Bishop Justin writes:

We wanted to give you a bit of an update about our travels over the next few months. It feels strange to be re-entering a global space after so much time with a locked-down world, but we are excited about the opportunities it presents to connect with brother and sister Bishops across our global communion.  

Bishop Ellie is away on sabbatical from next week. After 5 years in her role as Assistant Bishop, this is a welcome opportunity to spend time with her family in the UK, and to take space for her, Tim, Zac and Joe to nurture time together. They will be based in a number of monastic communities in the North of England and Scotland. Please pray for the Sanderson family as they travel, gather with extended family, and respond to God’s invitation for refreshment and renewal.

Prior to the Lambeth Conference in July, +Ellie will be attending the Movement Leaders Collective meeting (with Rich Robinson and Alan Hirsch), as she is part of their core leadership council.

And from July, the Lambeth Conference begins. Every Bishop across the Anglican Communion is invited to gather every 10 years (though it’s actually been 14 years, for various reasons) to learn, pray, spend time in fellowship, and discern God’s will for our global church.

Both of us are attending, and Bishop Ellie has a particularly special role to play in the gathering. Prior to the conference itself, she will be attending meetings in London of the newly-created Commission for Discipleship. The aim of the group is to support the mobilisation of missional discipleship across our global communion, and has come out of the Jesus-Shaped Life Intentional Discipleship coordinating group and the Plant Anglican network that +Ellie has already been part of.

+Ellie will also be continuing to work with the Lambeth Reconciliation team, which works to support the ministry of reconciliation prioritised by Archbishop Justin Welby. As we have seen in recent weeks in Aotearoa New Zealand, this seems to be a particularly critical piece of work for our church.

We are grateful to Vicar-General Julie Rokotakala who will be holding the fort while we are both away in July.

Please pray for us as we prepare to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church, and pray that we will return equipped and empowered to respond to that invitation.

+Justin

A note on our carbon footprint. We acknowledge and recognise that air travel is costly on our environment and as kaitiaki of God’s earth we seek to minimise air travel wherever we can. We will be using a carbon offset scheme for our flights.