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| Feature Article –July 2007 |
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Healthy Parishes – A National Symposium
by Gordon and Mary Dove
My husband and I were given the wonderful opportunity to attend the Symposium in Orillia, Ontario last month. Much work had gone into the organization and we thank the Revd Canon Linda Nicholls and National staff for all the visioning, organization, worship preparation and plain old hard work that always happens long before the date arrives.The request for such a gathering had come from our 2004 General Synod as a way, in part, to respond to a survey that had been commissioned by our National Church prior to that General Synod as an intentional listening exercise to find out what Canadian Anglicans were thinking about their Church. Interestingly enough, the report showed that there was concern shown in parishes about diminishing congregations, lack of youth, finances, residential school issues, homosexuality and, although there was some indication of joy, enthusiasm, hope and vision reported in parishes, it was reported by the Environics Research Group doing the survey that, almost by default, spirituality was not uppermost in the minds of most Canadian Anglicans at that time.
The two key-note speakers for the Symposium were Alan Roxburgh, from Vancouver, B.C. and Tex Sample from Goodyear, Arizona, both of whom are well respected in the wider Church for their work in congregational development and missional leadership. Each delegate was also able to choose five of the many workshops presented on the various aspects of “Healthy Parishes”. The worship that we shared was very meaningful and uplifting, some very familiar, some very new and all very Anglican. The conference was organized so that the delegates had time to seek out others and share stories of what was happening in the parishes across our country. Since people were there from almost all the dioceses of our Church, it was a wonderful chance to connect with old and new friends and during our time there, we felt a deep sense of spirituality, community and commitment to being the Anglican Church in Canada.
Alan believes that we must become more of a missional church in our society by getting out of our Church buildings more and into the neighbourhoods surrounding our parishes, responding to local needs and listening to the stories of all the people. He feels that trying to paste pre-planned programs and books to people’s lives and expecting people to come to the Church looking for spirituality no longer works as well as it used to because our culture has changed. We must, he says, engage with each other in our communities of faith as together we search for what God is calling us to do as a Church and as individuals in our ministries both in the Church and in the world. He feels that God’s Spirit is sprouting up in some of the most unlikely and “God-forsaken” places, in parishes around our country where His people are looking for Him and we need to “ride the Holy Gust of the Spirit in our lives”. A video of his A Story of Three Churches and a New Age Mall is available on www. allelon.org which is a website of his sharing resources on missional church and congregational development.
Tex also talked about where we are in the Church today and said, “The future is here but we can’t see it from there!” He spoke about us being in an “in-between time” in our Church history. We can’t go back to what it was like in the “good old days” and we’re not sure where God is leading us in the future, so there is an anxiety about who we are and where we are to go, but this “in-between” time itself is a gift from God. With His help,we can use it well. He believes that the Anglican Church already has everything we need to be relevant to society in our liturgy but the challenge is to ensure that the congregation is active, not passive in that liturgy.Tex feels that we need to integrate more art and music from the world around us into our liturgy and involve many people in the planning and in the leadership of worship. He showed a video of The Millenium Prayer (Lord’s Prayer) done to the tune of Old Lang Syne by Cliff Richard from England and another of a Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nissan in San Francisco which had a lot of congregational participation. Both are available on the internet.
The workshops provided a great opportunity to connect with our own leaders, and spend some time looking in depth at projects and happenings around our Church in Canada. Some of the various topics were about congregations understanding who they are, music in small churches, the strength of small churches, different ways of dealing with church closures and diminished congegations, evangelism for Anglicans, growing through discipleship and many others. Some of these resources are available through the Healthy Parishes Link on our www.anglican.ca website from our National Church.
We would like to thank Bishop Jim for the opportunity to be part of this Symposium and we would be very pleased to share any of our experiences.