I would like to see the Anglican Church broaden its shoulders to embrace not only the rest of the ( transformed) Anglican communion, but also all those of other faiths. We all  must face the certainty  that God cannot be claimed by any church or religion as its own. If we do not look beyond our own  altar and steeple, we will lose the opportunity to save the Anglican Church and more important to create the kingdom on earth that Christ talked about.

Heads up those of you in power!  Movement has already begun in the pews.

There exists in the Anglican Church, at least in North American, some very deep, fundamental problems that have been pervasive for some time. Among them are:

1.  Anglicans in the pew do not know their Bible. They rarely read their Bibles or take them to church services. I know, as I was one of them for years, until I began studying with Bible Study Fellowship International. It is shameful that very few Anglicans can even find their way around the Bible or know what it says exactly. The leaders and shepherds of the church have failed in this regard to teach the Scriptures to the congregants; therefore, they need to encourage Biblical knowledge and study.

2.  Anglicans do not hear the Gospel message; they are just served up cute homilies by their rectors. It wasn’t until I went to an evangelical camp one summer as a youth that I heard the gospel message that I was a sinner, that Jesus died for those sins, and that I could have eternal life through Him. I had never heard that truthful but simple message before from my Anglican church or camp experiences, yet that message opened to me a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, the gospel message needs to be proclaimed in Anglican churches on Sundays throughout our nation, as this has eternal consequences.

3. The Anglican church is too worried and too focused on being politically correct instead of being concerned about being Biblically and Spiritually correct. Culture changes, swinging from left to right, but the Word of God does not change. We are to please God and not society, listen to God and not other voices, and be open to the movement of the Spirit and not the movement of others’ agendas. God’s wisdom is far superior to our wisdom, and we do not have the right to rewrite His commands as we so please or as is convenient for us. The church, then, needs to focus on following God and preaching the gospel message instead of  following cultural and social philosophies.

Sunday School collages from Vision 2019 Sunday, St. James Anglican Church, Dundas Ontario, done to answer the question “Where is your church now, and where do you think the Anglican Church of Canada should be in 2019?”

Eric Traficante, Youth Council Representative to the Board of Directors of the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund responds to the question: Where is your church now, and where do you want the Anglican Church of Canada to be in 2019?

Filmed at the recent Council of General Synod meeting in Mississauga, Ont.

The original question asked was, “Where is your church now, and where do you want the Anglican Church of Canada to be by 2019?”  I take ‘my church’ to be the Anglican Church of Canada, rather than my parish church, St. George’s, Guelph, because I can say pretty confidently that where the ACC is, there is St. George’s, and where the ACC goes, St. George’s will follow.  So I ask the question, “The Anglican Church Of Canada: Where Is It Now, And Where Do I Want It To Be By 2019?”

Where is it now?  We have just come through a very painful and costly schism over the status of Same-Sex blessings, led by the bishop and diocese of New Westminster.  I don’t wish to enter into the endless argument over this, except to say that the two camps have two ‘authorities’ on which they base their argument.  The supreme authority of one is the Holy Spirit, the living Word in the world today, and leading us into all truth; the supreme authority of the other is the Holy Bible, the written word. (more…)