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.

The National Worship Conference of the Anglican Church of Canada is meeting in Regina this summer. It “will examine how church liturgy and worship practices can better reflect the diversity of modern congregations”.

The aim of the conference is to extirpate “expressions of empire” from liturgy in order to “decolonize“ it. As things stand, we are “excluding voices from the margins”.

We have to “begin by listening to the land, hearing the ancient voices of creation that hold our narratives.”

I’m not sure what the “voices from the margins” or the “voices of creation” are, although I’ve heard rumours that many clergy are hearing voices when they forget to take their pills.

Here is a radical idea: instead of straining to hear the voices of creation, try reading the Bible to see what God has to say.

You can register for the conference at the website.

All are welcome except orthodox Christians.

More here:

Berringer said she expected the subject matter of this year’s conference to be sensitive and controversial. The event’s website describes its purpose as exploring what it means to decolonize expressions of worship in the Anglican and Lutheran churches. Berringer says it’s about identifying the ways in which Anglicans and Lutherans from outside European-derived culture don’t see themselves reflected in the churches’ worship, and about finding ways to make it their own.

The word “decolonize” has so many disparate meanings to people according to their backgrounds and preconceived ideas, she says, that the conference may not get beyond negotiating a shared understanding of what the churches need to do to make themselves more inclusive. But even if that means having some difficult and uncomfortable conversations, she says it’s worth doing.

“I fully expect people to attend this conference and have pushback on everything from the title, to the description, to who we’ve included as far as workshop leaders,” she says. “We do expect people to be uncomfortable, probably. We’re providing prayer support, we’ve got chaplains ready … It’s human nature to feel defensive when the perception is ‘what you’re doing isn’t working, we’ve got to change it and make it better.’”

Numerically, of course, not theologically; theologically, it has nowhere left to go – surely.

In 2017, the ACoC published these numbers, which led statistics officer Rev Dr. Neil Elliot to predict extinction by 2040:

As of 2022, the number looked like this:

There has been a 40% decrease in average Sunday attendance since 2001, with a  accelerated decline of 26% between 2019 and 2022. The good news is funerals have not declined.

Read more about it here:

Sharp drop during pandemic: stats officer

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a significant decline in church attendance, marking a “radical discontinuity” even with previous downward trends, the Anglican Church of Canada’s statistics officer says.

Canon Neil Elliot presented data from 2022 diocesan returns in a January report sent to bishops and diocesan executive officers based on parish statistics. The statistics officer said he did not collect numbers in 2020 and 2021 since COVID-19 shut down churches for much of that time.

The figures show a decline on almost all fronts from 2019 to 2022, including a 12 per cent decrease in the total number on parish rolls, 26 per cent decrease in average Sunday attendance, and 17 per cent decrease in regular identifiable givers. The biggest drops came in the number of people attending services on major holy days: a 45 per cent decline in Easter attendance, 37 per cent for Pentecost and 47 per cent for Christmas.

Declines were also seen in the number of pastoral services, with 25 per cent fewer baptisms, 13 per cent fewer confirmations and 10 per cent fewer marriages—the only exception being funerals, which saw a very small increase.

“Attendance has been hit,” Elliot said. “I think that’s a really clear thing.”