Read it all at Canadian Christianity
Peter Elliott is chair of the Vision 2019 Task Force – an exercise “to discern, dream, and decide where we think God wants the Anglican Church of Canada to be in 2019.” Elliott also headed an Anglican Diocese of New Westminster study group which, in 2009, presented a strategic plan called ‘Growing Communities of Faith in Jesus Christ to serve God’s Mission in the World.’ The plan analyzed what is required for a vital, sustainable parish.
‘Vital’ refers to the quality of the parish, while ‘sustainable’ refers to quantitative requirements. As a general rule, the strategic plan asserted that to be sustainable, a parish requires a minimum of 100 active adult members and weekly attendance of 70. Financially, a parish with a building and one priest requires about $130,000-$150,000 annually, or about 130 parishioners contributing regularly.
Judged by these criteria, the plan revealed that almost three quarters of the parishes in the New Westminster diocese may be unsustainable: 25 percent have Sunday attendance of less than 50, and another 47 percent have 51-120 attenders.
What does this mean for the local church? Is it a dying institution? Are these disappearing local churches further evidence of the decline of mainline denominations? Is the neighbourhood church being replaced by some other form of church?
Without doing any further reading than this little snippet (in other words, off the top of my head!), I would say 2 things:
1. This seems to be a ‘business’ model, and I’m not saying the church should not look at these kinds of things as ‘helps’, and
2. I don’t think the work of the Holy Spirit takes any notice of, or is confined to, what we as humans ‘rationally’ think. In fact, in my experience, I know so!
With Peter Elliot as chair this exercise is doomed to failure. He is a strong supporter of Michael Ingham.
The church must stop its emphasis on all of the social and controversial issues such as same-sex weddings and global warming and all of the other nonsense that the Anglican Church of Canada has embraced.
The ACOC must return to Holy Tradition, the Holy Scriptures, and orthodoxy and get the parishioners saved and then the pews will fill up as most people want the old time religion.
Years ago the minister had to submit a monthly report as to what was going on in his parish, how many he had visited, how many were in church, how many souls had been saved and led to the Lord, how many youngsters were in Sunday School, and other statistics to show the Diocese what progress was being made in the parish. Now it seems that the priest does not report to anyone, but simply does his own thing.
It’s not about stats or money, it’s about obedience.
The Very Reverend Peter Elliot is “married” to his partner Thomas , he has already “discerned, dreamed and decided where the church should be in 2019. Sandra, I deleted a duplicate comment – admin