In addition to sharing office space, church buildings and a common culturally tinctured view of the Christian Gospel, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada are now also considering holding a joint Synod:
Joint synod with ELCIC considered for 2013
The Anglican Church of Canada’s management team met with National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and her senior staff in March to discuss ways to deepen the full communion agreement between the two churches Their discussion included plans for a joint General Synod / National Convention to be held in Ottawa in 2013 and the possibility of sharing space for both national offices in the future.
“If full communion is really going to have some sense of visibility across the Canadian church, there have to be some pretty bold steps that we take together to help people realize that we are, in fact, churches in full communion,” said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Both Bishop Johnson and Archbishop Hiltz said that these discussions are not about merging the two churches. “We’re not talking about being one church in one office space. We’re talking about being two churches in one office space,” said Bishop Johnson.
Perhaps the declared intention of being two churches in one office space is a little ambitious: two left-liberal social clubs and no churches in one office space would be a more realistic goal.
See if you close and sell an Anglican church it kind of looks bad. The decline of the institution is displayed for all to see. But if you merge an ECLA church and an ACoC church it looks like a positive act showing constructive movement toward ecumenical unity. And you still get to sell one of the buildings.