Walking Together 4: A Commonwealth Church in Wales
Trust, Shared Power, and the Hope of Renewal
Before reading this post, please make sure you read the rest of the series, which can be found here, here, and here.
When I wrote this series back in June, I never imagined what would unfold. The situation in Bangor seemed like it might blow over. The Archbishop of Wales hadn’t yet retired, and no one was yet talking openly about “leadership culture.” Walking Together started simply as a theological reflection. It was intended to provoke imaginations, to offer a vision of a Church that I believe to be theologically richer than the one that has dominated now for more than a generation.
Given all that’s happened recently, I hesitated to publish this final post. I know it risks being misunderstood. So let me say plainly: I’m not a prophet and I’m certainly not a revolutionary. I’m just a blogger trying to put some hope into words. This isn’t a manifesto or a call to arms. It’s an attempt to describe in concrete terms what the Church in Wales might look like if we inhabited it as a commonwealth rather than a single institution.
But nor could I pretend like recent events haven’t happened. So, I’ve tweaked the original post and altered its ending to offer some encouragement. If these words help anyone hold on to hope, trust each other a little more, or imagine something better, then they’ve done their job. That’s enough for me.
A Commonwealth of Hope
This final post returns to where we began: imagining the Church not as a single institution but as a commonwealth — a living network of people, places, and structures bound by trust, grace, and mutual care. Unlike any secular commonwealth, the Church’s life is shaped by walking together, discerning together, and carrying one another’s burdens in deep communion. Its true heart isn’t a corporate office or an archiepiscopal palace, but wherever Christians gather around the altar.
So far, so good. But what might this vision look like in practice? To explore that, I turn now to the institutions of the Church in Wales — the context in which I now serve — to consider how synodality, subsidiarity, and solidarity might help renew them. Here, I’m more tentative than before. Institutions are complex by nature, and they don’t change overnight. So please read what follows not as detailed instructions, but as an invitation to imagine what might be possible.
1. The Constitutional Core
At the heart of any true community is how authority is held and shared. The Governing Body, Bench of Bishops, and Representative Body form the backbone of the Church in Wales, entrusted with nurturing its common life and stewarding its resources. But authority slowly dies when hidden behind reports and managed agendas. Renewal begins when we remember authority serves the whole Body. Synodality calls our governing institutions to listen deeply and discern openly. Subsidiarity demands decisions rest as close as possible to those they affect, not hoarded at the centre. Solidarity insists that bishops, provincial officers, and delegates seek to identify with every part of the Church. We already have the structures — so what if we took up the Harries Report’s call and imagined a more robust synodical life that truly shares power, builds trust, and serves the Church’s common life well?
2. Dioceses
A diocese should be more than an administrative regions. It’s where oversight takes on a human face — close enough to local life to know its joys and struggles, yet tied deeply enough to the wider body to remind local churches that they’re integral to a larger body. Too often, a diocese grows remote from local church life or tangled in debilitating bureaucracy, coming to feel like remote offices rather than a family of churches held together in synod by their bishop. So imagine dioceses as local commonwealths, connecting churches and ministry areas with wisdom and support, while trusting local churches to make decisions close to home. When dioceses help congregations listen well and share burdens, they remind us the Church is held together by shared life, not command. Imagine the bishop in synod — clergy and laity gathered to listen and discern — standing at the centre, not as an annual formality but as a living sign of how we walk together.
3. Ministry Areas
I remain cautious about Ministry Areas, but they do offer a chance to practise synodality, subsidiarity, and solidarity locally. If the Church’s heart is wherever prayers are offered, bread is broken, and burdens are shared, then its health depends on its local life. Today, many local churches in Wales bear heavy loads: shrinking congregations, exhausted leaders, and dwindling reserves. Without fresh life here, there can be no lasting renewal anywhere else. What if we stopped seeing Ministry Areas as mere delivery points for central strategies and directives and trusted them to be genuine communities? Here, discernment happens face to face, trust grows among neighbours, and problems are named honestly. Local councils could become local synods where decisions rise from shared life, not top-down management. Such trust is built not through compliance but by supporting local churches to act boldly, share burdens, and shape decisions close to home.
4. Formation and Education
A Church that hopes to walk together must form people who know how to listen, speak wisely, and live as faithful citizens within a commonwealth Church. St Padarn’s Institute, Church schools, and local discipleship groups and bible studies aren’t just classrooms—they’re the engine rooms where imaginations are shaped, questions explored, and faith grows resilient enough for a changing world. True formation doesn’t stop at information or skills. It invites people to wrestle with faith in community, seeing how belief shapes daily life and draws them, through love of God, outward to their neighbours. This work begins locally — in homes and congregations — but stays rooted in the wider story we tell together. Imagine a Church where formation is never outsourced to a few but shared by all: each member growing in understanding and trust, learning to walk together and discover the grace by which God holds us as one Body.
