Bishop Harold hopes that C of E will achieve interchangeability of ministry with the Methodist Church
Listen again to 4 February’s Sunday Sequence on BBC Radio Ulster to hear Bishop Harold in discussion with Rosin McAuley.
They were considering interchangeability of ministries with the Methodist Church ahead of the Church of England General Synod vote next week.
The Synod will vote on whether it should share ministers with the Methodists, allowing priest from each church to preach at the other.
Bishop Miller said he believed that the move would succeed and hoped that it would: “I very much hope that they will proceed this time but I expect that it will go slowly because there is legislation to be made,” he said.
The Church of England has made previous 2 attempts to achieve interchangeability of ministry but will vote this time on a different model, very similar to that which the Church of Ireland agreed in 2014.
Leaders in the Church of England have suggested that the move would help in areas where there are “serious challenges in sustaining a Christian presence”.
Bishop Miller said: That slightly unnerves me because I think I don’t think it is good to create unity just to solve problems. I think one of the key things is that you create unity for mission.”
He continued: “I don’t think that bringing together institutions is the essence of unity I think discovering that we are one in Christ is the essence of unity and that’s that brings great blessing to our mission.”
When asked if the two denominations would come together under one name, Bishop Miller pointed out that Anglicanism and Methodism worldwide are numerically roughly the same size but distributed differently. He said that he did not believe there was any desire on either side for one church to subsume the other.
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland General Synod passed an historic Bill to provide for interchangeability of ministry between the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland at their meeting in 2014.