On 4 May 2012 the California-based bishop held a conference call with Archbishop Duncan, Bishop Chuck Murphy of the AMiA, and Bishop Terrell Glenn of PEAR-USA/ACNA to discuss his future plans.
Bishop Hunter stated that he had a “warm and collegial conversations” with the three bishops and “articulated for each of them my vision of C4SO becoming a servant to all the various Anglican entities within North America. C4SO will happily plant churches in partnership with PEARUSA, TheAm and the ACNA.”
Although Bishops Johnston and Miller are mentioned in the article, I don’t think they are “joining ACNA” the way that Bishop Hunter is. Unless something has changed, or Chuck Murphy is misinformed (or lying), Bishops Miller and Johnston are temporarily becoming canonically resident in ACNA but will continue overseeing AMiA congregations (who may or may not be part of the ACNA).
Bishop Hunter is not going to be overseeing churches or clergy, but rather… doing something only ambiguously described in the article. Why does ACNA need another church planting initiative? Isn’t that what Anglican1000 is for? [ad hominem sentence deleted by Elf] Something that was effectively a non-geographic diocese of the AMiA is now an ecclesiastically-informal planter-coaching subunit of ACNA?
I don’t get it.
[Edited by Elf]
Neither do I, samh. And reading all of this “dance” talk so soon after reading the ghastly address by KJS leaves me a bit queasy.
What “venom” from “Conger and AnglicanInk” are you referring to, samh? I’ve been reading Anglican Ink since the beginning, and Conger’s pieces at The Church of England Newspaper for longer, and his reporting has always been professional and irenic.
ACNA has too many Bishops and needs more church planting coaches. Anglican 1000 think the more initiatives the better! Sounds like Todd Hunter will be working in his strength which is a great move for all concerned.
It looks like its some kind of parachurch organization.
What I don’t see is how on earth he’s going to be church planting within three different Anglican entities, while a bishop in ACNA.
Okay — I can see *how* he’s going to do something that incoherent. I just don’t see why.
Oh well.
ACNA gets another bishop.
I suspect that clarity will emerge over time. I also imagine that Bp. Todd will continue his church-planting work, which won’t interfere with Anglican1000 which is not a planting organization but an effort to resource planters and “change the conversation” about planting in Anglicanism on this continent.
MotherViolet,
You repeat a meme which I’ve seen so often it has just become kind of background noise: “ACNA has too many bishops”.
Can you quantify this? What is the basis for the statement? How many is enough? How many is too many? Genuinely curious.
Darin+
A Bishop is a guardian of the truth/gospel, a pastor to the pastors and their families in his care and a focus of unity for all the people in his diocese. (1998 Lambeth)
ACNA has said a new diocese must have a MINIMUM of 12 parishes which is very small but perhaps a necessary place to start. I think 40 would be a good target number. This would be a manageable size to allow for yearly visits from the Bishop and yet large enough to pledge resources to the common mission. (For example church planting in the diocese) Compared to Africa all ACNA dioceses are pathetically small. Even compared to TEC (which itself is grossly over represented by bishops at Lambeth) ACNA has still a small ratio of parishes to diocesan bishops. There are now a number of extra bishops around who are not needed for normal diocesan work. Of course if they want to be pioneer church planting apostolic bishops then they can create their own diocese. More power to them. I expect that even though ACNA will grow in numbers of parishes and attendance the number of bishops will hold steady or shrink slightly.