Ms. [Janet] Marshall gave a brief history of FWMC’s work on human sexuality this past triennium. She reminded COGS that they had already stated their preference for a dialogue-focused General Synod that upheld the value of local, national, and international relationships.

Ms. Marshall then walked COGS through FWMC’s proposed process for discussing issues of human sexuality at General Synod. In the proposed format, General Synod would begin by “faithful reporting” of FWMC’s work in plenary, then break out into smaller discussion groups. Feedback from these groups would be collated and shared in plenary. The smaller groups would meet again for the same process of synthesis and shared plenary feedback. Finally a resolution would be shaped out of this feedback, and General Synod would vote on it.

COGS members discussed the proposed process. Some responded very positively. Others asked for clarification on who would draft the final resolution and whether there would be enough time for this process on the General Synod agenda.

One council member proposed that a motion-affirming the local option for dioceses to approve same-sex blessings-be brought to General Synod. COGS discussed this motion, but ultimately decided not to forward it to General Synod.

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For a little over a year, five Canadian and six African dioceses have engaged in diocese-to-diocese theological dialogue on matters relating to human sexuality and to mission. With one exception, each diocese has established a theological working group to prepare papers and responses which were shared with their partner diocese on the opposite continent (see below for list of participants). Ontario and Botswana exchanged documents related to sustainability in the context of mission. These dialogues have emerged from, and are a deepening of, relationships established during the Indaba and Bible Study processes at the Lambeth Conference of 2008.

From February 24 to 26, the bishops of these dioceses met at the Anglican Communion Office, St. Andrew’s House in London, England. In a context grounded by common prayer and eucharistic celebration we reflected together on our local experiences of mission and the challenges facing the Church in our diverse contexts. Though the initial exchange of papers had been related in most cases to matters of human sexuality and homosexuality in particular, our face to face theological conversation necessarily deepened to explore the relationships between the Gospel and the many particular cultural realities in which the Church is called to mission.

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The diocese of British Columbia may be the next in Canada to ask its bishop to allow the blessing of married gay or lesbian couples.

A motion asking that priests be allowed to conduct blessings of gay of lesbian couples has been submitted to the biennial synod meeting Mar. 6-7 by the parish of St. John the Divine, Victoria.

The synod, primarily concerned with a restructuring of the diocese, failed to finish its business but will resume at the call of the Bishop James Cowan later this spring when the motion regarding same sex blessings may come to the floor.

Bishop Cowan will make the final decision as to whether same sex blessings should take place in parishes of the diocese, which covers Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. At General Synod 2007, the bishop voted against extension of the blessing.

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Faced with declining enrolment and revenue that will force it to shutter churches on Vancouver Island, the Anglican Church is turning to the social medium where millions of followers already flock: Twitter.

The Anglican Diocese of British Columbia last weekend voted to close seven churches outright and move those congregations to “hub churches.” The meeting, during which several members tweeted updates to followers, came on the heels of an ominous recent report that predicted that the once powerful church was headed for extinction unless dramatic changes occur.

In addition to recommending that churches close, the report described Canada as a post-Christian society and urged a change in attitude to attract new members, including embracing modern forms of evangelism.

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The Anglican Church announced it would close seven churches on Vancouver Island due to declining attendance and revenues, but one reverend says there’s still a light at the end of the tunnel.

Over the next 18 months, the churches will be sold or leased and their parishioners relocated to four newly created “hub” churches designed to serve a wider community. The dramatic decision was made using a set of recommendations put forward by the Diocese of British Columbia earlier this year.

Rev. Christopher Parsons is the rector for two of the parishes being closed, St. Columba and St. Martin, but the 34-year-old said he is nothing but pleased with the church’s decision.

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The diocese of British Columbia has announced a plan to close 13 churches. While the dramatic restructuring is a response to declining church attendance, Bishop James Cowan says it goes beyond cost-cutting, addressing how the church can best allocate resources to carry out its mission as well as rebuild for the future.

Nineteen churches are slated to be dis-established, but five of those will be renamed and become hub churches in areas where other parishes have been closed. Bishop Cowan said the diocese hopes to use one other church as a diocesan conference centre.

Factoring in some retirements, reassignments and vacant positions that will not be filled, the bishop said he did not expect clergy layoffs would be necessary.

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In this fast-paced and noisy world, we all need to slow down a-t times for our physical, emo tional and spiritual health.

For centuries, Christian meditation has been used by people to draw closer to God and for many today it is also a way to step back from that busy world.

