The standing committee of the Diocese of Quincy has recommended that the diocese seek realignment with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone based in Argentina, while continuing as a member of the Common Cause Partnership, according to Fr. James Marshall, president of the standing committee.
Bishop Keith Ackerman of Quincy is on sabbatical through the end of October. In the absence of the bishop, the standing committee is in charge of non-sacramental ecclesiastical duties. Bishop Ackerman will be back in time to preside at convention, which is scheduled to meet Nov. 7-8 at St. John’s Church, Quincy.
Good for them and God bless and keep them in the inevitable round of lawsuits to come.
So, I guess after Bishop +Iker gets the Episcopal guillotine, the apostate machine will come after Bishop +Ackerman!
Can the HoB depose Quincy’s Standing Committee instead?
#3 the Roman,
Oh! Make no mistake the Standing Committee will get chopped as well. 815 & the HoB have an M.O.!
Has Darth Schori ordered the 815 Death Star over Quincy yet?
[i] Please do not move this thread into total sarcasm.[/i]
-Elf Lady
Whatever happens, I’m sure they know that we of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin are squarely in their corner.
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-FDW1shmqA&feature=related]Sarcasm[/url]
I wonder if Bishop Ackerman will be accused of fomenting rebellion WHILE on sabbatical? Can they depose him when he’s not even there? Of course they will try, but will they try before the Convention?
Stand by…KTF!…mrb
MIke Bertaut,
I suspect that KJS & the HoB will have both Bishops + Iker & +Ackerman deposed before GC09!
I welcome and applaud this development. It’s remarkable how utterly different are the Dioceses of Chicago and Quincy (or Chicago and Springfield for that matter). It’s too bad that the latter two are so small; they have such fine, outstanding bishops in +Keith Ackerman and +Peter Beckwith. If I recall correctly (IIRC), Quincy has only something like 35 congregations, the vast majority of which are in small towns and not financially independent parishes (maybe only 7 of the 35 are parishes, the rest are missions). Others can correct me, if I’m wrong about the actual numbers.
Of course, San Joaquin only had 47 congregations when it voted to leave TEC, and Pittsburgh only has about 72 (though some of those 72 are larger than anything in Quincy). But as Rick Warren says, “the greatness of a church is not measured by its seating capacity but by its sending capacity.” And God often uses the small and weak things of this world to shame the proud and strong.
This is commendable courage on the part of the Standing Committee of Quincy. Bravo!
David Handy+
” If I recall correctly (IIRC), Quincy has only something like 35 congregations, the vast majority of which are in small towns and not financially independent parishes (maybe only 7 of the 35 are parishes, the rest are missions). Others can correct me, if I’m wrong about the actual numbers. ”
Twenty four congregations: eight parishes, sixteen missions.
In 2006 there were 21 churches in diocese. There was only one parish with Plate & Pledge over $300,000 and 18 had Plate & Pledge of less than $150,000. It has lost almost 40 percent of its members since 1996 but Plate & Pledge has shown healthy increases. It is homogeneous in churchmanship and an all male clergy. Its rural nature may be an advantage. To whom does one sell 18 empty churches in small towns? TEC may want to consider that question before it sends in the lawyers. Statmann
Thanks to KevenBabb (#12) and Statman (#13) for setting the record straight in terms of the number of congregations in the Diocese of Quincy. I guess my memory was confusing numbers for Quincy and Springfield, or just plain remembering wrong.
It may be worth noting that Quincy, like San Joaquin, is not only overwhelmingly rural, but has no large cities anywhere in the diocese. And while Pittsburgh and Ft. Worth are obviously part of large metropolitan areas, they also include many small town churches as well once you get outside the see cities. That probably has helped insulate them somewhat from the corrosive effects of the moral relativism so dominant in the US culture at large.
But in our “flat” and highly interdependent world, nowhere in America is immune from the disastrous influence of the dominant culture, which is in moral free fall. Still, places like Quincy in the conservative rural heartland of the US do remind me of “the Shire” in Tolkien’s epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings. So who will play the role of Merriadoc and Pippin in setting wrongs to right upon their return to the Shire?
David Handy+
Father David:
Springfield is my diocese. We have 38 congregations, evenly divided between parishes and missions. Our biggest metropolitan area, Bloomington-Normal, is about as big as the biggest metropolitan area in Quincy, Peoria. Quincy also has half of the “Quad Cities” area on the Mississippi River at Iowa (Rock Island and Moline, in Illinois, and Davenport and Clinton, Iowa). Other than that, Quincy occupies the “breadbasket” of the United States, with the finest soil in the world, and that soil is, by and large, used in its appropriate way, which is to feed the world (with the assistance of implements manufactured in the Diocese of Quincy by Caterpillar {Peoria} and John Deere {Moline}..
As an outsider, but a “friend of the family”, I believe that the Diocese is overwhelmingly supportive of Bishop Ackerman.
Kevin (#15),
Thanks for the further information about both of the downstate TEC dioceses. Just because both Quincy and Springfield are small dioceses doesn’t make them unimportant. But since you, Kevin, are part of +Peter Beckwith’s diocese, let me simply say that I hope that Springfield soon follows the example of Quincy.
The Titanic (TEC) has been fatally damaged. It WILL sink.
David Handy+
As a product of Southern Illinois and a wife who graduated from ISU in Normal, I can’t resist a few omments. Historically, one is either Protestant or Catholic in Southern Illinois and Anglicans or Eastern Orthodox are really “strange birds”. The Springfield diocese has really felt the post-2003 effect. From 1996 through 2002 it only lost about 1 percent of members but from 2002 through 2006 it lost about 14 perent. Likewise, from 1996 through 2002 Plate & Pledge increased a healthy 28 percent but from 2002 tthrough 2006 Plate & Pledge increased a dismal 1 percent. In 2006, there were 103 burials but only 95 infant baptisms. Of the 38 churches in the diocese 30 have Plate & Pledge less than $150,000 and only 1 church with Plate & Pledge over $300,000. However, if Quincy can “make it”, then why not Springfield. My guess is that Springfield will not try to leave TEC because it lacks the homogeneity of churchmanship and all male clergy. Statmann ( a proud son of the Land of Lincoln, sans Cook County)