IN HER presidential address on the Tuesday morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in part:

I stand here among you by no means for the first time, but for the first time as the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is a humbling privilege to be called to serve in this role. It brings with it huge weight of responsibility, at a time when people love to remind me that the church faces significant challenges.

But when the wind and the waves are rocking the boat, I am reminded that what I need to do is to focus on Christ, who calms the waters and stills the wind. With your help and with God’s grace, I pray that I am able to approach this ministry with calm, consistency and compassion — as we seek to be what the Church has for so long been: a stable presence in an unstable world. . .

At my Confirmation of Election, I was deeply moved to be asked, during the Charge, to “help the Church love itself more . . . believing that its best days are still to come”. And I do believe that this is true. Through every challenge, our hope in Christ remains — and our confidence in the Gospel, as good news for our nation and for God’s world, is not shaken.

R.S. Thomas, in his poem “The Bright Field”, says:
 

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.
 

I see God’s Kingdom, the pearl of great price, revealed in countless places across the Church of England and the Anglican Communion. I rejoice in every example I see of this . . . glimpsed in faithful, local, sensitive, intelligent ministry which embodies and speaks of the Kingdom. . .

I was also told during that Charge that I am expected to be an evangelist, a pastor, a prayerful, penitent, and resilient disciple, and a teacher. I am also to be faithful, prophetic, a sign of unity, trust, and accountability, and provide Christ-centred moral leadership, loving the Church in all its breadth and diversity, and encouraging others to love her. I was told to work collegially and enabling the gifts of others to flourish.

Well, I will try. But what encourages me most in the trying is that I am in the company of all those who are represented by that diverse and wonderful group of people who took part in the Confirmation of Election. . .

So, what sort of Archbishop do I feel called to be? . . . I remain rooted in my first calling: to follow Christ, to know him — and to make him known in the world. . .

And so, I believe that I have been called to love and serve the diocese of Canterbury, the Church of England, and the Anglican Communion, not through developing new programmes and initiatives, but by being a shepherd, who works collaboratively and in partnership, enabling others to flourish.

And I will work with you, Synod, with my fellow bishops, and with our national church bodies, striving to ensure that the Kingdom is being nurtured everywhere — in parishes, chaplaincies, cathedrals, and schools, in the smallest and most fragile communities, as well as the larger and more confident expressions of Church, wherever disciples seek to be salt and light.

I have always, in any leadership role, been committed to accountability and transparency. . . And nowhere is accountability more imperative than in relation to safeguarding, where in the past we have fallen tragically short. Safeguarding is a fundamental, non-negotiable responsibility, sharpened by our past failings and shaped by the work we still have to do. I am committed to bringing an approach of seriousness and focused direction to all matters relating to safeguarding in all contexts in the Church. This approach must be trauma-informed, put victims and survivors at the heart of all we do, and be committed to proper independence. . .

We must be wholly committed to listening to victims and survivors, to independent scrutiny of our safeguarding practices, and to delivering timely and robust trauma-informed processes. We must be willing, always, for light to be shone on our actions and our decisions. We can only begin to rebuild trust and confidence through openness and integrity.

The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury is a complex and challenging one. But at its heart is something profound and simple. Along with my fellow bishops, I am called to share the hope that we have found in Jesus Christ — and what that means for us all as individuals, and as a society. I pray that the thread running through my time as Archbishop will be that of nurturing confidence and hope, rooted not in institutions, but in God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With our confidence in God, we can believe that indeed, the best is yet to come for the church that we love and nurture, and therefore for the world that the Church is called to serve.

It is sometimes said that hope is a muscle that we must build and develop. In the seemingly impossible situations we see around the world, we must flex the muscle of hope, strengthening our sense of God’s work and presence in the world. This does not mean that we deny the challenges that are in front of us — the challenges of inequality and injustice, the volatility of global politics, the climate crisis and more — but it means we can say with confidence that God is in the midst of us.

As a Church we have many reasons to be hopeful. There is a visible sign of hope in the anecdotal and statistical evidence that, over the last four years, people have been returning to church. There are early indications of that rise in attendance and participation having continued last year. Of course we must be cautious — these are early figures — but the trend is clear. People are returning to church. They are finding welcome, friendship, community, meaning, and purpose, and we rejoice with God in these green shoots of hope. . .

One of the glories of both the Anglican Communion and the Church of England is that we are, and always have been, an intentional Church which embraces the breadth of traditions. Just as we should never underplay our unity in Christ, it would be naïve of any of us to underplay the challenge our differences bring. Reflecting on the parable of the pearl of great price, we might recall that pearls do not come out of nowhere. Pearls are formed over a long period of time because of grit in the oyster. There is no pearl without grit.

For us, the grit often comes in the shape of the challenges of difference, conflicts, and misunderstanding among ourselves. This grit is real — it is not just uncomfortable — at times it can be deeply painful. At times, it is easy to be tempted to withdraw from one another or throw stones from a distance. But we are limited in our understanding, fragile in our humanity, and in need of one another. Only by finding the humanity and the courage to remain in one another’s presence do we truly, as individuals and communities, become places where the pearl can be formed.

This does not mean that we should not challenge one another, as iron sharpens iron. But we do this always with kindness and always in order to encourage one another. We do this in order to build one another up, never to tear one another down. We do this because we are called to break bread together as the apostles did, around God’s table.

And so I pray that my ministry, shared with you, will be of hospitality and of breaking bread, that together we learn to be good guests and good hosts, that we might create places where people can grow towards one another in trust, where difference is held with grace, where we offer deeply of ourselves and value the gift of one another, where we are accountable for one another’s flourishing and where healing is possible.

And I pray that our practice of hospitality may be offered as a model to a polarised world, speaking into the deepening divides in our society with the possibility of hope and of healing. Our calling is to live out that hope in a fractured and anxious world. And so, we must bridge the gap, for those who have no experience of church, to encounter Christ, by offering spaces of belonging, dignity, and conversation, where the love of God is encountered and the world is changed.

As a shepherd, I will strive to be calm, consistent, and compassionate to all in this role. I commit myself to enabling the Church to be the Church. May we continue to offer ourselves in God’s service for God’s world: our hope rooted in the Gospel, and our confidence rooted in God, who holds the Church and its future in love.

Please pray for me as I pray for you. Amen.

The full speech can be read at: archbishopofcanterbury.org

Read more reports from the General Synod Digest here