The Anglican Church of Canada has a $600,000 deficit, churches are closing, buildings are being sold, and employees are being laid-off. Even the Anglican Book Centre is no more.<\/p>\n
All this leads the ACoC\u2019s general secretary, Michael Thompson to muse that \u201cGod is putting something new in the church.\u201d Yes, he is: judgement.<\/p>\n
Michael Thompson turned up at St. Hilda\u2019s one Sunday a number of years ago; he was supposed to dissuade us from fleeing the Diocese of Niagara. He wasn\u2019t entirely successful and, although I thought he was a nice enough well-intentioned fellow, he flatly admitted he didn\u2019t quite know what he believed and he envied us our \u201ccertainty\u201d.<\/p>\n
To put it another way: he is an amiable but clueless cove; that\u2019s how he ended up as general secretary to the ACoC.<\/p>\n
From here<\/a>:<\/p>\n Amid the fiscal challenges facing General Synod, Archdeacon Michael Thompson urged Anglicans \u201cto be patient and kind with ourselves in this time of transition and transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGod is putting something new in the church,\u201d Thompson told the Council of General Synod at its meeting Nov. 15 to 18.<\/p>\n Reflecting on his first year as general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, Thompson noted the \u201cchange in ecosystem of the way the church lives.\u201d He likened it to the trail that he and his wife hike near Lake Superior, where land burnt by a forest fire is now home to healthy blueberry bushes. Could the church adapt to a similar challenge? he wondered. \u201cWe don\u2019t have trees anymore, so God doesn\u2019t expect us to be in the lumber business,\u201d he said. \u201cCan we figure out what to do with the blueberries?\u201d<\/p>\n The national church is \u201cbeing called by God into a bunch of new futures, not just one,\u201d said Thompson, adding the goal is to discover what ministries it is being called to develop.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Anglican Church of Canada has a $600,000 deficit, churches are closing, buildings are being sold, and employees are being laid-off. Even the Anglican Book Centre is no more. All this leads the ACoC\u2019s general secretary, Michael Thompson to muse … Continue reading