Since the Primate’s letter arrived I have been very reluctant to respond. I have been retired since 1993, and I did not want to sound like someone still longing for the “good old days”.  It is so easy in retirement to spend far too much time looking back.   I have been reminded more than once to “remember Lot’s wife”!

Let me begin by saying that the Church looks very different from the pew where I spend much of my time, from the view I had from an Episcopal chair.  From that chair I used to imagine that congregations hung on every word that came from the Synod Office and the Bishop.  I now discover that many congregations have very little awareness of belonging to a diocese, much less a national church.  The Anglican Communion meant and still means a great deal to me.  It is very far removed from the consciousness of many of the Anglicans I meet today.

My present Christian journey takes me into many different congregations across Canada; to some in the United States, and to some Lutheran congregations. When I am not travelling elsewhere I worship with a small, elderly congregation in the Diocese of New Westminster.

Two impressions stand out.

I meet congregations that are vital and healthy. They have a strong sense of mission, and look for ways to serve the wider community and the world.  Their worship is alive, and there is an openness to change. There is a conscious determination to be inclusive and welcoming.  They spend more time engaging in mission and less time talking about it.

Then there are congregations threatened with extinction; fearful of change, and focused on survival.  Clergy are dispirited – even defeated, and the surrounding community is seen more as a threat than a field of opportunity.  Archbishop Somerville once described this kind of attitude as “the drawbridge mentality”, which closes its eyes, its mind and its purses to the world around it.

Much of my current interest lies in teaching and preaching in the area of stewardship. Two responses are significant. The healthy faith communities ask, “What do we need to engage in mission more fully?”  The other group asks, “How can we survive another year?”  The first are looking outward; the second are turned inward – on their property, their building.  The first know what has been entrusted to them by God; the second lurch from fund-raise to fund-raise; from raffle to raffle; from bazaar to bazaar.

My dream for the Church is a faith community not motivated by its budget; not giving to prop up the building and not turned inwards on itself, and not merely in a survival mode.  But rather a Church aware of what has been entrusted to it; alive to the community and world around it; consciously seeking the mind of Christ as it engages in Christ’s mission.

I look for leadership at the national level – General Synod; House of Bishops; CoGS, and at the diocesan level – in helping us become what we could be as a church.  The answer is not fund-raiding campaigns, but a new and fresh approach to what stewardship really is. We all need to be reminded that everything we have and everything we are, are not possession we own, but things we hold in trust for the “benefit” of God. If the Parable of the Talents has any meaning at all, it means at least that. It also insists that what we have does not permit a constant reference to scarcity, since none of it belongs to us, and is only entrusted, and we are accountable for it.  So we would celebrate the incredible “wealth” that has been put into our hands.

Over the decades I have watched, and been part of, a Church that has shied away from stewardship. I have been as involved as any in allowing stewardship to degenerate into a way to meet a budget. When finances failed we invariably launched a campaign for more funds, and in so doing set back our understanding of stewardship.

I believe the time has come to discover again who we really are: A listening Church; a serving Church; a mission Church.

If this is all too negative, I apologise – put it down to my advancing years.

+Douglas Hambidge
Archbishop of New Westminster retired

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