After a very warm, Chinooky interlude, winter has come our way again. The cold air pool up by the Yukon broke out and headed south. Currently we are at -13c (9F) with 2″ of snow on the ground, with the possibility of hitting -30c (-22F) over the weekend. Here for webcams.
Being a winter-mad type, I think it’s just excellent 🙂
I’m going to scream and scream and scream and scream and…..
The Windsor Report Response Group
The Windsor Report Response Group was asked to prepare a draft response to the Windsor Report on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada. The members of the group were chosen in 2004 from the Partners in Mission Committee, the Faith Worship and Ministry Committee, and the House of Bishops, with staff support.
Following the publication of the Windsor Report in October 2004, Canadian Anglicans were asked by the Primate to send in responses to it. The Windsor Report Response Group read the responses and recorded opinions and concerns. A report was prepared for the Primate to take to the Primates’ Meeting in Dromantine in February 2005.
The group has been called together again and has prepared a draft response for the Council of General Synod to consider. The final response will be brought to the General Synod for approval and forwarding to the Anglican Communion in June 2007.
A Summary of the Draft Response
• As Canadian Anglicans, we are committed to our membership in the Anglican Communion
• We see our response as part of a process of exploration and discernment, as we work with other Provinces to understand the nature of the Communion we share. The Windsor Report is an important contribution to this process
In the report, we find much to affirm and celebrate:
• Our unity based on “our common identity in Christ”
• Our commitment to “the furtherance of God’s mission within the world”
• Our growing understanding of that call to unity in diversity
• The importance of Scripture and our commitment to exploring Scripture together
• Our commitment to the Lambeth Quadrilateral
• The role of bishops in the Anglican Communion and our concern over the intervention of some bishops in Provinces, dioceses and parishes other than their own
• The Shared Episcopal Ministry scheme as an appropriate model of supplementary episcopal oversight
• Our commitment to the listening process
• Our concern for the human rights and pastoral care of all
• An acknowledgement that our processes of synodical decision-making take time
We outline recent events and actions in the Anglican Church of Canada relating to the blessing of same sex unions, noting the expression of regret of the Bishop of New Westminster in response to the call of the Windsor Report. We await the discussion of the Windsor Report and the St. Michael Report at General Synod, 2007.
We find some areas where we feel more work needs to be done in our own church and in the Communion:
• A deeper understanding of how reports and statements of international Anglican bodies are received and made effective in each member Province
• Further discussions on the authority of Scripture
• More exploration of how authority is exercised in the Communion
• A recognition of the importance of providing opportunities for laity and clergy to share in decision-making at all levels
• Further work on the development of an Anglican Covenant, exploring a variety of models.
Conclusion
We affirm our willingness to work with other Provinces to develop a relationship of trust in the Anglican Communion.
Possible Resolutions to Consider at General Synod
1 A motion to forward the response to the office of the Anglican Communion.
2 A motion to affirm the commitment of the Anglican Church of Canada to membership in the Anglican Communion, and our willingness to participate in ongoing discussions about life in the communion.
3 A motion expressing regret at the hurt felt as a consequence of actions taken by our church.
4 A motion affirming our resolve to maintain and increase at a variety of levels partnerships and visits, exchange and communication, in order to foster communion relationships.
5 A motion to affirm our commitment to the Lambeth Quadrilateral, noting with appreciation the statement of the primates in 2000.
6 A motion affirming our willingness to enter into the process of developing an Anglican Covenant
Membership of the Windsor Report Response Group
Dr. Patricia Bays, Diocese of Ottawa (Chair)
The Rt. Rev’d Michael Bedford-Jones, Bishop of Trent Durham, Diocese of Toronto
The Rt. Rev’d Peter Coffin, Bishop of Ottawa
Canon Dr. Timothy Connor, Diocese of Huron
The Rt. Rev’d James Cowan, Bishop of British Columbia
The Ven. Peter Fenty, Diocese of Toronto
Ms. Cynthia Haines-Turner, Diocese of Western Newfoundland
The Rt. Rev’d Colin Johnson, Bishop of Toronto
Staff: Canon Dr. Alyson Barnett-Cowan, the Ven. Paul Feheley
Please send responses to Canon Barnett-Cowan, 80 Hayden St., Toronto On M4Y 3G2,
I wouldn’t have believed it was possible to say nothing in so many words until I had the misfortune to read this vapid ‘response’.
(h/t to felix hominum)
Something of interest. Often it seems as if the powers that be, governments, media, even Christian Churches, are going out of their way to ignore, minimise and gloss over this problem. Appeasement never works though, and the eventual reckoning becomes just the greater.
Perhaps the real question is this: Who are we as a culture, a people? Do we really have an identity any more? Do we have the backbone to resist what appears to be a hostile takeover bid from a different culture and religion?
