Having been with you in here in Derry and Raphoe for more than a full year now, I feel I am gradually getting to know the people, the parishes, the issues and the challenges that make up this fine diocese.

I continue to thank God for all that is going on in the diocese, for the large number of committed people who genuinely long to see God’s Kingdom come and his will be done. I am also aware of the need for fresh initiatives and creative approaches to the challenges we face together. Let me mention briefly eight issues which are occupying my mind of late.

1. WORSHIP AND THE BCP 2004.

I am sure that, by now, everyone in this hall is well aware that a new Church of Ireland Prayer Book will make its appearance within the next six months. This prospect is one that I warmly welcome, in the belief that it may well help us develop worship in our parishes so that it has greater freshness, impact and relevance to people of all ages. I am glad to hear that Select Vestries are discussing the practicalities of how the prayer books can be purchased and made readily available, while the clergy and the lay- and parish- readers are applying their minds to fresh ways in which worship may be planned and led most effectively.

2. ORDINANDS.

Are you aware that six members of our diocese were selected this year for training for the ordained ministry – three for stipendiary ministry and three for auxiliary? This is very good news and something that I sincerely hope will not be an isolated blip but a general trend. I have been very heartened by this development, and thank Canon Sam McVeigh for his good work as Director of Ordinands, and the Diocesan Panel who initially assisted me in making my decision to allow them to go forward to the Bishops’ Selection Conference. Fostering God’s call to ordination is a concern that is very close to my heart.

3. GENERAL MINISTRY PROVISION.

While bishops have particular responsibility for the selection, training and ordaining of men and women for ministry, we also have a wider duty to foster and encourage greater participation in ministry among the whole church. I am very keen to see an increase in the number of parish readers and diocesan readers as well as auxiliary clergy, as well as increased involvement in lay ministry generally.

My goal is to see the number of full-time stipendiary clergy maintained at as high a level as possible in the diocese, and I see no reason to assume that their numbers will inevitably decline. With a heart for mission, a heart for growth, a heart for generosity in our giving, and a heart for serving the wider community and not just our own flock, I can see the capacity for increase rather than decrease in the number of those called, trained, equipped and mobilised for all spheres of ministry.

4. PARISH DEVELOPMENT.

Every now and then I drop into a speech or a conversation a desire that is close to my heart, namely to see the diocese appoint a Parish Development Officer, whose role would be to act as a consultant with Rectors and their Select Vestries, helping them to plan strategically their parishes’ future, and then help with any training that would be necessary to see that vision implemented. I plant this seed of an idea among you today, as the influential people in the diocese, trusting that the Holy Spirit may move us in this direction, if the concept is one that meets with the Lord’s approval.

5. DIOCESAN CENTRE.

It is important that any diocese should have at its centre an effective heart where administration, meeting-space, staffing, specialist training, resources and fresh ideas are all to be found in a well-equipped, attractive and accessible venue. This is an issue that is occupying my mind, and on which I believe the Diocesan Council will have some creative suggestions to make before too long.

In the meantime, I pay tribute to our Diocesan Secretary, Mr Geoffrey Kelly, for the excellent service he gives to the diocese, aided by his Administrative Assistant, Miss Sandra Wallace. Our gratitude to them both.

6. CHILDREN.

Where children are taken seriously as part of church life there is usually vitality, energy and growth. It pleases me greatly when I visit parishes to see children involved in worship, made to feel fully welcome and catered for as important church members. This is as it should be.

I know that many of you have acquired your ticket for the large-scale event in the Millennium Forum on Saturday 8 November, Derry and Raphoe; Let’s Go! With about 250 people on the stage, and many others helping behind the scenes, this is a production that I am confident will make an impact on Sunday Schools, on children’s participation in worship and on the development of musical and singing gifts in the diocese. My hope is that it will be a catalyst to help raise the profile of children in the diocese and to help provide parishes with music that children identify with and enjoy.

7. YOUTH AND EMERGING LEADERS.

With a quiet and steady urgency, Captain Neville Barnes and a small team have been developing and refining a fresh strategy for youth work in the diocese. This is one of the most challenging and important spheres of church life, and Neville and his team have my full support as they draw the many strands together. Again, the vitality of this diocese, like any other, can be judged by the degree of involvement of its youth and the extent to which they feel they can participate meaningfully in what happens week by week. You do not need me to tell you that there is much to be done on this front, but I am determined to see things happen, and to make progress in some imaginative ways.

I am convinced that leadership is crucial in this regard, and am keen to develop leadership skills in our young people. New and creative things usually only happen when there is effective and visionary leadership because leaders are the influencers of change.

