The two parishes turned out to be more similar than I had expected. Both combine the thoughtful liturgy and preaching that mark Anglicanism at its best. The two rectors, David Widdicombe, 67, at St. Margaret’s, and Jamie Howison, 57, at saint ben’s, both hunger to work with young people at the city’s several universities, and both sense that the ancient and mysterious aspects of Christianity will be more appealing to people than any seeker-sensitive effort of evangelism that strips down the richness of the faith.

The two are longtime friends and admirers of one another. Neither seems to be aiming for anything other than helping to develop the best church they can. Given his achievements at saint ben’s, Howison could have written a book on church growth, or joined the speaking circuit, but he shuddered at that idea. The book that he has written is about jazz musician John Coltrane, God’s Mind in That Music. He calls the book “delightfully irrelevant to my ministry,” and adds: “but Coltrane feeds me.”

Widdicombe is only a bit less shy in sharing his ministry insights. He has a D. Phil. in theology from Oxford, where he focused on the theology of P. T. Forsyth and worked under Rowan Williams. He tells of getting thrown out of two classrooms—once by a liberal professor, another time by a conservative one—each time over questions of biblical interpretation.

Widdicombe’s sermons exude erudition. The day I’m there he preached from the lectionary text on Israel’s demand for a king and God’s sad warning: “he will take, he will take, he will take.” Never mentioning Trump by name, he portrayed all politics as a revolt against the reign of Christ. In some sense, worldly politics have to fail—or else we would fail to long for the kingdom Christ will bring. With its Augustinian realism about the continued reign of Babylon, the sermon owed something to another of his teachers at Oxford, Oliver O’Donovan.

Widdicombe made no reference in the sermon to himself, those listening, or the world. His only interest seemed to be in Christ and the text. Afterward, I talked to Marilyn Simons, a Shakespeare scholar who teaches at the local universities and who came to faith at St. Margaret’s. She said Widdicombe does with texts what the church and the academy have forgotten how to do: he lovingly interprets them.

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The Anglican Church of Canada has hired two new suicide prevention workers as part of its Indigenous ministry.

Jeffery Stanley, a master of divinity student at the Vancouver School of Theology, began work June 25; Yolanda Bird, a former member of Council of General Synod (CoGS) with extensive experience working with children and youth, began July 3.

Each will be responsible for helping deliver existing suicide prevention programs in the dioceses in their areas, as well as helping develop new ones, said Indigenous ministries co-ordinator Canon Ginny Doctor. Their work will also include developing teams of volunteers in dioceses where the need for suicide prevention is especially high, she said.

“We’re looking forward to working with them and developing a strategy that will hopefully alleviate suicides in our communities,” Doctor said. “It’s a start. It’s not going to end everything really quick, but we’ve got to start somewhere.”

Stanley, who will be based in Gingolx, a Nisga’a community on the Pacific coast of British Columbia northeast of Prince Rupert, will cover British Columbia, Yukon and Western Arctic; Bird will be based in Montreal Lake First Nation, about 100 km north of Prince Albert, Sask., and will cover Alberta and Saskatchewan, and, if necessary, also Manitoba and northern Ontario.

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In 2015, Singh took over a beautiful, ornate church in the centre of Montreal’s bustling downtown. St. James the Apostle had a leaky roof, an uneven foundation, and its books were in rough shape.

With the bishop’s blessing, he became the pastor of the church. And then he closed it down. He closed it down for nine months, giving the existing congregation of about 30 a list of other Anglican churches they could attend.

He emptied the church of its pews and got rid of the choir. He changed the name from the old St. James the Apostle to the new and more modern St. Jax.

Singh started toward his ultimate goal of changing the building from an Anglican church — to a multi-faith community centre.

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People living in tents next to All Saints’ Anglican Church in Winnipeg, diocese of Rupert’s Land, are being asked to leave after a decision made “with some sadness” by the church’s vestry, says the Rev. Brent Neumann.

Neumann, the priest at All Saints’, says the people living on the property will not be asked to return after vacating the site today, May 30, as part of an agreement to leave the property 48 hours before a wedding scheduled to take place at the church on Saturday, June 2.

The saga of the “tent city” has been ongoing for the past month.

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For decades, Melissa M. Skelton straddled the secular and spiritual worlds.

She did her masters in divinity at the same time as she completed her MBA. She was ordained as a priest in 1992 and worked at a parish while working as a brand manager for Procter & Gamble. Later, she juggled working as a rector with a consulting business in product marketing.

