The diocese has $2.2M in accumulated debt, a budget deficit for 2012 of $180,000 and rapidly declining revenue from parishes.
To pay its debt, the diocese is busy selling empty buildings and is not allocating funds to anything other than debt reduction.
The diocese’s financial predicament wasn’t improved by the $315,000 it spent in legal fees to remove the parishioners of the Church of St. Mary of the Incarnation, Metchosin from their building – that’s all a part of being a missional church, of course.
The diocese is consuming itself simply to stay alive. Still, at least it is paving the way for the rest of the Anglican Church of Canada.
For more details go here.
It appears the parishioners have exercised the decisive power in church polity: Hear that noise? It’s the sound of thousands of checkbooks closing simultaneously.
Serves those apostates right. That diocese should go bankrupt to go with their spiritual bankruptcy.
I have to struggle hard to put the collapse of this diocese in perspective and not gloat. We are not of this world and we are not to judge using worldly standards.
It is not the financial viability of the ACoC that matters, it is their spiritual poverty.
Hello Jim,
Well said. I completely agree with you on this one. That being said we should not be surprised that this is happening. We should remember it as a history lesson of what happens when a Church drifts away from God and His Holy Word, and make sure that it does not happen again.
Regards,
AMP
Me too.
The wages of sin are death. Best the organisation die.
Even their website is down……didn’t pay the bill?
And the Bishop had said that monies realized from the sale of properties would go to funding ministry rather than paying off debts- tell that to the Rainbow Kitchen!
I was in an Anglican church in the province of BC recently. The diocese doesn’t matter. I was in town for a visit, so I went to the nearest Anglican church on Sunday. The sanctuary would have held about a couple of hundred people; the attendance was about 40, and I was told that was more than usual because they had a new priest starting and this was his first Sunday.
Most of the congregation was over 60, with a few grandchildren present. Ther were virtually no young families (one, I think), which in my opinion is the sign of a heathy and growing church. The music was dismal.
Forigve me, but the advice I usually give any Anglican church I would like to help grow (and I’ve seen a few of them), is to find the nearest dumpster and throw all their Common Praise hymn books into it. Just as an aside, one of the hymns we sang that Sunday was, “She comes sailing on the wind.” I say, “we” but I mean, “they,” because I can’t bring myuself to sing of the Holy Spirit as a “she.”
Anyway, I was going to offer my assistance (those of you who know me know that I am somewhat in a position to help churches with a program that, indeed, can help them grow and attract new people), so I googled them later to get their contact information. The first refernce that came up on Google was as a member of, “Proud Anglicans.”
I decided, “Never mind,… let’s just let well enough alone.”
What, the blue Book of Common Praise? Not a chance is the Holy Spirit refered to as “She” in that book! Must be a later one?
I think it’s just called, “Common Praise.” It’s not the small blue book. It’s larger than the BAS. Is the Book of Common Praise the old traditional one?
I’m thinking of the one where they went through and changed all the language to be more inclusive – like where they try their very hardest to avoid referring to God as “He,” or, “Him.”
It’s this one, probably.
I inherited a copy of the 1938 edition of the Book of Common Praise and have had the opportunity to compare it to the 1998 edition (which is the one in our pews today). There are several hymns in both, but the words in the 1998 edition have all been changed. For example what used to be “Good Christian Men Rejoice” is now “Good Christians All Rejoice”. What I was able to see is that where ever I could find a gender specific phrase in the 1938 edition, it had been changed to a gender nuetral phrase in the 1998 edition. Seems to me that the femenist facsicts and their sympathizers had been hard at work.
In my sometimes not so humble opinion there are three books that need to be removed and replaced in our Church:
Remove the new revised standard version bible and replace it with the King James Version Holy Bible;
Remove the 1998 edition book of common praise and replace it with the 1938 edition Book of Common Praise; and
Remove the book of alternative services (stuff) and replace it with the Book of Common Prayer.
1. Remove the new revised standard version bible and replace it with the King James Version Holy Bible;
2. Remove the 1998 edition book of common praise and replace it with the 1938 edition Book of Common Praise; and
3. Remove the book of alternative services (stuff) and replace it with the Book of Common Prayer.
With respect, any congregation following these steps will probably shrivel faster than they already may be.
My suggestions:
1. Replace the NRSV wih a good modern translation such as NIV or CEV.
2. Transition form any hymnbooks to projection screens and begin to introduce some modern, but theologically correct, choruses with appropriate instrumentation.
3. Frankly, I don’t have a problem with the BAS, but probably only because I didn’t grow up with the Book of Common Prayer. In any case, services should be conducted in contemporary, easily understood language if you want to attract new, younger members.
And just for the record, I am 67 years of age; not some young whipper-snapper.
Good grief, you’re even older than me! Just.
Wherever I go, I’m older than everybody. Although actually, I lied; I’m only 66 and 7/12.
Not the ESV? That’s the translation I am reading through now (I switch translations each time I finish reading through the bible). I’m not a big fan of the ESV study bible, but the translation itself seems fine.
Hello Kate,
I am not familiar with the ESV. The issue for me is that we get rid of the inclusive language pseudo bibles. These were deliberately done in such a way so as to change what was written in the manuscripts so as to remove all gender specific terminology. I see this as nothing short of an attempt to politically correctify God, which I percieve as an act of heresy. The sooner we get rid of these pseudo bibles the better!
Yes, I like the ESV. I think that may what I meant when I said, CEV instead.
Hi Kate,
Just wondering what you don’t like about the ESV Study Bible -other than the tiny print?
Hi Amp,
I too love the King James Version. All of the quotes I carry in my head are King James. It just rings when spoken. But I do read the ESV as my steady diet.
For one, it’s too Calvinist for me. Secondly – there are places where the notes take sides on issues that I think are not black and white – they say “some scholars say x, but Christians should believe y” rather than “some scholars say x, some say y” and leaving the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. A minor thing, but it bugs me.
AMP – in instances where the original greek says “adelphoi” (bad transliteration), I see no problem with a translation that says “brothers and sisters”, because that is what the word means. Calling God “she” is a completely different issue – the original languages never do that (and I’m not aware of a bible translation that does that either, come to think of it, are there any?) We need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when we speak of inclusive language. Inslusive language is right and proper *when the original language allows for it*.
Hello again Kate
“Inslusive language is right and proper *when the original language allows for it*.”
I have no problem at all with this statement. Also, there are a few words in the manuscripts that do not have a word in english that means the exact same thing. In these instances the KJV uses the english word that was determined to be closest to the original and indicates this word in italics. Thus the reader knows to not take the word in its limited specific english definition.
Are you sure? I thought the words in italics were words that were added (that don’t exist in Greek) to make gramatically correct English sentences.
Hello Kate,
Upon some research I stand corrected (although we may both be a little bit right in that “The words in italics
are words which do not have any equivalents in the
Hebrew or Greek text.” and “They are words which have been
supplied by the translators in order to make the
meaning of the sentence clearer, or in order to make
the passage read more smoothly in English.”). Thanks for your input.
Reference
http://www.tribulation.com/prt_kjv.htm
“Readers of the King James Version now and again
come upon words printed in italics; that is to say,
with slanting letters. Some have supposed, mistakenly,
that these words were printed in this fashion for
emphasis. This is not the case. The words in italics
are words which do not have any equivalents in the
Hebrew or Greek text. They are words which have been
supplied by the translators in order to make the
meaning of the sentence clearer, or in order to make
the passage read more smoothly in English. Numerous
italicized words are found in the fifth chapter of
Matthew, and they occur with almost equal frequency in
other parts of the Scriptures.”