St George’s Cathedral
Tradition and
Transformation
The Revd Bec Bydder, Director of the Centre for Spirituality and Cathedral Missioner, St George’s Cathedral
Sustainability has become something of a buzzword over the last few decades, especially when used in relation to our environmental and climate challenges. In that context, the EcoCare Commission continues to remind and equip us as a Diocese to work for sustainability by being good stewards of God’s creation.
The Church also witnesses another kind of sustainability – namely, that we are all sustained by God, in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17.28). And the Church works in the confidence that the Gospel we proclaim and live out is sustainable – that is, ‘capable of being upheld or defended as valid, correct or true’ (Oxford English Dictionary).
Yet how we do that work may change, as we respond to the many different contexts in which the Church proclaims and lives the Gospel.
When the Church has been challenged or faced difficulty in the past, it hasn’t avoided change. Our forebears adapted the Church’s liturgies and practices to better proclaim and live the Gospel. And when we are challenged or face difficulty as a Church today, we can also adapt the way we do our work without throwing away all that has been. Like our forebears, we can change together in the confidence that we have an unchanging grounding that sustains and upholds us.
With the wider Diocese, St George’s Cathedral continues that work as the Mother Church of our Diocese and the seat of the Archbishop. The Cathedral offers traditional and contemporary Anglican liturgy, provides education and spirituality programmes and offers a sacred space for Diocesan events including ordinations, Chrism and Synod Eucharists.
We are to be good stewards not only of God’s creation, but of God’s Church in this time. We must be sustainable in our places of worship, agencies, schools and other ministry contexts. We must seek sustainable initiatives and practices, so that our faith endures and the Gospel is proclaimed and lived out. And we must do all this remembering that we are all sustained by God.
So let us work together joyfully and with courage, fully placing our trust in the One who sustains us.