by David Virtue, VOL
The Anglican Church in Canada is in deep trouble. Its very future is at stake. By any reckoning it is on life support.
A panel of Anglican experts recently outlined six paths to ‘big change’ in church. A commission wrote a 48-page document offering six pathways along which the church could organize work to update and strip down its governance to improve efficiency, clarity and inclusion.
The church’s acting primate urged Anglicans to join the work of transformation. The church is approaching a time of important decisions—one which Anglicans can and should embrace with hope, Archbishop Anne Germond, acting primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Council of General Synod (CoGS). Her comments came as a commission established by former primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls recommended major cuts to the size of the church’s organizational committees and governing bodies.
The commission’s recommendations are aimed at adapting the church to the needs of a smaller membership and a 21st-century social and political landscape, said the report. However, the lay representative of the ecclesiastical province of the Northern Lights, described it as a “chainsaw approach” to rapid cuts.
All this is code for ‘we don’t have enough money coming in to keep the bureaucracy going and the lights.’ Here are the data for average Sunday attendance.