Message from Canon Phil Ashey

Canon Ashey ACNA College of Bishops meets next week January 7-11, Orlando FL Dear Friends in Christ, I bid your prayers for the College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America as they meet next week to address a number of topics including the ordination of women to the priesthood, the formation of new and overlapping dioceses, church planting, a new Catechism, and the restoration of former AMiA bishops to the ACNA College. Bishop David Anderson will be there as a member of the College and the Archbishop's Cabinet.  I will be there in an advisory capacity due to our (AAC) work in supporting our emerging province through coaching new and forming dioceses, leadership and congregational development. The realignment of Anglicanism in North America and the forming of the ACNA is not only a reformation of belief - a return to our Anglican roots in the authority of the Bible, the Creeds and the first four Ecumenical Councils - it is also a reformation of behavior.  This reformation is also about identifying and living into the values of a church culture that will continue to build one, united, biblical and missionary Anglican movement in order to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ.  Sometimes there is a "disconnect" between the values to which we aspire and the values from which we actually "operate."  In both leadership and congregational development, the AAC has been emphasizing to clergy and lay leaders alike that it is precisely at these "disconnects" between aspired and operating values that conflict is likely to take place, and along with conflict, the failure of any strategy for mission and church growth. But we also teach that though conflict is inevitable (because the "disconnects" are inevitable), conflict can be quite healthy and precisely what we need for the church to move out of maintenance and into mission.  The challenge is how to deal with conflict in such a way that we remain focused on the core values, vision and mission that God has laid on our hearts. As I look at the challenges before the ACNA bishops, and the way in which they will be addressing those challenges, I am enormously hopeful and encouraged.  As the bishops take this opportunity to assess the health of the ACNA, they come with mutual goodwill and a willingness to face the "disconnects" under the authority of God's word, apostolic teaching and tradition, and the covering of intercessory, corporate and personal prayer.  For many of us, this in itself is a sign of a new and healthy church culture!  This in itself is the first fruits of a reformation of behavior. Yesterday I was reflecting on the challenges before the bishops in the light of the reading from Hebrews 11:13-22: "But having seen them [the things promised] and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth... they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city."  (11:13b, 16 NIV) Yes, there is no perfect church.  Yes, we may not live to see God's promises come true.  But what a wonderful stance of faith the author of Hebrews commends to the church!  In faith, we are called to keep our hearts longing for our true home, our eyes fixed on that heavenly city where the Lamb himself is the light.  This stance enables us to be like Abraham, who was able to obey God "even though he did not know where he was going." (Hebrews 11:8).  With hearts and eyes fixed faithfully on that heavenly city, bishops and other church leaders, planters and builders are more likely to build a movement, a missional church, that reflects more of that heavenly city rather than less - even when they and we do not know the road ahead! In The City of God, St. Augustine wrote about the difference between that heavenly city promised in Hebrews, and the earthly "city of man:" "We see then that two cities were created by two kinds of love; the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point of contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self." (Book XIV, 28) In a very real way, the Church should always be as Augustine suggests: a people who are already but not yet fully "the City of God." The Church is a people on pilgrimage to that heavenly city, carried by passionate love for God rather than self. As the ACNA College of Bishops meets this coming week, please pray that they will continue to be motivated by the love of God and his heavenly city, and carried by such love even "as far as contempt of self." Yours in Christ, Phil+ The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey Chief Operating and Development Officer, American Anglican Council