GENEralities

The Windsor Report has been much on the radar screen lately. As I read it and made notes, three statements in it impacted me before I’d really engaged with the sexuality issue.

First, in his introduction to the report, Archbishop Eames writes:

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our current difficulties is the negative consequence it could have on the mission of the Church to a suffering and bewildered world.

Unfortunately, I am convinced we have already passed the point of “could have.” We are well into an unmistakably negative trend in our ability to carry out our mission.

What is our mission? I found it beautifully stated in the report’s opening words:

God has unveiled, in Jesus Christ, his glorious plan for the rescue of the whole created order from all that defaces, corrupts and destroys it.

According to the third statement to catch my attention, in paragraph 38, that glorious plan is a missionary imperative: the church must give its primary energy to God’s mission to the world, not to reordering its internal life.

Episcopal Bishop Claude Payne, in Reclaiming the Great Commission: a Practical Model for Transforming Denominations and Congregations writes:

Any congregation, judicatory, or denomination that is not growing has reason to be deeply concerned. Our Lord’s command to make disciples of all nations is very clear, and so is His command to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Any congregation, diocese, or denomination that is not growing is not communicating the transformational power of the Christian faith to an unchurched world in spiritual pain…The Christian Church is fundamentally a missionary church.

Our part of the Anglican Communion continues to decline in numbers. If we were carrying out God’s glorious rescue plan in Jesus Christ, and our primary energy was devoted to this missionary imperative, people would be being rescued and added to our numbers.

Numerical decline is not the only negative trend our diocese and the national church face at the moment. There are also serious financial challenges. We have had to resort to fund-raising to finance what should be basic tithe-and-offering-supported ministry.

Adding “our current difficulties” to the mix only exacerbates the already negative trend in our part of the world as many of our own church members, along with a vast majority of Anglicans in the wider Communion, continue to be profoundly shaken by the actions of the Dioceses of New Westminster and New Hampshire and of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada concerning homosexual behaviour.

We are in trouble. What to do?

In My American Journey, Colin Powell, Secretary of State and Episcopalian, describes a key leadership principle he learned in basic officer training: “The mission is primary, followed by taking care of your soldiers.” That ought to be a key principle for Anglican leaders, too. Our rescue mission is primary, and then we look after our own people and “internal matters.” Most Canadian Anglicans have reversed that priority. Quite simply, we must regain our mission focus and become an active part of the glorious rescue plan God has unveiled in Jesus Christ.

Somehow we have to overcome our lack of will, ability, or confidence—whatever it is—to rescue people, or even to recognize that everyone needs rescuing, from defacing, corrupting and ultimately destroying sin. Our mission is to rescue people, not to pat them on the head and encourage them to continue doing whatever defaces, corrupts and destroys them.

There is such a thing as salvation (being rescued) and there is such a thing as being lost (being in need of rescue). That is what the Great Commission is about. Somehow, we Anglicans have to come to grips with that.

How? Two things: first, the Bible. We must rediscover the Bible as authoritative and lovingly reliable. We must get beyond the pernicious notion that it is only useful in an Anglican Aesop’s Fables kind of way—good literature up to a point, but having little to do with real life—especially when it seems to be at odds with the way we want to live it. Money and sexuality are particularly sensitive issues here.

Second: evangelism. After a modest Decade of Evangelism flurry of task-forces and commissions we’ve put the resulting studies on the shelf, relaxed and settled back into our pre-decade ways—Jesus, after all, as any reasonable, sophisticated person must accept, is only one way to salvation (if, indeed, anybody, in fact, needs it) out of many. There is, therefore, no need to press the issue. We’re okay, and so is everyone else.

At the risk of being repetitive: God has a glorious rescue plan in Jesus Christ. To carry out this plan is our missionary imperative. Our primary energy must be devoted to this task. All sorts and conditions of people need rescuing.

If ever there was a time for us to observe a holy Lent, and rediscover what we’re about, this is it.

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