Below is a transcription of an interview I conducted with Bishop Ron Ferris. Bishop Ferris recently joined ANiC and has a focus on church planting in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

Peter: Please describe for the uninitiated what is going on this week, and why?

Bishop Ron: It’s the coming together of a new Anglican Church for North American, and Anglican church that is recognised by 70-80% of Anglicans around the world. It’s an opportunity for a new expression of Anglicanism that is missional, that is scriptural, that is sacramental, that is focused on the gospel, and that for many of us that have operated in the older sphere of Anglicanism it’s a chance for a fresh start and a very exciting moment in history.

Peter: How would you envisage ACNA unfolding?

Bishop Ron: I think that we are approximately the size of the Anglican Church of Canada; there’s about 80,000 to 100,000 people who worship on any given Sunday and everybody who attends the Anglican Church of Canada numbers about 120,000. We also hope to be Church planting and increasing our membership; we’re looking with great anticipation to this coming Sunday because we’re planning a new congregation and we have our first service this coming Sunday.

So that’s happening all across the country; we’re working in cooperation with Common Cause / ACNA churches in British Columbia and Washington. There’s about 25 churches that are working together to plant churches and it’s an exciting era to see new churches planted. We’ve been visiting all the ACiC / ANiC churches in the BC area and have seen Anglicans who are worshipping in new buildings, schools, recreation centres, mission centres and churches from other denominations. It’s amazing to see them with such positive attitude and missional focus.

Peter: So you are working with churches both side of the border?

Bishop Ron: Yes, that’s right. My prime focus will be in Langley itself, I’m going to be the parish priest, and will (also) be assisting Bishop Harvey with episcopal duties.

Peter: ACNA has been described in the media as being in competition with TEC and the ACoC. What would be your response to that assertion?

Bishop Ron: I don’t see it like that. The vast majority of N Americans that are unchurched or underchurched; as an example I’m living in a neighborhood with 40,000 people and there is not an Anglican church in the area. I think that old structures don’t help in getting out into the area and starting churches. This is an opportunity for ACNA to get out and engage new generations with the gospel.

Peter: What will be the ongoing relationship with other Anglican churches?

Bishop Ron: The Anglican Church of North America can be thrilled that it has recognition already from the Primates of 70-80% of the Anglican world. For me that is as much as I care to see in my own lifetime. Over the decades formal recognition will have to be sorted out with the structures of the Anglican Communion. For places like the Church of South India, the Church of Pakistan it took a matter of decades for formal recognition to happen – sending representatives and formal delegates etc.

On the other hand I think we are also seeing Anglicanism become a multi-polar universe, so really what’s happening is that the Episcopal Church in the USA is becoming the rallying point for liberal Anglicans. Traditional structures of the ACC and the Lambeth Conference are for the middle of the road countries, and GAFCON fellowship has become the rallying point for evangelical and Anglo-Catholic Christians. Anglicans will likely find themselves somewhere between those three poles; some will belong to GAFCON, Lambeth and TEC; others will belong to one or two over the course of time.

Also the structures will have to change; it was recognised in Lambeth Conference 2008 by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his address that the Communion is broken and was unable to deal with the aspects now upon us, and that there would need to be changes of the structures. One of the big changes will be that the Global South Churches do not have representation by population in the ACC; so you have the church of Wales for example that is a minuscule church (smaller than the ACNA) and yet has exactly the same representation as Nigeria which has 18 million. So an institution that has such disproportionate representation loses its credibility.

Peter: So it’s not representative / democratic?

Bishop Ron: Exactly.

Peter: With the announcement of a number of new bishops, there has been a perception that ACNA is becoming bishop-heavy. How would you respond?

Bishop Ron: There’s a provision in the canons that we just passed to say that there cannot be more than one bishop for every 1,000 of average Sunday attendance. This is a way to keep the balance between Bishops and Churches / congregations. Also you’re developing a different kind of Bishop; a lot of our Bishops are also Rectors of their congregations, and they are using the resources of those congregations to launch satellite congregations, so it’s a different dialogue from traditional Episcopal ministry. I felt often in the old structures the Episcopacy was merely a veneer on top of the Church; people didn’t really know their Bishop, it was merely this old guy who came once a year to do confirmation, rather than your apostolic leader. A missionary bishop allows people to be close to the Bishop who is actually directing mission.

Peter: And that would be your role?

Bishop Ron: Yes, hopefully. Also the three new Bishops we have in Canada, one will be looking after Eastern Canada, one Western Canada, and we also have a Bishop, Stephen Leung, who will be developing Asian missions. So we’ll will all have a variety of roles to fulfill – I’ll be helping them and they’ll be our leadership. We do want a proportionality in our Bishops.

Peter: I noticed that the ACiC elected a Bishop, Silas Ng, who appears to be fulfilling a very similar role to Stephen Leung. Could you explain this?

Bishop Ron: What I would say is that this presents an opportunity; one of the problems that was recognised in 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences was that there was far too few Chinese Bishops (only 5 at the Lambeth Conferences). Compare that with a quarter of the world that is Chinese ( and a significant part of the population of Western Canada is Asian)- and this presents a wonderful opportunity.

I’ve had the privilege of visiting all the (Anglican) Chinese churches in the area. When you see their vitality, their passion for discipleship and the global connections of those churches, it really is exciting. I believe that Bishop Ng will be pioneering Asian missions – not just in Canada but for the whole of North America. Bishop Leung will focus on Canada’s west coast but also any overseas linkages his congregations have with other parts of the world. They know each other, and it won’t hurt to have them collaborating in the future. I think one of the great aspects of this reorganised Anglicanism is Bishop ministry and collaborative work.

Peter: From an outsiders point of view you look at the parallel jurisdiction and wonder if there are any issues there?

Bishop Ron: Anglicans do not preach the gospel because they are too afraid of offending people. We’re so preoccupied with jurisdiction and boundaries. We have overlapping jurisdictions (in this case), however mission and building churches is our priority rather than jurisdiction, boundaries, prerogatives and method of governance. That takes priority over offending each other. Whatever we work out (in this case) for the best is fine. As long as churches are begun and the gospel is proclaimed.

Peter: What would be your vision and hope for the state of Anglican mission and witness in (say) 10 years time?

Bishop Ron: I would hope that we would have a lot of congregations that are multiplying and are using that multiplication to preach the gospel. That would be exciting for me.

One of the greatest privileges of my life was signing the document with the Common Cause Bishops the other day that formed the new province.

So my hope would be for a multiplying Church gathering people in North America who have been disconnected from the life of the Church. If we capture just a small portion of that vision it will be an exciting decade ahead.