Category Archives: Diocese of BC

The Diocese of B.C. opens a multi-faith chapel in its cathedral

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From here:

The Multi-faith Chapel of Compassion is in the narthex in the south tower of the Cathedral.

Dedicated on 3 April 2012, the Chapel provides a space for people of all faiths to meditate and pray.

Here is a better look at the faiths represented – I was surprised to see Christianity:


I can’t help noticing that the most holy symbol of Jainism – the swastika – has been omitted; maybe next year.

Here is a part of the final blessing from the inaugural service:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Not really, that was too coherent. Here is the final blessing, written just before the liturgist lost himself in gladness having sampled one too many magic mushrooms:

May the deep blessings of earth be with us.
May the fathomless soundings of seas surge in our soul.
May boundless stretches of the universe echo in our depths
to open us to wonder
to strengthen us for love
to humble us with gratitude
that we may find ourselves in one another
that we may lose ourselves in gladness
that we give ourselves to peace.

Diocese of BC church becomes Taoist temple

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The diocese has been busy selling churches in order to replenish its dwindling coffers.

St. John the Divine is now a Taoist temple and in place of the altar is a painted dome representing general Guan-Gong who was deified and is worshipped by those who attend the temple.

So nothing much has changed.

From here:

What was once the St. John the Divine Anglican Church at 3426 Smith Ave. in west Burnaby was a tired-looking, A-framed structure with glass blocks next to the main entrance.

After renovations by the Chinese Taoism Kuan-Kung Association in Canada, which purchased the property in the fall of 2010, the building has been transformed. It retains the original structure but the front wall has been replaced with large panes of glass, with a natural-coloured wooden archway flanking the new entrance.

The property had sat vacant for over a year and the ultra-modern design was chosen after the association spoke with neighbours about what they wanted to see, said project manager Kevin Chen. The association wanted to put its own stamp on the building while recognizing its past as a Christian church by not completely changing the look of the structure.

Inside, where the altar once stood, a full-height elliptical dome has been added and a mural painted on it.

Now known as the Tian-Jin Temple, it is the first Taoist temple in Canada to worship Guan-Gong, an ancient general.

Correction: as a commenter pointed out, the church was in the Diocese of New Westminster, not the Diocese of B.C.

Diocese of BC in financial trouble

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The diocese has $2.2M in accumulated debt, a budget deficit for 2012 of $180,000 and rapidly declining revenue from parishes.

To pay its debt, the diocese is busy selling empty buildings and is not allocating funds to anything other than debt reduction.

The diocese’s financial predicament wasn’t improved by the $315,000 it spent in legal fees to remove the parishioners of the Church of St. Mary of the Incarnation, Metchosin from their building  – that’s all a part of being a missional church, of course.

The diocese is consuming itself simply to stay alive. Still, at least it is paving the way for the rest of the Anglican Church of Canada.

For more details go here.

The Diocese of BC has a solution for church decline

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The problem, it seems, is that people are no longer interested in rationalism, propositional faith, and institutionalism. Unsurprisingly, the solution is more fluidity, flexibility, openness, and diversity, seasoned with listening to the world and “God’s Spirit”, the current Anglican code word for the zeitgeist. In other words, more of what we already know doesn’t work.

It goes without saying that any article seeking to elucidate a remedy for the malaise afflicting the Anglican Church of Canada that resorts to using the word “deep” six times in just over 1000 words, can hardly be expected to be anything other than trite bluster.

Entirely absent from the article is any mention of ensuring that what is being peddled is the Truth, confident in the knowledge that God will use it – not necessarily to fill church buildings, but for saving people and for his glory. The reason is that, by and large, the ACoC, has lost interest in proclaiming what is true, preferring instead to spout what is popular. What else can the church do since it no longer believes that people need eternal salvation or that God actually acts in our universe: its efforts are confined to building Utopia Now without God’s participation.

Perhaps the real answer is that the Anglican Church in the West has had its day, and God’s plan is for it to fade quietly away to be replaced by the more robust expressions of Anglican Christianity found in Africa. That won’t do much for clergy pensions, of course.

