St. Matthew's Abbotsford, Diocese of New Westminster on how to observe Lent
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Tag Archives: Diocese of New Westminster
Why does social justice always have to be so conspicuous?
St. Matthews, Abbotsford presents an extremely large cheque – well, a physically large cheque – to a food bank:
Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matt 6:1-3
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Diocese of New Westminster closes church with 35 people
No, no, not St. John’s Shaughnessy, they have 40 people and that extra five makes all the difference. Apparently, “[t]he minimum standard …. for sustainable and viable ministry is being able to afford a priest”. Is the diocese paying for St. John’s priest because Michael Ingham would look too much like a dog in a manger if he didn’t use the building he fought so hard to keep for something that at least bears a passing resemblance to a church – albeit a nearly empty one?
Much better to mothball St. Mark’s which, ironically, is a diocesan appeasing “inclusive community” which is “grounded in social justice” – neither of which prevented Ingham giving them the chop:
From here:
Pam Martin married at St. Mark’s Anglican Church. She was baptized and confirmed there, as were her children. But at month’s end, the 52-year-old and the rest of St. Mark’s congregation won’t be allowed to use the church building at 1805 Larch St. anymore.
The Diocese of New Westminster owns the property, and Bishop Michael Ingham told St. Mark’s it couldn’t hold services after Feb. 28, although the building isn’t being closed.
Membership at St. Mark’s is stable but small – about 35 show up for Sunday worship. It’s been able to support only a quarter-time priest for years. Martin is upset about not being able to use the building, which she considers her spiritual home.
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Canadian Anglican Primate, Fred Hiltz, preaches at St. John’s Shaughnessy
Fred Hiltz visited the three ex-ANiC parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster this weekend in order to boost the morale of the diminished diocesan congregations.
At St. John’s Shaughnessy, he begins by giving his views on what has happened. To summarise:
He is aware of the pain that the congregation felt on seeing parishioners leave; he doesn’t mention that 800 left and 40 stayed, nor that most of the “pain” was experienced by the 800 whose building was seized by the diocese.
Schism wounds the body of Christ. Hiltz fails to mention that his bishop, Michael Ingham, was the primary instigator of the schism when he proceeded with same-sex blessings even after primates representing the bulk of the Anglican communion begged him not to.
The whole experience has been stressful. Quite right: 40 people maintaining a building built for 800 is stressful – and expensive.
The congregation at St. John’s – all 40 members – have remained “steadfast”, an attribute that has “not gone unnoticed” and is “exemplary”. Since the congregation is costing the diocese $20,000 per month to maintain, it could scarcely go unnoticed and if it is, indeed, “exemplary”, the ACoC will be bankrupt even sooner than my most optimistic prognostications.
Here is the audio of the introduction:
Further into the sermon, Hiltz talks about his view of the place of Scripture in the Anglican Church of Canada. The Scriptures have a “central place” in the church”, but are subject to the “contemporary cultural context in which they are heard”. Thus, Africa’s “cultural context” makes homosexual activity sinful, while Vancouver’s makes it wholesome – all of which makes Scripture nonsense:
Further on, Hiltz tells us that “in sexuality debates in the church, the one piece we keep missing is context, pastoral context. Who are the people God is calling us to serve?” The answer to this rhetorical question appears to be: those in a homosexual lifestyle – by affirming their lifestyle as holy.
Incurable insomniacs can listen to the entire sermon here:
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St. John’s Shaughnessy is only attracting 40 people to its main Sunday service
The church building will hold over 800 people and before the Diocese of New Westminster acquired ownership of it, over 800 people attended the church.