5. Finance and Property
Money and buildings are never just practical matters. They’re signs of trust — and where trust often frays first. Our ancient churches remind us the Gospel has endured collapse, conquest, poverty, and prosperity. Yet too often finances feel cut off from real ministry, with dioceses treating local churches mainly as revenue streams. What if we handled money as we handle prayer — as something that binds a community together? Local congregations could then discern what they need and how best to use it, standing within a wider family that shares when any part falls short. Dioceses and the RB wouldn’t just collect resources but channel them wisely so churches flourish together, not compete alone. True stewardship means honest accounting and open hands: giving not just as duty but as trust in each other and the God who provides. Resources should serve people, reminding us we are stewards of a commonwealth Church.
6. Mission and Outreach
At its heart, the Church exists not for itself but for the world it inhabits. Chaplaincies, social action, public witness aren’t side projects but signs that faith always looks outward. Yet it’s easy for outreach work to drift to the margins: done by a few keen people while the institution carries on unchanged and too inwardly focused. A healthier vision draws mission back to the centre. Chaplaincies should be bridges that help the Church as a whole to learn the language of its neighbours. ustice work wouldn’t be an add-on but a daily sign that what happens at the altar shapes what happens on the street. Evangelism, too, could move beyond slogans to become a way of life that genuinely welcomes people to be part of this commonwealth, drawing near those once far off (Eph. 2.13).
7. Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations
In a world fractured by suspicion, friendships across old boundaries speak volumes. Ecumenical partnership must be real, not token, and the Church in Wales shouldn’t see itself above its neighbours. So imagine dioceses inviting trusted ecumenical friends to stand alongside them as observers and co-workers in synods and mission plans. Picture chaplaincies, community projects, and outreach teams woven from more than one tradition, showing that trust across difference can bear fruit. What if our ordinands once again trained alongside those of other church traditions? Such friendships aren’t instant or easy, but when they grow, they bring fresh gifts and perspective, renewing tired churches and offering a glimpse of the unity Christ prayed for. This is not a policy but an invitation: to trust that what binds us runs deeper than what divides — and to share that hope with a divided world.
8. Spiritual and Cultural Life
Finally, there are places that offer beauty and reverence when words fail: cathedrals, old churches, retreat houses, shrines. These places carry bless the weight of memory with the scent of prayer. They aren’t sideshows to the Church’s “real work”, but signs of where its deepest work begins. In hurried, anxious times, they remind us renewal isn’t just a strategy but a deep turning back to the One who gives life. Here, our restless striving gives way to the transforming presence of God. Prayer offered in these places isn’t passive — it’s the wellspring of courage, hope, and vision. When the Church draws from these wells, it remembers that it is more than an institution; it’s a people formed and transformed by the presence of Christ, made in his image and renewed by the Spirit. Such prayerful places offer the stillness, beauty, and prayerfulness needed to attune us to the grace that undergirds and pervades our common life.
The Call to Conversion
Most of this was written weeks ago. I hope they help anyone from any Anglican province see how the church can become more like a commonwealth than an institution by embracing synodality, subsidiarity, and solidarity.
But instead of my original conclusion, let me offer these final words of encouragement for my fellow members of the Church in Wales.
Becoming a Church that truly belongs to its people isn’t about perfect systems or flawless plans. It begins with metanoia: a turning of hearts and minds from defensiveness to honesty, from power guarded tightly to authority shared generously, from suspicion and fragmentation to trust and belonging. The Church in Wales isn’t starting from scratch. It already has the bones of a commonwealth: good structures, faithful habits, and local gifts waiting to be trusted and brought to life. But bones alone aren’t enough. They need real relationships, shared responsibility, and love that holds when things are hard.
This is the invitation now: not to rescue the Church with frantic plans, but to receive it again as a gift — the Body of Christ made visible in how we live together, listen to each other, and bear one another’s burdens. That witness only becomes believable when it’s shared between bishops, clergy, and laity across dioceses and ministry areas, crossing every line that might divide us as it seeks to in include everyone.
This kind of renewal is slow. It asks us to surrender old illusions. But we’re not called to build the Church in our own strength. Our task is simply this: to stay faithful to Christ, to the Gospel that sets us free, and to the Spirit’s patient work within and among us.
If we can find the courage to listen before we speak, the grace to trust each other to act faithfully, and the humility to keep walking side by side, then the Church in Wales may yet grow into what it’s meant to be: not an anxious institution clinging to what’s left, but a living commonwealth of grace, rooted in trust and sent out for the good of the world.
Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together…promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love (Eph. 4.15-16).