Because of the vast distances involved in servicing the central-west, the Anglican Church says it is physically impossible for one ordained person to minister to the whole region.
The church says it can also be difficult to attract people to serve in more isolated locations.
As a result a different approach is being trialled…
ALL Saints’ College is to be sold to help the Anglican Diocese of Bathurst repay a multi-million dollar debt to the Commonwealth Bank.
Plans to sell the school were confirmed on Saturday during the first day of a local synod meeting. Nine other unidentified church properties across the diocese have also been earmarked for sale to repay the debt.
The Anglican diocese of Bathurst is being forced to sell church property following a NSW Supreme Court order to settle an outstanding debt of up to $25 million to Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
The diocese, which covers one-third of the area of NSW, is likely next month to approve the first sale of properties at a synod, or governing council, after losing a lengthy battle in which it argued it did not have the authority to sell property it held under trust structures.
“We will be selling church trust property in order to satisfy what we owe,” Ian Palmer, the bishop in charge of the Bathurst diocese, said.
Bishop Richard Condie was consecrated on Saturday and is now the highest clergy member in Tasmania.
The Anglican Church reached out to abuse survivor and long-time campaigner Steven Fisher to invite him to meet with the Bishop.
It was an invitation Mr Fisher was pleased to receive.
“I believe it’s a huge step for them to reach out and ask a victim to come down and actually talk to them,” he said.
“It’s something we’ve been campaigning for for 15 years.”
Read it all and there is a report in the Tasmanian Examiner
Goodson Muleya originally hails from a village in the Mazabuka District in Zambia’s southern province. His parents died when he was seven and he was taken in by his uncle, but not treated well. Eventually, Mr Muleya ran away from home and spent time living on the streets while also trying to complete his studies and find work.
It was during his time on the streets that someone shared the gospel with him. Although like many in Zambia Mr Muleya had grown up going to church, he did not truly know and follow Jesus. It was after this chance encounter that he thought hard about whether he was truly a Christian and he decided he needed to change.
“After this confession my life was transformed,” he says. “I felt the need to forgive my uncle and everyone else who harmed me, as I was living in bitterness all these years after the death of my parents. Also, it dawned to me that not everyone who goes to church is Christian.”
Bishop Richard Condie is sworn in by Anglican Primate Philip Freier
A healthy church…transforming life
The Tasmanian Church and community has celebrated the Installation and Ordination today of The Right Reverend Dr Richard Condie as the 12th Bishop of Tasmania.
The Installation service took place at St David’s Cathedral, Hobart, with the Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Archbishop Dr Philip Freier conducting the Installation. Local, State and Federal Tasmanian political leaders, and Aboriginal elders were there representing the Tasmanian community. There were also heads of a significant number of other Tasmanian church denominations in attendance, as well as representatives from the 45 Tasmanian parishes, Anglican Schools and agencies. You can read the full Media Release here. The Revd Dr Peter Adam preached the sermon. The text is available here.
Newcastle’s Anglican Bishop Greg Thompson says having the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse come to Newcastle will be important for the community.
The Royal Commission will hold a two-week public hearing into Newcastle’s Anglican diocese starting on June 20.
The ABC has previously reported that several alleged paedophile rings are being investigated by police and the Royal Commission.
Bishop Thompson said Newcastle needed to hear the stories of victims and come to terms with the abuse.
The appointment of Kanishka Raffel as Dean of St Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney makes him the first non-European to hold the position in the Anglican Church of Australia.
The Very Rev’d Raffel was raised Buddhist and as a student was once a member of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies, but reading the Christian gospel was a life changing experience that set him on the road to the Church….
The emergence of a “para Anglican Communion” was underway, Newcastle Bishop Greg Thompson said in a letter to Anglican Primate Archbishop Philip Freier in December, in which he declined to attend the annual bishops conference in South Australia from March 6 because it would give the impression of a united church that conflicted with reality.
He accused Sydney diocese of demanding other dioceses sign up to Anglican protocols on homosexuality, or Sydney would not attend any further national bishops’ conferences.
Bishop Thompson’s letter followed a Sydney Synod resolution in October against Australia’s first female Anglican Bishop, Kay Goldsworthy, for appointing an openly gay priest in a long-term relationship with a man to a parish in her diocese of Gippsland.
…..