In recognition of this, I have invited to an Emerging Leaders’ Weekend, a group of young people in whom there is leadership potential, so that we can share together about how leadership works, the character of a leader, the ups and downs of leadership, and how God calls and equips people for leadership. This event is a Pilot Project, and if it proves helpful, will be run again as many times as we can find more and more potential leaders. In the meantime I would ask you to pray for this initiative this weekend.

8. MISSION AND SERVICE.

Another theme that is occupying my mind these days is the need for our churches to be more and more outwardly focussed and to seek to be of service to the wider community.

Throughout the country, there is an increasing number of parish churches, the viable future of which can no longer be assumed if its members merely look no further than themselves and cater only for their own needs. It has always been the case that the Church of Jesus Christ was meant to be a servant church, an outward-looking church, a church which crosses boundaries and which cares for and makes connections with people beyond itself.

In the era of Christendom when it was pretty well assumed that the next generation would follow their parents into faith and full church membership, the church could quite comfortably minimize its efforts in mission, in outreach and in social care.

But now that the patterns of Christendom are virtually a thing of the past, the need (which has, in fact, always been there) for the church to be an agency of mission and of service has come into clearer focus again.

I will be arguing the case for these churches to change the question they might previously have asked, namely, ’How can we keep these churches open?’ to a different question, such as, ‘What do we as the Church of Ireland to offer to the community in these neighbourhoods, and how might these church buildings be used to provide that service?’

One of the ways in which I am prepared to be a mixture of an encouragement and an irritant is in prompting parishes to be increasingly outwardly-focussed, community-minded and mission-oriented.

There is much work to be done as a diocese in looking at issues like reconciliation and bridge-building, youth work, caring for social need, training in all manner of skills, provision of resources for ministry and outreach, and many others too, and examining how our existing churches, as well as being places of worship, can imaginatively specialise as centres of excellence in the meeting of these needs.

These eight issues which I have briefly highlighted are all demanding yet positive and hopeful aspects of diocesan life that I am relishing the challenge of facing - with you – as part of a team, in these exciting times.

But there are two other tough themes to which I want to refer before I finish this address, both quite urgent and topical, namely homosexuality and sectarianism.

GRACE AND TRUTH

Words from our reading this morning have been on my mind for some time, and have shaped some of what I want to share with you as an introduction to these subjects.

In the marvellous prologue to John’s Gospel, where the wonder and glory of what it was like to see Jesus, the Word of God, made flesh, the two attributes above all others that are singled out are that he was ‘full of grace and truth.’ Full of grace and truth. One of the obvious implications of such a description is that wherever Jesus is to be incarnated or made known in today’s world by those who are his followers, is that the twin qualities of grace and truth are to be clearly evident in the way we live and speak and interact. There is to be a gracefulness and a truthfulness in our dealings with one another and in the way we come across to those outside the church.

HOMOSEXUALITY

On the question of sexuality, you are probably aware that the bishops of the Church of Ireland recently issued a Pastoral Letter encouraging honest reflection within the church on the subject of homosexuality. In following the debate within the worldwide Anglican Communion of late, I sense that many of us have all been saddened and perplexed in one way or another, with the way the situation has developed. Strong opinions have been expressed on each side of the argument, hurt has been felt by many, disappointment and disillusionment has been the experience of a large number, and frustration has been expressed by some about the kind of leadership offered by bishops and others.

The Anglican Communion is a demanding and testing place in which to be a leader at any time, but this particular period must be as challenging as any there has been for some time.

As bishop of this diocese of Derry and Raphoe, I wish to exercise leadership in this issue in two particular ways at this time.

The first is to make clear that, as requested by the Bishops’ Pastoral Letter, I want to encourage and participate in open discussion, debate and prayerful consideration of this issue in this diocese. My longing and expectation is that whatever debate we have should take place in a spirit of grace and truth. Some contributions I have heard in media coverage and in person, have come across to me as being overly strong on one of these aspects at the expense of the other. Making every effort to speak the truth in a spirit of grace, and to offer grace on a foundation of truth can significantly shape how we deal with our differing viewpoints.

Secondly, I think it only fair that the diocese should be aware of my own views on such a hotly debated issue, and therefore I want to share with you now, even briefly, where I stand on the subject.

I was not a bishop at the time of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, but had I been there, I would have agreed with and voted for the Resolution on sexuality that was passed by a very substantial majority of the bishops of the Anglican Communion. It was a lengthy resolution, but in it the bishops made clear their concern:

• To urge faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman in life time union.
• To call for abstinence for those not called to marriage.
• To make a clear distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual practice, rejecting the latter as incompatible with scripture.
• To decline to support the blessing of same sex unions or the ordination of those in same gender unions.
• To commit themselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and to assure them that they are loved by God and that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation are full members of the body of Christ.

