http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2011/7/18/co-mission-plays-role-in-amies-launch
Co-Mission Plays Role in AMiE’s Launch
The district of Mayfair offers a keen example of the pastoral problems that crop up in a complex city like London. Christ Church, a nondescript edifice, was built in 1865 to accommodate servants of parishioners worshiping at nearby St. George’s Hanover Square.
In the 1980s the local residential population amounted to little more than a few hundred. Sunday worship gradually fizzled out. For some years the building was used on Friday lunchtimes by a group called Christians in Property, Mayfair being an important location for London property businesses. For all sorts of reasons Christ Church proved to be one of those pieces of church property that proved impossible to redevelop or sell off.
Yet contrary to every expectation, today a thriving congregation meets at Christ Church. There are three clergy and a women’s worker, two lay workers and an administrator. It runs an apprenticeship scheme for people who want to gain experience in full-time ministry. It supports several people engaged in international mission.
Why the turnaround? In 2001 the Bishop of London agreed to an overture from St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London to plant a congregation in that corner of Mayfair. Most of the people involved in the infusion were young professionals and students previously attending the evening service at St. Helen’s.
The project began modestly, Sunday evening meetings advertised simply as “Bible Talks.” Three years later Christ Church launched a Sunday-morning service. Today Christ Church exudes energy and enthusiasm and is an answer to the earnest prayers of the tiny congregation of the early 1980s, godly people who dreamed something like this might be possible.
There is another interesting cue. Christ Church is affiliated with Co-Mission, a coalition of 12 congregations around London. In late June three young men from Co-Mission traveled to Kenya and were ordained deacons by the Most Rev. Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of Kenya.
News of these ordinations emerged at the same time as news of the launch of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), which has its roots in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held in Jerusalem in 2008. An earlier plan to provide an ecclesial umbrella for conservative evangelical Anglicans under the name of the Society of St. Augustine was scrapped.
AMiE has a steering committee and a panel of retired bishops (including Wallace Benn, Michael Nazir-Ali, John Ball, John Ellison and Colin Bazley), all signatories to GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration.
The announcement created ripples within the evangelical constituency. Fulcrum, the open evangelical network that supports the proposed Anglican Covenant, women’s ordination and women bishops, greeted the emergence of AMiE with “serious concern.” Fulcrum said the name reflected breakaway movements in the United States, inviting the conclusion that this was its true purpose.
Fulcrum was concerned that the prime motivation seemed to be more political than missional. The panel of bishops signaled intent to offer alternative episcopal oversight without proper negotiation with senior leaders of the Church of England. Other sources expressed concerns about the secretiveness of the affair. The names of the ordinands have still not been announced.
Lambeth Palace issued a critical statement. There is no clarity about how AMiE’s panel of bishops may relate to other bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury, recently returned from a visit to Kenya, was careful not to criticize the church there but said there had been an opportunity to discuss the matter. “The good faith and fraternal good intentions of our Kenyan colleagues are not at all in question,” the statement said.
“It seems that there were misunderstandings of the precise requirements of English Canon Law and good practice as regards the recommendation of candidates for ordination,” the statement added. The implication has to be that the promulgators of the ordinations were not entirely transparent in their dealings with Archbishop Wabukala.
Co-Mission is primarily centred south of the River Thames in the London diocese of Southwark. Its leader, the Rev. Richard Coekin, has explained that Co-Mission asked the Archbishop of Kenya to ordain the new deacons because the group considered itself in a state of “temporarily impaired communion” with the Bishop of Southwark, a state of affairs obtaining since 2005.
Southwark has a relatively new bishop, the Rt. Rev. Christopher Chessun, and there had been hopes of a thaw in relations with Co-Mission. But in a statement Coekin said Bishop Chessun “would offer us no assurance that he would teach that homosexual practice is sin and therefore something not to be tolerated among the clergy.”
Co-Mission says it had been in negotiations with Lambeth Palace for four years, and appealing to Kenya was a last resort. Sources in the English House of Bishops suggest that there had been a good chance of a change of approach in Southwark, but these ordinations set things back and caused confusion.