Now, under the liberal regime of Bishop Michael Ingham, around 40 people are attending. Rev. Michael Fuller announced the number in his November 4th sermon:
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St. Matthew’s Abbotsford may become self-sustaining – one day
From here:
The Archdeacon introduced The Rev. Allen Doerksen, Bishop’s Missioner to the Central Fraser Valley and Priest at St. Matthew. Allen recalled his childhood in Abbotsford as a member of the “Mennonite Tribe” in Abbotsford and as a young person he knew that the “Anglican Tribe” was a very active part of the Christian Community. He used the term “Tribe” not in an anti-ecumenical way but as a way of defining a church that has changed and now lives a “principled pluralism.” The emergence of the worshipping community at St. Matthew, Abbotsford is an exciting and challenging event. Those who are new to Anglican worship or worship in general and are in the beginning stages of their journey of faith find a place in this community.
Allen takes heart that this can be a place where art and beauty can flourish in what many would see as a very pragmatic suburban community.
St. Matthew is a mission church of the diocese and Allen is very grateful for the support of the diocese and he is confident that the time will come when this community can be self-sustaining.
Rev. Allen Doerksen is the brother of Brian Doerksen, a Christian musician and song-writer associated for many years with the Vineyard Movement. Allen was installed by the Diocese of New Westminster’s heretic-in-residence, Michael Ingham, as the rector of St. Matthew’s after the congregation who paid for the church was ejected. I can only assume that the brothers are much as the brothers Hitchens, occupying opposite poles of the metaphysical spectrum.
Brother Allen uses the term “principled pluralism” to describe his church. He doesn’t explain what he means by this, but if he is implying an accommodation to the concept that religions other than Christianity are as valid as Christianity, then he has coined an oxymoron, since he is supposed to adhere to the proposition: “Jesus is the only way to the Father”. From a Christian’s perspective, to water that down is as unprincipled as it comes.
Obviously, the Diocese of New Westminster is paying to keep the parish afloat: an act of face-saving rather than generosity from Michael Ingham.
Here are the 500 people who used to worship in the building when it was self-sustaining, departing in an act of principled non-pluralism:
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Diocese of New Westminster has Pride Day service
To coincide with Vancouver’s Pride Day, Christ Church Cathedral has a “Pride Day service”. It managed to draw 80 people this year – in a facility that will hold 600. So you can see by the numbers it is attracting how successful the Diocese of New Westminster has been in tapping in to the spiritual pulse of the nation.
And they even used the Book of Common Prayer.
From here:
For the past few years the 8am Celebration of Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer at Christ Church Cathedral on the first Sunday of August has been slightly modified and extended in order to mark Pride Day in the City of Vancouver.
On August 5th, 2012, close to 80 worshippers gathered in the sanctuary of the diocesan cathedral to participate in this annual celebration of Holy Eucharist on what was to be the hottest day of the year.
Prior to the singing of the opening hymn and the Collect, the Service of Light was celebrated.
Clergy, servers and lay representatives gathered around the Altar and in a brief yet moving liturgy 8 candles were lit signifying: light in the face of fear, light in the face of violence, light in an age of AIDS, hope, healing, courage, community and resurrection. At the beginning of the interactive Service of Light, the presider says these words, “The Lighting of a candle is a simple act yet becomes a powerful sign. For when we don’t have the words or don’t know how to pray, a small candle burning brightly expresses our prayer that is always with us –and becomes more powerful with each candle lit.”
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According to the ACA, the Diocese of Toronto's gift of $250,000 to the Diocese of New Westminster was a tithe
As I mentioned here, “the Diocese of Toronto’s Bishop Colin Johnson has paid Bishop Michael Ingham $250,000 for being the Canadian test case in the building dispute between the ACoC and ANiC. …. the ruling sets a Canadian precedent, effectively guaranteeing that the ACoC will be able to hang on to church properties – so that they can close and sell them.”
Rev. Dr. Murray Henderson from the Anglican Communion Alliance, a conservative group within the Anglican Church of Canada, has made a rather extraordinary statement about what he calls this “tithe” to New Westminster:
I further advocated at the Council Meeting that the announcement of the gift make it clear that this was not our taking a stand on the issue of same sex blessing, but strictly a matter of paying our fair share as a diocese and parishes which are interested in maintaining our ownership of our property. The Archbishop made this clear in his announcement last Saturday.
