Recent attendance statistics from the Anglican Church of Canada predict that it will cease to exist by 2040.
Understandably, this has spread consternation amongst the clergy; no one likes to be unemployed.
The new Primate, Linda Nicholls, sees this as a “wake-up call” and asks, “what might need to be tried” to reverse the decline? I would be tempted to suggest “Christianity” if I thought it would fall on any but deaf ears.
“I don’t think they’re a surprise to anybody,” Nicholls said of the statistics in an interview with the Anglican Journal. “Anybody who’s been in the church in the pews, or as a priest, or as a deacon or a bishop has known that this decline has been happening. We see it every Sunday, we see it in lots of ways. “I think it is a wake-up call…. If people are not coming to the church and finding a place of hope and good news, then we have to ask, ‘How are we presenting that hope and good news to this current generation and time? And what might need to be tried?”
Nicholls muses that part of the problem is the “general zeitgeist”, an observation that might have some merit were it not for the fact that the ACoC has utterly capitulated to the zeitgeist: the two are marching in lockstep. In spite of the church’s eagerness to oblige, potential customers have little reason to turn to the church to have their chosen pronouns affirmed, their gender reassignment baptised or their drag attire sprinkled with holy water.
Laughably, Michael Thompson general secretary of General Synod, put his finger on the problem without noticing he had done so. When the church busied itself with saving souls, ignoring social justice fads, parishes were full to overflowing. “Things are quite different now”, he tells us: now we hear about nothing but social justice and the pews are empty. This, he tells us is a “change for the better”.
Introducing Elliot’s presentation to CoGS, Thompson said he believed Canadian Anglicans should look at the numerical decline of their church’s membership in the context of other changes for the better.
The London, Ont., church in which he started worshipping in 1968, Thompson said, “while not filled to the point of discomfort, was full.” On the other hand, he added, “in all of the years that I attended that church…in all of the years I had attended church before then, and in all of the years that I attended church until I was in my 20s, I never once heard a sermon that made reference to God’s justice.”
He continued, “I never once heard anybody tell me about the residential schools. I never heard anything about the responsibility of the people of God to respect the dignity of every human being. It’s not that people didn’t care about those things, but those things were not tip-of-the-tongue discourse in the life of the church in which I was formed. Things are quite different now.”
In much the same vein, Nicholls has decided that the church’s main job is to fight racism. To give her credit, by 2040 she will have succeeded in completely expunging racism from the church:
The Anglican Church of Canada’s new primate says she hopes her communion can begin to fight racism within the church and society.
Haha, David. I read the whole copy of the AJ about the”decline” and it was hilarious. What a crock. All Nicholls and her ilk care about now is keeping enough money in their pension funds so they can live high while the church dies. Notice how they love the idea of “home churches” so they can sell off the good real estate for millions. They don’t give a darn about anything else. Wonder what Nicholls salary as Primate is? Bet she has a car and driver and other perks along with all the travel. They wanted to kill the church and they’ve succeeded.
I am totally amazed at the thinking of this APOSTATE Primate. Indeed the ACoC will cease to exist unless she and other APOSTATES return to the GOSPEL by making a full public confession of their actions and then return to the TRUTH and AUTHORITY of Scripture and return legally stolen properties to the genuine Christian congregations from which such properties were stolen.
Tragically this APOSTATE Primate and her followers seem to be so full of themselves they are not likely to take this action.but will continue to endorse teaching that are totally opposed to the authority of THE WORD.
Why the people dont vote with their feet is beyond me.
Yeah, some are leaving , but what about the rest, they are “putting up” with the apostasy. The ship is sinking.
Theres no fixing this shitshow .
Those who remain are unaware that the HEAT in the frog pot of apostasy is near to boiling so as to be lethal!
I and many others left years ago!
They learnt the whole method from the UCC. To quote from my spiritual autobiography, part of a letter to my parents sent in 1990 when I was President of the Council of Christian Churches, “You ask about the Council work. My immediate Past-President, an United minister, has been incapacitated by the events leading to schism in the United Church of Canada. When I became his ‘Vice’ he was already getting uneasier by the day about directions in his own church. He was already preparing his escape-route from the situation. I am piloting the Council single-handed through some stormy seas. Some of these ministers are in anguish, and getting strokes and even migraine for the first time in their lives. My Corresponding Secretary, when this evil was first promulgated, went up into his pulpit the next Sunday to preach in sackcloth. He was threatened with being sent a male ‘couple’ asking to be married, by way of a loyalty test. He moved to another Presbytery. He and his people are going Congregationalist. At one point his migraines were so severe that his doctor looked for a tumour. They have now vanished. He is afraid like so many of being deprived, and so deserting his people. Their UCC pensions are safe, but not much else.”
I then experienced at first hand, as an ‘adherent’ of St. John’s United in the Vancouver West End, the technique whereby a church was demolished, first spiritually by the driving out of a decent man followed by the appointment of a lesbian minister, then physically for a lucrative sale to a developer. There is a high-rise there now where once was a conservative congregation, a fine place of worship and hall. Much more may be read in OLHD here: https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/dr-priscilla-turner/
“I never once heard a sermon that made reference to God’s justice.” Never once a sermon about how God is “just, and the justifier of those who trust in Jesus”? Not one sermon about hell, or God’s wrath and punishment of sinners and unfaithful covenantal people, particularly those who distort and deny his Word? Not one about how, if believers are scarcely saved, what will the end be of “those who obey not the gospel of God”?
Yes, at one time the Anglican Church in it’s days was doing well, ‘commanded respect,’ words of Archbishop Hambidge but now is in more debt, this he’d said in the 1980s.
One of our Priests at St John’s (Shaughnessy) mentioned it was elitist was for the well to do.
Likewise the United Church was told did really well in the 1950s read it would build one Church/week compared to now have also read it would close one church/week.
At that time joining the United Church was the thing to do had heard a story of a person who was Roman Catholic who’d joined probably in the 50s.
A conversation with a person did not mention being Christian mentioned, “It doesn’t -meet people’s needs…”. I think I’d had that conversation with him more than once about this same topic.
Trying to remember, I think he’d might’ve been Wiccan is now passed on
The question is:
Does the:
Anglican
United
Church of Canada
meet peoples’ needs?
What are peoples’ needs?
What is the Church’s role in meeting these needs?
The four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, Mark being the main book the others rely upon.
One thing that I cannot get over is the lack of anything to do now in the churches other than attend on Sunday AM. The church gives and supports almost any group that comes along, for example the Food Bank and many other charities. The average person who attends every week, what does he/she receive from it all? One might be better to join the Moose Lodge or some other fraternal organization, at least in those clubs the people are friendly and are traveling on the same path, and there is lots of volunteer work to be done with people who are on the same “wave length”.
Re Dave’s comment
One thing that I cannot get over is the lack of anything to do now in the churches other than attend on Sunday AM.
Sounds like what’s left of a congregation of once active now no longer active older persons just going on Sunday that’s it
Probably, once they were when they were younger. Lots probably was provided for them when they were in the youthgroup but they had the numbers then but now they don’t.
Small & inactive congregations now in Churches