I'm sitting in my hotel room " General Synod begins in less than an hour. Early this morning, I was puffing to keep up with one of our Bishops on a 30 minute run around the foreshore of Lake Burley Griffin. (You guess which bishop!)

Canberra's a beautiful city. Black swan and her cygnets on the lake. The last of the flowers from Floriade. Early morning hot air balloonists on the horizon. Canberra's landmark buildings all around.

So what's ahead at General Synod? For me a good introduction to the challenges and tensions was the article in The Australian concerning Bishop Tom Frame's new book Anglicans in Australia on the future of the church, launched to coincide with General Synod.

I've not read the book, only the report by Jill Rowbotham, who is the Oz's religious affairs writer, and is pretty reliable. Still I realise the article may not fully reflect everything Tom Frame says.

According to the article, Tom Frame is not satisfied with the notable decline in Anglican Church attendances. He kindly notes that Sydney is the exception. He criticises church in-fighting between evangelical, Anglo-catholic and liberal. He says we must focus on the world and its redemption rather than on church structures. OK.

Despite what he has just said, he then proceeds to criticise Sydney for "the abandonment of Anglican structures". Two things to note here. Firstly, there is apparently no reference to Anglican theology. Sydney centres on historic and orthodox Anglican theology " on the gospel of Jesus Christ and his atoning death and his bodily resurrection, on justification by faith without works, on the central importance and authority of the Bible, and so forth.

Secondly, why criticise our flexibility about structures when later he says the Anglican Church must deal with the public perception of institutional rigidity “based on traditions which lack appeal to all except those who experienced them in their youth and now feel obliged to protect them”?
According to the article, it seems his answer includes better market research, a full time Primate centralised in Canberra with a bigger bureaucracy, more trust in bishops who need to be more visionary, and better exploitation of media opportunities!

I pray we could instead spend some time agreeing on the gospel of Jesus Christ, living that gospel and preaching it!

Link to Jill Rowbotham's report in The Australian (17/10)"

Link to my letter to the editor of The Australian (18/10)