Meanwhile staff affected in this country, including regional co-ordinators, face difficult times. Words such as redundancy do not fit comfortably in the vocabulary of mission. People committed to the outworking of God's call on their own lives and who are involved in calling others to follow Christ in mission will need our prayers as they struggle to find ways of expressing, to themselves and to others, what is a harsh reality.

It is incumbent on the rest of us not to expect them to spiritualise this too much. 'God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year' is a phrase in a great hymn. It does not, perhaps, fall so easily from the lips of those who face immediate financial pressure, and real uncertainty about work, and housing.

Neither are the effects limited to a few headline casualties. Struggles to make ends meet will be felt by Christians as much as anyone else. Ten or more years of rising prosperity in this country has coincided with an explosion in new worship material and technology, which has brought freshness to many a Baptist service.

Yet it is to be hoped that the first has not so affected the second that we find ourselves with few liturgical resources to help us reflect on our experience and express our faith in God, now that 'give us this day our daily bread' begins to take on new force.

As the Lambeth conference gets under way, the Church of England's problems, which have been aired widely across the media (including in this paper) for several weeks, gain new momentum over the issue of the ordination of Bishop Gene Robinson. One reflection appropriate in a denominational newspaper might be how much all of this is affected by the attention of the press and other media. There was something particularly unedifying when a TV camera turned its focus on a 'traditionalist' Anglican coming out of last week's York Synod meeting who was clearly close to tears, and a reporter asked the unfortunate man, 'what are you going to do?'

What anyone will do at and after Lambeth about the issue of the ordination of a gay bishop is not clear at this juncture. At which point it were well to recognise that the instinct to 'do' or to find out what 'should be done' is one shared by more than just the agents of the media. Any pastor, on hearing the news of a sudden tragedy in the life of someone in her church, will know the strong sense of helplessness when there's nothing to be done at all - except, just to be there.

At the heart of the gay bishop issue, and more widely the relationship between homosexual people and the Christian churches, is identity.

Granted, among some there is a sense of dread at what, they imagine, homosexuals actually do, but reflect for a moment on what is really going on when we see an ordinary-looking man dressed in a purple clerical shirt, talking exactly the same language as his colleagues about the love of God and the mission of the Church. It is his identity as a self-confessed gay man that is problematic. We are confronted with something about ourselves when we see someone who looks as we look and believes what we believe yet over whom there hangs a question about shared identity.

Because of which we can be grateful both to the Anglican Communion and to the media and, perhaps most of all, to Bishop Gene Robinson. To the Anglican Communion for holding such issues up to the light of scrutiny in a way more sectarian Christian groups cannot - dare not. To the media for providing images that confront us, and for asking the questions that shame us all - 'what are you going to do?' - and to the good, saved, damned, Bishop for having the bravery to put himself at the centre of all this.

Later there may be time for action - for now, as after the York Synod, it is only a time for prayer, and reflection on just one more in a seemingly endless succession of challenges to our identity - our being - as members of the Body of Christ.