Kendall Harmon--Lambeth Questions (I)

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/14468/

[TitusOneNine] 21 Jul 2008--Does it bother anyone else that the participants in the conference have so little sense of what the content of the conference itself is actually going to be? Some of you may remember my doctoral supervisor at Oxford, Geoffrey Rowell, now Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe, saying before the conference how little information he actually had (and he was genuinely surprised). Well, yesterday I spoke to a Bishop at the conference, who, having been there now some days, still is quite unsure and unclear as to what will be taking place when exactly.

Now don't get me wrong, I am well aware that you can overplan a conference. I believe you need to leave the Holy Spirit room to blow where he wills. But, say what you like about the Episcopal Church General Convention, which I have been to as a deputy 4 times now, you can tell people before you get there pretty much what you will be doing on any given day. There is value in this in terms of stewardship of time and energy.

Why is so little information available at this late stage to actual Lambeth 2008 conference participants? There are only two possibilities. One is less than good administration, and the other is a deliberate attempt at control. I do not have enough evidence to make a judgment either way, so I will keep an open mind. But neither choice is a good one--KSH.