Prominent evangelical Sydney Anglican priest David Ould described the Sydney resolution as “robust”, in a blog in which he said Bishops Goldsworthy and Parkes were “undermining the Biblical doctrine of marriage and human sexuality”.
The resolution included “praise to God” for the recently formed Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) in Australia, associated with the global Confessing Anglicans movement based on strong rejection of female and gay clergy and same sex marriage.
A 125-year old male tradition will be turned on its head when girls are given their own choir at St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral.
In what’s been described as a win for gender equity, girls will eventually perform Sunday and Evensong services that until now have been the exclusive domain of boys and men.
Anglican Dean of Melbourne Dr Andreas Loewe said the city icon wanted to give girls the same opportunity that boys have enjoyed since 1888.
“If women can become archbishops in the Anglican Church of Australia then they should also be able to sing at St Paul’s Cathedral,” he said.
The new Anglican Dean of Sydney has made history. Kanishka Raffel, who was officially installed as Dean of Sydney last Thursday, is the first person from a non-European background to hold the role in the church’s history in Australia.
“No, it probably doesn’t cross my mind … I just feel like me,” the Dean said.
But his appointment heralds a bid by St Andrew’s Cathedral to cater for the changing demographic of its congregation, with a rise in parishioners from Asian and sub-continent backgrounds.
It also presents a opportunity for the church to access and attract new followers, Dean Raffel said, pointing to census statistics that 56 per cent of the City of Sydney’s population have both parents born overseas compared to the state average of 36 per cent.
Melbourne’s Anglican churches say they cannot offer sanctuary to asylum seekers facing immediate deportation to Nauru because they are not equipped to provide accommodation.
It puts the Melbourne Anglican diocese at great odds with its counterparts around the rest of the country, who are willing to face police raids and possible charges to shield asylum seekers.
Senior Anglican clergy shared a secret understanding of each other’s attraction to young boys, a royal commission has been told.
The inquiry into the Church of England Boys’ Society being held in Hobart heard evidence on Thursday from the convicted child sexual offender Louis Daniels, 68, a former archdeacon who was one of Tasmania’s top-four church leaders in the early 1990s.
Daniels has since been jailed for pleading guilty to abusing 12 boys.
I will take comments on this submitted by email only to KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.
We bless you, God of the Universe,
for this land,
for its contrasts of landscape and climate,
for its abundance of wealth and opportunity.
We bless you for our history,
with all its struggles in adversity,
its courage and hope.
Give us in our diversity
tolerance and respect for each other
and a passionate commitment to justice for all.
Bless us so that we might be a blessing to others.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
..consider some extremists: A couple of successful, capable, health professionals leaving all the comforts, prosperity, security, and career advancements in Australia to help the desperately sick in an isolated, dangerous, impoverished, dysfunctional society. They have not done it as a short-term stint to help the needy in a crisis but starting in 1972 have continued for over 40 years. Here is a surgeon still working in his 80’s, for there is no other to replace him, amongst the thousands of well remunerated, western surgeons. He is the only surgeon for a couple of million people, building a hospital from nothing. He and his wife have not worked for money or fame but for their ultimate aim “to show the love of God”.
These people are extremists. Their whole life is anything but normal, average, usual or mainstream. They are extremists: Christian extremists. They are not alone. All over the world there are Christian extremists like this: People who have voluntarily given up the great Australian secularist life for something higher, grander, better. Extremists who have sacrificed the materialist dream to serve Christ by serving the poor, marginalised, endangered and sick.
When Muslim extremists kidnapped them, their life came into the public domain…
A Huntley’s Point grandmother has been awarded an Australia Day OAM for a life of devotion to women and families ”“ at home and abroad ”“ through one of the Anglican Church’s oldest surviving charities.
Huntley’s Point’s Christine Jensen was the President of the Mothers’ Union of Australia (Anglican Diocese of Sydney) from 2008 until 2013 and Patron from 2001 until 2013.
The Mothers Union was founded in by Mary Sumner in 1876 in the Anglican parish of Old Alresford , near Winchester in England to bring mothers of all social classes together, to provide support for them and to train them in motherhood
Mrs Jensen’s Australia Day Award citation further notes she has served as a Council Member of Mothers’ Union Australia as well as a Lay Member, Women’s Ministry Team, Anglican Diocese of Sydney from 2002 until 2007.
She has worked to support the wives of students attending Moore College, Moore Theological College from 1985 until 2001 and the Sydney Diocese Ministry Wives from 2001 until 2013.
