Cytûn - the next chapter

Revd Siôn Brynach, Chief Executive of Cytûn : Churches Together in Wales looks back over his first few months in post and some key questions for the future of the ecumenical movement in Wales.

The period since my first day in the job at the beginning of April has been an exciting time for Cytûn: Churches Together in Wales. The arrival of any new Chief Executive is a period of resetting and reorganising especially after Canon Aled Edwards had been in the job for so long - nearly fifteen years. Inevitably therefore, the priorities of the organisation had to be considered, and that is not easy. Cytûn is an interesting organisation since it is the Trustees in consultation with the nation’s church leaders who decide the strategic direction of the organisation. This is why I have prioritised two things.

The first was asking existential questions about the future of Cytûn and the ecumenical movement in Wales - and to be given the opportunity to do this thanks to an invitation to give the Rev Lloyd Jones memorial lecture in the Church of Saint Beuno in Clynnog Fawr during the National Eisteddfod.

In that lecture, Climbing the second mountain: a future for ecumenism in Wales? I outlined some of the things that had struck me during my first months in the job, and especially including some of the speeches and addresses I had heard during that period. And resulting from these to ask some of the key questions for Cytûn and the ecumenical movement. I have spent a great deal of my career working in the field of communications and, invariably , the key questions for me, nearly every time, are who, what, why, when, where and how, and these are the questions for me that the Trustees of Cytûn, in consultation with the church leaders in Wales, must deal with.

Secondly - directly deriving from the first - a joint meeting was arranged for the Welsh church leaders for the first time in many years, on October 19th. This was remarkably constructive and a report is in the process of being prepared at the moment, to be published on the Cytûn website before Christmas.

As result of this report, the Cytûn Trustees can consider the future of ecumenism in Wales. After all it is not a choice but rather a duty to follow Jesus’ instruction to his followers on the eve of his crucifixion “to be one as we are one” (John 17)