Read it all here (page 7)

8. In order for us to cooperate with the work of God’s Spirit, we must loosen our grip. If the church wants to move forward in the current environment, we can allow no place for stultifying rigid hierarchy or  oppressive control. Clergy must learn to let go. We need to relax our structures, allow for fluidity, flexibility, openness, and diversity.

9. Letting go means being willing to accept that certain things may need to die. There are some institutional expressions of faith that are simply no longer sustainable. Certain things must be left undone in order to create space for new things to arise. For a time this may look messy. It may seem like failure. But the only failure is demanding that what has been in the past must continue to bein the future. Such a demand makes us unable to respond to the call of God’s Spirit blowing through the church today.

10. A church that has the potential to appeal beyond the narrow confines of churchland, will be driven by a vision that reduces division and emphasizes the oneness of all creation and of the human community. We are too familiar with the devastation of division in our midst. We know too well the impact of dissension and discord. The world is looking for places where the realities of deep connection are honoured and practiced. When churches quarrel and separate, they erect impenetrable obstacles to being able to speak in any meaningful way to the world beyond the church. We must model profound respect for all people. We must learn to pay careful attention to the world and to listen carefully for God’s Spirit at work in all peoples’ lives. Good speaking always starts from good listening.

11. We need to listen to the world outside the church and find ways to make church more accessible to that world. The world will never listen to an arrogant voice that pronounces from a position of power and privilege. The world will listen only to the authentic voice that speaks from a place of deep sensitivity and openness to the real wisdom that is already present in the hearts of people who do not find a place in the church.

Waking up the latent ability in Anglicans

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Rev. Derek Dunwoody, a retired Anglican priest from Calgary, has the answer for all that ails the Anglican Church of Canada: toss out the “restrictive” historic creeds which represented a “doctrine controlled corporation with a top-down management style in which the expression of compassion was an uncommon experience” and replace them with what Jesus was really getting at. You must:

Wake up the latent ability within you to live into the awareness of the presence of the Compassionate Holy Mystery in your hearts and let it flow out from you into all of humanity.

The same Rev. Dunwoody, in April 2010, wrote that original sin is an outdated concept and that the God of the Bible is “capricious, petty and easily offended”.

If you want to see if the article awakens anything within you other than a headache and mild nausea, Dunwoody’s spiritualised Anthony Robbins formula for successful churches is here on page 7.

 

Why are churches really being closed in the Diocese of BC?

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The reason the Anglican Church of Canada is coming apart at the seams is that it still adheres (rather tenuously, I suspect) to the historic doctrine of original sin – so says Rev. Derek Dunwoody in the august organ (page 8 ) of the Diocese of BC:

It is obvious that the majority of Canadians have long ago given up buying into the mindset required by the concept of Original Sin. So, I would add, have many if not most of the remaining members of the Diocese of British Columbia. We have outgrown our allegiance to this capricious, petty and easily offended God. The leadership of the diocese needs to recognize this fact and cease to blast us with a stentorian old paradigm style of evangelistic rhetoric.

So there you have it: the Diocese of BC should toss out original sin, then we don’t need salvation or atonement or Jesus dying on the cross or Jesus’ resurrection or churches in which to worship him. We might as well close all the churches – British Columbia: the first sin-free province in Canada.

Another vapid Anglican mantra: Change is Good!

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A couple of years ago I was walking barefoot around the house when, on my left foot,  I caught the space between the little toe and the toe next to it on the edge of a door. It hurt a bit; I looked down and couldn’t help noticing that my little toe was standing out at a 90 degree angle to it’s normal resting position. When my wife told me I would have to have something done about it, I told her, “not to worry, I’ll cut a hole in all my shoes and let the toe poke out the side. After all, Change is Good!™” I ended up opting for the same old familiar, dull toe angle that my wife was used to; the first thing the doctor said to me when he looked at it was “I bet you don’t want me to touch that”. I’ll spare you what happened next.

Because of financial embarrassment, the Diocese of BC is busy closing churches. Not to worry; as the editor of the Diocesan Post notes (page 5), Change is Good™:

Change really is GOOD.

