The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA)’s Society for Mission and Apostolic Works has lost one of its two ecclesial sponsors. In a 22 August 2012 statement given to Anglican Ink, the Church of Uganda said the canonical cover offered by one of its bishops to clergy who wish to affiliate with the society under the leadership of Bishop Chuck Murphy had been withdrawn.
Sorry, but it’s getting very hard to take anything about AMiA seriously. From their plagarized constitution (see Joel Martin’s posts at his blog “A Living Text”) and their repeated announcements about a new Anglican jurisdictional “covering” – only to have those offers quickly withdrawn… AMiA has sadly become a huge joke and debacle.
I can only hope and pray that individual AMiA parishes and clergy are finding safe harbor in PEARUSA and/or ACNA.
I hope that AMiA can find its way to becoming a proper mission society. If so, it will be keen to pass on its congregational plants to the local church (presumably ACNA) as soon as they are firmly established.
MichaelA, yes, that is really my hope as well. I don’t mean to sound so cynical and negative. I’m just so sad to see this mess and confusion continue and fear that so many once-excellent leaders may be sucked into a long-term morass and church planting momentum totally sidetracked. But I DO know God can turn what the enemy intends for evil into good, and I pray that there will be repentance as needed and much good fruit that follows that.
RE: ” If so, it will be keen to pass on its congregational plants to the local church (presumably ACNA) as soon as they are firmly established.”
I’ve seen you say this a couple of times and I don’t understand what you mean.
They’ve been a “mission” thingy for years now — very proud of their missionness and church-plantingness since they were founded in 2000. They were originally started with that kind of rhetoric. I’m not certain why one organization would “transfer” churches to another organization when the original churches were planted under one organization and presumably wished to be in that organization.
What am I missing?
Of course, the AM also desires to be an “ecclesial entity” as well as a “mission society” so again, I’m not certain why they would willy nilly kick parishes out of their ecclesial entity into another one.
The only thing I’m sad about, I guess, is that there are very decent and hard-working and faithful people — both lay and clergy — within a debacle of an organization. It’s a horrible mess and a lot of human suffering and turmoil and demoralization and painful stubbornness.
But that was true also five years ago, so I’m not sure that it is any worse — [i]only more public, and the chaos more disintegrative[/i] — which is of course, the nature of TEC as the years go on and on.
The nature or ontology of an organization and its driving ideologies tend to become revealed, eventually, in a public way.
Sarah, what I think is “worse” is that the chaos has now reached the point of affecting the normal folks in the pews and causing division in congregations.
I was just reading some article (forget where, sorry) about one AMiA congregation trying to figure out its future affiliation and the confusion in the pews, especially those who came to that AMiA church from a non-churched background or from a free church / evangelical background and who were definitely horrified to be caught up in some battle about church hierarchy and Anglican identity and ecclesiastical structures. Some parishes may split and be weaker for it…
Also, I would imagine many formerly in AMiA will now have a hard time trusting leaders or throwing off cynicism or bitterness. I’ve been through a serious and ugly team split 15 years ago and I’ve seen that bitterness from that split can still pop up and threaten to poison current relationships…
It’s all tragic. Yes, some of the personalities and mess and issues were the same 5 years ago, but by and large, most AMiA churches seemed to be able to get on with their local mission. Now they are having to naval gaze and figure out who and what they are. God can redeem it, but it threatens to be a serious distraction from their calling to make disciples.
RE: “. . . but by and large, most AMiA churches seemed to be able to get on with their local mission. Now they are having to naval gaze and figure out who and what they are.”
I understand — churches of whatever organization may be able to trudge onward despite the dysfunction of the larger organization. I’m in TEC after all, so I’m certainly appreciating that!
But if ever I’d doubted this truth, I’ve certainly grasped it over the past ten years — and that’s that organizations and ideology and theology matter and they will, eventually, affect everything “downstream”. We’re not congregationalists — at least, officially Anglicans are not. And figuring out who and what you are as a parish is very very important and does have a lot to do with “local mission” too.
I just don’t think the two can be separated and — whether they were [i]conscious[/i] of it or not — the theology/ideology and nature of the larger organization did affect the smaller parish-organizations five years ago. It’s just that the smaller parish-organizations were able to remain less aware and distracted by other activities.
Again — I know that many churches of whatever organization are often not aware of the effects of the overarching ontology of larger organizations. But surely we want them to [i]become[/i] aware, rather than remain blissfully unaware — [if not so catastrophically as the current situation.]
I’m not trying to say anything that people on this thread don’t already know — just putting down my thoughts.
Unforunately, the church on earth is run by fallen people in a fallen world. Were it not for the workings of the Holy Spirit, there would be no hope for it. As it is, by God’s grace, enough leaders(and followers) always survive to keep the church alive. Charles Williams’ book, The Descent of the Dove, A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church, chronicles this history of the “church” from c.30 AD to 1939. It is amazing!
For me, hope comes in the form of remembering Who is in charge and how He manages to bring Good results out of bad human decisions.
Sarah, I was referring to the way that the Church Missionary Society and some others have operated in the past, in view of recent statements by the AM that seem to emphasise the issue of becoming a “missionary society”.
If that’s not what they want, then its not what they want.