The General Synod of the Church of Ireland

General Synod is a meeting of representatives of all dioceses in the Church of Ireland. It meets annually in May over a three day period. General Synod enacts legislation for the whole Church of Ireland. Of the 57 representatives elected by the Diocese of Connor there are six from St John’s:  Donald Davison, Ken Dunn, Arthur and Rosemary Macartney, David Smith and Joan Turner. 

This year the synod met for three days in the Lyrath Estate Hotel in Kilkenny chaired by the new Archbishop of Armagh, our former Rector, Alan Harper, who in his Presidential Address suggested members should ask themselves “hard questions about what we do and the way that we do it.”

“Synod is not only an exercise in internal self-government it is also a window on the Church and indeed a shop window for the Church”. He concluded that “we are called upon to shape our procedures and focus our energies in ways which will allow the important things we have to say to be clearly heard. This may, from time to time, require us to be deliberately provocative in the way we articulate the important things we have to say”.

On the first evening the Synod Service was held in Kilkenny Cathedral

On the second evening a reception was hosted by Kilkenny Council in Kilkenny Castle