Bishop Rob Gillion
Last Thursday the Club was honoured to be addressed by his Grace Bishop Rob Gillion, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of the Riverina. Prior to being consecrated and installed in 2014, Bishop Rob was the Rector at Holy Trinity in Upper Chelsea in England. It was a condition precedent of his acceptance of the ministry that he be elected unanimously (a condition imposed by his wife Jeanine). The vote was in fact unanimous (something that has not happened in Australia before) and here they are. Bishop Rob admits to there being a little bit of a culture shock; however he notes that Australia is a good place to be a Bishop as there is no chance of being grand or up yourself.
Bishop Rob began life as an actor. He has made great use of the skills that he honed while treading the boards in his ministry. Acting requires you to step into the shoes of a character, to live the experience of that character. These empathetic skills have proved invaluable to Bishop Rob in his ministry. Bishop Rob has even gone as far as spending a week in a maximum security prison in Hong Kong to live the experience of the prisoners to whom he was chaplain.
The Anglican Diocese of the Riverina covers 37% of the State of New South Wales. It incorporates 23 Parishes and stretches from The Rock and Corowa in the east to Broken Hill and White Cliffs in the west. During his first year Bishop Rob covered 100,000 kilometres visiting each parish. Bishop Rob sees the greatest challenges facing those within his Diocese as isolation, loneliness and nature (fire, floods, plague etc). However Bishop Rob is inspired by the people that he has meet in his travels and sees hospitality as the true gift of the outback.
Bishop Rob left us with two pearls of wisdom. Firstly "God does not expect us to be perfect, just excellent." Secondly, "Every day is a gift from God; the way we live it is our gift to Him."
Bishop Rob was thanked on behalf of the Club by Brian Munro.