Welby: Lambeth 2020 should ‘look outwards’
by Madeleine Davies, Church Times:
THE 2020 Lambeth Conference will be held in Canterbury from 23 July to 2 August, it was confirmed this week.
Every “active bishop” within the Anglican Communion’s 40 provinces — Chile became the 40th this month — will be invited, with spouses bringing the total to more than 800.
The theme — “God’s Church for God’s world” — was announced last year by the Design Group, chaired by the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba, who said that it would help the Communion to “look at something greater and bigger than ourselves, and not to quibble around the little things within the family” (News, 20 October 2017).
Items for discussion are also being suggested by the Anglican Communion Primates in a series of regional meetings.
A former Bishop at Lambeth, the Rt Revd Nigel Stock, has been appointed Chaplain to the Conference. Most events will take place at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It will be the Archbishop of Canterbury’s first Lambeth Conference: when the 2008 Conference took place, he was not yet a bishop.
In a video message, Archbishop Welby said: “We do have very important differences, but we must show that we respect each other as sisters and brothers in Christ, and that we learn to disagree in a way that demonstrates that we love and value each other. . . But, whatever views we come with, we come to be under the authority of scripture, and inspired by the Spirit. Quite rightly, and very importantly, the programme centres around studying the Bible together, reading the Bible together, listening to God and praying together.”
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