The deepest irony might be that the secularists who have spent so much time and effort dismantling our judeo-christian foundations are only going to see them replaced by something even less to their liking.
Unless their liking is Anything But Christianity. Sometimes it seems that way…..
You’ll find me from time to time on ‘liberal’ (I use the term reluctantly) Anglican blogs because I still think it’s important to communicate, or at least try and understand how the other ‘side’ thinks.
Right now they generally appear to be flip-flopping between “All is well” and “It’s all your fault”. The main sense I get is one of immaturity, a willful inability to face things as they really are. I guess when you’ve been extolling the virtues of the ‘new thing’, looking to lead people into the promised land of inclusivist heaven, and when you can no longer ignore the fact that the picture is nothing like the one you’ve been painting, then you’ve got to blame somebody – anybody. The alternative would be admitting that you might be wrong. That this ‘new thing’ might not be all its cracked up to be. And that seems to be an intolerable option.
Now, that’s not to say that one side has a monopoly on immature behaviour. Indeed, I see plenty on some ‘conservative’ blogs. But this frantic denial of reality, this grasping at anything but the truth, this desperate blaming of anything and anybody but themselves indicates a mindset in denial.
This just increases my sense of an inevitable separation – for the sake of both sides. I use the word separation rather than divorce as I think there is always hope for an eventual reconciliation, somewhere down the road. I hope, but I am not sure it will ever come to pass.
Indeed I wonder if what we might see in TEC/ACC and other liberal Anglican bodies is a slow, continual decline into a small gnostic sect holding the ‘secret’ knowledge of radical inclusivity, secure in the pride of their ‘new thing’, looking askance at a mainstream Christianity who continue not to ‘get it’. Meanwhile, their lover, the spirit of this age, will ignore and be indifferent to them, as they continue to espouse an emasculated and insipid parody of Christianity.
Separation is inevitable. I just hope that, unlike the reformation, all sides will come to recognise both the necessity and the tragedy.
“A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.” John Steinbeck
Isn’t that just so? Also, from a persecuted Romanian pastor:
“In my experience, 95% of the believers who face the test of persecution pass it, while 95% who face the test of prosperity fail it.”
Could it not be said that prosperity is in fact the most insidious and effective form of persecution? I know I feel it.
(Quotes taken from this book)
About 150 years ago, Soren Kierkegaard wrote these words:
The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?
Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament
Are we capable of acting accordingly? Yes. Do we want to? No. It’s always a lot easier to remain as a Christian community practicing group deception.
To my mind, that’s why we are in desperate need of real prophetic voices – challenging our cosy preconceptions and our blindness – stirring things up and causing ‘trouble’.
Too many of the current voices are either marketing the deceit of the prosperity gospel or having fun playing with images of the end times. Anything but hitting us where it hurts.
Without wanting to sound pretentious, I am convinced this is my calling. Whenever I get close to Gods’ heart in this matter, overcoming my own propensity to blindness, it is as if there is a fire burning in my bones. A mantle is laid upon me, and I cannot help but speak, prophesy, in His name. I am compelled to do so.
There are concequences to this calling, for we also are a stiff necked people, secure in our own pride and affluent arrogance, saying ‘we lack nothing’. We are rich, we say, secure in all that our malls can provide. The great god GDP will sustain us forever.
The verdict has already been written. Rather than being rich, we are poor pitiful fools, hewing our own broken cisterns while forsaking the true living water. People will not listen. People cannot listen, lest they be undone from all they hold most dear. This mantle is one that invites a response of deafness, blindness, apathy, indifference, ignorance, and in the rare case, anger. There are a few who will turn, who will listen. Listen, for the Lord still calls you, calls you to turn aside from your own way, and back to the True Way. Choose to live.
The truth is this – if you walk with Him you cannot help but be in conflict with the world. If you are not in conflict with the world then examine yourself. Do you really walk with Him? Or a deception of your own making? Go back to the bible, go back to Him and enquire. Is there any wicked way in me, Lord?
So often we have it all upside-down. Does Jesus really care if we are popular? Does he really care if we’ve grown big churches? Does He care if we have all the trappings of success?
I read that He was unpopular, scorned, rejected and despised. I read that He gave hard words that stripped Him of the vast majority of His followers. I read that He would go off alone to pray when the needs of the world were laid at His feet. I read that he was a failure in the eyes of the world.
Jesus said – But be of good heart, for I have overcome the world (John 16 v33). You must choose in the end, friends. Whether you will overcome the world, or whether the world will overcome you. You have to choose. So, choose life this day.
(original inspiration here)
Seeing as I’m in the great white north and all…..
End October
The view yesterday
Compared to the Summer
And some other ‘winter wonderland’ shots for you…..