Skelton’s unorthodox background made her historic election as the 12th archbishop of the ecclesiastical province of B.C. and Yukon on the first ballot — the first female archbishop in the Anglican Church of Canada — all the more unexpected.

“Given that background I was rather astonished to be elected,” Skelton said, still in shock a day after the election Saturday when the church’s provincial electoral college chose her among three bishops who had agreed to stand for election.

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By now it has sadly become a familiar story that we hear about or read in the news—a church is being closed, deconsecrated and put up for sale somewhere in the country.

The reasons for closure are almost always identical—the congregation has steadily and dramatically declined, the buildings needed many repairs and the cost of maintaining them was prohibitive.

Sometimes the closures happen voluntarily, sometimes after a long, drawn-out battle with church leaders. But when they happen, they are heartbreaking, to say the least.

The effects are profound. Many parishioners have compared it to losing a loved one.

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St. Mark’s Anglican Church, a 100-year-old facility in Kitsilano, one of B.C.’s most upscale areas, is up for sale at the steep price of $11,998,000.

[The] Rev. Richard Leggett said Anglican churches in the Vancouver area are moving elsewhere due to, in part, the steep cost of housing.

Other Anglican properties up for sale include St. Margaret of Scotland in Burnaby and St. Monica’s in Horseshoe Bay.

“Housing prices in Vancouver have grown so rapidly and so high that the grandchildren of the grandparents who built the church are no longer living nearby,” said Leggett.

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You were ordained in 2009 and have worked in both Anglican and Episcopal churches. Can you comment further on how you have tried to balance your pursuits in ministry with your academic pursuits?

I have to confess that I don’t think I do balance very well. That’s partly because my week is mainly spent caring for a rambunctious toddler. But I have also been trained to pursue something other than balance. I remember one mentor, in particular, talking about what it means as a theologian to, before all else, be responsive to the Word, the Word being God’s address to us in our forms of life across different seasons. Sometimes God’s call will provide you a feeling of equilibrium between academic work and other ministry opportunities.

But sometimes it can mean that you have an intense period where life feels a bit out of control—starting a new ministry, for instance, or that final period of “writing up” a thesis. The important thing for me is to be able to say that I’m responding to God at that moment, giving my all where I’m called to serve. Right now, I’m primarily an academic and dad; while I certainly take part in the church, I’m not that active in leadership. That’s the shape of my obedience for this season and I’m finding new clarity and joy here.

Maybe twenty years from now I’ll be able to give you a better answer. Maybe part of it is that I’ve had a period of four years in ministry, then four years in PhD work, now a combination of full-time parenting and writing. Certainly in both cases I sought the other community: as a pastor in Ottawa I was regularly involved on the neighbouring university campus, and as a doctoral student in Scotland, I was regularly involved in the local churches. Then there are times when the communities overlap: a big joy of my time in Scotland was working with Iain Provan and other Regent alum as they founded the Abbey Summer School, where they insist on integration.

Read it all and you can check out his website there.

Get acquainted with Regent's Scholar-in-Residence David S. Robinson as he reflects on the “Bonhoeffer Moment,” his personal motto, and balancing academics, ministry & fatherhood. https://t.co/4njn55w6go pic.twitter.com/2InpoipD58

— Regent College (@regentcollege) February 17, 2018

Members of Quebec City’s Muslim community will stand alongside those of the Huron-Wendat, Jewish, Catholic, Anglican and many other communities Sunday, as they honour the victims of last year’s deadly attack on a mosque.

The interfaith ceremony, which starts at 7 p.m. at the Pavillion de Jeunesse at Expo Cité, will not be the first time different religious communities in the city will have come together since the shooting.

Bruce Myers, bishop of the Anglican diocese of Quebec and Boufeldja Benabdallah, co-founder of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City, spoke with Ainslie MacLellan on CBC Radio’s All in a Weekend, about how their communities have built a friendship.

Read it all (and please note there is an audio option also, which is about 12 1/3 minutes).

Having reached the age of 100, Canon Ken Cowan is ready to go to the next level. His 101st birthday on March 23, that is.

Cowan, whose youthful appearance belies the fact he was born 50 years after Confederation, before the end of the First World War, and before his birth-province of Saskatchewan became a teenager, was presented with a Canada 150th Anniversary Medal January 21 at his home parish of Christ Church Bells Corners, in the Anglican diocese of Ottawa.

