The U.S.-based Episcopal Church that many of ACNA’s members split from was largely unmentioned, but the divergent direction of the two churches was apparent. The Episcopal Church became increasingly centralized in the past 100 years, with more and more authority placed in the office of the Presiding Bishop and the denomination’s General Convention. Subsidiarity ”“ placing responsibility with the lowest unit capable of carrying out a function ”“ often fell by the wayside.
ACNA seems to have realized this, instead keeping the church at the provincial (national) level relatively streamlined.
“What you celebrate, you become,” claimed Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist missiologist and a keynote speaker for the assembly. Stetzer, who heads the SBC’s Lifeway Research arm, advised how to get out of the way of local efforts: build a culture of multiplication (churches and ministries), avoid the dependency that comes from lavishing money upon start-up churches (it doesn’t improve the odds of success, he reports), open more lanes to potential church leaders (lay and bi-vocational pastors) and give permission to people to do non-traditional things, such as have voluntary clergy.
All what Ed said, plus the fact that “the primary agency of mission is the local congregation”, and instead of shoehorning a little worship and teaching around business meetings, we shoehorned a wee bit of business into a whole bunch of worship and teaching and healing and fellowship.
[blockquote] “These examples seemed in line with what Stetzer prescribed when he told the church convention to “give permission†upfront for missional activities, rather than have a structure in which local churches had to ask for it.” [/blockquote]
That seems the best way to encourage mission.
I expect there are many in TEC who also recognise this, but TEC has become so centralised in its decision-making processes that it will be institutionally incapable of permitting its congregations this sort of leeway. ACNA is not so constrained.
A good example is The Falls Church in Virginia, which obtained permission to plant two new churches over several years whilst a part of TEC; but has apparently planted twice that number of new churches in the much shorter time since leaving TEC.