Extraordinary General Meeting Announcement
A special announcement this week that we are holding an Extraordinary General Meeting for our church at 7.30pm on Monday 26 May for the purpose of electing a new synod representative. As I mentioned at the Annual General Meeting in March, Mark Streeter has resigned and we need to elect a new person to represent our church at the Synod later in the year.
That’s the headline, Now let me explain what a synod is and why this election matters.
As I am sure you know, we are an Anglican Church and one of the key principles of Anglicanism is the priesthood of all believers - that is, while some people are set aside to lead the church (like me), we are all equal in the sight of God. No one is more special than anyone else and we must all minister to one another. We don’t rely on the “staff” to do ministry, we all serve as one body seeking to build each other up in love so we can all become fully mature (1 Peter 2:4-10, Ephesians 4:1-16).
This is one of the key reasons why, as we pray to be a church of 3000 wholehearted disciples of Jesus, we encourage everyone to be in a growth group and in a serving team so we can be ministering to each other and with each other for God’s glory.
So what has all this got to do with synod? Well, in the Anglican Church, when decisions need to be made about our shared life together, they’re not made by one person or a small collection of ministers, decisions are made by the synod. And the synod is made up of 800 men and women, representing every church, including both ministers and church members. Infact, there are twice as many church members as ministers because we believe in the priesthood of all believers.
The synod meets every year for 5 afternoons and evenings in September and we discuss, debate and vote on issues that affect the life and mission of our church. In recent years this has included our theological understanding of church & state, how money is spent, our diocesan mission goals, what the strategy with Christian schools is, and so much more. Also, when we need to decide who our next Archbishop will be, the synod meets and decides. If you are after a simple picture of all this, synod is like a parliament for the Anglican Church.
Every Anglican Church gets to send two elected church members and their senior minister to the synod and at the moment we only have one elected church member so we are holding the Extraordinary General Meeting at 7.30pm on 26 May in Lower Hall 1 to elect a second.
If you would like to be nominated for this position, please email me (nigel@christchurch.com.au) or Anna Richardson (anna@christchurch.com.au).
A few technical details:
You must be over 18
You must be a baptised member of our church and not a member of another church
More information can be found in the Synod Membership Ordinance 1995 (you can google it)
You must not have been convicted of a disqualifying offence listed in Schedule 2 of the Child Protection (Working with Children) Act 2012.
You must be available on September 15, 16, 17, 22 and 23 from 3pm-10pm.
If you have any questions, please let me know and I look forward to seeing many of you on 26 May at 7.30pm in Lower Hall 1.