Liberal MP Chandra Arya was on hand at the reception to congratulate Cowan and pin the medal on him as dozens of parishioners, guests and two of Cowan’s sons looked on. The medal is given to Canadians whose generosity, dedication, volunteerism and hard work make their communities a better place to live in.

It was the Rev. Kathryn Otley, rector of Christ Church, who nominated Cowan for the medal. “We made a nomination on Ken’s behalf—without telling him—so it was a big surprise,” she told the gathering.

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Some provinces of the Anglican Communion have been reticent about restoring the vocational diaconate. The most frequent objection is that ordained deacons clericalise lay ministry and in any case lay people can do anything that deacons can. Also, bishops and priests are already deacons, so a separate order is redundant.

But part from ignoring the historical roots of the diaconate, this approach negates the purpose of ordination. Deacons are officially commissioned to a leadership role by the Church, to which they make a lifetime commitment. A leading deacon in the US-based Episcopal Church, Susanne Watson Epting, has put it this way: “Even though ordained, [the deacon’s] primary identity remains baptismal and our ordination charges and vows serve only to expand, enhance, and urge us on in animating and exemplifying the diakonia to which all the baptised were called.” Experience with the renewed diaconate has amply fulfilled this assertion.

As for bishops and priests already being deacons, there are those, including myself, who turn the argument on its head. The Church should return to its original practice, end sequential ordination and abolish the transitional diaconate, which serves little purpose and inhibits the ministry of the vocational deacon. Food for thought!

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Noah Njegovan, a former priest in the diocese of Brandon, who pleaded guilty in December to stealing more than $190,000 from the diocese, was handed down a 22-month conditional sentence Tuesday morning, January 9, by Justice John Menzies of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Brandon, Man.

Under the terms of his sentence, Njegovan will be confined to his home for 12 months—only allowed to leave the house for work, medical emergencies and four hours each Saturday to obtain necessities—and under a curfew of 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. for the remaining 10 months of his sentence. He will have a criminal record for theft over $5,000.

“This is commonly known as ‘house arrest,’ with very strict curfew and supervision conditions,” said Diocese of Brandon Bishop William G. Cliff in a letter to his diocese January 9. “Mr. Njegovan will be able to go to work and will have four hours per week for necessary maintenance. Otherwise, he must remain at his home and at any time, be able to prove to police that he is there. Should the police check on him and he is not there, he will finish the rest of his sentence in a provincial institution.”

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In the early afternoon of Christmas Eve, 2016, Chad Geis, chair of the pastoral council at the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qu’Appelle, Sask., arrived at the church he had known since his childhood to get things ready for the Christmas morning mass.

From the moment he stepped in, it was clear something was amiss. It was oddly cold inside. The thermometer read -5° C. Christmas services ended up being cancelled at the church while Geis tried to find out what was wrong with the boiler.

Two and a half blocks away, at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, there were no Christmas services planned either. Its congregation of eight to 10 active members receives sacramental ministry once a month from a retired priest who also ministers to other churches, and they wanted to offer the priest the option of putting on a service at a larger church with more children, says warden Jean Kurbis. So Kurbis and some other parishioners had made plans to attend the Christmas service at the Roman Catholic church instead. When they arrived on Christmas Day, they were surprised to see a sign bearing the words “Closed until further notice” on the door.

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Archdeacon John Meade, coadjutor bishop-elect of the diocese of Western Newfoundland, died early in the morning of November 29, 2017. He was 45.

Meade had been in the hospital throughout the summer, but “faced his deteriorating medical situation with a calm faith,” according to a statement posted by the ecclesiastical province of Canada on its Facebook page.

Western Newfoundland Bishop Percy Coffin described Meade as “a dedicated man,” saying he “certainly was a dedicated person to his task—unwavering, unfaltering. He was just so committed.”

It was “a great sadness” that Meade was never consecrated as bishop, Coffin said. “He offered much, and there was a promising future for him.”

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Bishop Charlie Masters has just welcomed Bishop Wm. Anderson and his wife Margaret into the Anglican Network in Canada. They continue to reside in Terrace, in Northern British Columbia. Bishop Bill has recently retired as Bishop of Caledonia. He has relinquished the exercise of ministry in the Anglican Church of Canada as of November 16, 2017.

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The Rev. Jacob Worley, whose election as bishop of the diocese of Caledonia was not upheld by the provincial House of Bishops in May, has been fired from his position as a priest effective November 30, 2017.

