Tag Archives: Diocese of Toronto

Bishop Colin Johnson eats Kraft Dinner to help the hungry

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When I was young and didn’t want to eat, my grandmother used chide me with the reproach that “children in India are starving”. Being a smartass even then, I suggested she send my parsnips to them. I remain unconvinced that stuffing myself with food I don’t want will be the solution to the problem of world hunger.

Like my grandmother, Anglicans in the Diocese of Toronto – led by the doughty Bishop Colin Johnson – probably mean well, even if their endeavours suffer from the same ignorance of cause and effect as my grandmother’s. They have come up with what appears to be the obverse of my grandmother’s scheme: help hungry people by making yourself hungry too. It’s a bit like throwing yourself in the water next to a drowning man, pretending to drown with him for a while and then getting out and drying yourself off while he sinks. Why simply help someone when you can embark on a noble campaign of Social JusticeAdd an Image and Advocacy instead?

From here:

A woman flees an abusive situation and is left with nothing, not even a can opener. A disabled couple cannot work, have trouble getting around, and can barely afford to pay their bills. A boy comes to school hungry, because his father cannot afford to give him breakfast.

These are the people Ted Glover, a member of the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy Committee and a parishioner at St. George Memorial in Oshawa, will have in mind in October, when he lives for three days on food that would typically be handed out in a food bank hamper. They are all people he has met through his extensive volunteer work with social service organizations and his job as a teacher. The three-day diet is part of the Do the Math Challenge, a campaign that will see Anglicans, along with community leaders and other concerned citizens, calling on the government to bring about an immediate increase of $100 a month in social assistance rates, and in the longer term, revise social assistance rates based on actual local living costs….

Archbishop Colin Johnson, area bishops, and Evangelical Lutheran bishop Michael Pryse will also participate in the poverty diet.

The Diocese of Toronto responds to Canada’s Anglican crisis

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The Diocese of Toronto has recognised that the Anglican Church of Canada is in trouble:

The Anglican Church of Canada has been experiencing decline in its membership for some time. A report to its House of Bishops in 2005 showed that between 1961 and 2001, Anglican parish membership dropped from 1.36 million to 642,000, a decline of 53 per cent. The decline was quickening. Membership fell by 13% between 1981 and 1991 and by a further 20% from 1991 to 2001. The report

warned the House that the Anglican Church was currently losing 2% of its members per year and that ‘if you take that rate of decline and draw a line in the graph, there’ll be only one person left in the Anglican Church of Canada by 2061. The Church is in crisis. We can’t carry on like its business as usual.’……

The diocese of Toronto faces a stark reality: grow or die.

It is about to adopt the same solution as the Diocese of BC:

A report from the diocese of British Columbia, which faces similar issues to Toronto and is also seeking to stimulate new growth, notes that: ‘The Achilles heel of organizational transformation is resource allocation’ and so ‘the Diocesan Council will need to demonstrate fierce resolve if the Diocese is to shift financial resources from marginal activities to mission-critical initiatives’.

The italicised section is easily recognised for what it is: a euphemism for closing marginal parishes, selling the buildings and using the money to prop up more promising – or diocesan compliant – specimens. As this admits:

There has been a general welcome within the diocese for the sustainable and strategic policy. The diocese has been applauded for finally doing something about the subsidy of declining parishes and there was widespread acceptance that ‘growth requires pruning’.

Perhaps foreseeing a future exodus to more orthodox pastures, the diocese has pronounced by fiat:

° All church property in the diocese is held for the purposes of the whole Church, irrespective of the name of the registered owner, and the proceeds realized from any sale or other disposition of surplus property or any land by any parish are to be shared with the diocese for the purposes of the Church.

° On disestablishment of a parish, all proceeds are designated as diocesan share.

° It is inappropriate to use proceeds for ongoing operating expenses of the diocese.

° The diocesan share of any sales proceeds shall be placed in the Ministry Allocation Fund.

So, no matter what the deeds say, the diocese is laying claim to building ownership.

My favourite part is:

The conclusion is that self-funding Churches are essential. St Paul was self-funding and the primitive Churches were largely financially independent.

Who could argue with that? Bishops, you had better take some tent-making classes.

Just as in any secular enterprise, there is a great deal of tergiversation about “mission”, but entirely absent from the document is any recognition of the importance of bringing people to salvation and reconciliation to God the Father through Christ: it is all about surviving as an institution – somehow – anyhow.

Is a church that is so preoccupied with its own welfare worth preserving?

A letter to Bishop Colin Johnson from a parishioner concerned about diocesan participation in the Toronto Pride Parade

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The letter:

Dear Bishop,

I am writing as a concerned Anglican who would like to bring to your attention a float that was present at this past Sunday’s Gay Pride Parade, a painted up double-decker bus with a banner from end to end which read PROUD ANGLICANS and which featured a great number of people semi-attired waving the gay flag about. To see this float for yourself, assuming you weren’t in attendance, please visit the youtube posting at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOnefx4zg8A&

First of all, I would like to know if this float met with Diocesan approval, and if so, why? I am aware that our church is struggling with the issue of the blessings of same sex marriage and the consecrating of gay and lesbian bishops and that a lot of people within the church are struggling in earnest with these questions. But I would suggest that most would have no problems with their reservations on either issue after seeing this display of licensed exhibitionism and decadence and I for one would like to both see and hear the Bishop of my Diocese stand up and say so publicly in order to protect the church from further embarrassment.

