The Anglican Diocese of B.C. has suspended operations at Camp Columbia on Thetis Island as it begins a major restructuring in the face of falling church attendance.
The 62-year-old Christian camp for children, youth and adults had racked up a deficit of more than $500,000, the diocese said in a news release.
The Diocesan Council decided it could no longer afford the drain on resources and laid off all five camp employees, the release said.
Neither Bishop James Cowan nor finance officer Harry Felsing was available for comment. But Felsing said in a posting on the diocese website that the council has made no decision to sell the 72-acre property.
The land and buildings are worth $4 million, church documents show.
While it’s sad to see this camp close, and sadder yet to read about the dismal condition of the Diocese of B. C. as a whole, I found the remarkably candid assessment of Gary Nicolosi+ actually quite encouraging.
It’s rare for such a frank admission of deep trouble and crisis to appear in a diocesan paper, but apparently reality just couldn’t be publicly denied any longer. The stats are bleak and disheartening indeed. The diocesan ASA is down over 20% in just one year!! From 4,955 in 2007 to 3,856 in 2008. The average church’s ASA fell from 97 to 82 in just one year. Now that’s truly scary. Alarming even.
Perhaps there’s some partial explanation for this catastrophic drop (such as a change in reporting accuracy). I don’t think it was due to a couple of big churches leaving the ACoC, since we’re not talking about the Diocese of New Westminster here, the Vancouver-based one, but the neighboring, more rural diocese around it.
But what interests me here are some of the bold proposals put forth by Fr. Nicolosi. I especially relished the idea that clergy compensation be tied to actual performance. Wow! What a novel idea. If that doesn’t goad the clergy into drastic action (and scare their wives), nothing will. But such fear can also become counter-productive, because frightened leaders do dumb things.
But I certainly applaud the idea of spending diocesan money “strategically,” even if that means slaughtering a few “sacred cows.” As Methodist pastor and church consultant William Easum put it so well in an engaging book a while ago, [b]Sacred Cows Make Great Hamburgers[/b].
Bravo, Gary Nicolosi! But can the diocese really handle the truth? Time will tell.
David Handy+