The nineteen elected lay and clergy members of General Synod from our diocese took their places and made their mark at its first meeting of the next five year term, which was opened by the Queen on November 24th.
During the two day meeting at Church House Westminster, Synod discussed climate change and gave its overwhelming backing to work by parishes and dioceses to support the resettlement of vulnerable Syrian refugees.
More controversial in the media has been the Report on Church Buildings with wide –ranging, and widely reported proposals including the idea of allowing some parish 
churches to become ‘Festival Churches’. Synod overwhelmingly endorsed the introduction of measures to allow communities to adopt flexible approaches to the use of churches, securing their future for use by future generations.
More than three quarters of the Church of England's churches are listed, and the Church of England is responsible for nearly half of the Grade I listed buildings in England. West Yorkshire and the Dales sits in the middle of the table of dioceses with listed buildings with 13% of its buildings Grade 1, 14% Grade 2* and 44% Grade 2 listed.
The Revd Gary Waddington, Incumbent of St Wilfrid’s, Harrogate (pictured right with Canon Ruth Hind and Revd Paul Cartwright all from our diocese), making his maiden speech, made a plea for better training for clergy. “My own parish is currently involved in a £2.5 million redevelopment project, and whilst my formation has allowed me to understand something of the Gospels in Greek, a 28 page, online, stage two heritage Lottery Fund application form, and some of the other funders that one has to read, seem to be written in a language with a specialised hermeneutic not readily accessible to the uninitiated…”
Canon Ruth Hind of Ripon Cathedral supported an (unsuccessful) amendment which asked the ‘Simplification Task’ Group to consider new creative models for the ownership and management of church buildings. She said, “At present it is difficult for incumbents to assign the care and management of buildings to others if they remain legally responsible for them with the PCCs…The Reform and Renewal agenda is one of streamlining our practice to make it fit for purpose.”
The Synod debate was led by the Building Report’s main author and Chair of the Review Group, the Bishop of Worcester, Rt. Revd Dr John Inge. Bishop Inge recently spoke on the subject to a clergy study day in Bradford Cathedral and earlier this year gave a St Wilfrid Lecture on the subject at Ripon Cathedral (see report).
He told members, “Apart from growing the church there is, in our view, no single solution to the challenges posed by our extensive responsibility for a very significant part of the nation's historic heritage. That having been said, we are not proposing 'fiddling while Rome burns' or burying our heads in the sand like proverbial ostriches, hoping the problem will go away. We propose a more strategic approach to the use of buildings nationally, and dioceses as part of their mission plans.”
The report can be downloaded here: https://www.churchofengland.org/media/2383717/church_buildings_review_report_2015.pdf