Fr Luke Miller

Please give me your FIRST preference vote! Archdeacon of London and Recor of S Andrew by the Wardrobe with S Martin Ludgate. The perspectives of a parish priest and a senior staff member. Experienced and effective in General Synod. A track record of making a difference. A traditional catholic known for working with people of other opinions. Committed to the Mission of Christ’s church. Nominated by The Venerable Catherine Pickford & The Rev'd Graham Hunter Effective on the issues that matter Engaged across Synod and the National Church Experienced to get things done Why Synod? In Synod we walk together in response to Christ’s call to serve the Kingdom of God. On the surface Synod is all “issues” and laws and Measures and debates. At its best however, Synod is Christ’s people engaging in a common task of seeking grace to configure our common life to Christ as His Members in the World. Why me? We have big issues to address. I can be effective on the matters that need to be addr...

The Tyndall Sermon for the  Armourers and Braziers Company  p reached at the church of  S Margaret Lothbury on the Feast of S George, 23 April 2024 The Will of Roger Tyndall, Citizen and Armourer, 1589: … and also to procure yearly, on the feast-day of St. George the Martyr if it be not a fish-day, and if it be a fish-day then the next Sunday or Monday after that, a godly sermon be made in the forenoon of the same day in the parish Church of St. Dionise Backchurch [Now in S Margaret Lothbury ] by a godly learned preacher of King's College in Cambridge, [or some other godly preacher] at which sermon the livery of the said company, or the greater part of them, to be present in their liveries, they to give the said preacher for preaching the said sermon 6s. 8d., and also to have him with them from the said Church to their common hall to dinner if he will go. John 1:43-50 John 1:46 Nazareth! Can anything good come from there? “S George for England!” we used to cry, innocent ...

The Protect Duty is a new statutory responsibility which will impact Churches and Places of Worship. Responses to this consultation are needed . The deadline for responses is 18 March 2024 What is all this about? The consultations and parliamentary process for the Bill to implement a Protect Duty (" Martyn's Law ") have made a difference. Changes have been introduced to mitigate the severe unintended consequences of the original proposals. As it was they would have given terrorism a win by making things very difficult for churches and places of worship. I set out why that was here . It is now really important to respond to the consultation on the impact of the proposals as they now stand so that the changes for the better are not lost and so that the Bill can be improved further. Government needs to be clear about the impact of the Duty on Churches and other places of worship The more individual responses there are the better. Please respond yourself, and ask others in ...

God’s Glory revealed in the face of Christ. Sermon for the Sunday before Lent at S Marks Hamilton Terrace. S Mark's church burnt down in 2023 and the community worships for the time being in the church hall. There are two sorts of barbers. Those who are silent and those who talk. Of those who talk there are those who talk and cut and those who only do one thing at a time. If you get one like that then you are sunk. It is going to take all morning just to get a short back and sides. The place I go to used to have a chap there who would talk but not cut, and one who was silent. I would always try and get to the silent one – but I did not usually manage it as the talkative chap loved to talk religion and I was to him as a honey pot is to a bee. I went one 6th August and he told me that today – he was a Greek Cypriot – was a great festival, the feast of the metamorphosis. You don’t have this festival in the West he said, yes we do said I it’s called the Transfiguration no metamorphosi...

Sermon given in the context of the S John Passion at Holy Trinity Sloane Square, Palm Sunday 2023  The S John Passion was written as a liturgy to surround the sermon, and while tonight we perform it as a concert, there is justification for a few remarks about the religious import of what we are listening to. This is a Lutheran work but draws on the tradition of the Catholic Church to read the whole of the passion narrative of Saint John on Good Friday. On Palm Sunday one of the other gospels is read but St John comes round every year on Good Friday. Bach wrote for a Good Friday evening worship in which the passion lifted from Luther’s German translation of the Bible, specifically the 18th and 19th chapters of Saint John’s gospel, sung interspersed with hymns and interpretive Arias, and with a sermon at the heart. As we have heard, it begins with the betrayal and the question which is put to those who come to arrest Jesus but also to the congregation, Wen suchet ihr? whom do ...

