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This is All Saints Cathedral in Hong Kong. As we have connected with the local church here – and had lunch today with Archbishop Paul – I remain amazed at how similar Anglican churches are everywhere in the world. It’s there in the worship, in the culture and – this is one that isn’t so obvious – in the governance.

Which brings me to the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC15) which is only another five hours of jet lag away in Auckland. And that in turn raises the question of what holds the Anglican Communion together – given that we delight in not having any tooth-endowed centralised authority nor any single teaching magisterium. Indeed, if we attempted to do either, I can be sure that Scotland would be there to vote it down.

But we do have what are called the Instruments of Communion. You can read about them here
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/resources/acis/docs/unity.cfm

They are:

The Archbishop of Canterbury – with whom we are all in communion
The Lambeth Conference – the ten-yearly gathering of bishops
The Primates’s Meeting
The Anglican Consultative Council ACC

The Anglican Consultative Council is particularly important because it isn’t just bishops and it has some democratic credentials. Indeed I am not even a member since I attend as a representative of the Primates – as does Archbishop Paul Kwong of Hong Kong

Welcome to Hong Kong. This is the night time view from the Peak after the journey up in the Peak Tram. The gradient is so steep that the buildings all appear to be leaning backward. I expect that all visitors to Hong Kong make this journey. But we had some other experiences as well

The church worldwide is a remarkable organisation. In part of the whirlwind of hospitality which descended on us, we found ourselves caught up in a ‘blessing of pets’ service with Very Revd Samson Fan of All Saints Cathedral. Alison obviously thought that the idea of blessing a snake – or in any way encouraging one – was not at all the thing. So she sought the reassuring presence of this cat.

The subtext of all this is the Anglican Communion Continuing Indaba initiative. The church in Hong Kong took part with Jamaica and Toronto and Samson was part of that. I serve as the Chair of the Reference Group at the Anglican Communion Office in London. Indaba is an African word – it’s about handling conflict across difference – talking about mission in the context of difference.

Tomorrow we’ll be meeting Archbishop Paul Kwong – we are both members of the Anglican Communion Standing Committee and he too will be in Auckland next week.

As you can imagine, I spend quite a bit of time away from home. But it’s a couple of days here and there even when it’s a long distance.

So preparing to head off to New Zealand and be away for a month has a rather different feeling – a slight need to tidy up just in case .. Alison has just retired so we’re both going. Two days in Hong Kong – during which we are looking forward to meeting Archbishop Paul Kwong – and then two weeks of the Anglican Consultative Council in Auckland. I’m going off to preach in Rotorua in the middle of that and afterwards we are going to have ten days in the North Island.

But just as part of that tidying up … we went to Donegal briefly after preaching in Belfast last week and then visited the next generation. This is our grand-daughter Eve getting her teeth into the doctrine of the Atonement.

This is St Thomas’ Church in the university area of Belfast. The picture comes from the Belfast Telegraph taken at the time of the £1m restoration – and very fine it is.

I was there on Wednesday evening to preach at the Institution of Paul – seventh and last of the curates with whom I worked. I hope that Paul’s ministry will be as remarkable and courageous as this renovation and reordering – I was glad to be there to support him as he takes on this significant new ministry. And this is what I said

All clergy are used to people saying, ‘Of course Sunday is your busy day’. It’s kindly meant, I think what it means is that they can see what you do on Sunday. And the paradox is that, for exactly the same reason, Sunday doesn’t feel all that busy. Expectations are clear – you do what is expected of you.

For us today was something of a classic of the Scottish Episcopal Church – a visit to Killin – 53 miles each way. North from Blogstead to Dunkeld. Cross the Tay and over the hills on a perfect morning to Aberfeldy. On to Kenmore and along the north side of Loch Tay noting the first signs of snow on the top of Ben Lawers.

Killin has featured here before. It’s a ‘tin tab’ in the village. A huge convention of hairy bikers was in action just across the road. My visit was partly to mark the retirement of Revd Ladd Faggerson after 12 years looking after the congregation in his retirement, as it were. And after the Eucharist, Angus and Jill sat the whole congregation down for lunch around their hospitable table at Boreland

And then we returned – this time through Strathtay and Ballinluig

I’ve been pretty comprehensively gathered this weekend.

First with Mothers’ Union from across the Province at Tullyallan Police College – a place where I can find neither the way in nor the way out. They are thinking about the Road Ahead. So – never backward in coming forward – I offered a few directions Actually, so far as our diocese is concerned, I think the answer lies partly with me. I need to do more to enmesh them in our Casting the Net initiative for mission and growth.

