Acnac Meeting Explores Ministry
Episcopal News Service. June 27, 1985 [85148]
ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland (DPS, June 27) -- The sixth conference of the Anglican Council of North America and the Caribbean (ACNAC) met here June 15-21 with the task of examining "Ministry in Christ's Name."
Participants, both clerical and lay, came from the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, the Church in the Province of the West Indies, Cuba and Bermuda. During their visit to the Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, the 35 delegates were given the opportunity to observe the strong ministry of the clergy and laity in a difficult area -- large distances between parishes, overworked parish priests, unemployment, and communities struggling to find their niche in a society caught between the urbanization of North America and the more rural conditions normally associated with island life.
There was agreement among delegates that the Anglican Communion in this hemisphere, in its institutional forms, must strive to keep from isolating itself from the realities of change in the world and in the lives of the people it serves. One suggested method of doing this is to reassess the commitment of members and others by actively helping them discern their own special gifts and training them to use those. Laity were urged to remember that they have a contribution to make, and that God's love can be exhibited in the classroom or boardroom just as much as it is at the altar.
This must be done at the national and local levels, where the ordained and laity unite in a ministry which melds economic, social, political and religious concerns in order to help people shape their own lives. Ways in which the provinces represented at the conference have begun to respond to the need for a "contextual ministry" are as individual as the regions themselves.
Delegates representing the Anglican Church of Canada, for example, called for the recognition and training of ministries of the laity, greater support for the ordained -- their mission and families -- and a reaffirmation of the diaconal function of the Church.
Speaking from their diverse experiences as members of the Episcopal Church, delegates noted that ministry issues revolve, in part, around lifting up the ministry of the laity and moving toward a wholeness of ministry through such programs as the Next Step, Volunteers for Mission and the Jubilee Ministry, and recognizing the emerging patterns of the diaconate.
Delegates from the West Indies and Bermuda spoke of the need to minister to the unemployed, the family -- particularly women who head households -- and the clergy and their families.
In recognition of the history of the Anglican Church, the Conference urged that the ordained and laity alike, working together to minister to all people, not be bound by tradition but buttressed by it, using past lessons and knowledge of where the Church has been to help move effectively toward the future. Conferees stressed that only by understanding where one has been can one understand where one is going.