TAP: Is that when you started the church plant?
JW: Yes, it was just at that moment that many of the people who were already leaving the church said to me, “Will you now plant a church for us?” My new Bishop said yes, so I planted the church. So what the majority in the House of Bishops here [in British Columbia and the Yukon] said is they couldn’t accept me as a bishop because I planted the church within the boundaries of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and that I won’t say I’m sorry I did it. They said that constitutes that I have a view that’s contrary to the Anglican Church of Canada–and the National Chancellor was actually involved in all of that. He was talking to the Provincial Chancellor and diocesan Chancellor, as well as Archbishop Privett. And he was quoting Lambeth 1988, Resolution 72 as the rationale for my view being contrary to the discipline of the Anglican Church of Canada. They came back to me and wanted me to say that it was wrong to plant the church. And I can’t say that, because I know that the Lord moved in a mighty way there. And I didn’t go to anybody and say “Come and join us, leave the church”–I never said that. I just did it. At first there were 19 of us, and 7 were my family! There were young families, just having their kids kind of families, in their early to mid-twenties. And they didn’t want to leave the legacy of the Episcopal Church to their kids, because they saw what was happening. And so we started in someone’s living room and within three years we saw substantial growth in numbers. But more importantly than that, the people we were ministering to were those people in the community who had no place to go, people with mental illnesses, people ostracized by the rest of the churches, who felt they needed to worship and have a loving place where they heard the Gospel.