John Martin, in London
In the 1980s the local residential population amounted to little more than a few hundred. Sunday worship gradually fizzled out. For some years the building was used on Friday lunchtimes by a group called Christians in Property, Mayfair being an important location for London property businesses. For all sorts of reasons Christ Church proved to be one of those pieces of church property that proved impossible to redevelop or sell off.
Yet contrary to every expectation, today a thriving congregation meets at Christ Church. There are three clergy and a women’s worker, two lay workers and an administrator. It runs an apprenticeship scheme for people who want to gain experience in full-time ministry. It supports several people engaged in international mission.
Why the turnaround? In 2001 the Bishop of London agreed to an overture from St. Helen’s Bishopsgate in the City of London to plant a congregation in that corner of Mayfair. Most of the people involved in the infusion were young professionals and students previously attending the evening service at St. Helen’s.
The project began modestly, Sunday evening meetings advertised simply as “Bible Talks.” Three years later Christ Church launched a Sunday-morning service. Today Christ Church exudes energy and enthusiasm and is an answer to the earnest prayers of the tiny congregation of the early 1980s, godly people who dreamed something like this might be possible.
There is another interesting cue. Christ Church is affiliated with Co-Mission, a coalition of 12 congregations around London. In late June three young men from Co-Mission traveled to Kenya and were ordained deacons by the Most Rev. Eliud Wabukala, Archbishop of Kenya.
News of these ordinations emerged at the same time as news of the launch of the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), which has its roots in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held in Jerusalem in 2008. An earlier plan to provide an ecclesial umbrella for conservative evangelical Anglicans under the name of the Society of St. Augustine was scrapped.
AMiE has a steering committee and a panel of retired bishops (including Wallace Benn, Michael Nazir-Ali, John Ball, John Ellison and Colin Bazley), all signatories to GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration.
The announcement created ripples within the evangelical constituency. Fulcrum, the open evangelical network that supports the proposed Anglican Covenant, women’s ordination and women bishops, greeted the emergence of AMiE with “serious concern.” Fulcrum said the name reflected breakaway movements in the United States, inviting the conclusion that this was its true purpose.
Fulcrum was concerned that the prime motivation seemed to be more political than missional. The panel of bishops signaled intent to offer alternative episcopal oversight without proper negotiation with senior leaders of the Church of England. Other sources expressed concerns about the secretiveness of the affair. The names of the ordinands have still not been announced.
Lambeth Palace issued a critical statement. There is no clarity about how AMiE’s panel of bishops may relate to other bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury, recently returned from a visit to Kenya, was careful not to criticize the church there but said there had been an opportunity to discuss the matter. “The good faith and fraternal good intentions of our Kenyan colleagues are not at all in question,” the statement said.
“It seems that there were misunderstandings of the precise requirements of English Canon Law and good practice as regards the recommendation of candidates for ordination,” the statement added. The implication has to be that the promulgators of the ordinations were not entirely transparent in their dealings with Archbishop Wabukala.
Co-Mission is primarily centred south of the River Thames in the London diocese of Southwark. Its leader, the Rev. Richard Coekin, has explained that Co-Mission asked the Archbishop of Kenya to ordain the new deacons because the group considered itself in a state of “temporarily impaired communion” with the Bishop of Southwark, a state of affairs obtaining since 2005.
Southwark has a relatively new bishop, the Rt. Rev. Christopher Chessun, and there had been hopes of a thaw in relations with Co-Mission. But in a statement Coekin said Bishop Chessun “would offer us no assurance that he would teach that homosexual practice is sin and therefore something not to be tolerated among the clergy.”
Co-Mission says it had been in negotiations with Lambeth Palace for four years, and appealing to Kenya was a last resort. Sources in the English House of Bishops suggest that there had been a good chance of a change of approach in Southwark, but these ordinations set things back and caused confusion.
John Martin, in London
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