ACoC revenue is expected to decline by around $200,000 per year, diocesan contributions to the national church are falling and the number of active parishioners is in free-fall.
Most businesses in this situation would have fired their executives long ago but, alas, the number of bishops in the ACoC seems inversely proportional to the number of lay people.
The situation is so desperate that radical solutions are being explored. So radical that, in order not to unsettle the staff, meetings will be held behind closed doors. What could be that unsettling?
Reintroducing Christianity to the church would certainly qualify but that is as unlikely as firing all the bishops. More probably, there will be staff cut-backs, diocesan mergers, church buildings sold and a further combining with the ACoC’s partner in self-inflicted extinction, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
Read all about it here:
He recommends that conversations about the future of the church be convened around the theming of the five “transformational commitments” in the church’s latest strategic plan. Doing so, he says, “could be an instrument to aid in the renewal and rejuvenation of the General Synod and perhaps begin a process of devolving some powers and responsibilities to provinces and dioceses.”
The document ends with five “intentionally provocative statements,” which assert that “generally, General Synod’s adherence to strategic planning must be deemed a failure” and that this planning has not always recognized General Synod’s role as the “weaker partner in a strong alliance of dioceses,” which exercise more power in funding and implementing goals. It notes the church’s “precipitous” decline in attendance and General Synod’s history of strategic plans that have attempted to reverse this without demonstrable results. The last of these statements concludes by asking “Is it time to de-acquisition and downsize some structures to enable new possibilities to emerge? Is this the framing that should guide current planning?”
Archdeacon Tanya Phibbs, deputy prolocutor of General Synod, brought a motion that only council members and Archbishop Anne Germond, soon to be acting Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, remain for the session. It was necessary for CoGS to meet behind closed doors, she said, to ensure its members were able to freely share ideas, hopes, fears and dreams for the church’s future which may be provocative. Phibbs also said some of the content of the discussion might be unsettling to the staff as it directly affected them. It might be difficult for members of CoGS to discuss some of the options before them knowing staff were in the room, she said.
Both Luther and Cranmer would be turning in their graves if they were in them.
Wonderful history, healthy ethnic connections, beautiful hymnody, the finest of liturgy, and above all commitment to credal orthodoxy, our Church had everything. It was a bishop or bishops who chose to throw all of this away and teach falsehoods instead.
How ironical that it has finished up with just a handful of bishops with as good a theological education as two lay people, my dear late husband and me. We passed through a so-called study process over 30 years ago in our Diocese: it was an insult.
“Time Will Tell”
&
“The Process Of The Burden Of Proof” mentioned in Court
David, I think you meant to write “combining” not “combing”.
I think you’re right. Corrected now.
I wish I still had hair that needed combining.
“Lord, we pray for your church, fallen. Give it a headbonk and restore it we pray, Amen.”
“de-acquisition”……ok ….
With Bishops like that, who needs enemies?
It’s a full calendar year since I wrote to my bishop as follows:–
GIFT OF BOOKS
These come with my prayers and every good wish. All have emerged one way or another out of our parochial life at Holy Trinity Vancouver. Please of course ignore the price-labels. No need to acknowledge, as they will be hand-delivered.
I welcome any personal contact. I supply no phone no. since I no longer hear well on the phone.
“God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” [Hudson Taylor]
I supplied ample means of his communicating with me, or discussing what is in those books.
All are titles kindly posted here by David our host.
One reason why our bishops don’t seem to grow in their grasp of the Faith is that there is apparently not a one of them that reads anything at an adult Christian level, however politely and respectfully it is offered to them. Far back they got a smattering at some institution or other, though nothing like a British theological first degree, let alone a doctorate; but they haven’t moved since then. So they parrot fashionable platitudes.
I am reminded of Hudson Taylor’s remark, ‘God’s work, done in God’s way, will never lack for God’s supply’. I would add, God’s supply in fiscal and human resources.
We need to forget about, ‘five ‘transformational commitments”, and ‘intentionally provocative statements’. The cognitive dissonance is deafening. We need to ask two simple questions: What does God’s work look like?, and How do we implement it.
I have lost hope that the ACoC leadership have the ability to answer these very Biblical and straightforward questions.
It probably won’t matter much to those of us who have left the ACoC, or are in the process of leaving, as we have found God moving in other places.
“But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to The Ministry of The WORD…And The WORD of GOD increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the Priests were obedient to the faith.” + Acts chapter 6. Amen.
In our world of darkness, injustice, pain and suffering, declining church membership and financial resources can be a very humbling experience.
In Vancouver 12% attend the Roman Catholic Mass; Furthermore, Families would have picnics in Graveyards in order to be closer to persons closer to God than persons on earth. Out of that evolved parks instead where family gatherings are there instead to eat. Churches were the center of society with the best artwork coming in there and the Church Halls is where to gather. Out the Church Halls came the Community Centers.
#1 Graveyards to Parks
#2 Church Halls to Community Centers
#3 Prayer & Bible Readings were in Public Schools now stopped:
-Young Life Christian Fellowship did visit schools
-Chinese Christian Fellowship was allowed in Kitsilano High School in Vancouver but not Young Life they were allowed leaned to go instead
The Church is no longer the Center Of Society that it once was.
But
‘The Church is -within you!’
When I walk outside of Roman Catholic Mass this morning at St Patrick’s on Main & E12th feels like I’m in a different world from where I just came from can really feel a big difference.
Statement:
‘I’m an atheist’
‘I’m an agnostic’
‘I’m spiritual’
But
“Christ is -within me”
Pingback: Hubris month is upon us | Anglican Samizdat