…while there are few official communications from the gathering, different groups of church officials have been communicating with their churches. Both ACNA ”” and the broader Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) group with which it is affiliated ”” have shared prayer requests and created web sites around the gathering, as has Welby via an official web site operated by the London-based Anglican Communion Office.

In contrast to Welby, who has granted multiple interviews in advance of the gathering, Episcopal Church officials have said little publicly. New Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is not regularly active on social media (Curry averaged one tweet a month for the past three months) and he has faced both an unplanned emergency surgery and the administrative suspension of three high-ranking church staff in the past month.

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Attendance at Church of England services has plunged to its lowest level ever as the Archbishop of Canterbury warned it was battling to maintain its place in an increasingly “anti-Christian” culture.
Official figures ”“ based on an annual pew count ”“ show that only 1.4 per cent of the population of England now attend Anglican services on a typical Sunday morning.
Even the Church’s preferred “weekly” attendance figures, which include those at mid-week or extra services, has slipped below one million for the first time ever.

Overall average attendances at Sunday services across England fell by 22,000 to 764,700 in 2014 – a fall of seven per cent in just five years.

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You can listen directly there and download the mp3 there.

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.

Watch and read it all.

…sources have told The Telegraph that some conservative Primates had been led to expect a more fundamental discussion about teaching in sexuality on other issues rather than change in structures to accommodate division.

Sources claimed that the first some clerics attending the meeting had known of the plan was when it was reported in the British media last year.

Several Primates are understood to be backing a warning by the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Rev Stanley Ntagali, that there would be a walkout if there is no discussion on restoring what he called “godly order” to the Anglican Communion by punishing the Americans for their liberal shift…

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Archbishop Hiltz’s predictions of the first day flow of events appears to have been borne out. AI can confirm the primates spent Monday morning in prayer and the afternoon in hearing an address by Archbishop Welby and in setting the agenda for the week ahead.

AI has seen what purports to be a copy of the archbishop’s address, and has asked the Lambeth Palace press office to confirm its veracity. If the document is correct, then the themes identified by Archbishop Hiltz in his Anglican Journal interview were present in Archbishop Welby’s address. The archbishop’s aides have not responded so far.

Nor can claims that an overnight ultimatum was given by the GAFCON block to Archbishop Welby be verified.

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Almighty God, who didst endow thy abbot Aelred with the gift of Christian friendship and the wisdom to lead others in the way of holiness: Grant to thy people that same spirit of mutual affection, that, in loving one another, we may know the love of Christ and rejoice in the gift of thy eternal goodness; through the same Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Feast of #Saint Aelred (” 1167), abbot of Rievaulx, hagiographer, historian, & teacher of spiritual friendship pic.twitter.com/yujUolIvji

— Silverstream Priory (@cenacleosb) January 12, 2016

O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst sit lowly in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions: Give unto thy servants that humility of heart, and willingness to learn, without which no man can find wisdom; to the glory of thy holy Name.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”

–Genesis 3:6-10

Today's Collect for #Primates2016 is a prayer by William Temple: https://t.co/2TvcTRLZBa #OneFamily pic.twitter.com/CUAlmcA5en

— Primates 2016 (@Primates2016) January 12, 2016

The reality is that a Church such as the Anglican Communion is such a mixture of histories, and of theological difference, that inevitably there will be deep differences and from time to time these will lead to grave crises, such as the one faced in recent years.

Like all crises in the church it is complicated. It springs from history, the history of centuries a history of Anglicanism and of the church in England which began before the fall of the Roman Empire and long before Augustine, with Bishops, including at York.

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Found here:

Perfect storm of Scripture at BCP Evensong tonight in Canterbury Cathedral.

Psalms 59-61
Amos 1
Magnificat
1 Corinthians 1:1-17
Nunc Dimittis

O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness

And for those for whom numbers are important, I counted them all in (including Foley) and I counted them all back out again.