Have you noticed that ‘the Diocese’ is always somebody else? It is ‘them’. I have never found anybody who will admit they are ‘the Diocese’.

Before I became a bishop, I would use the word ‘Diocese’ to mean ‘them’ in St Andrew’s House. And the two things that ‘them’ have are the money and the rules. They have the money so that we can ask, ‘Can’t the Diocese fund this, or that?’ And they have the rules so ‘the Diocese’ will or will not let things happen. I think this perception is fairly widespread.

Recently, however, I have realised two truths.

1. When I finally got to work in St Andrew’s House, I began to look around for ‘the Diocese’ but couldn’t find it. There were the Archbishop, and the bishops, and there was the Synod, the Secretariat, the Property Trust and all the other people.  But no one who could identify themselves as ‘Ah, we are the Diocese’.  So what is the ‘Diocese’?

2.  More importantly, I came to realise that the phrase ‘the Diocese of Sydney’ is not a reference to institutions so much as to people, to the whole community of Anglicans spread throughout Sydney. Of course the word can mean the area of oversight by the Archbishop of Sydney. But more importantly ‘the diocese’ is the people who regard the Archbishop of Sydney as our senior pastor.

The Diocese should not be defined by institutional or infrastructure terms but rather by community terms. The Diocese is what we have called in the Mission statement ‘the whole Anglican community in Sydney’.

This redefining is very valuable because of three reasons.

1. It puts our institutions in their place. While I believe institutions are very valuable for common enterprise and for our embodying values, we mustn’t simply define ourselves by our legal and institutional structures.

2. When we use the term ‘diocese’ vaguely, we can fall into the trap of not identifying precisely which particular body we mean when referring to ‘those people’ who set the rules or have the money. Is it the Synod? Is it the bishops? Or the Secretariat?

3. By realising we are the Diocese by virtue of being a community, we define our relationships in terms of our common purpose and sense of belonging together. Not by the rules or ordinances which may order some of our life. This means that we look to the virtues of trust, love, openness and faithfulness in building our relationships. So let’s stop looking for the Diocese. We are the Diocese. In fact, these days I find I’ve got to get out of St Andrew’s House, out among the clergy and laity to find out what’s going on in the Diocese.