These views, expressed by the bishops, concur with my own. I believe them to be a fair distillation of a scriptural perspective.

I am well aware, in endeavouring to listen attentively to Christians who hold to a different viewpoint, that they draw from the same scriptures a very different truth. I am determined to grapple with and try to understand why and how this is. I want to listen with grace as well as truth, and hope that they in turn will listen to me with grace as well as truth.

I am aware that this view which the bishops outlined at Lambeth goes against the tide of much secular opinion where every self-expression is equally acceptable and valid, and even goes against the sincerely held views of some within the church. But I also believe that there are times when God calls his people to be courageously counter-culture, and we may need to be prepared to endure being misunderstood and even dismissed for our stance. If there is such a thing as the hard gospel, there is also such a thing as tough love.

Two of the responsibilities of a bishop are to uphold the teaching of the church (holding to the truth) and to be a focus of unity (doing so with grace). It is my intention to provide leadership in overseeing the listening process that the bishops have called for in that spirit of grace and truth. I will make known and express what I believe to be a correct interpretation of truth, endeavouring to do so grace-fully, and I will listen attentively to others whose experience and whose understanding may be different from mine.

In just a few days, it is anticipated that Canon Gene Robinson will be consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church of the United States. I am one of the many who are perplexed and concerned not just about this development itself but about its timing.

In the Service of Ordination of Bishops at which I was consecrated, the Archbishop made clear the primary responsibilities of a bishop in the church of God. These include, ‘As chief pastors they share with their fellow bishops a special responsibility to maintain and further the unity of the Church, to uphold its discipline, to guard its faith and to promote its mission throughout the world.’

I have to say that I find it very difficult to see how the consecration of Canon Robinson at this time will maintain or further unity in the church, how it will uphold the church’s discipline, how it will guard its faith and how it will promote mission. In fact, the warnings of the Archbishop of Canterbury, many Primates, bishops and members of the Anglican Communion that it will achieve the very opposite must be taken seriously. Quite why the Diocese of New Hampshire and parts of ECUSA seem so determined to push ahead with this decision at this particular time is very hard to understand, to explain or to justify.

SECTARIANISM

The second issue I have been considering under this theme of grace and truth is that of sectarianism.

In 1997 The General Synod of the Church of Ireland took the courageous decision to embark on an examination of our church’s life at all levels ‘to identify ways in which the church may be deemed to be accommodating to Sectarianism’ and ‘to promote at all levels of church life tolerance, dialogue, co-operation and mutual respect between the churches and in society.’ It was a brave decision because you can never be sure what uncomfortable realities may in time be revealed by such a process of self-examination.

What is significant in this process is that instead of the familiar pattern of pointing to the errors, weaknesses, mistakes and flaws in the thinking and actions of others, the Church of Ireland is choosing that we examine ourselves and acknowledge that we may have to modify our ways of doing things which could be perceived by others to be sectarian, offensive or destructive .

The first stage in this journey of self-discovery is before us today in the form of The Hard Gospel, a 179 page scoping study of what the Church of Ireland is really like when you scratch the surface! I am grateful that Dr Gareth Higgins is with us this morning and will shortly introduce a debate on the report.

At his point, however, I would wish to make a brief comment about the issue of Sectarianism, particularly as it relates to the theme of grace and truth.

We must be clear that what is at issue in this process of self-examination is not whether it is acceptable to have a strong faith or deep belief. Convictions about truth are at the heart of the Christian faith, and are healthy and good. What we are seeking to discern is whether we may unwittingly or otherwise display a manifestation of these which becomes destructive, belittling or demonising of others, displayed with an absence of grace.

We stand in a good heritage of holding to the riches of a biblical faith in Christ as handed down in the Anglican tradition. But we must admit that in our dealings with others we have not always been full of grace or gracefulness when expressing or living out that truth in the community. Again, the tone of our debate today, I have every confidence, will be one that is full of grace as well as truth.

CONCLUSION

As I conclude this address, I do not wish to do so with any sense of gloom or despondency. There may be complex and potentially divisive issues with which we have to deal. But our gaze must not be fixed on them alone; they must not become our preoccupation. Our focus, much more importantly, is on Christ himself. Let us fix our eyes on him, ‘the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.’ We will not grow fearful, or weary or lose heart. I for one am more excited and expectant about what God is doing in these days that gives grounds for hope and for kingdom growth, and I want to devote my energies, my time and whatever gifts he has graciously given me to work wholeheartedly with him in these things. I invite you to join me in the most wonderful and satisfying challenge of all, serving him in the extension of his kingdom.