The termination was made “without cause,” according to a statement released by diocesan administrator, the Rev. Gwen Andrews.

Andrews declined to make further comments, but wrote in the statement that the decision was made by Archbishop John Privett, metropolitan (senior bishop) of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and Yukon, “in consultation with those in leadership positions in the Diocese and in prayerful consideration of what is in the best interests of the Worley family and the future of the Diocese.”

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TAP: Is that when you started the church plant?

JW: Yes, it was just at that moment that many of the people who were already leaving the church said to me, “Will you now plant a church for us?” My new Bishop said yes, so I planted the church. So what the majority in the House of Bishops here [in British Columbia and the Yukon] said is they couldn’t accept me as a bishop because I planted the church within the boundaries of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and that I won’t say I’m sorry I did it. They said that constitutes that I have a view that’s contrary to the Anglican Church of Canada–and the National Chancellor was actually involved in all of that. He was talking to the Provincial Chancellor and diocesan Chancellor, as well as Archbishop Privett. And he was quoting Lambeth 1988, Resolution 72 as the rationale for my view being contrary to the discipline of the Anglican Church of Canada. They came back to me and wanted me to say that it was wrong to plant the church. And I can’t say that, because I know that the Lord moved in a mighty way there. And I didn’t go to anybody and say “Come and join us, leave the church”–I never said that. I just did it. At first there were 19 of us, and 7 were my family! There were young families, just having their kids kind of families, in their early to mid-twenties. And they didn’t want to leave the legacy of the Episcopal Church to their kids, because they saw what was happening. And so we started in someone’s living room and within three years we saw substantial growth in numbers. But more importantly than that, the people we were ministering to were those people in the community who had no place to go, people with mental illnesses, people ostracized by the rest of the churches, who felt they needed to worship and have a loving place where they heard the Gospel.

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The likelihood that the church’s revenue will stagnate in coming years means it might want to think carefully about its priorities, Fraser Lawton, bishop of the diocese of Athabasca and a member of the financial management committee, said in a presentation to Council of General Synod (CoGS) Saturday, November 11.

“The trends as we go forward, looking ahead over a number of years, suggest that we need to be mindful of what appears to be a probability of declining income,” Lawton said. “It might be wise for us to think about what are the critical things…Why do we exist as General Synod? What is our purpose, what is the priority in terms of funding?”

More than 90% of General Synod’s net income comes from the dioceses, Lawton said, but almost all of them are “having some conversations” about their own financial future. Given this, he said, “if everything continues as is, the day is going to come when we’re going to have to make some very hard decisions.”

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An actor turned priest has come up with a unique way to attract attention to his tiny church in Russell, Ontario.

[The] Reverend Lee Lambert has taken to social media to put the fear of God into people this Halloween period, in a fun way. This motorcycle ridin’, leather wearin’ priest isn’t your typical man of the cloth. In fact, his first calling was to the stage, not the altar.

Lambert played a soldier in the 1990 movie Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. It was largely shot in Ottawa’s Rockcliffe Park. After dabbling in acting, Lee Lambert became Reverend Lambert in 2001 and took over the services at St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Russell 7 years ago.

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Five existing Anglican and Lutheran churches in Peterborough could be merged into a single church, and a new “mission church” planted elsewhere in the city, under a proposal put forth earlier this month by the area bishop.

On October 1 and 2, Riscylla Shaw, area bishop for Trent-Durham within the diocese of Toronto, presented the plan to parishioners at two public meetings. It foresees three Anglican churches—St. Barnabas Anglican Church, St. Luke’s Anglican Church and All Saints’ Anglican Church—and Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church all closing “in the immediate future,” with parishioners gathering to worship for traditional services at the one remaining church, St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church.

At some point after that, Shaw proposed, a new church might be built, probably in the city’s southwest corner, to house a “new missional congregation.”

The idea, Shaw told the Anglican Journal, is that the newly-merged congregation at St. John the Evangelist would focus energetically on “bringing the Word, the good news of Jesus out into the street, into Peterborough and out to meet the people where they’re at,” gathering new parishioners to the point where the new church would need to be built to house them.

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About 80 people attended a community service of reconciliation held at All Saints Church in St. Andrews Oct. 1. The Anglican Church of Canada’s first national Indigenous bishop, Mark MacDonald, was the guest preacher.

The ecumenical service saw participation from a wide range of community churches and members, including All Saints parishioner Judith Moses, who is a member of the Delaware Nation.

