Standing Committee daily bulletin, March 29
Episcopal News Service. March 29, 2011 [032911-04]
The Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is meeting March 26-30 in London, England. On the third day of the meeting the members heard reports on the United Nations Anglican Communion Observer's Office, the international Anglican Networks, the Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy, and Unity, Faith and Order.
The first two daily bulletins issued by the Anglican Communion Office are available here.
The third daily bulletin follows.
In brief:
- Standing Committee: "Africa, Asia and Oceania should appoint more ACC members"
- Membership of Anglican Communion now at "85,000,000"
- Young Anglicans to write book on historic Edinburgh meeting
- Additional Mark of Mission on peacebuilding reviewed
- The Anglican Alliance "driven by the global south"
- Provinces 'adopting' Anglican networks should be "a way forward"
- Communion urged to mark international days against gender violence
United Nations Anglican Communion Observer's Office
A presentation on the work of this office, made on behalf of the staff there by Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Canon Kenneth Kearon, included reports on the Program for the Environmental and Sustainable Development, the Volunteer [intern] Program and the Anglican Communion's attendance at the 55th Session of the UN's Commission on the Status of Women.
Lambeth Palace Review
In 2009, Bishop Clive Hanford led a review of the working relationship between Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion secretariat to clarify roles and responsibilities. This report was welcomed by the Standing Committee and it was agreed that a Memorandum of Understanding should be drawn up clarifying the working relationship between the roles of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Communion and of the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion.
Analysis of membership of the Anglican Consultative Council
A review was undertaken of the recorded Provincial membership figures. The four sources were:
- Publicly advertised numbers on Provincial websites
- The World Council of Churches' A Handbook of Churches and Council 2006[1]
- Atlas of Global Christianity 2010
- The Anglican Communion website
Reviewing these figures revealed that, according to the current model of representation[2], some amendments to ACC membership representation should be made. The Standing Committee agreed that:
- The Secretary General will write to Provinces to confirm their own Provincial numbers and alert them to any proposed member number amendments, and
- With the agreement of two-thirds of the Primates, these proposed amendments should be made.
Mission cluster
The Rev John Kafwanka's began his report by saying that the young Anglicans who attended the Edinburgh 2010 Conference will be producing a book from an Anglican perspective of their experience of the conference in the context of the Five Marks of Mission. This is part of a Communion commitment to support and encourage the development of young leaders worldwide. He went on to report back on the work on developing another Mark of Mission around advancing reconciliation and peacemaking. The Committee thanked him for the work done on this proposed additional Mark of Mission and asked him to revisit it to bring a final version to ACC-15.
The current Marks of Mission are:
- To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Project Officer for Mission and Theological Education, Stuart Buchanan presented on the Communion's Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative. He reported that at its recent meeting hosted by Bishop Ng Moon Hing in the Diocese of West Malaysia in February the Core Group highlighted resources about church growth and evangelism available around the Communion and stressed these needed to be made widely available. As a result ninety different such resources have been posted to the ECGI section of the Anglican Communion's website. ECGI also has a regular quarterly newsletter available and a growing community of 250+ people signed up to the initiative.
The Standing Committee members heard from Sally Keeble, the Director for the Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy, that the Alliance will be doing things "very differently that other agencies." These differences were manifest in the Alliance's 'Modes of Working'. The first 'mode' is that the Alliance will be driven by the global south. "That's on the principal that those who are at the sharp end of poverty and injustices should be the people who decide the policies of the alliance," said Ms Keeble. She explained that the first conferences are being held in Africa (11-16 April), South and South-East Asia together and then South and Central America and the Caribbean, and the Pacific.
The first conference in Nairobi, Kenya is being co-hosted by the Alliance and the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA). "Twenty-eight participants from every Province in Africa and every other region are attending," said Ms Keeble, "as are three of the main Anglican agencies: Anglican Board of Mission and Anglicord from Australia and the Primates' World Relief and Development Fund in Canada will also be there.
The first development strand for the Alliance, 'economic empowerment' has been selected by CAPA and it will also choose and agree with everyone else what the second one should be. The conference will also consider an outline for the relief strategy and an advocacy campaign around economic empowerment.
Mrs Keeble added that the second mode of working from the grassroots up would involve capacity-building and accredited distance learning online. Mode of working three was that the Alliance would be about adding value not duplicating what others are doing. The new Alliance website that will launch in the next few months will feature a data capture tool attached to an interactive map showing who is doing what work where.
Mode of working four is collaboration, encouraging south to south learning and sharing of best practice. Mode of working five is that it will operate on 'bureaucracy lite' with few central staff, but regional co-ordinators. She also stressed that the Alliance is not a funding agency but would co-ordinate and amplify all the good work already taking place at every level.
International Anglican Networks
Networks co-ordinator and women's desk officer the Revd Terrie Robinson reported to the committee on the international Anglican networks. She highlighted the present work of the Anglican Communion Environment Network and explained a major ten-day meeting will take place in Lima, Peru in August 2011, the first network meeting since 2005.
The International Anglican Family Network (in partnership with The Family Centre, Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand) held a regional consultation in Oceania in October last year attended by participants from a range of countries in the Pacific region. The participants, both men and women, produced a Six Step Action Plan for implementation in their own dioceses and Provinces, and for Churches throughout the Communion.