The Diocese is undergoing a transition and while it is hard, painful for some, a relief for others, it is changing none-the-less. And you, we, as people of Christ, either need to get on board or get off.

Of course, sometimes change is good; that’s why so many parishes have chosen get off the Anglican Church of Canada and realign with vast majority of orthodox Anglicans.

The Disintegration of the Diocese of BC

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From the Bishop James Cowan’s charge to synod.

Woodpeckers are eating the cathedral:

For a variety of reasons, the initial design of the East End was modified. As a result, leakage has been a major problem in the East End ever since its completion. As well, some of the materials used for construction of the exterior east wall and transept towers have a lifespan of no more than twenty-five years. While that time is almost up, in fact the lifespan of that material has been considerably lessened, because woodpeckers seem to like it, and the repair of bird holes in the east nave wall and the transept towers has been an almost annual and costly event.

Even though many parishes will be closed, the cathedral will be fixed because it is – well, more important:

It may seem odd that in the midst of budgetary concerns, diocesan staff downsizing, and proposals about the disestablishment of parishes and the regrouping of parishes, there should be thought given to further development of the Cathedral.

Diocesan staff will be laid off:

There will have to be a major downsizing and re-alignment of the Diocesan Staff, and to that end I have consulted with the Officers of Synod, seeking their advice about what that downsizing and realignment might look like. The downsizing of Staff will take place regardless of the decisions which will be made during our consideration of the notices of motion which are before us from the Diocesan Transformation Team.

Parishes will be closed; parishioners will be angry:

I am aware of the anger that confronts us as these recommendations come before us for decision. For many years the buildings in which we worship and through which we minister have been a focus of that ministry and worship.

And the most interesting part: whole dioceses are candidates for closure:

Over the past thirty years, it has been suggested that there are too many Dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada. We have talked about the extensive territory which exists in Canada and the reality of the great distances which separate the communities in which Anglican mission exists. Vast territories and a commitment to ministry in places where there are small numbers have been cited as reasons to let the status quo remain unchanged. The difficulty in bringing about change to the civil legislation which established most if not all of our Dioceses is also cited as reason to do nothing. And, as we continue to maintain our present structures the programmatic support which might be used to extend the proclamation of the Gospel is reduced, and reduced, and reduced.

Somewhere, somehow, this has to end.

The Diocese of Quebec is close to collapse; the Dioceses of Montreal and Toronto are in financial difficulty. So is the Diocese of Niagara, whose bishop has opined that the ideal size for a diocese is 35 parishes – Niagara currently has over 100 parishes.

Cowan seems to recognise that doing more of the same is not going to work:

A variety of sources have defined insanity as just that, doing the same thing while expecting different results. It did not work, it will not work, and the history of our denomination and of the Christian Church both here and in the rest of Canada over the past forty years, shows that working harder at doing the same things does not work.

And yet, although many of the ACoC bishops are feverishly rearranging Anglican trappings in things like Fresh Expressions, doctrinally they are continuing  to plod resolutely down the same road of theological liberalism, and that is – insane.

Diocese of BC: building ambivalence

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Mary Ruth Snyder, the editor of the Diocese of BC’s newspaper, the Diocesan Post is all for sloughing off church buildings in the interest of following Jesus:

Jesus never had a building, that is about as outside as you can get and he is our example, is he not? Let’s show God and Jesus that we have actually been paying attention to their words and their actions and follow the example set by the Son of God.

Let go … and let God.
Let go of the buildings
Let go of the books
Let go of our fears
Let go of our comfort
Let go of our humanistic expectations
Just let go, get outside the lines and see what happens!

Perhaps she didn’t consult the diocese’s bishop, James Cowan before expressing such enthusiasm for a cavalier abandoning of buildings. He seems pretty determined to hang on to them:

Victoria – The Anglican Diocese of British Columbia (Vancouver Island & the Gulf Islands) has asserted its ownership of buildings at 4125 Metchosin Road, in the District of Metchosin, by securing the property with a change of locks and the installation of a monitored alarm system. The property is known as St. Mary of the Incarnation Anglican Church.

The Bishop’s need to “protect and preserve” people and property is a result of the Episcopal and the synodical make-up of Anglicanism in Canada.