Sometimes it’s very difficult to explain what the fundamental problems are within the Anglican Church, obscured as they are by the latest round of ‘who’s done what to whom’, or by the whole presenting gay issue. These latter things often become the smoke and mirrors that obscure the deeper issues.
So, with that in mind, I’d suggest checking out this article recently posted by Fr Jake. Now, I’m not suggesting that everybody with a ‘liberal’ perspective shares these sentiments, nevertheless it is revealing of a particular way of understanding the gospel, that uses the same language, but ends up in a very different place.
I read what John-Julian has written, and some of it I can agree with in part, but some of it certainly not.
My whole issue is with a gospel that, at the end of the day, seems to be a rather weak version of the same. Why evangelise when the best you are doing is to give a person who already knows Christ through their own religion (or no religion at all) a better understanding of the truth? No salvation, mind, they are already saved.
The issue is not about sincerity. The issue is about sinfulness. The issue is about recognising that even our most righteous acts are no more than dirty rags in Gods eyes. Hence, we don’t need a friend we can reach out to in sincerity. We NEED a saviour.
As far as other religions go – yes, I can see that they contain good aspects, and that goodness comes from God. However, I affirm salvation is through Christ alone. The truly historical, living Christ. Not, have some have put it, Christ as ‘love’, which can be a very amorphous concept flecked through, at least in our case, with plenty of sin.
I don’t believe that Muslims are worshipping Jesus at all. They would be insulted if you suggested this. They worship Allah. I know an ex-Muslim who has very particular ideas as to who Allah is.
Can ‘good’ people of other religions come to God through Christ? Perhaps so, it is simply not for us to know. But to move from that to a position where all faiths are worshipping Jesus, well no, I cannot go there. I think that indeed demotes Jesus, who suddenly is everything and thereby rather amorphously nothing.
The sense I get from “whose Son sacrificially cancelled all ideas of divine wrath or judgment” is definitely one of universalism. Jesus spoke rather a lot of hell. Either He was mistaken, or there really are going to be many who are going to go there. You and I might not like it, but those are the words and I prefer to read them plainly.
To finish with, John-Julian says: “He is the Way – that is, any human way to God is Christ. He is the Truth – that is, every truth is Christ. He is the Life – that is, every life is Christ. There is no way to the Father except through the Christ, so all ways to the Father are also Christ, even when that is not overtly stated.”
I’m going to go with Matthew 7: 13“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
God in His mercy grant that we, in fear and trembling, may find that Way.
I’m aware that this weekend was of some import to Anglicans south of the border. Most of what can be said, has been said. So I’ve just been listening and observing the reaction.
Anyway, something came to me yesterday that may have some bearing. Now, a little disclaimer is needed here. Firstly, this is hot off the press, as it were. It has not been tested by our prophetic group, nor have I had time for more than a brief reflection. However, mindful of the day I received it, I thought it might be worth putting in the public domain for your prayerful consideration.
This is what I saw. A ship that we were sailing on had its’ back broken and was sinking fast. Indeed, only the bow and stern was visible above the waves. Swiftly it sunk out of sight and left me and others treading water. I had a sense of sadness and a desire to hold on, as if by will that we could save this ship, but it sunk swiftly and with a finality.
Suddenly, as we were treading water, up from the waters below us rose another ship. So that, at one moment, we were treading water, the next we were standing on the deck of a supertanker. Yes, a supertanker. Not what you might imagine as normally happening after a sinking – no drowning or rescue by another ship or whatever. Nor is it normal for fully working ships to come up from the sea. We were stunned, grateful and suprised all at once.
Some random thoughts on these pictures:
Sinking ships have been used as analogies for our current Anglican troubles. So, this may have some bearing into this. Course, it could mean something different entirely. Like I have an overactive ship imagination or something 😉
The sense that we didn’t have to go anywhere, indeed that we really had nowhere to go or any means to get there. That it was all the Lords’ doing.
The strangeness of the vessel that was presented to us. Like, couldn’t we have a battleship or something? Then I got to thinking, what is it that a tanker can do? Well, full of fuel, it has the ability to refuel many, many ships. Make of that what you will. Perhaps it will be that we will have the ability to touch and refuel many people/groups beyond our current Anglican world??
Course, this may mean something entirely different, or may not mean much at all. I invite you to comment…..
Oh, related to this is the Ichabod prophecy. There’s another one too regarding lifeboats from last year that I’ll try and post sometime this week. This vision may be for a post-lifeboat time…..after all lifeboats are all well and good….but you wouldn’t really want to live in one forever.
This is the Lords’ doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
No, still alive, I feel fine 🙂
Real life interfering with blogging. Normal service will be resumed shortly.
The Age To Come 