Tag Archives: Five Marks of Mission

In the Anglican Church of Canada, hope is a boat

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St. Paul hoped for eternal life (Titus 3:7); Job’s hope was in God (Job 13:15); King David placed his hope in God’s steadfast love (Ps 33:18).

Thrusting aside these passé, fevered deleria of Middle Eastern primitives in favour of something relevant to today’s Anglican sophisticates, the Anglican Church of Canada has decided that hope is a boat; and they have a song to prove it.

The song, “Hope” is the winner of the ACoC’s Marks of Mission song contest.

Apparently, it’s “catchy and deep” and Fred Hiltz is a fan.

Although it is a pretty enough tune, well sung and produced, I can’t for the life of me see what it has to do with Christianity. But, then, the same could be said about the Five Marks of Mission. Or the Anglican Church of Canada.

Bishop Sue Moxley tries to add to the Five Marks of Mission

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At the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in New Zealand, she wanted to add a sixth: “to advance peace, eliminate violence and reconcile all.”

You can always count on a Canadian bishop to come up with something sufficiently nebulously utopian that no-one can openly disagree with it. And why would they? Everyone is secretly convinced that, being manifestly unattainable, it will make few demands, yet it will distract from the more tangible woes of the Anglican Communion; and that’s what the meeting is all about, after all.  The motion was defeated, but the substance was tacked on to number four which now reads:

To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.

Now, to paraphrase Ps 46:9, we can expect wars to cease to the ends of the earth, the bow will be broken, the spear shattered and the oceans will stop rising. Oh, hang on, that last bit has already been done.

Still, I’m very glad we are left with only five marks of mission; mainly because I think Fatuous Five has a better ring to it than Scelestious Six.

More cutbacks in the Anglican Church of Canada

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Due to its continuing financial embarrassment, the Anglican Church of Canada is cutting back:  the Five Marks of Mission have been reduced to two.

Of the first three:

“To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom” was the first to go because no-one in the ageing ecclesial hierarchy could actually remember what the Good News is, so there seemed little point in continuing to pretend to proclaim it.

“To teach, baptise and nurture new believers” was the next to fall since all extant Anglican seminaries are dedicated to squeezing any vestige of belief out of new seminarians, rendering them, by the time they emerge, incapable of nurturing anything but doubt.

“To respond to human need by loving service” was finally removed too, since Anglican clergy are simply too busy nurturing the doubt in new doubters.

The two survivors are:
“To seek to transform unjust structures of society”
“To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”

The Anglican Church can throw its full weight behind these because both are the responsibility of government.