Mrs Robinson advised the committee that funds for the International Anglican Family Network were drying up. "Unless new sources for funds can be found the Network will have to find different ways of operating," she said. "This would be a particular shame as the Family Network newsletters are pretty much the only pan-Anglican publication that goes out to the Communion."
The Anglican Refugee and Migrant Network has a new co-ordinator the Revd Catherine Graham who will be located in Hong Kong, the Province that is a significant supporter of the network. Canon Kearon said he believed that networks that had such support from a Province were often the ones that were most active and productive. "I think that's the model for the way forward, Provinces adopting networks," he said.
Activities of the Francophone Network of the Anglican Communion have included identifying and collecting French-language resources especially for worship and theological education. European members of the network participated in a conference in Paris 'L'Anglicanisme Contemporain: entre tradition et renouveaux'. There are plans for a meeting of the network to take place in Bujumbura, Burundi, funding permitting in July 2011.
Among other achievements this past year, the Anglican Health Network has launched a health microinsurance project in Tanzania that has now 2000 people who have taken up this insurance. This next year will see the relaunch of a medical equipment transfer programme in East and West Africa, the Middle East and India.
The next gathering of the Anglican Indigenous Network is planned for May 18-25, 2011 outside Sydney, Australia. The Anglican Peace and Justice Network is working towards the network's 25 year anniversary publication, and will have a presence at the World Council of Churches' International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in Jamaica in May 2011. Among the the International Anglican Women's Network was a statement expressing concern at the sentencing to death of Assia Bibi, a Christian woman in Pakistan. Reports indicated that at the request of IAWN members, government representatives in several countries then took up this issue at inter-governmental level and expressed concern to the Government of Pakistan. One of the key developments for the International Anglican Youth Network is the launch of its journal Buenas Nuevas. It is also planning a triennial Provincial Youth Officers' meeting in Hong Kong in August 2011.
Mrs Robinson went on to revisit the issue of violence against women and girls and challenged the committee to consider next steps following the commitments made at the recent Primates' meeting. She said that there were 11 strands of action[3] in the Primates' statement on this issue and invited the committee to consider how to follow them up. The decision was made to produce a resource for the Communion to enable all churches to mark the 16 Days Against Gender Violence, beginning on 25th November.
Unity, Faith and Order
Director for Unity, Faith and Order the Revd Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan presented her report the committee. She explained that working groups of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order were tasked to consider the definition and recognition of churches, to look at how the Church receives into its life the results of all dialogues in which Anglicans are involved, and to produce a full text on the Instruments of Communion[4] in time for ACC-15. Another working group has already completed its task of producing resources on the Anglican Communion Covenant.
The Anglican Communion is about to begin the third round of The Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). The talks are going to ahead in May in Italy.
There have been two meetings of the International Anglican Orthodox Commission for Theological Dialogue and papers have addressed 1) What is a human being? 2) The freedom of growth of the human being with particular reference to the understanding of image and likeness and 3) Human responsibility for creation. The next meeting is in Albania in September. The next steps in the relationship with the Oriental Orthodox Churches are being explored.
The Anglican Lutheran International Commission has been focused on the theme of 'diakonia'. The final meeting of this phase takes place in Jerusalem in 2011. Members of this dialogue include representatives from the Anglican Church of Canada, the Church of England, the Church of the Province of Central Africa, The Anglican Church of Australia and the Nippon Sei Ko Kai (the Anglican Church in Japan).
The Anglican Old Catholic Co-ordinating Council established to oversee the common mission of the Anglican Communion and the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht with which Anglicans are in full communion. It met most recently in November 2010 and is producing a major paper on ecclesiology which will be shared with Anglican and Old Catholic Bishops in May 2011.
Hearing that Chinese Christians have expressed an interest in learning more about Anglicanism the Standing Committee meeting encouraged the Director to establish a contact group on the issue in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General.
Footnotes:
1. The latest editon
2. Provinces with fewer than 250,000 represented by one person (preferably lay) on ACC; with between 250,000 and 1 million by two people (1 bishop or 1 priest, and 1 lay); and with more than 1 million three people (1 bishop, 1 priest and 1 lay).
3. Awareness raising; advocacy; changing attitudes and behaviour; care and reintegration into society of victims/survivors of violence; work with perpetrators of violence; raising the profile of Millennium Development Goal 3; affirm, bless and pray for existing initiatives; gather other church and faith leaders together to discern what might be said and done together; training of clergy and pastors; development and accessibility of local, contextual and accessible resources; work with our young people.
4. With seven sections: 1) What it means to be a communion of churches; the Anglican Communion and the communion that it has, 2) The more informal sinews of the Communion, to show that the coherence of the Communion does not depend on the four Instruments alone, including the networks, mission agencies, principles of canon law, etc., 3) Lambeth Conference, 4) Archbishop of Canterbury, 5) Primates Meeting, 6) Anglican Consultative Council, 7) A reflective summing up, including an examination of the Instruments as channels of God's grace within the Communion, with the conciliar life of the Communion flowing out of the eucharistic event of the Christian Church.