» Download Synod Report

» Download Statement of Accounts

---

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble Ps. 46:1

The Annual Meeting of the Diocesan Synod of Kilmore, Elphin and Ardagh took place this Saturday 16^th October via Zoom Conference.  It is the second year in a row that we have been able to meet in person.

 

Presidential Address

In his Presidential Speech to the Synod, the Rt Revd Dr Ferran Glenfield noted the manner in which the past year has been dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Church life was disrupted by Covid restrictions – unable to meet in person for the first five months of 2021, Sunday and seasonal worship was conducted online. Bishop Ferran acknowledged the ingenuity of clergy and laity who enabled participation in worship and learning remotely. Likewise, he commended our clergy and lay pastors who conducted their pastoral ministry under very different circumstances and rules. Bishop Ferran said that Covid 19 has taken a heavy toll on people, parishes and the nation. We continue to look to Almighty God, our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.

Bishop Ferran also payed tribute to the teams of people who have made it possible to return to church. He expressed hope that, as Covid restrictions are eased later this month, we would  be able to worship more fully and to use our halls and properties for parish and community activities. However, he noted that vigilance was still necessary to protect on another as winter approaches.

Bishop Ferran went on to highlight a number of items for the Synod’s consideration.

 

Welcoming the Balisodare Group of Parishes

At the beginning of November the Balisodare Group of Parishes will join the Diocese. At the same time the Diocese of Tuam, Killala and Achonry and the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe will amalgamate.  He wished both Bishop Patrick Rook and Bishop Kenneth Kearon a happy retirement and the new Diocese God’s blessings as they come together.

 

Ordained Local Ministry

Bishop Ferran noted that the emergence of Ordained Local Ministry in the diocese is a real dividend for parishes. There are seven OLMs mostly active in Elphin and Ardagh. They are ministers in the fullest sense of the word. It is a ministry, authorised by the Church and for which training has been undertaken. It is a self-supporting ministry, no stipends are paid, although expenses are provided. It is a collaborative ministry. An OLM is part of a team of clergy and lay ministers overseen by a stipendiary minister. The ministry of an OLM is not simply about filling gaps but intended to expand the reach of the local church into the community. Bishop Ferran commended this ministry for support and prayers.

 

Schools

Bishop Ferran remarked that the life of our schools were deeply disturbed by Covid-19. He praised and thanked principals, teachers, support staff, board members and parents in their herculean efforts to deliver education to our children. He noted that our schools are places of learning, belonging and faith formation and are to be valued.

 

ReCentre Community Church

One of the positive outcomes of online church services and studies was that people outside of our parish community were able to join in. Our reach beyond the four walls was considerable. As Covid recedes we need to keep the balance between the inside and the outside. Jesus Christ is for all and he commissioned his church to reach the world beyond itself. One new church to gather online was ReCenter Community Church. ReCentre is now going to gather in person in Sligo under the leadership of Alan Williamson. It is what is known as a Fresh Expression of Church – something new which appeals to people who have no or little contact with the conventional church. This is the Diocese’s first step in this field and Bishop Ferran noted his gratitude for the partnership between Dear Arfon Williams, Rector of the Cathedral Group and Church Army, who sponsor Alan’s ministry.

 

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to 2022, Bishop Ferran noted a number of areas to prioritise:

• The renewal of confidence, faith and hope in local churches.
• The restoration of parish and diocesan finances.
• The confirmation backlog and a review of our work with children and young people
• The training of parish and diocesan readers.
• The implementation of Safeguarding standards for children, young people and vulnerable adults.
• The adoption of practical proposals to make our parishes more environmentally friendly.

In conclusion he noted that, while this past year has been one of frustration, there is much to be thankful for and much to do. God has been our rock and strength and he holds all the resources we require; we need to look to him.

 

Following the Presidential address, the Revd. Dr Andew Ison, Ryector of the Ballisodare Group of Parishes was invited to address the Diocese. Using the power of technology he was able to give the Synod a tour of the three churches that make up this group – Holy Trinity, Ballisodare, St Paul’s Church, Collooney & Emlaghfad Church, Ballymote. In his address to Synod, Revd. Andrew noted the close links of proximity, history and relationships that already exist. He thanked Bishop Patrick Rooke for facilitating the transfer and Bishop Ferran for so graciously welcoming the group of parishes. Bishop Ferran urged the Synod to embrace the Ballisodare Group into our Diocese and noted that he would be visiting the churches on the first Sunday in November.

