I hate to draw attention, yet again, to the reality that the Anglican Church of Canada is in decline. See essays here and here and the statistics report for the House of Bishops. Of course this has been the case for decades, and has only been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. Numbers for the whole Anglican Church of Canada have not been released for 2023, and though I think they will be better than 2022, it won’t be by much.
While the Anglican Church of Canada has been declining for years, the world has also been changing. Who would have thought 20 years ago that folks could “attend” church online? Technological change has accelerated beyond expectation. And Canadian society has changed too, with an increasingly diverse country fueled by immigration, and the emptying of rural places as people flock to cities.
Canadians have had their eyes opened to the cultural genocide committed against Indigenous people, they have an increasing awareness of climate change, and have learned to live with shifting mores and social attitudes about religion, sex, and gender. Plus, high costs of living have been putting strain on families who are struggling more and more to make ends meet. These are to name only a few pressure points felt in the church.
To respond to the changes in and outside of the church, Primate Linda Nicholls called together a commission of lay and ordained people from across Canada to think of how the Anglican Church of Canada might continue to proclaim the gospel the 21st century.
It meets under the theme “Reimagining the Church: Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century,” and you can read more of the background in this document.
I had recently finished serving as the rector of St. Luke’s Church in the Diocese of Fredericton when I received an invitation to join the commission. Though I am now happily serving in the Diocese of Texas, I am grateful for the opportunity to work for the renewal of the Canadian church that I love so much.
As members of the Commission were tasked with answering:
What is needed now — in the 21st century — at the national level to effectively proclaim the gospel in sustainable and lifegiving ways? Are changes needed? If major changes are needed, how do we implement them with care and attention to their impacts? If we need to improve current patterns, how do we celebrate and support the gifts we have and use them well, now and into the future? How will the structure of the General Synod need to shift or improve to be most effective?
So all of us met to talk about this, first by Zoom, then in person in Montreal in January 2022, and now by Zoom again. We’ve come up with several initial “hypotheses” that we’ve proposed about how the Anglican Church in Canada might change for the sake of the gospel in this next century. These proposals center on certain major themes and issues: structure (the relationship between the Indigenous Sacred Circle and the wider church), funding (budgets for meetings, travel, staff, the Primate, and The Anglican Journal), and governance (striving for diversity in governance, and reassessing the relationship between provincial and national structures).
We had to start somewhere, and our goal was to get a conversation moving in the right direction, rather than coming up with a pristine master plan for the future of the church. We gave ourselves permission to write a bad first draft, if you will, so that we might have some raw material for the future.
After releasing these hypotheses, we’ve been engaged in a broad and thorough consultation with key groups throughout the Canadian church, requesting feedback and criticism. We’ve received lots of both! Shortly we’ll collect and analyze the qualitative data we’ve received in order to integrate it into a sharper, honed-down proposal that will be presented at the next General Synod in 2025.
Now, here is the really important piece to understand in all of this: We are extremely limited in the scope of our work.
In part, this is because we’ve been given a mandate by the Primate and need to work within it. More important, however, because of structure of the Anglican Church of Canada and the nature of its General Synod, we can only make suggestions about things over which General Synod has any jurisdiction.[1] Specifically, this includes the communications of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Primate’s office, liturgical resources, the House of Bishops, the Council of the North (a funding partnership for under-resourced dioceses, usually in the North), and relations to the Indigenous Church, among other things. Even here, our work is advisory. If it is adopted by General Synod, there is no telling if or how our suggestions might be implemented in dioceses and parishes.
I should also note for readers who are members of the Episcopal Church, or other provinces of the Anglican Communion, that within Canada, ecclesial provinces and dioceses retain significant power and authority over the governance and daily affairs of the church. There are no national ordination exams, for instance, and even the Provincial Advisory Committee on Postulants for Ordination is in fact advisory, with diocesan bishops making the calls as they see fit. The authority of diocesan bishops is so great that many have reinterpreted or simply ignored long-standing Canons of the General Synod on marriage, for instance, and have established diocesan policies on the matter.
I say all this to reiterate the point that we on the Primate’s Commission are working with virtually no power, in an advisory capacity, on one specific facet of the Anglican Church of Canada. If the Anglican Church of Canada were a sinking ship, with holes in the hull, a short-handed, overworked, and inexperienced crew, tattered sails, and broken instruments of navigation on board, the Primate’s Commission would be equivalent to a team repairing the sails. It’s an important part of the ship’s proper functioning, but it is only one problem among many, and righting it will not save the ship. More must be done.
Even if as the Primate’s Commission we are successful in identifying significant issues in the church, and our plans are adopted by General Synod, and implemented in provinces, dioceses, and parishes, we won’t have fixed the church. But our work may be part of its restoration, by the grace of God.
My sense is that though the Anglican Church of Canada has structural problems within General Synod, and these must be addressed, they are not the primary problem, but rather symptoms of a deeper spiritual malaise.
No doubt the soul-sickness of the church is partially the result of our unfaithfulness. At the same time, I recognize the saintly and devoted lives of many lay people and clergy who are doing gospel-centered and faithful work. I have no doubt that that even the difficult and dire situation we are in has some kind of gift in it by the providence of God.
As for a solution, I don’t have a silver bullet. I think it would be prudent, though, to stay focused on prayer, preaching, and teaching the Bible, focused on discipleship and evangelism, focused on Jesus. I also think that pastors and parishes must want to grow. And wanting to grow, they must learn the best practices to grow faithfully and effectively.
We should want parishes to grow not for the sake of growth or “success” or anything like that. We should want parishes to grow for the sake of the gospel, knowing that disciples make disciples, and there are thousands and thousands of people who have never really heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, have never had an encounter with him.
And very little of this — praying, teaching the Bible, parish life — has much to do with General Synod or the Primate. It has everything to do with all Anglicans in Canada and their commitment to Jesus and his gospel.
[1] For an excellent history of General Synod, see Peter G. Elliot’s The Evolution of General Synod, which he prepared for the Primate’s Commission.
The Rev. Dr. Cole Hartin is an associate rector of Christ Church in Tyler, Texas, where he lives with his wife and four sons.