We are to be reconcilers: Archbishop's first Presidential Address

In a world where people, communities and nations are becoming more divided and polarised, we are to seek and to speak out for peace, reconciliation, community cohesion, recognising that all human beings are of equal worth and each deserve respect and dignity, Archbishop of Wales Cherry Vann has said in her first presidential address to Governing Body.

The twice-yearly Governing Body of the Church in Wales is meeting today and tomorrow at the International Conference Centre in Newport to discuss a range of issues, including blessing of same-sex relationships and the Middle East conflict.

The agenda will include a keynote address by the new Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev’d Cherry Vann, as president of the Governing Body.

Another major element of the meeting will be a discussion on same-sex relationships. The Church in Wales currently allows for the blessing of same-sex civil marriages and civil partnerships in its churches, a provision authorized by the Governing Body in September 2021 for an experimental five-year period, which is set to expire in September 2026.

The Church is currently in a period of discernment to determine the future of this provision, with potential paths forward including allowing the provision to expire, extending the authorisation of the current services of blessing, or introducing formal same-sex marriage services. Decisions on this rest with the Governing Body, which requires a two-thirds majority in all three orders – bishops, clergy, and laity – to implement changes.

In a process led by the Rt Rev’d Mary Stallard, Bishop of Llandaff, members will be asked to share their views on the proposals. These views will then be considered in October by the Bench of Bishops, as they decide whether to bring forward formal proposals to a future Governing Body.

Against the backdrop of continuing conflict in the Middle East, the Governing Body will be addressed by Jamie Eyre, CEO of the Christian Development Charity Embrace the Middle East.

The meeting is being live-streamed via a link on the Church in Wales website at www.churchinwales.org.uk and YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/churchinwales

Archbishop Cherry's presidential address

I want to begin this Presidential Address by thanking all who have sent messages of congratulation and good wishes on my election as Archbishop. I’ve been quite overwhelmed by the number of people who have taken the trouble to be in touch both here in Wales and from across the world. I’ve been surprised and delighted to receive cards and e mails from people I’ve not seen since secondary school, from my days at the Royal College of Music and from my 30 years of ministry in Manchester. It’s been a time of reconnecting and that’s felt to be a real blessing.

Most of all, I’ve been encouraged and heartened by those who have assured me of their prayers, particularly those who can’t accept the ordination of women, never mind a woman in the role of bishop and archbishop; and others who struggle with the fact that there is now an Archbishop in Wales who is not only a member of the LGBTQI+ community but is living in a Civil Partnership. Thank you for your graciousness and for the assurance of your prayers. It gives me hope that amidst all our differences we can reach out to one another in prayer and so build a hopeful future together. More about that later.

First though, it’s important to acknowledge that me standing here this morning is not what any of us were expecting last time we met in Llandudno. There’s a been a seismic change in the life of our Province and one that has brought many of us pain and confusion. None of us has been left unaffected and we need to acknowledge that. Archbishop Andy’s decision to retire following his heartfelt letter of apology has impacted the Province and, most particularly, the Diocese of Bangor.

My own experience of Andy’s ministry was as Archbishop and I want to pay tribute to him in this work, not least with the Bench which is now a very different group to the one I joined back in 2020. He encouraged a focus on prayer, reflection and honest conversation. Under his leadership we have gradually been able to be more open and vulnerable with one another and to gently challenge each other when we feel the need. It feels a good place to be. I, and I think the others too, now look forward to our meetings together. And I am grateful for his time with us and for the work that we were able to do together.

I ask for your prayers for him and Naomi and also, of course, for Bishop David as he seeks to discern where God is now calling him to serve. I know that he would very much welcome and value your prayers.

Prayers too for the diocese of Bangor as they seek to work through the many, complex and long-standing challenges that they are facing, and doing so without a bishop, a diocesan secretary and only a recently licensed Dean. I’m grateful to the Archdeacons who are acting as my commissaries in the diocese until a new bishop is elected and who’ve taken on significant additional roles to support as best they can. Help and support is also being offered from the staff at Callaghan Square and other dioceses to try and get the diocese of Bangor back on an even keel. But it’s going to take a long time, so please do keep them in your prayers.

So, to our future. I’ve already been asked by some what my priorities as Archbishop are going to be and I want to begin to set out some background thinking to what I believe our priorities as a church need to be. In my statement to the electoral college back in July, I said this:

If I am elected to become Archbishop, I will dedicate the next three years to transforming the culture of the Church in Wales. This, I believe, is the most important thing we have to do together. Because, as we have seen, all the good news stories, all the missional activity, all the wonderful work that is going on in our local churches and communities is being undermined and hidden under a sea of shocking headlines and bad news stories. We will never flourish as an institution and we will never have the credibility to speak into the public square about God’s love for God’s creation unless we develop a culture, a way of being and behaving, that ‘reflects the nature of God as we see it in Jesus Christ’.

And so the three areas that I want to talk about today are 1) Tending to our core purpose as God’s church; 2) Tending to our relationships with one another; and 3) Tending to ourselves and our own individual relationships with God.