 

In other Synod business, a motion to recreate the post of Archdeacon of Ardagh was passed.

Call for mental health champions marks World Mental Health Day: Sunday (10th October)

Prayer and faith help to support good mental health but stigma around the issues involved still remains a major challenge, research carried out by the Church of Ireland has revealed. These are some of the key findings that have emerged from research undertaken by the MindMattersCOI project earlier this year, and the Church is now preparing to take practical steps to improve and support mental health literacy.

Over the past 12 months, MindMattersCOI has been listening to both clergy and lay members of the Church of Ireland to understand the Church’s attitudes and awareness towards mental health. Over 1,200 members and more than half of all clergy participated in this research.

On World Mental Health Day (Sunday, 10th October), the Church of Ireland is putting the call out for mental health champions to promote mental health literacy and help break down barriers created by stigma.

The Chairperson of the MindMattersCOI advisory group, Bishop Pat Storey, is urging people with an interest in mental health, whether personal or professional, to become involved in the project. She commented: “Improving mental health literacy is so important for us all. We need to understand how to maintain and support positive mental health amongst our friends, community and, in particular, our younger people. Recognising issues and talking about mental health helps to decrease stigma and remove barriers to seeking help.”

The MindMattersCOI project is supported by Allchurches Trust. Jeremy Noles, Head of Grants and Relationships for Allchurches Trust, said: “As we continue to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s a renewed focus across the UK and Ireland on mental health and well-being, and the increased needs and issues in this area. We’re delighted that our funding can help bring greater awareness and hope, by extending the reach of MindMattersCOI. This will help many more people struggling with mental health issues to access support which could change their lives for the better.”

The research, the results of which will be available on the MindMattersCOI website –

https://mindmatters.ireland.anglican.org – in the coming weeks, also found that:

both members and clergy agreed that the Church of Ireland has a role to play in promoting positive mental health;
bishops note that they can provide the strong leadership required to effect positive and lasting change in relation to mental health attitudes and awareness;
96% of respondents felt that Covid-19 had had a significant impact on people’s mental health;
family, friends and other connections were identified as key contributors to positive mental health;
respondents reported that, although they have positive attitudes towards mental health issues, these still carry a significant level of stigma within the community;
in contrast to other studies among churches and other communities of faith, respondents did not identify clergy as a primary source of help in dealing with mental health issues; and
a significant number of clergy feel that the Church currently does not provide sufficient support for their mental health.

Based on the findings of the research, the next phase of the project will focus on improving mental health literacy. This is defined as:

• understanding how to obtain and maintain positive mental health;
• understanding mental health problems and their treatments;
• decreasing stigma related to mental health problems; and
• assisting people to seek help effectively.

The project is now calling for additional volunteers to get involved and become ambassadors for mental health in their parishes and wider communities. Thanks to the generous support of Allchurches Trust, there will be a wide variety of training on offer as well as funding available for local projects that support mental health literacy. Announcing Phase 2 of the project, Bishop Storey said: “We have listened to what you told us in the research and now we want you to get involved. We want you to join our movement for mental health literacy. There are opportunities for training and there is also seed funding for projects in parishes and dioceses.”

Although the MindMattersCOI project was conceived before the Covid pandemic, it is recognised that young people were among those most affected during successive lockdowns. The project is therefore carrying out an additional sub-study focusing exclusively on younger members of the Church of Ireland.

For more information and to sign up as a champion, please visit the MindMattersCOI website at https://mindmatters.ireland.anglican.org

Congratulations to Revd. Malcolm Young who was ordained a priest for local ministry by Bishop Ferran Glenfield at a service in St. George’s, Carrick-on-Shannon on Sunday 19th September. Revd. Malcolm will be serving in the Drumcliffe Group of Parishes.

Malcolm Young has been working in the Drumcliffe Group of Parishes for nearly four years. Revd. Malcolm initially came to Drumcliffe to take on the role as Tourist Chaplain. Drumcliffe Church is one of the top tourist destinations in Sligo, or Ireland for that matter. It is the final resting place of the world famous poet W.B Yeats and is also the site of one of St Columba’s most influential monasteries. Pre-covid, the site was welcoming around 180 000 visitors annually.

