Right now I see the Anglican Church starting to come into its own. We’re really starting to “get it” where it comes to reaching out to young people. As dire as the need is for spreading the Gospel abroad, the need at our own doorsteps is just as great. So many children (especially those in good families) don’t hear the Gospel in any way, shape or form, so it’s important for  the focus of our mission to be balanced between local and global.

Our baby boomers, who make up the majority of the population are going to be quite elderly by then and our young people desperately need reassurance of a loving God and eternal life in Christ, so I think by 2019 our main message should definitely be one of hope for something tangible that we can picture and understand.

I grew up in a larger parish in Brantford, Ontario, and there had a wonderful experience of growing up as a part of a Christian community and learning what it meant to be a follower of Christ and allow him to form my entire being. I especially enjoyed being able to participate in worship, through experiences such as being a part of the Junior Choir (wearing, of course, the requisite red cassocks) and being a server. More recently, since going to university, I have continued to grow within the church. and have been engaged by it in a manner that meets what I have learned in school. For example, I have been able to assist in leading the weekly Evensong service, which has repeatedly challenged me to draw closer to God. It seems too often that churches do not attempt to challenge young adults at the same level as they are in the rest of their lives, and as a result they think Christianity intellectually shallow. This, of course, is not the case; indeed, I have increasingly found that faith provides a basis for knowledge. This is well expressed in a phrase of St Anselm of Canterbury, “credo ut intelligam” (I believe in order that I may understand).

Since coming to university and meeting different sorts of Christians, especially though the campus Inter-Varsity group, I have come to better appreciate what it means to be Anglican. Growing up Anglican instilled me with a sense of belonging to the “one holy catholic and apostolic Church”. Furthermore, it taught me that Christianity isn’t just about what happened during biblical times and the last twenty years or so, but is truly universal in terms of both time and space. While the Bible is obviously our ultimate textual authority, I learned that there are also authors such as St Augustine, Dante, Cranmer, and C. S. Lewis that express the same faith we do, but in terms that reflect a very different mode of thinking from ours, leading modern readers to challenge their own assumptions. This has been very instructive in my growth both as a Christian and a member of society. Finally, I see in Anglicanism a special call to the creation and preservation of beauty: in the reading of the Scriptures, the words of the liturgy, music, art, architecture, and most of all in the people themselves who form the Body of Christ.

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Where is my Church now?
It is lost in the wilderness of secular society, trying to fit in. It has forgotten that Jesus Christ is not of this world, and neither is His Church. By trying to fit in to this world, the Anglican Church of Canada has moved away from Jesus Christ. Like the tree that bears bad fruit, it is being cut down and cast into the fire. Like the worthless servant, what treasure it was trusted with is being taken away.

What would I like my Church to do?
1. Get rid of the Book of Alternate Services, and use exclusively the Book of Common Prayer.
2. Remove from the Priesthood all homosexuals and women. Put an end to woman ordination. Require all Clergy, Priests, Deacons, and Bishops to be “a man of but one wife”, along with all of the other requirements given in 1 Timothy 3.
3. Remove from the Priesthood any and all persons who do not publically acknowledge Jesus Christ to be Devine, Resurrected (and that includes in body), and the one and only way to salvation.
4. No longer recognize any so called “marriages” or divorces performed by the courts of the secular government. Recognize only the marriages that were performed by a Priest in a Church, and only those divorces in which one of the spouses committed a sexually immoral act.
5. Define marriage as “an Act of God in which God Himself joins a man to his wife”.
6. Concentrate on following and obeying the Teachings of Jesus Christ and the Holy Word of God (that being the Holy Bible in its entirety). Spread His Holy Word to all who might hear it. Stop wasting time, effort, and resources on the Millennium Development Goals.

Allan P.
Owen Sound, Ontario