The Synod Experience
It's Synod time again. You may remember my baptism-by-fire first experience of Synod last year, which I helpful dealth with by blogging all the insignificant things here: Fashions of Synod and Synod: ONTD!. If you missed it you can catch the first in the series here.
I was really hoping to relay more synod triviality this year but sadly I haven't really captured anything. Knowing what to expect this year has meant that, even though I am exhausted already after the first three days and there are still two days to go next week, I have been engaging pretty well. For starters I have had realistic expectations of my "work/life balance" this week, fully apprectiating the temporary change to "work/synod balance" and being extremely thankful for Matt who has driven me everywhere, kept the house ordered and been incredibly gracious with my tiredness. Also every time I come home there seems to be Turkish Delight icecream in the fridge. The day can never end badly when it ends like that! On top of this I started this synod already knowing how to interpret all the proposals, business papers, amendment sheets and meeting protocol. Rather than spending most of my time in a constant state of panic, never quite sure what we were talking about, this time I've been able to actually listen and reflect during debate. I wonder if this is why I have nothing trivial to report. I think I am too distracted by the actual business of synod. It only took a year - how quickly things change!
One of the hard things about appreciating and understanding what is going on is that rather than playing it safe and voting with the majority, or relying heavily on prompting from my minister and fellow parish representative, I have used my brain and voted for myself. Unfortunately most of those votes have fallen with the minority. Oh well. I know that regardless of how I vote I am still a pretty straight-down-the-line Evangelical-Anglican-in-the-British-tradition, so I'm not letting it shake me too much. Every time so far I've lost a vote, I've paid attention to the people who have voted like me (so far there has only been one secret ballot so it's been easy). There have always been at least a handful of ministers and lay people I know and respect who are voting the way I do. Phew.
My minister argues for an ammendment to redirect
a small proportion of the money we raise to purchase land for churches
towards co-ordinating the church planters for those sites.
A brilliant idea, but sadly one of the things I voted for that didn't get up.
It hasn't all been too serious, I have one little triviality to offer. Before synod started I created a synod meme - my first meme ever!
And of course there are still two days to go. I'm hoping I can collect material in the vein of last year's livejournal synod reports. See you soon, hopefully with something slightly more ridiculous.
I was really hoping to relay more synod triviality this year but sadly I haven't really captured anything. Knowing what to expect this year has meant that, even though I am exhausted already after the first three days and there are still two days to go next week, I have been engaging pretty well. For starters I have had realistic expectations of my "work/life balance" this week, fully apprectiating the temporary change to "work/synod balance" and being extremely thankful for Matt who has driven me everywhere, kept the house ordered and been incredibly gracious with my tiredness. Also every time I come home there seems to be Turkish Delight icecream in the fridge. The day can never end badly when it ends like that! On top of this I started this synod already knowing how to interpret all the proposals, business papers, amendment sheets and meeting protocol. Rather than spending most of my time in a constant state of panic, never quite sure what we were talking about, this time I've been able to actually listen and reflect during debate. I wonder if this is why I have nothing trivial to report. I think I am too distracted by the actual business of synod. It only took a year - how quickly things change!
One of the hard things about appreciating and understanding what is going on is that rather than playing it safe and voting with the majority, or relying heavily on prompting from my minister and fellow parish representative, I have used my brain and voted for myself. Unfortunately most of those votes have fallen with the minority. Oh well. I know that regardless of how I vote I am still a pretty straight-down-the-line Evangelical-Anglican-in-the-British-tradition, so I'm not letting it shake me too much. Every time so far I've lost a vote, I've paid attention to the people who have voted like me (so far there has only been one secret ballot so it's been easy). There have always been at least a handful of ministers and lay people I know and respect who are voting the way I do. Phew.
My minister argues for an ammendment to redirect
a small proportion of the money we raise to purchase land for churches
towards co-ordinating the church planters for those sites.
A brilliant idea, but sadly one of the things I voted for that didn't get up.
It hasn't all been too serious, I have one little triviality to offer. Before synod started I created a synod meme - my first meme ever!
And of course there are still two days to go. I'm hoping I can collect material in the vein of last year's livejournal synod reports. See you soon, hopefully with something slightly more ridiculous.