Secondly, I have noticed since my return from Prague, Czech Republic, (where I have spent the last 15 years) that a lot of Anglican Churches in the Toronto Diocese have the gay rainbow insignia either on their church doors or sign fronts. I would like to know if this practice too has met with Diocesan approval and the reasons, if so, why? Surely the only insignia or iconography that belongs on either a church door or sign front should be that of the particular Saint to which the church is dedicated?

From my year back in Canada I am very disappointed at all of this, and after what I witnessed this weekend my fear is that the Anglican Church is preoccupied with sharing the gospel of Church Street and not with the gospel of the Church.

Respectfully,
John McKillop

Bishop Colin’s response:

Dear John,

The focus for the diocese of Toronto is building Christian communities of hope and compassion through healthy, vibrant and life-giving congregations.  We believe that the good news of Jesus Christ is at the heart of that.  We are fully engaged in being a missional church, strengthening both the traditional ways of being church that have nurtured countless people through the centuries as well as seeking to respond where God’s Spirit is leading us in mission to those who are not in church in creative new ways.  At Synod last year, we recognised that our focus needs to be missional, and that while issues of sexuality were important, they were secondary.  We agreed by consensus that issues of same sex blessings, etc. were better dealt with pastorally than legislatively.  The diocese of Toronto is a richly diverse body representing the wide spectrum of theological, spiritual and liturgical expressions that lie within the Anglican tradition.  Some people are more intensely engaged in the sexuality issues (on the many sides of the discussion) than others or than I am.  I can think of other things that offend me more.  I said in my sermon at my installation that I wish all of us would expend as much energy on alleviating poverty and injustice as fighting about sex.

In answer to some of your comments: the float (which I did not see and to which your link did not connect me – although my children attended the Pride parade) was not diocesan sponsored, and I have no comment to make about it; the official policy of the Anglican Church is that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are welcome; those parishes which choose to use the rainbow on the sign to signify they are specifically gay-friendly can do so by their own decision processes – I could not dictate otherwise in any case, even of I were so inclined.

Welcome home from Prague.  I’m looking forward to my first visit there this summer.

The Most Rev’d Colin R. Johnson,

Archbishop of Toronto
and Metropolitan of Ontario
Anglican Diocese of Toronto
135 Adelaide St., E.,
Toronto, ON  Canada  M5C 1L8

Diocese of Toronto: going down slow

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In April 2009, the ACoC House of Bishops declared a fiat that no member of ANiC would be allowed to lead a Cursillo group.

The bishops also stated, “with regret,” that clergy and laity who are members of the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) “should not be given permission to exercise a leadership role in the Cursillo movement of the Anglican Church of Canada.”

In September 2009, ANiC formed its own Cursillo group under the name of Anglican 4thDay.

Coincidentally, the Diocese of Toronto’s Cursillo has ceased to be; there couldn’t be a connection, could there?

Dec. 31, 2009, saw the end of the Diocese of Toronto’s renewal movement called Cursillo. It had been established in 1976 by the late Rev. Canon Graham Tucker with the support of the late Archbishop Lewis Garnsworthy. Its mandate was to empower and train lay leaders.

In the same issue of the Toronto diocesan paper, Fresh Expressions is exhorting ACoC Anglicans to indulge in the seemingly worthy, but ultimately futile fantasy of hastening the eschaton by trying to build the kingdom of God on earth:

RACHEL Jordan has some advice for Anglicans who believe that someone else is going to build the kingdom of God here on Earth. “There isn’t a Plan B – you’re it,” she says. “You are the people God has chosen to be his agents right here, right now.”

Giving their buildings away – as long as it’s not to ANiC:

Ms. Jordan says tiny, dwindling congregations that are struggling to maintain large and costly churches can play a vital role in creating fresh expressions of church. “It may be time for them to say, ‘If there are only 25 of us, then we don’t need the big building with the leaky roof. We could give it away.”

And “heading into the unknown” – a theological landscape currently occupied by bishops:

He says Christians don’t need to be afraid to leave their churches and head into the unknown.

It sounds as if the Diocese of Toronto is in trouble and is about to start making the same Visionary Changes™ that the Diocese of BC is making: closing parishes.

The Diocese of Toronto urges action on poverty

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The important word in the headline is “urges”. The diocese would rather not do anything itself; after all, why would it when it is so much easier to urge.

Anglicans join Archbishop to urge action on poverty in budget.

While agreeing that the government faces a major fiscal deficit, the brief notes society’s “colossal human deficit, of needless suffering, hardship and lost opportunity.” Foodbank usage soared by 19 per cent in Ontario in 2009, so that 374,000 Ontarians now use foodbanks.

Ontario’s government was also praised for positive steps, such as a commitment to reduce child poverty by 25 per cent by 2013.

Anglicans across the diocese are adding their voices in support of the brief. St. Martin, Bay Ridges, Holy Spirit, Dixie North, and St. Barnabas, Chester, passed vestry motions supporting the brief. St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Toronto, produced a bulletin insert.

St. Matthew’s Anglican Church makes this curious confession:

In their letter to Mr. Duncan, members of St. Matthew, Islington, said “it is immoral to live in a society in which the top 10 per cent of families now receive 75 times more income than the bottom 10 per cent.”

By their own lights, these members of St. Matthew, Islington are living an immoral life. Never fear, intrepid St. Mathews’ members, a moral life awaits you in a damp cave in the remote mountains of Afghanistan; bon voyage.