During the debate I spoke on the amendment calling for the Pastoral Guidance to be published before the implementation of the Prayers of Love and Faith.  This was my speech. You can watch it here . I welcome this amendment. We were promised in the debate in July that we would see the full guidance before the prayers came into use, and we should take our time to make sure that that is the case. Five issues which specifically affect the clergy. First, whether they use or do not use the prayers, the Pastoral Guidance will provide protection for clergy from challenge. Without it clergy are exposed. Seeing legal advice might give some consolation on this point, but even had that been offered it would be necessary to see the Guidance in full before the prayers are commended. This means secondly that the pastoral guidance fits into the framework of clergy discipline and with the clergy conduct measure passing through Synod we need to be clear abou...

 Sermon on the monring after the Coronation preached at the  Temple Church London . The readings were for the Fourth Sunday after Easter: James 1.17-21 and John 16.5-15

The Lections (from the Authorised Version)  Ezekiel 34.11-16a    1 Peter 2.19-25   John 10.11-16 The Third Sunday after Easter, 23 April 2023  1 Peter 2:25 The shepherd and bishop of your souls Audio here The reason we find it difficult to understand the Bible is dry stone walls. Dry stone walls create enclosed pastures. Despite the enormous work that has gone into building them, dry stone walls are a labour-saving device. Once built, you can release your sheep into the area bounded by the wall, and then let them get on with it. The Shepherd can zoom around on his quad bike visiting and dealing with the issues that the sheep may have, but he does not actually have to stay with them. The biblical Shepherd on the other hand pastured his sheep in the vast areas of the Palestinian wilderness. With relatively small amounts of grass creating fields was a nonstarter. The Shepherd must lead the flock, gathering them in when they stray and taking them from pasture to pas...

 As the conflict in Ukraine began, the teaching of Fr Congreve on war, and the Christian attitude to it takes on an immediate contemporary relevance. The Church Times published an extract from my book . Here is the screen shot, and the article is here . 

  Luke Miller Archdeacon of London Proposed by The Venerable Catherine Pickford Seconded by The Rev’d Nigel Taylor Please do vote as this election is important. I ask you to give me your first or high preference vote. Christ’s Church, founded on Him, is His Bride, but in her human aspect she is ever called by Him to proclaim the Gospel afresh in every generation. The synod we are electing will make fundamental decisions about the Church of England and what it is to be one of her clerics in the next decades. Please give me your first – or high – preference vote as someone who cares about the issues, and who can be effective in contributing positively to the debates. MY BACKGROUND As well as being Archdeacon I am Rector of S Andrew by the Wardrobe in the City of London. I have served in parishes in Watford and Tottenham, where I helped plant a Church and helped set up the church of S Francis at the Engine Room Tottenham Hale . I am a traditionalist catholic, living out the ...

Sermon for SS Cornelius & Cyprian. Preached at the AGM of The Society for the Maintenance of the Faith SMF is a society of the Church of England which holds the patronage in whole or part of over 90 parishes.  John 17: 14 They are not of the world any more than I am of the world… 18 As you sent me into the world, I sent them into the world. SS Cornelius and Cyprian were both martyrs, but thy are linked together because of their correspondence on the nature of the church. Ecclesiology is suddenly the issue of the moment. As someone said to me the other day, how refreshing that people are standing for General Synod on issues other than sex.  The issue our saints were considering was the nature of the primacy of Peter, and the seniority of the Bishop of Rome. Later centuries have viewed the correspondence through the prism of later debates, but it seems - at least to Orthodox theologians - that the African Bishop Cyprian may have begun with a more ‘modern’ and ‘western’ view ...

  A government consultation reveals some significant concerns for churches and places of worship.  As chair of the Faith Sector Panel of the London Resilience Forum I have a lot to do with London’s Faith Communities’ response to terrorism (see here for my role). So it was with interest that I heard that there was to be a consultation on a new “ Protect Duty ” to “make the public safer at publicly accessible locations.” The proposals follow campaigning by Figen Murray, whose son Martyn was tragically killed in the Manchester Arena attack , to introduce “Martyn’s Law” which aims to legislate for a duty on those who own or manage publicly accessible places to take actions to reduce the threat of terrorism. The ‘simple common sense security’ for which Figen Murray calls must be right; but the legislation now being consulted on causes considerable concern. The proposed legislation has very significant unintended consequences for places of worship. In my view it needs to be...