Some Anglicans may recognise her as the wife of Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen (2001-2013) or know her as a powerful public speaker with a strong belief in strengthening families.
Read it all and there is a report from the diocese of Sydney here
The statement by Anglican leaders, thrashed out after four days of “painful” talks in the crypt of Canterbury cathedral, made no reference to LGBT Christians.
“To say I’m really disappointed would be an understatement,” Martyn Percy, the dean of Christ Church Oxford, told the Guardian. “The statement had nothing to say about LGBT Christians, and that’s a lost opportunity. By saying nothing, you are sending a signal.”
Jayne Ozanne, a prominent gay evangelical within the Church of England and a member of its general synod, said: “It claims that ”˜there is neither victor nor vanquished’. This is false. Those whose lives will be most impacted are our LGBT brothers and sisters around the world, of which the statement makes no mention. It is as if we do not even exist.”
GAFCON Supporters Message 2016 from Greg Gorman on Vimeo.
…the unity of the Communion does not depend upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rather, it depends upon the various provinces being able to recognise each other, with all their differences of culture, as truly apostolic and committed to the faith as it has been received. Tragically, that recognition has now broken down and affection for Canterbury is no substitute. As the GAFCON movement affirmed in the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008,
”˜While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury.’
The Anglican Communion is in danger of leaving aside the gospel of God’s costly grace to us sinners, replacing it with the poor substitute of cheap grace which makes us comfortable but can neither save nor transform. This is not the renewal and restoration which the GAFCON and other orthodox primates seek.
The choice before the Primates as they gather in Canterbury is whether they will take the difficult but necessary action to renew the confessional unity of the Communion placing the teaching of the bible at the centre of its sacramental life and witness, or whether they will accept a merely cosmetic institutional restructuring which will see it increasingly taken captive by the dominant secular culture of the West.
“This year, the world we live in has been overshadowed by darkness. We are appalled at the dark acts committed in Paris, Beirut, San Bernardino and elsewhere.” Dr Davies said. “We long for light to dispel the darkness. Yet that is exactly the message of Christmas, when God’s light shone into the world and the darkness did not overcome it.”
The court found that the Bank had a contract with the Diocese, as represented by the Bishop in Council and that there was a real guarantee made to honour the loan. Further, the court found that the BiC has an obligation to promote the necessary ordinances to levy the funds required (i.e. general diocesan assets including, if necessary, church buildings and properties should be sold to make good the debt).
This obviously puts the diocese in a dire position. It is widely acknowledged that it will be unable to meet these debts and continue to function in any general sense as it currently does. So where to from here?
It’s less than 24 hours since the judgement was passed down but I’ve been able to canvas a range of responses from senior and informed figures in the Anglican Church of Australia.
Amongst many there is a genuine sorrow for the diocese which is now facing a major crisis, and also for Bishop Ian Palmer who is not in perfect health. But options are limited. This will now be a test of the national church’s understanding of its own mutuality. To what extent should other dioceses get involved to help out? What role should the Primate or the General Synod take? When the crisis first developed a financial advisory group went to meet with then Bishop Hurford. They were, it’s fair to say, sent packing. More recently at a General Synod Standing Committee meeting one member urged the Standing Committee to “either send a condolence card or stand shoulder to shoulder”. But which will it be?
One of two organisations at the centre of a royal commission into horrific sexual abuse across two decades in two Brisbane schools has pledged to proactively seek out confirmed victims and refund their school fees.
The other is yet to indicate whether it will follow suit.
The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane is responsible for St Paul’s School, which employed a paedophile music teacher for four years in the 1980s and a sexually abusive student counsellor a few years later.
Last month the diocese adopted a policy to refund the tuition and boarding fees of what’s believed to be dozens of students from the Bald Hills school and any other confirmed cases of abuse under the diocese’s control.
THE Anglican Diocese of Tasmania has elected a new Bishop to replace the recently retired Bishop John Harrower.
The Church held its Election Synod gathering in Launceston over the past two days, with Dr Richard Condie selected for the top job.
Dr Condie is Vicar of St Jude’s Carlton, one of Melbourne’s largest Anglican churches.
Queensland’s proposal to reinstate civil partnerships for straight and same-sex couples has received support from Anglicans and Baptists, while other Christians continue to oppose the move.
