"The Church has the impossible task of being an organisation, with an unavoidable power structure, that exists to preserve the memory of one whose mission was to oppose the processes and sacrifices of power, because they are almost always exercised at the cost of the individual," the Most Rev Richard Holloway, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, said. Bishop Holloway was preaching in St. Andrew's Cathedral Aberdeen, at the Opening Service for the 11th Meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council.

Bishop Holloway delivered a challenge to both literalist biblical interpretation and the institutional church. He stressed that "if we want to understand the bible properly, we have to read it in its own literary convention." In other words, Scripture can not be taken literally and/or divorced from the context in which it was written. Rather the truth of the Gospel can only be known through the life and interpretation of the ongoing body of Christ. Bishop Holloway thus affirmed that "it has been through the Church that the meaning and message of Jesus has been shared with the world."

Bishop Holloway, however, was not sanguine about the role of the Church in demonstrating the meaning and message of Jesus. He continued that "there is something about Jesus and organized institutions that do not marry well." The Bishop said that the truth that inspires the Church "cannot be perfectly routinised or institutionalized, so the very process that gives (institutions) continuing life also begins to kill them." Critiquing clericalism, he emphasized "that the people who are brought in to supervise the routine are usually more interested in the process than in the purpose or vision. People like us who get ordained become fascinated with the process. We get into church and its structures rather than what it is meant to serve."

What the Church is meant to serve, according to Bishop Holloway, were the individuals for whom Jesus lived and died, "those who had been beaten up by the world's power systems, those outside the great institutional enclosures". "He always went after the lost . . . the broken ones, the excluded ones, the lost sheep," "We are supposed to express that same unconditionality and acceptance of all; while knowing that the system we have invented to do the job is not up to it, because it is run by us and not by Jesus." Bishop Holloway maintained, however, that "the truth of God's unconditional love does get through the Church, in spite of its own compromising timidity." So, he concluded, Jesus, "will be encountered in our meetings as the Anglican Consultative Council this week, as we struggle to be faithful to the mind of Christ, knowing full well that we all encounter it in different ways. He will be mysteriously present as we struggle in our weakness and fallibility to respond to the challenge of his burning love."

The packed congregation echoed his words when they sang "Love that binds us all together be upon the Church outpoured; shame our pride and quell our factions, smite them with your Spirit's sword; till the world, our love beholding, claims your power and calls you Lord."

The impressive service with its solemn pageantry was held in historic Aberdeen, which has its own place in Anglican history. It was where Samuel Seabury was consecrated bishop in 1794 for the emerging Episcopal Church in the United States, marking the advent of the modern worldwide Anglican Communion.

Representatives of the University, churches and schools, together with the Lord Provost of Aberdeen and political and City Councilors joined the Episcopal Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney in greeting the members of the Anglican Consultative Council, who represent the provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The procession was led through the streets of Aberdeen into the Cathedral by the Loretto School Pipers and during the service ACC members were welcomed in Gaelic, Old Scots and English languages.

After the Eucharist, at which the Archbishop of Canterbury was the celebrant, ACC members enjoyed the splendid hospitality of the Lord Provost Margaret Smith at a reception and dinner in the Town Hall. She was warmly thanked on their behalf by Archbishop Carey and Bishop Simon Chiwanga, the Chairman of the ACC.