In addition to his role as tourist chaplain, Revd. Malcolm also assisted the Rector with Sunday services as Diocesan Reader. During this time, he felt a strong call towards Ordained Ministry which has brought him to this point. His ministry in Drumcliffe still involves both roles. During the day, Revd. Malcolm welcomes increasing numbers of visitors to Drumcliffe, gives talks about the site and it’s rich history, offers prayer ministry and blessings. However, he is also very much involved in parish ministry in Drumcliffe, Lissadell and Munninane, the three parishes in the Group.

We pray for every blessing on Revd. Malcolm and his ministry to both the communities of the Drumcliffe Group and visitors from afar.

Congratulations to Revd. Edmund Smyth who was ordained a priest for local ministry by Bishop Ferran Glenfield at a service in St St George’s, Carrick-on-Shannon on Sunday 19^th September. Revd. Ed will be serving in the Roscommon Group of Parishes.

Speaking about his ordination Ed thanked the many people through the years for their many and varied outputs. He feels that though the tide is out in terms of faith at the moment, he believes that the recent saga of the covid crisis has at least awoken many people. He says that the privilege of ministry is the opportunity to share God’s word with God’s people and that ordination is the opportunity to continue sharing the story of the bible and the Good News of eternal life with the church and outsiders alike.

We continue to pray for Revd. Ed as he embarks on this next phase of ministry.

The Most Revd John McDowell has been enthroned as Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland this evening (Tuesday, 14th September 2021) at St Patrick’s Cathedral, on the Hill of Armagh. Archbishop McDowell was elected to the office by the House of Bishops on 11th March 2020, having previously served as Bishop of Clogher since 2011. He took up his position on 28th April 2020.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Service of Enthronement for the new Archbishop unfortunately did not take place in 2020 and with the necessary restrictions earlier this year, plans for the service were put on hold.

In his sermon, Archbishop McDowell reflected on the Cross of Jesus and the true meaning of sacrifice. He remarked: “Any human relationship or political or social arrangement which does not allow the sacrifice of reciprocal self-giving room to flourish will ultimately crumble, because it is founded on falsehood. On a reef of sand. And that is so because sacrifice is at the heart of the nature of God, who made us in his image.”

The Archbishop was welcomed to the Cathedral by the Very Revd Shane Forster, Dean of Armagh. The Bible readings during the service were Numbers 21:4-9 by the Ven Elizabeth Cairns, Archdeacon of Ardboe, and John 3:13-17 by the Revd Dr Heather Morris, General Secretary of the Methodist Church in Ireland. Music was provided by the Choir of the Cathedral and the Revd Dr Peter Thompson, Assistant Organist.

The service was livestreamed at www.armagh.anglican.org and it is hoped that a much larger event, a liturgical welcome, for the Archbishop will be possible on a future date.

The full text of Archbishop McDowell’s sermon from the service is provided below:

May all the words that I say to you be spoken in the name of the Cross of Christ, our shame and our glory. Amen.

A Service of Enthronement usually marks the beginning of a Bishop’s ministry in his new Diocese, and in the case of the diocese of Armagh, as the Primate of All Ireland, in the Anglican obedience. That is manifestly not the case today, as I have been loitering in these precincts, persecuting clergy and parishes in this diocese, and trying my best not to wreck the RCB and the Standing Committee for nearly eighteen months now.

So, instead I thought I would say a word or two about (what is nowadays called) “the day that’s in it”. Holy Cross Day. The Cross. Not only the enduring sign of Christianity, but also its enduring substance. And I do so in the knowledge that the Cross may not be a benign or reassuring symbol to everyone, and also in the presence of an abbot whose house is under the patronage of the Holy Cross.

Holy Cross Day is not a red letter day in the Calendar of the Church of Ireland. It commemorates the dedication in 335, of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which was built over the supposed site of the crucifixion and the tomb of Jesus.

I don’t know about you, but It feels a bit odd to me to commemorate the Cross on its own, out of the context of Holy Week, and that full narrative of salvation history. In Holy Week our focus is on the tragedy of the Cross and the heartrending events of his last hours, when Our Lord was “extra-judicially executed on the majority recommendation of a corrupt committee of very religious people”. The emphasis of Holy Cross Day is a little different.

