A gloomy picture is emerging from the Diocese of Huron: there are too many buildings, too few people and too many congregations that cannot afford to pay for their priest or maintain their buildings.
Bishop Linda Nicholls, recently imported from the Diocese of Toronto, has inherited the mess and will be encouraging parishes to start “the difficult conversations themselves – at least initially”. Or else.
The blame for all this is being placed on “social transformation”; nothing whatever to do with replacing the Gospel with leftist political agitation laced with religionless spirituality.
Nicholls is doing her best to be relevant to the culture, though – some might say to the extent of being subsumed in it. Here she is at her arrival in the diocese marching under a brolly across a rainbow coloured cross-walk, a tribute to London’s annual gay pride cavorting. If that doesn’t pull them in and reverse the decline, nothing will.
Anglicanism — God can MAGA. Do it, Lord!
Maybe if they were actually promoting Bible-believing Christianity, more people would want to join them.
Don’t curse the darkness, turn on the light. Perhaps, instead of covering stories of declining congregations, share with us news about growing Anglican congregations in North America. News like that will be more encouraging to most fellow Anglicans.
The only way for the LIGHT to be turned on within the ACoC is for the dismissal of the apostates including the Primate and other so-called bishops that have and continue to lead persons within the parishes from the worship of our Lord and Jesus Christ to the worship of the god of political correctness — more correctly called political expediency.
I don’t see the decline and collapse of the Anglican Church of Canada as a source of gloom, but rather of warning and a demonstration of what not to do.
The organisation has ceased to proclaim anything resembling the gospel of Jesus Christ. Instead they offer a poisoned substitute and so deceive people, who think they are receiving something historic and true, when it is nothing but a cheap imitation in an expensive dress.
Christ died. Two words that roll so carelessly from too many people’s minds. But he died to give the gospel power and to give people hope of salvation from everlasting damnation. The false shepherds in the CoC care not one whit about the agony of God in the Flesh on the cross, and dare to promote the very thing he suffered to save people from.
Their actions exceed that of Judas, for even Judas lacked hindsight and never was able to look back and see the accomplished resurrection. These people receive the completed testament, and despise it.
At the same time they proclaim themselves representatives of that same Christ while they empty his cross of power, and sell him again for their own careers and their own standing among a corrupt generation.
But worse, they sanctimoniously clothe themselves in moral superiority and smug superciliousness that cannot be corrected even by the voice of God in his inspired word.
As St. Jude said, they are clouds without water. They are wandering stars for whom the blackest darkness is reserved forever. Not only have they damned themselves, but they have taken hundreds of souls with them. As Christ said to the Pharisees, they are not entering in themselves, and they have shut up the kingdom of heaven from those who were entering in.
To see the steady decline of this damnation factory is sad only in the sense of comparison between the present ruin and the church as it once was. But there is nothing lamentable about a false, pagan, God-dishonouring, heretical, cruel and faithless organisation going down the proverbial sink hole – not, at least, any more lamentable than the news of cigarette companies going bust.
We have too much depressing news already. Can we have more good news about the growing congregations of Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), or news about the Global South churches, or events about Global Anglican Future Conferences (GAFCON)?
You are absolutely correct. We are members of Saint Matthews Anglican Church, Abbotsford, who had our property legally stolen by the Diocese of New Westminster and are part of ANIC. Our members are very committed Christians and our membership continues to grow. Unless the ACoC returns to the Gospel it will continue to decline and descend into the pit of apostasy.