Tending to our core purpose is not just about proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. It’s about living out, in a demonstrable way, the good news that we proclaim. It’s been said that ‘The Church is called to be a community of disciples who love one another with the passion of Jesus and, in their passionate love for the world, to reveal to the world that it is loved.’ That, it seems to me, is not a bad stab at a mission statement: Disciples of Jesus who love one another as Jesus loves them, who love the world that God created, in and out of his love, and in so doing show the world just how much it is loved by God. Love changes things. Love transforms us and the way we live and behave. Love compels us to reach out beyond ourselves to others and to the world which God has gifted to us.

The image that encapsulates this, which St Paul speaks about in a number of his letters, is the Body of Christ. He talks about a body with many parts, each part having its own unique job to do and each needing the others in order for the body to be whole. In order for the body to work well and at its best, the parts need to work in harmony with each other. That interconnectedness is vital. No part can work in isolation and if one part is bruised, broken or damaged, then the whole body is affected – whether it’s a blister on your heel, a pulled muscle in your shoulder or splinter in your thumb. When one part suffers, the whole body suffers. But we can inflict suffering on ourselves and on others by our attitudes and our behaviours – often without realising it.

One of the most formative periods in my ministry has been the six years that I spent working as Chaplain to the Deaf Community in Manchester. I went in full of enthusiasm wanting to work with this marginalised group of people, but with attitudes and assumptions that I later realised were both arrogant and patronising. Like many in ministry, I came to see that I had much more to learn from them than they had from me; not just about what it means to be Deaf and marginalised, but also about God and about prayer and about what a dominant group (in this case hearing people) can do to people who are different (in this case people Deaf from birth). I came to realise that I had to meet them where they were and listen to their stories. Stories of having been caned at school for using sign language – they were there to learn to speak and they would only get on in the world if they could speak with the hearing majority. They were excluded, made to feel stupid because they couldn’t hear and so couldn’t join in – but few if any stopped to try and understand them. Their educational attainment was low because everything was taught through words; words spoken and written that they struggled to understand. Afterall, we learn both to speak and to read by listening.

But they’d also been taught about a God who listens and who speaks, and about a Jesus who healed people who were deaf and without speech. God, then, was hearing; part of the dominant group that they felt excluded from. Where was the good news for people born deaf? One of the most poignant questions I’ve ever been asked is, Does God understand our sign language? Because, of course, most hearing people didn’t and they didn’t really care either.

But they loved me in, this Deaf community; an ‘outsider’ in their terms. They welcomed me despite my level 1 sign language which was completely inadequate for the work I’d been called to do as their Chaplain. I learnt what it feels like to not to fit in, to be in the minority and to feel excluded. They taught me the importance of being alongside, meeting people where they are and not where you think they are, and of seeing difference and diversity not as a threat but as a gift that enriches and which can be transformative.

There are so many people, so many groups of people who are marginalised in our world today and in this county of Wales, who’ve been pushed to the sidelines, made to feel as if they’re not valued, had their voices silenced or not heard: people who are living in poverty, who are homeless, who suffer with their mental health, who are in some way dis-abled – and others because of their sexuality and gender.

So many people crying out for good news – for the good news – and yet how often do we go out, as I did with the Deaf Community, assuming we know what they need, assuming we know what’s best for them, wanting to do to and for them without stopping to listen first, to meet them where they are, to appreciate and love them for who they are and allow them to change us and shape us and form us into the likeness of Christ. For as I discovered in my work with the Deaf Community, we have just as much to learn from them, who are also children of God and made in God’s image, as they have from us. This is mission. As I read the other day, ‘Only when the church can be seen to be the church can people be persuaded that it is the church. The love of Jesus has to be seen to be believed.’ We must tend to our attitudes, our behaviours, our assumptions and unconscious biases that can so often get in the way of God’s love being shown and shared.

The other day I was interviewed by a 19-year-old Oxford University student. One of the questions she asked struck me forcibly. ‘With the rise of right-wing extremism and divisive rhetoric, particularly after Wales has recently seen the largest conference of the Reform Party to date, how can the church counter exclusionary narratives and foster unity, safety and belonging for all who wish to worship?’ Some question!

I found myself talking about the story that we have to tell. A story that’s inclusive and all-embracing. A story of God’s love for the world he created; an endless and eternal love for every single human being, whom we believe to have been made in God’s very image. We are called not only to tell that story but to live it out by doing all we can to build bridges between people rather than dividing them. We are to be reconcilers, as St Paul urged the Christians Corinth to be. For God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, has given us the ministry of reconciliation; urging people to be reconciled not only to God, but to one another.

In a world where people, communities and nations are becoming more divided and polarised, we are to seek and to speak out for peace, reconciliation, community cohesion, recognising that all human beings are of equal worth and each deserve respect and dignity. ‘The Church is called to be a community of disciples who love one another with the passion of Jesus and, in their passionate love for the world to reveal to the world that it is loved.’ It’s a story that welcomes everyone.