In early Christian art Jesus reigns from the Cross; only from the medieval period has he been shown suffering on it. And a fixation with that suffering can become morbid, as I think it comes very close to doing in many modern films and treatments of the life and death of Jesus. It cannot be without significance that those who witnessed the Cross of Jesus, and who have left us a witness of it in the New Testament, are very reticent about the gruesome details.

And there is no evidence in the Gospels to support Nietzsche’s notion that Christianity finds value in suffering in itself. As far as I can tell Jesus never once advised the diseased and troubled who flocked round him to reconcile themselves to their suffering. In fact he regards their sufferings as the work of Satan, and he releases them from it and heals them.

So, let us remember that it is the Cross of Jesus that we venerate today, not some generalised symbol. His life is consummated, not contradicted in the nature of his death.

The Cross of Jesus is unique in this sense. It is the only time in history when a sacrifice was also an atonement. When the sacrifice of the life offered was congruent with the reward it received. It is no longer the purity of doves and calves being offered (who are innocent only in the sense that moral concepts have no bearing on them). It is the offering of the blameless just on whose head a poisonous political aggression is now visited.

As for us, we plan our little heroisms and the Father is pleased to see them hung on the Cross of his Son, who he bowed to the ground, and to reward us far beyond the depth of our sacrifices.

So, following the imagery of the reading from Numbers and Jesus’ interpretation of it in the Gospel passage, the Cross of Jesus is something we turn to for life. Sacrifice in the Christian sense of mutual self-giving, concerns the flourishing of the self not its extinction. It involves a formidable release of energy and a turbulent journey from death to life.

In the foundational and continuing sacrament of baptism we are signed with the sign of the Cross; the sign of sacrifice. It is the sign with which we go out headfirst into the world. And we do so because the inner structure of love and of all fruitful relationships is sacrificial. We give ourselves to the beloved (whoever that may be) in order to possess ourselves more deeply.

Like baptism, sacrifice as mutual self-giving is not a single event; it is a passage that is never completed, that must always be resumed and prolonged. For once the word liminal is the correct one here. Sacrifice is the threshold situation that pervades all of life, that becomes the experience of our entire existence. No doubt that is what St Paul means when he talks about us dying every minute and what Jesus means when he refers to his death as his baptism.

All that we do, all of our human acts, have the quality of deathliness about them, as for good or ill they cannot be undone. And when I say “all our acts” I mean not only our religious or personal acts, but also our social, economic and political acts. Christ rules over the whole of life from the Cross. So, are our acts, acts of deathliness leading to life or are they more like the acts of the unequalled ego, deepening into the gloom of annihilation?

Sacrifice is not as it has been so often caricatured – some form of self-mutilation. In a relationship it is not the submission of a woman to a capricious tyrant of a husband or of a poor person to an unjust social system. Any human relationship or political or social arrangement which does not allow the sacrifice of reciprocal self-giving room to flourish will ultimately crumble, because it is founded on falsehood. On a reef of sand.

And that is so because sacrifice is at the heart of the nature of God, who made us in his image. Sometimes we express this politely (even decorously) such as in the Athanasian Creed, when we say of the Persons of the Trinity, that “none is afore or after other”. Sometimes with St Paul much, much more radically, as in Philippians when he points to a sacrifice at the heart of God, (taken before the worlds were made,) not to consider equality with God as something to be taken advantage of, but taking the form of a servant…”

And as St John points out in the Gospel reading, the servant not only came, but “…must be lifted up”. Must. Because God is what he is, the lifting up of His Son is inevitable, and glorious. The source of life.

The Cross interprets ourselves and the world to us. In a personal sense Jesus calls us to bear it with him, but to bear it as sons and daughters of the resurrection; in the mutuality of sacrifice. In the Church it is always present in the continuing sacrament of our initiation and is a standing rebuke throughout our lives to what are often the egotisms of our discipleship. In the political and social senses the faith of the Cross brings a disruptive energy to the spurious stability of any civilisation which claims to be just, but is merely complacent, yet also recognises the signs of the life of the Spirit and the Cross of Jesus wherever they are encountered.

Clung to by millions of dying men and women; the hope of millions more who live in violence and oppression; the Cross is the sign and agent of all human emancipation.

So, in finishing, if I could add a word or two to the Collect of the Day:

Almighty God, who in the passion of your Son made an instrument of death to be for us the means of life and peace: grant us so to glory in the Cross of Christ that we may gladly suffer for his sake; yet seek never to be a cause of suffering in others, also for his sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen