Monday, July 14, 2008

Lambeth virgins

My current favorite bishop blog (see the list here) is Bishop Alan's Blog. Today he talks about the risky business of living by faith:
The whole Lambeth Conference process is about faith, and living by faith is a risky business. Meeting 15 bishops in Saturday, only one had actually been to one before so we're pretty much all Lambeth virgins. That may help us think different; what some would see as the greatest weakness of the process may actually save the day.


His nightmare is that the conference will be like this.

But his hope is:
"And just to say what could go right, given the anger and frustration of some commentators that we can’t pass imposing resolutions and play power games down at the cashpoint like last time, here are some pointers to the real power and possiblity of an indaba process from E. B. Brooks:"
What kind of entity (notice that I am not calling it a structure, yet) would be about setting free, instead of creating boundaries? What kind of entity would be about improvisation rather than writing a script? What kind of entity would be about leading to the next level rather than justifying the current level? What kind of entity would be about the actors, rather than the stage, the set, or the director?