Source: Orthodox Christian Laity<\/a>
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\nThe work of the Episcopal Assembly is off to a slow start. The coordinators are not coordinating. Could it be that the Patriarch asked all to go to Istanbul so he too could understand where are the committees and how are they progressing. After all the Old World Patriarchs directed the bishops to meet and demonstrate that they can work together, what have they accomplished these past four months? Only 50 percent of the bishops have signed up to be members of the 12 committees. How many clergy and laity have been invited to serve? How will they be invited? Will all of the invitations be managed? Maybe the Patriarch has the same questions that I have. <\/p>\n

My experience is that most bishops see themselves as islands unto themselves. Most bishops guard their turf. They seem to have a passive \u2013 aggressive ethos. Each bishop will need to give up something to make this consensus-building process work. The whole world is watching to see if this will happen. They need to share their staffs and manpower. Will they? They need to work together to assemble a staff and committee that will oversee the work of the committees. Someone needs to make sure the committees meet deadlines and do their work. I do not see this happening. Do the bishops know how to go about doing this – considering their mindsets?
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\nWhere is this coordinating staff that will assist the committee workers? Business as usual will not accomplish the splendid opportunity that the bishops have been given to build a foundation for unity. The bishops have been asked to think out of the box to show the Old World Patriarchs that they can work together. Hopefully, they will not squander a great opportunity, because they do not know how to move ahead. With humility, they need to ask the clergy and laity that can help them to help. The bishops need to direct and let the staff work by providing a full-time coordinating staff to assist the committee members. <\/p>\n

The committees and the committee staff under the direction of the bishops will be the ones that do the hard work of building consensus related to unity. Clergy and laity with consensus-building skills and knowledge related to the issues of unity need to be invited to begin the work that will eventually be approved by the bishops that lead to presenting a conciliar, consensus plan for unity. The staff, not the bishops, will do the hard work. We realize that bishops already have full time jobs administering their diocese. They need to direct and trust and let competent clergy and laity begin to do the work that they eventually will approve and present. Let us pray for our bishops. Let the work begin. <\/p>\n

George Matsoukas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: Orthodox Christian Laity The work of the Episcopal Assembly is off to a slow start. The coordinators are not coordinating. Could it be that the Patriarch asked all to go to Istanbul so he too could understand where are the committees and how are they progressing. After all the Old World Patriarchs directed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8007,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8005\/revisions\/8007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}