17.10.2026
Diocese and Parish: A Common Church – Presidential Address at Dublin and Glendalough Diocesan Synods
‘There is still a vision for the appointed time; it will testify to the destined hour and will not prove false’ … Habakkuk 2.3
Exploring a common mission and vision for the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough and its parishes was the theme of Archbishop Michael Jackson’s Presidential Address to Diocesan Synods this morning (Saturday October 17).
Synod has drawn lay people and clergy from every parish in the dioceses together in Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin, today. This is the first time in recent years that Synod has met on a Saturday. The day long event follows a review of Diocesan Synod which sought to improve the way it meets the needs of both the dioceses and their people.
Archbishop Jackson drew on Habakkuk 2:3 in considering the theme of ‘Diocese and Parish: A Common Church’.
“In his way of expressing a vision awaiting us and in his hope of an appointed time for us, Habakkuk pinpoints a real opportunity and a real possibility for our diocese now,” he stated. “There is always a moment for glory and there is always an opportunity to seize that very moment. Annually, through our Diocesan Synods, we have the opportunity to express and to preview a vision. While the destined hour is in the hands of God, the appointed time is ours to grasp and to enjoy in our own hands.”
The vision the dioceses need is not a product, he suggested. Rather it is a journey of belief. During the past year of prayer and consultation, he suggested that the dioceses had learnt a lot.
The prayer and consultation had taken the dioceses to the root of who we are and who we are yet to become, he said. It has also provided a focus on the future.
“The series of consultations that has taken place has already given us a perspective on ourselves that will, in the years ahead, make us more urgent in letting the vision emerge and percolate. The distinct advantage of our having done what we have done in this way is that, through the sorts of opportunities for patient and attentive listening that we were given at The Diocesan Synods 2025, along with the discussions in Rural Deaneries that have followed throughout the year, a view of the diocese will undoubtedly have started to emerge. We are eager to learn about it, about us. It is important that we all grasp and hold this view together. It has to be more than the sum of the individual voices. It needs to be: in common,” the Archbishop stated.
He continued: “From what we are already doing and from what we want to become, through common effort, it is important that we work in a structured, connected, integrated way. Yes indeed, a parish is a parish is a parish. But this never was about parishes competing with one another about anything. It was about holding in common, holding and treasuring together, what parishes are doing and how we can share, in teaching and learning, in assessing and enjoying, from and with one another in being A Common Church. At some point, all of this will yet blossom and flourish into a vision by which the diocese can be guided and to which it can refer as a self–definition, a confident expression of who we are in the spirit of Habakkuk, and about the appointed time. For my own part, I offer some brief thoughts on what is in common and what, therefore, can be shared in this journey of mission together.”
He said that the work of the Diocese of Dublin and the Diocese of Glendalough needs to focus on the features and capacities of each dioceses, and on what they had in common and could share. He added that each parish needs to work out where it stands in common with the Church of Ireland and the other members of its community. “This is hard work but essential. This is our springboard of sustainable mission,” he said.
He posed a question for consideration as part of considering the position of church buildings which might be under utilised: “How can we invite into a church space a common community life of which we are part AND retain a welcoming Christian and Anglican presence there as something that people will instantly recognize and to which they might wish to belong?”
Communities everywhere are crying out for space, he noted, and parishes are some of the few entities with space to spare. “We in the Church of Ireland and in these United Dioceses have more resources of this type than we can use for ourselves alone. As part of our prayed mission we need to think about more than getting more people like us into church as we have made church to become. As I said: The chasm of antiquity leaves everyone behind. Antiquity needs to be re–distributed, re–thought and re–imagined and shared in common in each new generation,” he said.
“If we begin by admitting that we are all in difficulty, then I suggest we can all travel somewhere new and discern this vision together without fear. The groundwork has been done. We need to sow the harvest. We need, most of all, to trust the Spirit.”
He pointed out that a common life is what connects all people in their communities. For Christians what is important is how we engage, discern, interpret and see the face of God in this common life. People may call this witness or society. “Society is about how you and your neighbour share the things that are common property and common capital for all. It is grounded in the values that we bring to them. Social cohesion is vital to society’s survival. It needs our concentration and our commitment,” he noted.
Archbishop Jackson suggested that in both prayer and mission, it is through the values we express that we influence the common good.
He said the purpose of the mission plan “is to strengthen parochial and diocesan life and in this way to enable the Church of Ireland way to be attractive and attracting of people inside our parishes who know us and have forgotten us along with people of our parishes who have no clue as to who we are as ‘those people who go to church on a Sunday’ – or why. This is our exciting present and our exciting future. If the chasm of antiquity leaves everyone behind; surely the vista of a common future can draw everyone in; and the hope of a common life can revive our common dioceses”.
Ypu can read the Archbishop’s address in full here.