Of the 30 submissions to the parliamentary committee, most were in support of the return to civil partnerships which were established in the dying days of the Bligh government, but changed into registered relationships in one of the first acts of the Newman government.
The Palaszczuk government legislation would alter the name and once again allow state-sanctioned ceremonies for same-sex and straight couples.
Read it all from the Brisbane Times.
[The] Reverend David West said it was the first lecture the church had banned and admitted the timing was “unfortunate”, saying he only became aware of the content of the talk on Monday….
“We use church property for all sorts of groups, but the content of any group can’t be offensive to the Anglican Church and assisted dying is something the Anglican and mainstream Christian churches object to.”
A former bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Grafton has been stripped of any standing within the church over his handling of allegations of abuse at the North Coast Children’s Home.
Keith Slater was Bishop of Grafton for 10 years until his resignation in May of 2013.
“If we don’t do this – what will our silence say?” argued Tara Sing, who spoke as seconder of the reaffirmation motion.
Mrs Sing echoed a call from Archbishop Glenn Davies, in his Presidential Address to the Synod, when he said “It is time that all Christians, especially Anglicans, should enter the discussion and graciously and sensitively explain the reasons why our good Creator has made marriage the way he has.”
Canon Sandy Grant, of Wollongong, moved the resolution, which “affirms once again that marriage, as a gift from God who made us male and female, is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life” and urged the Federal Parliament to uphold that definition.
“We live in a world of social change. This is not a new observation, yet it brings fresh challenges for gospel proclamation in our society, which appears to be moving further and further away from the guidelines for living which are enshrined in God’s Word. As Christians, we are at odds with the world. For good reason, John the Evangelist recorded Jesus’ warning to his disciples: If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)”
“In the same chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples that he had spoken these words so that his joy might be in them””in us””and that our joy may be full (John 15:11). This is an incredible promise and one that perhaps we do not appreciate, let alone assimilate, in our daily lives.
How is your joy? Is it real or feigned in the face of opposition to the gospel from your friends or family, workmates of fellow travellers?” the Archbishop said.
“The antagonism of the world to the Word of God is perhaps seen nowhere more acutely than in the virulent challenge to the definition of marriage which pervades conversations in the media, the workplace and even in our places of leisure.” Dr Davies said. “It is time that all Christians, especially Anglicans, should enter the discussion and graciously and sensitively explain the reasons why our good Creator has made marriage the way he has. We need to be courageous in our discussions both in private and in public, yet we also need to be sensitive and loving in our defence of biblical truth.”
Read it all and note the link to the full text of the Archbishop’s address.
Another day, another bishop trying to tell us that the church has had it wrong for 2,000 years.
The latest is the Anglican bishop of Wangaratta, the Most Rev. John Parkes, who has gotten himself into the newspapers and on the radio to tell us that not only is same-sex marriage inevitable in Australia, but that it might actually be compatible with Christian doctrine.
He is, of course, not the first to make the argument in one form or another, and none of his arguments are new so they serve as good example of this tendency of the theologically liberal wing of the church – and, not least, the Anglican Church of Australia – to keep pushing contrived arguments that are less likely to make the grade than that famous strained gnat of which Jesus spoke.
Read it all from ABC religion and Ethics in Australia.
The synod of the Anglican Church’s Sydney diocese will next month consider a report from a senior bishop which argues that wedding service providers should have the “religious freedom” to refuse to cater for gay couples.
While some believe that such laws would set a dangerous precedent, Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson argues the rights of both groups can be protected.
The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney Robert Forsyth heads up the Religious Freedom Reference Group within the church’s conservative Sydney diocese.
He is personally opposed to gay marriage and wants any new laws to offer an opt-out for those opposed to [same-sex marriage].
The gulf is widening among the world’s 80 million Anglicans and now the Archbishop of Canterbury has called a summit of church leaders to work out a new way of running the divided church.
Archbishop Justin Welby has asked Anglican primates from each major region to meet in London in January 2016.
He will discuss religiously motivated violence and the protection of children. But it’s the issue of sexuality and same-sex relationships that’s most divisive.
Is Archbishop Welby trying to achieve the impossible””satisfying the demands of liberal and conservative Anglicans for a church that’s totally inclusive or Biblically conservative? The Rev Dr Stephen Burns, associate dean of Trinity College Theological School in Melbourne and an expert in the worldwide Anglican communion, discusses the dilemma.