On Wednesday 8 July 2026, The Rt Revd Christopher Chessun gave his final Presidential Address to Southwark Diocesan Synod ahead of his retirement as Bishop of Southwark this Summer.
The full text of the address is below:
Members of Synod, this is my final Presidential Address. I shall soon have retired and I am glad to have nominated Bishop Rosemarie to be Acting Bishop of Southwark for the duration. I look forward to the next stage of life, and I leave the Diocese to Bishop Rosemarie’s care with full confidence in her and the College of Bishops – Bishop Martin and Bishop Alastair, in our Archdeacons and the Senior Team, in the Diocesan Secretary and her team at Trinity House, and in Roz as Director of the Board of Education. I shall leave this Diocese with my heart full of thanksgiving for the faithful of South London and East Surrey, for our parishes, for fresh expressions of being church, for our chaplaincies and other communities of faith, and of course our schools – and especially for our God given diversity – which is God’s gift and blessing to us all and I give thanks for each one you. I am encouraged and hopeful.
Mission and Ministry are resourced and held together in life-enhancing ways in the Diocese of Southwark. We can give thanks that numbers in our Worshiping Communities are at pre-pandemic levels and growing, our average weekly attendance for children and young people was one of the highest last year in the Church of England with 9% growth. Additionally we have seen real growth in confident catholic mission as well as confident evangelical mission.
Our DNA as a Diocese is to be Christ centred and outward focused and we therefore as fellow members of the Body of Christ seek not only to offer Godly service forming joyful partnerships in the Gospel but also commit to speaking well of each other.
We have a lot to be thankful for, and we – or rather, you – will soon enter a new chapter of common life. Devote yourselves as did the first disciples “to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2.42), and “trust in the Lord with all your heart” (Proverbs 3.5). The Christian life is all about steadfastly applying wisdom and discipline to staying the course. Get up. Stand up. Say your prayers. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. And love your neighbour as yourself. The great Russian Bishop St Theophan the Recluse wrote, “The principal thing is to stand before God with the mind in the heart and to go on standing before him unceasingly day and night until the end of life”. That is precisely what we need to do. Everything else will follow. For this reason Jesus says these things that have been “hidden … from the wise and the intelligent” and revealed instead “to infants” (Matthew 11.25). Retain a childlike heart and stand before God as one fully mature in Christ (Colossians 1.8).
Being a Bishop – certainly on Sundays – is rather like being an itinerant preacher. Bishops do not just barge in – but crucially with every parish priest in the Diocese I say: ‘Receive the cure of souls which is both yours and mine:’ The cure is shared and that is to be respected on both sides and any extended episcopal ministry happens by invitation only – something the House of Bishops is absolutely determined should remain so going forward. It always seems to me, however, that in my wanderings around the Diocese I should concentrate and focus on encouraging the faithful – so that the people of God leave a Sunday service nourished by the sacraments, refreshed and encouraged, and rather more ready for the week to come after divine worship than they were before it. In other words going out from church keen to share the love of Christ in daily life and contexts.
I want to encourage you, Synod, in a similar spirit. And I have two things to say: first, be thankful. Look back over the years we have walked together with thanksgiving for God’s mercy, for his provision, and for his kindness. We need at times to train our eyes to see what to be thankful for, and to train our hearts in gratitude. Thankfulness is the cure to anxiety, as St Paul wrote to the Philippians: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4.6). To give thanks releases us from the culture of anxiety that pervades both the world and regrettably even the Church. Anxiety reduces our capacity for joy and our commitment to justice – that is to say, to our commitment to one another. Anxiety eats away at hope and coarsens love. Anxiety undermines community. An anxious person is, paradoxically, not humble, and an anxious Church cannot be truly hospitable. But Southwark can and should continue to be humble and hospitable in good measure. We do not bury our heads in the sand. We face the challenges given to us; but it is for us to be a sign of hope in these anxious and uncertain times: hospitable, joyful, humble, steadfastly committed to justice for all God’s people and ready to stand up and say so. If we continue with thanksgiving, my brothers and sisters, the future will open with hope.
To borrow words from the great King James translation, “the second is like, namely this”. Do not be afraid. This is the angelic greeting, most powerfully at the Annunciation, and it is constant across the pages of Scripture. “Do not be afraid” (Luke 2.30). It was, after all, the charge to the Israelites, the ancient people of God when they stood on the threshold of their new life: “Be strong and bold. Do not fear … because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31.6). And it is the message we need to hear today. The pandemic taught us the power of fear, and we are living with the consequences of what fear makes possible today. But I say again, do not be afraid. Resist the fear that would separate us from neighbour, and as Jesus said, “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10.18). In the Church’s life, we will escape fear of our neighbour if we honour one another. I have consistently asked that we speak well of each other, and several addresses ago I charged that we go further and honour one another across the differences that are God’s gift and blessing. St John wrote, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love” (1 John 4.18). We have been set free from punishment because of Christ’s sacrifice. We have the responsibility to strive for perfection in love. We are charged to live – or at the very least, we should to try to live – fearlessly. If we do, my friends – just as with thankfulness – the future will open to hope.
My beloved brothers and sisters, I am encouraged and hopeful. I am thankful and express heartfelt gratitude to you all, and I am not afraid for the Church, or for this Diocese, or for the future. In less than a month, the wheel will have turned and I shall have handed on the baton – and, dear friends, that is exactly as it should be.
Pray for me, as I shall pray for you and may God bless you all. Amen.