Phil Barnett of Winnipeg, the national coordinator of the Ca n-adian Christian Meditation So ciety, will be in Calgary next week to talk about Christian meditation for a Lenten focus called Hearing the Voice of God Within Us.

He will be at Christ Church (Anglican) to teach and talk about the ancient spiritual practice.

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“My first reaction was just a real sense of wanting it all to be over and crawling in a hole and pulling the covers over my head,” says Peter Gibb, the People’s Warden at St. Saviour’s Anglican Church in Victoria.

That was his feeling when a report from the diocesan transformation team recommended St. Saviour’s as one of 13 churches in the diocese of British Columbia to be dis-established and its building sold or leased. The news was not unexpected. In response to dwindling numbers of people in churches, the diocese has been discussing the necessity of such changes for a number of years.

Dean Logan McMenamie of Christ Church Cathedral has been overseeing St. Saviour’s since its last rector left in December. “[He] reminded us that our church has been operating on the margins for at least 20 years,” says Gibb. Still, this final blow was still painful.

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As budget day approaches for Ontario, Anglicans are stepping up calls for the province to help those hardest hit by the recession.

In a brief called “Standing Together,” submitted to the Ontario government’s Pre-Budget Consultations, Archbishop Colin Johnson and the diocese’s Child Poverty Subcommittee urge the government to carry out the following steps to help people in poverty:

Ӣ A $100-per month Healthy Food Supplement for people receiving social assistance so they can afford a more healthy diet.
Ӣ Greater funding for affordable housing.
Ӣ Funding for a threatened child-care subsidy program for low-income families.

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.

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In addition to providing hospitality and programs at 25 different places in Metro Vancouver, the group is also supporting social justice initiatives in the city such as the memorial march for murdered and missing women and raising money for homeless people.

Some Vancouverites are uncomfortable with this mixing of religion and the Olympics. But the two have long been entwined, going right back to the origin of the Games themselves.

Back then, “there was no such thing as secular athletics,” says David Gilman Romano, director of Greek Archaeological Projects at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.

His museum’s website notes that the ancient Games were part of a religious festival in honour of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and goddesses. The name of the Games themselves comes from Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece and home to those same deities.

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What do the Conservatory of Music, Belfry Theatre, Ballet Victoria and the Canadian College of Performing Arts all have in common? They’re all located in former churches.

And in a year or two, 10 more Greater Victoria church properties could be sold or leased, holding opportunity for creative new uses.

Elsewhere, former churches have become galleries, single-family homes, condos, museums, coffee houses, clubs and lecture halls. An old Ottawa church is now a bed and breakfast. A rock group in Montreal turned a church into a recording studio, while another was reincarnated as a pub called L’Anglican.

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The Anglican Church in Canada is updating how it trains priests so they can minister to everyone from Bay Street stockbrokers to Baffin Island Inuit.

Ottawa Bishop John Chapman, who is leading the initiative, believes a savvier clergy would help bridge the church’s current bitter divisions over issues such as gay priests.

“The genius of the Anglican Church has been its capacity to live in difference,” Chapman said in an interview.

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By the ash on their foreheads will most Christians around the world acknowledge their faith on Feb. 17, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

There are about two billion Christians around the world, but not all celebrate Ash Wednesday and/or Lent. Those who do will receive the imposition of ashes, as it has come to be known, from a priest who traces the sign of the cross on their foreheads with ash and says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The ash is meant to symbolize mourning and penitence. The ashes are palms kept from the previous Palm Sunday which are burned and mixed with anointing oil.

Ash Wednesday, said to have begun as early as the third century, is also recognized by Christians as the day of fasting for 40 days before Easter. The 40-day period was chosen based on the Biblical account that Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert.

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God bless those ancient Hebrew hippies who loved to live in their bodies, who understood that denying our sensuality and sexuality would be denying the very thing that draws us into joie de vivre and links us to the Divine. Because, as the old poets knew, our spirituality has everything to do with our desires and passions.

In other words, as Ron Rolheiser sets forth in The Holy Longing, our spirituality is what we do with our sexual energy.

The preaching I heard growing up, more often than not, made me feel guilty about desire and pleasure. And the Song was avoided, or if not, it was sterilized — keeping us safe from budding desire and associative pleasure, which, it was thought, would lead to sin.

But Sebastian Moore, a Benedictine priest, turns this conventional view of sin on its ear. “Sin,” he says, “stems from a lack of desire for pleasure.” Dom Moore is saying that desire and pleasure are not only gifts, they are God’s own calling cards, and their repression is not only an offence to the Giver but a sure way to snarl up our psychological, emotional and spiritual health.