The service began with a smudging ceremony led by Cate Akagi of the Passamaquody Nation. She opened the service with prayer honouring the four directions.

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A Leamington, Ont., church is renting out space in its basement to local Muslims for use as a mosque.

Since this spring, Muslim worship has been held in the basement of St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, diocese of Huron, says the church’s rector, the Rev. Andrew Wilson.

The arrangement serves the church because it provides income to fund its ministry, he says; but it also an important part of the church’s outreach to Leamington’s growing refugee population.

“To one degree, it’s as basic as a rental, but it is creating wonderful community for them—they feel safe, they feel welcome,” he says.

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I do remember how many folk on the other side of the argument about 10 or so years ago were at pains to point out this was about blessings, not marriage–marriage was not going to be touched. We were not fooled by that, even then.

Read it all (emphasis mine).

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Christ Church Cathedral is asking the public for $8 million to save its spire and for other repairs to the 158-year-old building.

The Anglican church’s steel spire is corroded and could topple unless it is rebuilt, officials said at a launch of the fundraising campaign at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Earlier, Parks Canada and the Historic Monuments Board of Canada unveiled a plaque recognizing the historic significance of the 1859 church, which played a key role in expanding the city from Old Montreal to today’s downtown.

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…[The Rev. Gwen] Andrews said she was shocked at the bishops’ decision, partly because in March, before the electoral synod, a search committee formed by the diocese sent a copy of Worley’s curriculum vitae and his employment history to Privett, pointing out his missionary work under the bishop of Rwanda and asking if it posed a problem to his candidacy. The search committee told her, Andrews said, that Privett did not think it would pose a problem.

Asked about this, Privett said his remarks were “off the cuff,” not part of the formal vetting process, and based on the fact that Worley had been received by the diocese of Caledonia as a priest in good standing.

“In itself, it may or may not have been an issue,” Privett said. “At that point, it didn’t seem to be, because he was functioning in the diocese of Caledonia and I’d assumed that the diocese of Caledonia had received him in due order…It was only when it came to the House of Bishops, when we were looking primarily at the criteria in the provincial canon, that we recognized that we needed to look further than we had been before.”

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Last month’s election was held to find a successor for Bishop William Anderson, who announced in late 2015 his plans to retire.

The house’s decision has to do with Worley’s views on his involvement with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), a collection of theologically conservative churches that was originally a mission of the Anglican Province of Rwanda.

In 2007, Worley, who was born and raised in the U.S., planted a church in Las Cruces, New Mexico, as a missionary for the Anglican Province of Rwanda. (At some point after Worley left, that church joined the Anglican Church in North America, another grouping of conservative Anglican churches.)

The bishops began to discuss Worley’s views after a review of his service for AMiA, which, according to the statement, he performed “under license from the Province of Rwanda in the geographical jurisdiction of The Episcopal Church without permission of the Episcopal Church.”

“After many open and prayerful conversations, the majority of the House concluded that within the past five years the Rev. Worley has held—and continues to hold—views contrary to the Discipline of the Anglican Church of Canada,” Archbishop John Privett, metropolitan of the province, is quoted as saying.

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Eight same-sex couples have been married in three Anglican Church of Canada dioceses, ahead of General Synod 2019, when a resolution to allow same-sex marriages will be presented for final approval.

Since General Synod 2016 approved – on first reading – a proposed change in the marriage canon (church law) to allow same-sex marriages, four weddings of same-sex couples have taken place in the diocese of Niagara, three in the diocese of Toronto and one in the diocese of Ottawa, according to the offices of the respective diocesan bishops. Several other same-sex couples in the dioceses of Toronto and Ottawa are also preparing to walk down the aisle.

In the diocese of Montreal, Bishop Mary Irwin-Gibson said she is currently going through a discernment process with four same-sex couples considering marriage.

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The Rev. Jake Worley, an Alabama-born priest, has been elected bishop of the diocese of Caledonia.

Worley, rector of the Bulkley Valley Regional Parish, which includes three congregations in northern British Columbia, was elected on the eighth ballot of an episcopal election held in Prince Rupert Saturday, April 22, in what he described as a Spirit-filled event.

“It was an amazing experience of the Holy Spirit,” he said. “He certainly came there and moved on our hearts. It was amazing. I don’t know what else to say besides we’re in many ways shocked, but also grateful, for his leading.”

Worley said he actually never intended to run as bishop, but was eventually talked into it.

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