It is evident he does not wish the Diocese of Toronto’s payment to be a condoning of same-sex blessings – even though the diocese is actively engaged in performing them – but, rather, wants to pay a “fair share” of the litigation cost of ejecting worshipping congregations from buildings for which they have a use to place them in the hands of dioceses who are allowing them to stand empty.
It’s not entirely clear to me whether it is worse to bless same-sex couples or turf fellow Christians out of their buildings but evidently, it is to Rev. Henderson: how far would he take it, one wonders? Would he be content to see all parish buildings stand empty so long as his diocese retains ownership of them and has not taken a “stand” on same-sex blessings – even though, to the un-blinkered it obviously has?
Not only does the ACA statement illustrate the impotence of struggling conservatives in the ACoC but it bodes ill for any plausible possibility of a conservative come-back within the church. To make it worse, I fear Rev. Henderson has strained out a gnat (albeit a big hairy one) and swallowed a camel.
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The Diocese of New Westminster synod repudiates the Doctrine of Discovery
The synod motion is here.
The forward looking Diocese of New Westminster has, in its ceaseless pursuit of relevance, passed a synod motion to “repudiate and renounce” a papal bull issued in 1452. The Doctrine of Discovery was a papal justification for colonising newly discovered non-Christian lands.
The diocese, having writhed with guilt for centuries over occupying native – sorry, Indigenous People’s – land, has made the odd decision to compound the problem by occupying churches in St. John’s Shaughnessy, St. Matthews Abbotsford and St. Matthias and St. Luke’s Vancouver. In fairness to the diocese, though, a further motion to call a special synod to figure out how best to colonise the parishes was defeated.
500 years ago Christians displaced pagans and took what belonged to them. Today pagans displace Christians and take what belongs to them.
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The arrogance of youth
Now that I am not exactly young, the old saw I wish I knew now what I thought I knew when I was eighteen, often comes to mind.
The youth coordinator for the Diocese of New Westminster ponders the question of when the “shift from childhood to adulthood takes place” and laments the attempts of “the wiser generations” to “wipe out self expression in our young people”. This all relates to the teen who wore the Jesus tee-shirt, but it raises some more interesting general points.
The question of when children become adults is an existential one: children become adults when they cease behaving as children. For the pampered offspring of western decadence, this may never occur: look at Justin Trudeau. For an impoverished Ugandan family that must struggle merely to survive, it probably occurs around the age of ten.
Bemoaning the suppression of young people’s self-expression, is an odd complaint against a society where anyone, including the youngest of young people, can say just about anything and publish it on the Internet – so long as it doesn’t offend Muslims. Perhaps what the supposedly stifled Mr Colvin means is that no-one listens to what young people have to say. The answer is simple: say something interesting and people will listen. Moaning about a lack of suitable jobs and the evils of consumerism is so predictably trite it doesn’t even elevate itself to the level of dull.
From here:
I’m glad that Colin McComb’s letter [Dress codes a good way to start, anglicanjournal.com, May 10] gets beyond the T-shirt discussion because it exposes a much deeper, more dangerous mindset. The author writes: “The classroom should first and foremost be a place of learning: not a forum in which to exercise one’s freedom of expression. Children need to learn how to think before they learn how to bellow out whatever it is they’re thinking.”
Welcome to the history of childhood for the past century or so. An environment which has been built on the foundation that ‘we, the adults know things and you, the children, do not. Our job is to fill you with information and prepare you for the world when it’s your time.’
Except, when is it a young person’s time? When they leave school? These days, there are practically no entry level jobs in any industry for someone with a high school diploma. And while a college graduate might be lucky enough to get one the rapidly diminishing entry level jobs, as Colin McComb says, the modern Canadian workplace is no place for self expression. And so the children once again are, figuratively, being told that they are not yet really adults.
Perhaps the shift from childhood to adulthood takes place when a person buys a house or starts a family? But wait: Buying a house generally doesn’t happen without some support and subsidy from family. More waiting for adulthood. And in the meantime, young people become consumers.