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Olympics fans heading to Vancouver might want to visit a vanishing cultural treasure while they’re in Canada — local churches.

Canada has become a “post-Christian society” where once-dominant Anglicanism has “moved to the margins of public life,” according to a bleak study reported by Michael Valpy at the Globe and Mail.

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The Anglican Church in Canada ”“ once as powerful in the nation’s secular life as it was in its soul ”“ may be only a generation away from extinction, says a just-published assessment of the church’s future.

The report, prepared for the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, calls Canada a post-Christian society in which Anglicanism is declining faster than any other denomination. It says the church has been “moved to the far margins of public life.”

According to the report, the diocese ”“ “like most across Canada” ”“ is in crisis. The report repeats, without qualification or question, the results of a controversial study presented to Anglican bishops five years ago that said that at the present rate of decline ”“ a loss of 13,000 members per year ”“ only one Anglican would be left in Canada by 2061.

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A Senior cleric of the Anglican Church of Canada has identified inaccuracies in Lorna Ashworth’s briefing paper for her private member’s motion, which will come before the General Synod next Wednesday. Similar concerns are coming from the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Mrs Ashworth’s motion will urge the Synod to “express the desire that the Church of England be in com­munion with the Anglican Church in North America [ACNA]”. Canon Alan Perry, a lecturer in ecclesiastical polity and former Prolocutor of the Province of Canada, rebuts allegations on clergy and property in her paper.

The Revd Brian Lewis, a Synod member from Chelmsford diocese, circulated the note to all members on Monday.

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The visitors’ report, discussed at a January meeting here of the House of Bishops, also noted that General Synod 2010 is bound to be “a watershed both for the [Anglican Church of Canada] and for its wider relations with the Anglican Communion””¦no matter what decisions may be reached.

The visitors said they were “very encouraged” by the general desire that the church be more mission focused. They noted “”¦a very positive approach to church growth, a strong commitment to ministry among indigenous people and a determination to deliver better, more integrated forms of theological education both for ordinands and for laity.”

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The Anglican Church of Canada may close up to 14 churches in British Columbia because of declining attendance.

Bishop James Cowan of the Anglican Diocese of B.C. says its community numbers are dwindling because churchgoers are aging and no new members are taking their place.

“We are a church saying a crisis could come if we don’t act. It is painful.”

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“Packer’s last crusade in this world,” the Rev. Dr. J.I. Packer affirms, is recovering catechesis ”” systematic instruction in the Christian fundamentals ”” to meet the challenges of an increasingly pagan age.

The evangelical theologian said at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas on Jan. 9 that he yearns for the return of catechesis, “Bible-based, Christ-centered, declarative in style,” at a time when “the Christian value system is virtually disappearing from schools.”

“We are drifting back into paganism, that’s the truth,” said Dr. Packer, the second featured speaker in the James M. Stanton Lecture Series.

“Ongoing learning is part of the calling of the Church,” he said. “It has to be taught in all churches at all times.”

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It will be a “challenging” year for staff at the General Synod office in Toronto.

More budget cuts will be needed to achieve a balanced budget for 2011 and eliminate deficits by 2012, said Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.

“There’s another cut to come and it will be bigger,” Archbishop Hiltz told a meeting of the House of Bishops held Jan. 7 to 9. “We’ll look at a smaller staff.” He said that decisions will be guided by priorities that will be set out at the upcoming General Synod this June.

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There is “general pessimism” among bishops of the Anglican Church of Canada about the potential for “any clear resolution” of the divisive issue of sexuality at the church’s upcoming General Synod in Halifax this June.

This is one of the many observations recently made by two pastoral visitors from the U.K. who were deputized by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. They were invited to attend the four-day meeting of the House of Bishops last November in Niagara, Ont., at the request of Archbishop Williams. Archbishop Williams is seeking ways to heal divisions among member provinces of the Anglican Communion.

No matter what decisions may be reached at the 2010 General Synod, however, the gathering is bound to be “a watershed both for the (Anglican Church of Canada) and for its wider relations with the Anglican Communion,” said Bishop Chad Gandiya of Harare, Zimbabwe, and Bishop Colin Bennetts, the retired bishop of Coventry, in their report. “At its worst it could lead to internal anarchy. At its best it could help us all to appreciate and practice a properly Christian style of inclusiveness.”

Bishops Gandiya and Bennetts said that the last General Synod left the issue of same-sex blessings “unclear,” noting that while it did not approve same-sex blessings “nor did it rule against them.” Such uncertainty has resulted in a situation that is “complex, not to say confusing,” they said, with some dioceses independently approving same-sex blessings.

