ACNA up 34% in 18 months: The Church of England Newspaper, July 1, 2011 p 7. July 5, 2011

Posted by geoconger from Church of England Newspaper.

ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan

First published in The Church of England Newspaper.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has bucked the trend of mainline church decline in the US and has added almost 250 new congregations, Archbishop Robert Duncan told delegates to the church’s second provincial council held last week in Long Beach, California.

“Two years ago we were 706 congregations. The annual parochial and diocesan reports for 2010,” Archbishop Duncan said on June 21, “identify 952 congregations as part of the dioceses of the ACNA and its ministry partners. Statistically this represents a 34 per cent growth in congregations at the end of the first 18 months of Church life.”

Growth has been strong across all age groups and demographics, the leader of the breakaway province of conservative Anglicans in the US and Canada told the delegates. One statistic Archbishop Duncan found particularly encouraging was the report on baptisms for 2010.

Over the past year ACNA parishes recorded “987 baptisms of adults over thirty, 424 baptisms of young people aged sixteen to thirty, and 1647 baptisms of children.” These numbers excluded baptisms performed in the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA).

“What is so stunning about this data is that the number of baptisms of those 16 and older is almost equal to the number of children baptized,” he said.

“What this says is that we are reaching adolescents and adults who have never known Christ, never been part of a church. This is to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, one sign among many that something quite extraordinary is unfolding,” Archbishop Duncan noted.

A one to one ratio of adult to children’s baptisms is uncommon among Anglicans in North America. Data released by the Episcopal Church for 2009 recorded 33,778 children’s baptisms and 5113 adult baptisms.

In his presidential address Archbishop Duncan reported the church’s finances were sound, its membership rolls expanding, and the internal tensions and strains of forming a new Anglican province comprising a range of traditions from Anglo-Catholic, to High Church, to Evangelical to Pentecostal were under control.

The province welcomed four new dioceses and dioceses-in-formation: the Mid-Atlantic, the Carolinas, the Southwest (covering West Texas and New Mexico) and Cascadia (covering the Pacific Northwest).

He reported that the non-geographic Diocese of the Holy Spirit, originally formed by congregations that had come under the oversight of the Church of Uganda, had voted to dissolve. “All of its congregations and clergy have now been dispersed to other dioceses,” Archbishop Duncan said, and he added that Holy Spirit’s bishop, John Guernsey, had been elected Bishop of the Mid-Atlantic.

“There are many evidences of God’s favor toward us, not because we deserve it, but because we continue to work so hard to align ourselves with His will,” the archbishop said.