Today we had the second of our two Casting the Net Gatherings – Stirling this time. I thought it was a fairly remarkable event. Some very impressive workshops … some really interesting people with potential for future leadership …. a lot of inter-congregational contact. In case you missed it the last time, this is what I said in the worship

Just to complete the day, I then had a meeting with the leader of the team from the Church of England’s Ministry Division which is at present carrying out an inspection of TISEC, the Theological Institute of the Scottish Episcopal Church. This is part of our commitment to ensuring the quality of our training. They are talking to staff, students and others. It took me back to my days as Chair of Governors in various schools when there was a School Inspection. It’s challenging stuff. It’s relatively easy to say what an academic course in theology for somebody in training for priesthood might look like. It’s quite a bit harder to say what is needed to provide adequate priestly formation. All I can say is that being a priest is harder than it used to be – but no less rewarding for that.

I visited Christian Aid’s Tax Justice Tour bus in Bristo Square, Edinburgh, yesterday with a group of Scottish Church Leaders. This bus has been trundling around Britain drawing attention to the amounts of tax which companies and corporations don’t pay through schemes of legitimate – if not altogether moral – tax management and avoidance.

I arrived on the Brompton – which caused a bit of a flurry among Christian Aid’s photographers. We then went upstairs and did a Bible Study on Naboth’s Vineyard. An interesting morning!

Ah …. ministry in Scotland. This is the Falls of Bruar today on a beautiful autumn afternoon.

And yesterday as a group of clergy we spent the day considering vocation – revisiting the fires of vocation which brought to to where we are – considering the ways in which ministry has changed for us. We discussed with our Provincial Director of Ordinands the way in which our church is attempting to bring a new focus to full time training for a younger group of ‘whole of life’ clergy – the kind of people who will do the thinking about where our church is going – the kind of group from whom future leadership may come.

I find it hard to work out how I have – if I have – negotiated the changes myself. My reflection is that I was ordained to be a visiting machine in a community not yet secular. Indeed the sectarianism both latent and overt of Northern Ireland in the ’70’s ensured that secularisation was kept at bay. In that sense, apart from the pain of the violence and the challenge of reconciliation, ministry did not have to be thought out as it does today.

My other reflection has been shaped by the difficult times through which we have been passing recently, it seems to me that there are three strands to ‘what makes a priest’. One is vocational – that means spiritual connectedness and spiritual formation. Another is the need to be bright – today’s priests need to be able to reflect and think creatively. The third is temperament and character. That third element seems to me to be the one about which we know least. But it is to do with having a vessel or holding structure which can carry vocation. Without it there is a risk that ministry will crash and burn,

We decided to do our Casting the Net Gathering rather differently this year. Instead of clearing the Cathedral and bringing everybody to Perth, we decided to hold two smaller events. The first was today at All Saints, St Andrews, and the second will be in two weeks at Holy Trinity, Stirling.

It’s workshops and music and ‘let’s try some new things’. But it’s really about getting people from our diverse and scattered congregations into one place and giving them the chance to encourage each other. I was running a workshop which I called – for want of anything better – ‘Netcasting for Beginners’. By the time I was doing it for the third time, we had achieved what I hoped for – which was people talking with depth and passion about how faith can be shared and congregations grow. One doesn’t ask for much more than that.

We had some good ‘bang, rattle and shake – with reverence’ worship at the end and I offered this homily

For reasons too complicated to explain …. I found myself last Friday on the hour-long train journey from Edinburgh to Dundee. It must surely be one of the great railway journeys of the world. It threads its way among the approach lights at the end of the main runway at Edinburgh Airport so that you can reach up and touch an approaching Easyjet flight. It crosses the Forth Bridge and as a finale picks its way rather gingerly across the immensity of the Tay Bridge

Which led me to reflect on how relatively isolated the end of Fife must have been before the building of the Forth and Tay road bridges. Part of the charm of Tayport is that it has never quite lost that charm. It is quite a substantial community – obviously a warm and friendly place where people are very happy to live. And if they feel they need to, the shops and Ninewells Hospital and all the other facilities are just minutes away in Dundee..

This is St. Margaret of Scotland, our little church in Tayport. It’s beautifully kept and they build a little meeting room round the back which is widely used by the community. When I was there on Sunday, there were 18 adult communicants and four children. It’s interregnum time again for them and they carry on – using their own resources and ministry and the support of local clergy.

If you want to know about the SEC, this is typical. Alison and I went away cheered.