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The high price of furnace oil is a burden for some church congregations which have had to find more cost-effective places to worship.
Geoff Tothill, treasurer of the Northumberland Parish, said the congregation at St. John the Baptist Anglican Church in River John is contemplating moving winter services from the 130-year-old building to the church hall following the Christmas service.

“Our church is not insulated at all, it’s the old style ”“ open to the rafters ”“ and that’s a big cost for us,” said Tothill, adding heat there usually costs about $2,500 annually.
He said in the last two years heating costs have increased about 30 per cent.

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The Council of General Synod (CoGS) has approved changes that will increase the employer contribution paid by dioceses and reduce the amount of pension earned by plan members. The employer contribution will be increased to 11.2% of pensionable earnings in 2010 and up to 12.4% in 2011.

The amount of pension earned for members will be reduced from 2% to 1.8%.

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In every major city in Canada, you can see people, huddled over grates, covered with sleeping bags, taking shelter in entrance ways to stay warm. The plight of the homeless is most troubling as winter comes to Canada, but it is a dangerous, precarious situation at any time. Sometimes those who lack affordable housing struggle in less visible ways, one rent cheque away from disaster.

Anglicans across the country are looking for ways to work for change. In November, Virginia Platt, a parishioner at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Winnipeg, was part of a group picketing a decommissioned military base in the city. The Right to Housing Coalition, of which the diocese of Rupert’s Land is a member, was protesting the fact that more than 100 houses on the base have remained empty for the past five years, costing $1.5 million per year to heat and maintain. The coalition is calling on the federal government to permit the houses to be used as transitional housing for families who lack affordable housing.

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As we prepare for conversations about sexuality at General Synod it is very clear that people favour conversation and discernment over resolution and debate. Many hope that our discussions will be marked by a capacity to hear one another’s perspective and to appreciate the diversity of settings in which the pastoral and sacramental ministry of the Church is desired. My own hope is that we will emerge from the Synod with an honest statement of where we are in our continuing discernment.

Personally I am both challenged and heartened by a comment made by the Pastoral Visitors in their report to the Archbishop of Canterbury, “General Synod will, indeed, be a watershed, both for the Anglican Church in Canada, and for its wider relations within the Anglican Communion. At its worst it could lead to internal anarchy. At its best it could help us all to appreciate and practise a properly Christian style of inclusiveness. … Our distinct impression was that if the Anglican Church of Canada could find a way through this current impasse, it could well become a vibrant model of the kind of renewed Christian community that has much to teach the wider Church.”

In the service of God’s mission I believe the Holy Spirit is blowing through the churches and calling us to deeper partnership.

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It is a vision most mainstream Canadian church leaders can only dream of: Sunday mornings in which parishioners dance and sing through three-hour services. Seminaries overflowing and unable to keep up with demand for pastors as the number of the newly baptized rises.

The dream is a reality in such places as Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, where there is an explosion in Christianity. In the past decade, this demographic surge has started to spill out of Africa, as well as Asia and Latin America, in the form of missionaries to the West, a trend influencing everything from styles of worship to doctrine.

Whereas many Catholic intellectuals and academics in North America have the luxury to worry about, for example, the ordination of women, the Africans entrust that issue to the judgement of the Vatican and concern themselves instead with the practical work of basic survival.

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St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Abbotsford is among those involved in an appeal filed against a B.C. Supreme Court decision that could have forced them to vacate their properties.

Cheryl Chang, in-house legal advisor for the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), said the appeal was filed on Christmas Eve in order to meet a 30-day deadline since the judgment on Nov. 25.

Chang said trustees of the four congregations decided to file the appeal now and then weigh their options after the holiday season. An appeal can be withdrawn at a later date, but it cannot be filed once the deadline passes.

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Members of All Saints’ Anglican Church in downtown Whitby, Ont. gathered outside on Monday to mourn the loss of their 140 year old church that burned in a fire before dawn.

Also lost in the fire were about 90 Christmas hampers that were ready to be delivered to needy families in the area, but the community is pulling together to help both the congregation and the families.

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A parish council vote December 10 will affirm a local congregation’s support for the blessing of same-sex marital unions within the Anglican Church of Canada.

That according to Andrew Twiddy, reverend for the parish of St. Anne and St. Edmund in Parksville.

He said information he has gathered on an informal basis indicates “a great majority of the congregation is in favour of moving ahead on this. That’s witnessed I think by a vote in 2007 by the diocesan synod (a provincial legislature made up of elected representatives from every parish). Two-thirds of that group voted in favour of blessing same-sex unions.”

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