Not even sitting in a sacred circle could console members of the Council of General Synod as they pondered their growing deficit: there was even talk of layoffs. Compassionate layoffs. A layoff that is “done with compassion, understanding, kindness and thankfulness” is one where the person being laid off has the compassion not to swear at his superior, the understanding that there is nothing he can do, the kindness not to sue the church for wrongful dismissal and the thankfulness that his impending unemployment is contributing to the financial well-being of his former employer.
Luckily for CoGS the Rev. Dr. Christopher Duraisingh, professor at Episcopal Divinity School, was on hand to explain that:
Jesus’s baptism was not baptism for forgiveness of sins, but an identity marker as being enlisted in the kingdom of God’s movement. We’ve turned baptism into sin-management rite. We need to put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism.
Perhaps it’s my not being a Rev. Dr. professor that prevents from me seeing this as anything other than a restatement of Pelagianism – the heresy that Man is born without original sin. To “put our baptism in line with Jesus’s baptism”, we would have to be sinless as he was.
Duraisingh went on to opine that “COGS must be like a midwife as this movement is born”. I fear that the only movement being born in the Anglican Church of Canada, is one that bears less resemblance to a movement of the Spirit than it does to a movement of the bowels.
You’d reckon that if there were to be retrenchments of clergy, they’d start with the bishops and work their way down. Or at least cut back on the “back office” who aren’t actually spreading the Gospel.
Or doesn’t the ACoC believe in the Gospel these days?
Well the stopped selling Bibles and stuff the modern clergy shouldn’t be allowed to read.
The ACoC is so set on destruction that it can’t even grasp its own death throes.
The prophet Amos, who preached about 750 BC, said:
“I smote you with blight and mildew;
I laid waste your gardens and your vineyards;
your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
yet you did not return to me” says the LORD (Amos 4.9)
Amos has five such warnings (4.6 to 4.12). He ends with this onimous climax:
“Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”
I think the apocolypical rhetoric is a bit much. It is reasonable to criticize the ACC for poor planning, over-extending its ministry tenticles and not cutltivating stewardship education, but to suggest the revenue shortfall is due to God’s wrath is a bit over-the-top and is a far too simplistic explanation for what ails the ACC.
The ACC has known for years that they could expect declining revnues from the dioceses. Perhaps a new funding model is required. Perhaps General Synod needs to purge itself of its ministry priorities.
On the other hand, I don’t think it is helpful that Dennis Drainville get caught up in utopia dream language that the simple solution is to enbrace mission. Coming from an NDP hag like himself, it only reinforces the fact that the church is rife with socialists who have no mind for the realities of life.
Well said Eph. Unfortunately though the financial landscape is a reflection of the spiritual landscape in the ACoC. From the Nov. 17 COGS highlights:
Resolved that MSCC board of directors authorize the transfer to General Synod from its undesignated reserves, sufficient funds to cover the operating deficit of General Synod for 2012 and 2013 [a total of approximately $800,000 of $1.3 million in this reserve]
Eph
The ACoC has set itself up against 2000 years of church tradition and explicit biblical passages as the arbiter of God’s intentions.
The result doesn’t have to be apocalyptic, just one of God’s sad withdrawal.
Jim,
Fair enough. But it needs to be said that in the Diocese of Toronto we save a plethora of Ecclesiologies, Christologies, Dogmas and Divisions. We have leftist nut-bars and right-wing quacks. Yet through it all many churches survive and thrive despite their differences.
Redeemer and St. Paul’s – both on Bloor Street and less than a cigarette smoke length apart. Both are thriving, growing, evangelising – yet never the two shall meet.
Somehow in their deep divisions they still find a common heritage and existence within the ACC. Nothing apocalytic here.
Eph
May you continue to take solace in the trajectory of your church.
A visit with my children and local friends to Christ the Redeemer one Easter service was instrumental in my finding God. 🙂
Vincent
Praise God! May He lead you in His ways.