And, as that statement suggests, we have to model that ourselves in our dealings with one another within our church family and tend to our relationships with one another. The church is no different to society in having difficulty with people who are perceived as being different. But we are called to build community, a community of faith and hope and love, and that means learning to love our neighbour as ourselves – even those we don’t like, or we don’t understand, or we’d rather avoid. Even those with whom we vehemently disagree.

Learning to love takes time. It’s a long hard road, requiring patience, kindness, perseverance. Sometimes, forgiveness, and always hope. But it is possible.

Some of you will have heard me talk before about the small group that we formed in Manchester in the mid-1990’s, shortly after the first women had been ordained to the priesthood. There were a significant number of priests in the diocese opposed to the ordination of women who felt angry, betrayed and isolated at the decision the church had taken and, at a clergy conference, the divide between those in favour of the ordination of women and those opposed was stark. Each kept themselves to themselves, in the bar, in the restaurant, in the sessions and at the Eucharist where the peace was not shared and the men did not receive communion. Instead, they held their own Eucharists.

Recognising that this divide within the body of Christ was profoundly damaging and was only likely to get worse, a small group of us agreed to meet. Four were ordained women and four were ordained men opposed to the ordination of women.

We agreed that we would meet, not to try and change each other’s minds but to seek a way forward together that somehow modelled our unity in Christ, despite our strong and seemingly irreconcilable views. Three times a year we met to pray, to share lunch and to talk. The first few years were intensely awkward and uncomfortable, but we persevered. And gradually, as we listened to one another, tried to understand one another’s position, and learnt to see one another as sisters and brothers in Christ, our friendship developed. We found healing and a sense of belonging together. We held vigils of prayer that strengthened our bonds of affection for one another and drew others in on the journey we were taking. Listening to one another, meeting each other where we were and seeking to love and understand one another was transformative not just for us but for the whole diocese. We’d come a very long way from the time when we’d feared one another and demonised one another.

When I came here to Wales, we’d been meeting for more than 20 years, and we’d become very fond of each other. In fact, some of those men were amongst the first to write to me to congratulate me on being elected Archbishop, which warmed my heart.

‘Only when the church can be seen to be the church can people be persuaded that it is the church. The love of Jesus has to be seen to be believed.’

And we have an opportunity to do something similar here, in the Church in Wales, not just as we discuss same sex relationships and equal marriage, but as we face the many other challenges that lie ahead. How do we live together as Ministry/Mission Areas, as dioceses, as a province, in a way that’s more interconnected and interdependent – modelling the body of Christ where every member is valued and all work effectively and efficiently together? What are the values and qualities that we see in the life and teaching of Jesus that we want to demonstrate and live out as a church? How do we ensure that power is used well and wisely, that we can hold one another to account and that we deal with one another, always, with compassion and humility – treating one another as we ourselves would like to be treated?

We’ll have the opportunity to discuss these things more fully after the break. But this will be only the start of the work we need to do together. We need to tend to our relationships one with another as much as we need to tend to our core purpose, for the two are intertwined. Our story is compromised when we are seen to be protecting ourselves, hiding uncomfortable truths and keeping silent in the face of wrongdoing. Our mission is undermined when what people see is Christians not able to practise what we preach, even amongst ourselves.

How wonderful it would be if those looking in from outside were able to say, ‘see how these Christians love one another, despite their differences and deep disagreements.’

So how do we learn to love one another with the radical, passionate, uncompromising love of Jesus? We do so by tending to ourselves and our own relationship with God. This too is part of our core purpose. For only as we become more and more Christlike can we truly be his hands and feet in the world. Our life of prayer, both as individual disciples and corporately as the body of Christ is vital to our mission and ministry. For prayer binds us together and strengthens our relationships one with another, as I discovered most profoundly as that small group of us met up in Manchester. It helps build community and reminds us that whoever we are and however different we are, we are nevertheless united as children of the same heavenly father. Our times of prayer together here are not just a nod to God before we get down to the real business that we’re here to do. They call us to fix our eyes on Jesus, whose business we are about. Whatever our agenda, we are drawn through our prayer to the one whose world we live in, whose church we are part of and whose people we are.

Some of you will know that one of the verses of scripture I carry around with me is from the first letter to the Thessalonians where Paul urges his readers to ‘pray without ceasing’. (I Thess 5:17) We are to be a people who are connected to God, tuned-in to God at all times and in all places; learning to discern his presence within and around us wherever we are and whatever we’re doing. The psalmist prays, ‘Teach me your way O Lord and I will walk in your truth; knit my heart to you…’ (Ps 86:11) And we are invited to pray the same: knit my heart to you, that we may be drawn more deeply into communion with God and so be agents of his reconciling love.

My prayer for these next three years is that individually and together across the whole of the Province of Wales, we might allow ourselves to be shaped and changed to become ever more Christlike in our lives, in our relationships with one another and in the mission that God has entrusted to us.

Now to him, by whose power at work within us is able to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations for ever and ever. Amen. (Eph 3: 20,21)

+ Cherry Cambrensis

September 2025