St. John's Vancouver

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St. John's Vancouver
St. John's Vancouver Anglican Church
St. John's Vancouver logo.png
St. John's Vancouver
49°14′14″N123°07′18″W / 49.2371°N 123.1217°W / 49.2371; -123.1217
Location Vancouver, British Columbia
CountryCanada
Denomination Anglican Church in North America
Website www.stjohnsvancouver.org
History
Founded2011
Administration
Diocese Canada
Clergy
Rector The Rev. Canon David Short
Vicar(s) The Rev. Dr. Jordan Senner

St. John's Vancouver Anglican Church (known in short as "St. John's Vancouver") is an evangelical Anglican church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 2011 by the clergy and almost all of the laity of St. John's Shaughnessy after the group left the Anglican Church of Canada over theological and moral issues and the congregation lost a legal battle to keep its building during the Anglican realignment. [1] With more than 700 in regular attendance, it is the largest church in the Anglican Diocese of Canada, a diocese of the Anglican Church in North America. [2]

Contents

History

Until 2011, St. John's Vancouver shares its history with St. John's Shaughnessy, which was founded in 1925 and whose building was dedicated in 1950. By the 1970s, St. John's had become known for high-church Anglo-Catholic liturgies. [3] The church's membership had significantly declined and the church's finances were deteriorating. The vestry called the Rev. Harry Robinson, a prominent low-church evangelical within the Anglican Church of Canada, as rector in 1978. During his theological studies in England, he had befriended notable evangelicals like John R. W. Stott, J. I. Packer, and Dick Lucas and he had experience developing a strong student ministry. [4] A year after Robinson's arrival, Packer took an appointment at Regent College. Considered one of the preeminent evangelical theologians, [5] Packer also received an appointment as honorary assistant priest at St. John's, which he held until his death in 2020. [6]

Robinson presided over significant growth and renewal at St. John's. Future Saskatchewan Bishop Tony Burton said that Robinson took over "a moribund, complacent small congregation, and at considerable personal cost set it on the path to becoming Canada's largest Anglican community, and one of its liveliest and most creative." [4] By the time Robinson retired in 1992, St. John's had grown to an average weekly attendance of 800 and was widely reported to be the largest Anglican church in Canada. [3] [7] [4] [8]

Robinson was succeeded by the Rev. David Short, a priest from the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and the son of Bishop Ken Short, who continued Robinson's low-church evangelical practices and teaching. [9] In 1998, Short launched Artizo, a training program for priests that has graduated over 100 clergy. The church also developed educational resources used by more than 90 other churches. In 2007, St. John's planted a church in Richmond. [2]

Anglican realignment

Since 2011, St. John's Vancouver has rented Oakridge Seventh-Day Adventist Church, pictured here, for Sunday services. Oakridge-sda-vancouver.jpg
Since 2011, St. John's Vancouver has rented Oakridge Seventh-Day Adventist Church, pictured here, for Sunday services.

In 2002, the Diocese of New Westminster synod controversially approved the blessing of same-sex unions. Packer, Short, and other delegates from St. John's, along with delegates from seven other churches, walked out of the synod in objection. [10] The dissenting churches formed a group called the Anglican Communion in New Westminster (ACiNW) and declared impaired communion with Bishop Michael Ingham. [11] [12] Short and the other clergy walking out faced canonical charges from Ingham. [13]

The synod decision became a major flashpoint in the Anglican realignment. [12] [14] After the failure of the ACiNW churches to obtain alternative episcopal oversight from within the Anglican Church of Canada, [15] [16] in February 2008 St. John's membership voted with 96 percent in favor to disaffiliate from the Anglican Church of Canada and become canonically resident in the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone. [3] [7] The Southern Cone agreed to provide primatial oversight for traditionalist Anglican churches in Canada as an interim step to creating an eventual parallel province in North America. [17]

In April 2008, Short, Packer and St. John's vicar Dan Gifford formally relinquished their ministry in the Anglican Church of Canada and join the Anglican Network in Canada. [18] The church was involved in litigation over the ownership of its $13 million property; [3] the Supreme Court of British Columbia (a trial court jurisdiction) in 2009 affirmed that the property belonged to the Diocese of New Westminster. [19] The higher B.C. Court of Appeal affirmed the ruling, and the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the case, [1] resulting in all of the clergy and the bulk of the congregation leaving the 1950 building on September 18, 2011. [2] The departing clergy members relaunched the church as St. John's Vancouver with about 700 members in rented facilities at Oakridge Seventh-Day Adventist Church. [2]