The truth of the matter is, when the diocese wants to close down a church in order to sell it, parishioners are reminded that “Jesus never had a building”; when a parish joins ANiC, Cowan feels a sudden need to preserve the “property of the institution in my care”.

At least one thing is consistent in the ACoC: the application of the ethics of self-interest.

Diocese of BC makes “visionary” changes; closes 13 churches

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The diocese of BC’s Diocesan Transformation Team (DTT) has been at work. This report is at pains to point out that the diocese is not “closing parishes in order to prop up a dying institution or to delay its inevitable collapse”. That is the last thing on Bishop Cowan’s mind: apparently, it’s all about mission, about being “a people on a journey” and, no, not people on a journey to oblivion.

What is this mission? It’s hard to say for sure, but In October last year Cowan, in a CBC interview, declared that he wants to “forge a deeper connection with the culture and engage in more “social justice” and ”spirituality”; in December last year he reversed a policy that prohibits clergy in same-gender relationships from serving in the diocese. It sounds as if the mission is more of the same pseudo-Christian clap-trap that has brought the diocese to where it is today.

On the other hand, Cowan in a recent edition of the diocesan paper said:

We can reduce, reduce, reduce. We can restructure, redefine and try to work smarter. These we must do. But unless we couple reduction and restructuring with spiritual renewal and the reclamation of those aspects of faith which are both central and essential to Christianity the downward trends of Anglican ‘religion’ on these islands will continue.

If, by “spiritual renewal and the reclamation of those aspects of faith which are both central and essential to Christianity” he means what J. I. Packer would mean if  he said it, then perhaps there is some hope for the diocese; I suspect he doesn’t, though. If he did, a letter like this would never have been written:

I believe the Diocese of British Columbia has not dealt with the cause of division in this diocese. This avoidance has caused the Diocese to look like it cares more for buildings than it does for its people, who are so discontented with the situation in the ACoC that they are choosing to leave it. Rather than deal with the theological concerns of conservative Anglicans, the Diocese is more than willing to allow conservatives to “vote with their feet.” Of 395 people on the roll of St Matthias, only 24 (as recorded at the subsequent St Matthias Vestry) remained in the ACoC following the vote to join the Anglican Network in Canada. Of those who voted, 94.5% elected to rejoin the worldwide Anglican Communion, from whom we had been cut off by the actions of the ACoC, which led 22 Provinces to declare broken and impaired communion with the ACoC.

This would not have happened:

Parishioners of St Mary of the Incarnation (Metchosin) in Victoria were locked out of their church by Bishop James Cowan of the Diocese of British Columbia on April 4th. A court ordered the Diocese to return the church building to the parishioners the following day and ordered the parties to return to court before May 3 to consider a longer interim order.

And neither would this:

Today, Thursday February 26th, 2009, I accepted on behalf of the Bishop the following resignations:

♦ The Reverend Canon Ronald Corcoran, as Rector of St. Matthias, Victoria, and as a Diocesan Canon and priest of the Diocese of British Columbia.

♦ The Reverend Rodney May as Priest Associate of St. Matthias, Victoria and priest of the Diocese of British Columbia.

♦ The Reverend Glenn Sim as priest of the Diocese of British Columbia. As well, I have withdrawn the Permission to Officiate of the Reverend Michael Pountney, a retired priest of the Diocese of Toronto living in Victoria. All four have indicated that they could no longer give their obedience to the authority over them, namely, the Bishop of British Columbia. They have stated their intention to receive licenses from Donald Harvey and the Anglican Network in Canada. While they have said that their resignations became effective on March 8th, 2009, I have exercised the Bishop’s prerogatives as bishop and employer to withdraw Licences and Permissions to Officiate effective today, with payout of compensation due. The clergy have all been informed that they must depart from the premises of St. Matthias, and may only return with the permission of the Bishop or his designate

So what is so important that James Cowan is desperate enough to use the language of evangelicals? The DDT report has the answer: “The DTT concluded: If it is to survive, the Diocese is going to look different.”

The diocese isn’t restructuring to win souls for Christ, it is restructuring to survive.