Tag Archives: Diocese of BC

Diocese of B.C. selling churches to pay off debt

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From here:

A year ago, the Anglican Diocese of B.C. made the traumatic and dramatic decision to sell nine Vancouver Island church properties or see its $1.2-million debt escalate further.

The move has turned out to be a blessing, despite the turmoil it caused for members whose families had attended the historic congregations for generations.

Five of the nine church properties have sold, the accumulated debt of the diocese is gone, and its financial future and mission potential have been “helped tremendously” for the next several years, said Chris Pease, the diocese’s asset manager.

Listed at $175,000 to $1.4 million, sale prices came “very close” to asking prices, he said.

In combination with cuts to expenditures, the diocese has paid off its accumulated debt, and will use some of the proceeds “to finance the annual operating deficit until revenues and expenses are back in balance,” Pease said in an email.

What does this really mean?

snake

St. Matthias, Victoria saved by armchairs

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When the congregation of St. Matthias voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and join ANiC, they left behind more than the building: two armchairs worth between $180,000 and $250,000 were also abandoned.

The rector of the 30 or so people who remained in the Diocese of BC, Rev. Robert Arril, is rubbing his hands in glee, since the sale of the chairs will enable him “to carry on the work we do”: subverting the Gospel.

St. Hilda’s Church in Oakville also has hidden treasures generously donated by the ANiC congregation that vacated the premises in June. If the Diocese of Niagara searches diligently, it will uncover an antique sump pump secreted in a hole in the basement: it doesn’t pump that well – if at all – but it is a fine early example of F. E. Myers engineering and, as such, could fetch a few needed dollars  for the impoverished Niagara coffers.

From here:

They’d been there, in a quiet spot along the back wall of Victoria’s St. Matthias Anglican Church, for decades — possibly since the parish opened the doors of its new home in the B.C. capital nearly 50 years ago.

But two elegantly designed wooden armchairs, their origin unknown to clergy or even the eldest members of the congregation, may prove to be the salvation of the financially-challenged church — nothing less than a “godsend,” according to St. Matthias’s rector, Rev. Robert Arril.

An antique-furniture buff’s fortuitous visit to the church two years ago for a Bible study session has led to the identification of the chairs as rare and valuable Qing dynasty treasures, expertly crafted in 17th-century China before making their way somehow — thanks to a long-forgotten donor evidently unaware of their significance — to the Vancouver Island parish.

Now, a church, which has struggled to survive since a damaging schism over same-sex marriage in 2009, is poised for a potential windfall when the chairs are auctioned next month in New York, where Sotheby’s expects the matching set to fetch as much as a quarter of a million dollars at a Sept. 11 sale of Chinese ceramics and works of art.

“It’s a remarkable discovery — such a fantastic turn of events,” Arril told Postmedia News. “It’s very significant for us as a struggling congregation, very meaningful. It will allow us to carry on the work we do.”

[….]

The two-chair set has an estimated value of between $180,000 and $250,000 US, according to Sotheby’s. A similar pair of 17th-century chairs from China sold earlier this year at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong for $282,000.

Rev. Logan McMenamie: saving the salmon

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There was a time – I’m almost old enough to remember it – when the pulpit of the Anglican church was used to preach on the salvation of souls; progress marches ever on, so now the message is the salvation of salmon.

Rev. Logan McMenamie thinks the Northern Gateway pipeline is a bad idea because it doesn’t respect the “interconnectedness of living things”, the “sanctity of the earth” – and it would disturb spawning salmon.

I will make the bold assumption that the worthy Reverend has not taken to heart Henry David Thoreau’s advice found in Walden: he doesn’t travel everywhere on foot. In which case he must fill his automobile with petroleum distillate – from Saudi Arabia, presumably, since he has no use for Canadian oil. Saudi Arabia, home of “interconnectedness of living things” pipelines, not to mention oppression of women, homosexuals and anyone who doesn’t like Islam – but then, who cares about them, they are people not salmon.

All of which makes Rev. Logan McMenamie, Dean of Columbia and Rector of Christ Church Cathedral – yes, you’ve guessed it – a hypocrite.

From here:

Churches take pipeline views into the pulpit

Rev. Logan McMenamie is speaking out against the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, saying it doesn’t respect the interconnectedness of living things.

McMenamie, of Christ Church Cathedral on Burdett Avenue, is one of many religious leaders across Canada focusing on the pipeline – something McMenamie says concerns “the sanctity of the Earth.”

“What I preached on was my own perspective,” he said of his Sunday sermon, adding that he doesn’t speak on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada. “I think [the sermon] resonated with many in the congregation.”

He’s not alone in bringing the debate to a religious forum. On Tuesday, the United Church of Canada decided to publicly oppose the project.

The pipeline proposed by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. would do severe environmental damage, traversing waterways where salmon spawn, said Ray Jones, the chair of the church’s aboriginal ministries council. And the potential for an oil spill in the port of Kitimat is very real, he said.

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 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 Anglican Church of Canada has been insulted!

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From the Journal

Bishop James Cowan of the diocese of British Columbia told his synod at the Mar.6-7 meeting that Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was “insulting” in the way he refused to allow eleven priests from the Anglican Church of the province of Myanmar to visit last fall when the diocese was celebrating its 150th anniversary.

“When Victoria MP Denise Savoie tried to speak on our behalf with Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, she was rudely received and patronized by him. His correspondence with her is insulting to all concerned,” Bishop Cowan told synod.

A New Democratic Party press release last fall accused the Immigration Minister of being “unwilling to take the word of Canadian church officials about a group of priests with unbreakable ties to their home parishes.

Jason Kenney represents one of the few remaining sins that is still acknowledged by the Anglican Church of Canada: he’s politically conservative. And now he has insulted the ACoC apparatchiks by refusing to take their word that the Myanmar Anglican priests would return to their own country.

Although the visit of the Myanmar priests was probably innocent enough,  Kenney’s mistrust of the ACoC is not entirely unfounded: in 2009 the Anglican Diocese of Montreal sponsored Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian terrorist who conspired with Al Qaeda.