course.
So we have some work to do, don't you think? This is part of it. Thanks for your contributions.
YiCaa
email: andrewa @ alder . ws
http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa
Phone 9441 4476
Mobile 04 2525 4476
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