Some Sober Reflections on a Year in Office
Diocesan Press Service. October 7, 1965 [XXXVI-2]
Ralph S. Dean, Executive Officer, Anglican Communion
A year is a long time and 20 countries make up a lot of territory so that one article cannot contain all it should and what it does contain is almost bound to be misleading--but here goes!
First: I never really understood how thin the Anglican Church is on the ground in most areas. I knew, of course, that we only make up 5% of Christendom, and I knew of Howard Johnson's polite derision of those maps which show the Anglican dioceses throughout the world, with their implied suggestion either that all the people in them were Anglican, or at least that many of them were. How far from the truth it is! In so many places there are but a handful compared with the bulk of the population, and while significance cannot be judged by arithmetic, since our Lord Himself had only 12 apostles, it is disconcerting just the .. same.
Second: I never really comprehended how much of our time and energy and resources. are spent in preserving what we have. In these days of dialogue with other faiths (whatever that may mean) the word "convert" is almost a dirty word. Is this a rationalization to compensate for the fact that there seem to be so few of them? And does that drive us in on ourselves and explain the use of our energies to preserve the status quo because, after all, we must somehow do something?
Third: It is a shock to realize that we seem not to believe in the power of the Holy Spirit anymore. Work is begun overseas -- on western rather than on indigenous patterns -- with an increasing national episcopate to be sure, but yet with some western personnel liberally sprinkled to make sure that overseas bishops work on western lines or provide a kind Cave of Adullam if they don't.
Fourth: The stimulation of seeing the so-called "younger churches" really and truly concerned with Christian unity, despite our timid western response which never seems very encouraging even when we are not actually pouring cold water on them. When will we learn that the unity of the Body of Christ in a local area is much more important and meaningful to Christians in that area than formal fellowship in a world-wide Communion or confession of whatever denomination?
Fifth: Our reluctance to take seriously the whole question of planning not only in a local church or area but between national churches themselves. Thank God there is some progress -- even if it is still in its infancy -- in the attempt of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America, the Church of the Province of the West Indies, and the Anglican Church of Canada to work together in their common obedience to mission, which is at the heart of MRI and which we claim to be the test of all our activities.
Sixth and last -- because it is the most important: The wonder of seeing what God can do when we allow Him to use what we have. A Canadian primate once said to me: "There is no limit what God can do with a man if He has all there is of him." I always knew that in theory, but now I have seen it with my own eyes, A doctor-priest in a leper colony in Uganda, a Texan doctor working away in Malawi with the most primitive equipment possible, the impact of the Anglican Community in Hong Kong, the quiet devotion of a scholar-priest in Korea, all these and many more spring to mind as I reflect on my journeyings.
If one lives in Canada or the United States, or even in the United Kingdom, the word "stewardship" inevitably suggests money as though that were the only commodity that stewards handle. Important it is but it is certainly not everything. We could have at our disposal all the money in the world, and still achieve nothing for the Kingdom without the offering of the self that has the money, of the gifts which under God can set it to work. Nor is this only a matter of full- time professional service either. In these days of wellnigh incredible mobility, when business men of all kinds spend varying periods in countries other than their own, there is a field of witness, of evangelism, and of service of quite unprecedented scope. Because of the fantastic ease of modern communication and travel, because of increasing technical knowledge and skills, Christian people -- and specially laymen -- are being challenged as never before to answer the call of Christ to discipleship in every area of life -- and not just those we wrongly classify as simply "religious."
There is indeed no end to what God can do, yet in some strange way it seems to be part of the divine will that it should depend on our response. That's a sober reflection if ever there was!