Since 2011, St. John's Vancouver has held steady at around 700 in weekly attendance. In 2022, Gifford was consecrated as the new diocesan bishop of ANiC, [20] and St. John's Vancouver began planning for a $12–25 million capital project to buy or build a permanent church building. [2]

Ministries

Artizo Institute and church planting

Since 1998, nearly 100 clergy have been trained through St. John's Artizo Institute, which provides a two-year apprenticeship for junior clergy to complement seminary education. Artizo graduates may move on to a residency, similar to a curacy, at another church. [21] Artizo graduates serve ANiC churches across Canada, as well as churches throughout the Anglican Church in North America. They also serve in Lutheran, Reformed, C&MA, and non-denominational contexts across the English-speaking world. [22]

Many Artizo graduates have served as church planters, and St. John's has during its history planted several churches, including St. Peter's Fireside in downtown Vancouver, St. John's Richmond, and a new church plant in the area encompassing East Vancouver, Burnaby, and New Westminster. [23]

International partnerships

St. John's Vancouver partners with Helping Point in India, [24] Ratanak International in Cambodia, [25] and the Anglican Diocese of the Upper Shire in Malawi. [26]

Related Research Articles

Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed same-sex marriage since 2015, and the Scottish Episcopal Church has allowed same-sex marriage since 2017." In 2017, clergy within the Church of England indicated their inclination towards supporting same-sex marriage by dismissing a bishops' report that explicitly asserted the exclusivity of church weddings to unions between a man and a woman. At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition. In 2023, the Church of England announced that it would authorise "prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God's blessing for same-sex couples."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglican Diocese of Sydney</span> Diocese in the Anglican Church of Australia

The Diocese of Sydney is a diocese in Sydney, within the Province of New South Wales of the Anglican Church of Australia. The majority of the diocese is evangelical and low church in tradition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglican Church of Australia</span> Church of the Anglican Communion

The Anglican Church of Australia, originally known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Roman Catholic Church.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglican Church of Canada</span> Church organization in Canada

The Anglican Church of Canada is the province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is l'Église anglicane du Canada. In 2022, the Anglican Church counted 294,931 members on parish rolls in 1,978 congregations, organized into 1,498 parishes. The 2021 Canadian census counted 1,134,315 self-identified Anglicans, making the Anglican Church the third-largest Canadian church after the Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blessing of same-sex unions in Christian churches</span>

The blessing or wedding of same-sex marriages and same-sex unions is an issue about which leaders of Christian churches are in ongoing disagreement. Traditionally, Christianity teaches that homosexual acts are sinful and that holy matrimony can only exist between two persons of different sexes. These disagreements are primarily centred on the interpretation of various scripture passages related to homosexuality, sacred tradition, and in some churches on varying understandings of homosexuality in terms of psychology, genetics and other scientific data. While numerous church bodies have widely varying practices and teachings, individual Christians of every major tradition are involved in practical (orthopraxy) discussions about how to respond to the issue.

The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, formerly the Church of the Province of New Zealand, is a province of the Anglican Communion serving New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and the Cook Islands. Since 1992 the church has consisted of three tikanga or cultural streams: Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia. The church's constitution says that, among other things, it is required to "maintain the right of every person to choose any particular cultural expression of the faith". As a result, the church's General Synod has agreed upon the development of the three-person primacy based on this three tikanga system; it has three primates, each representing a tikanga, who share authority.

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, known until 2006 as the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, is the province of the Anglican Communion in the southern part of Africa. The church has twenty-five dioceses, of which twenty-one are located in South Africa, and one each in Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Saint Helena.

A provincial episcopal visitor (PEV), popularly known as a flying bishop, is a Church of England bishop assigned to minister to many of the clergy, laity and parishes who on grounds of theological conviction, "are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests". The system by which such bishops oversee certain churches is referred to as alternative episcopal oversight (AEO).

In 2003, the Lambeth Commission on Communion was appointed by the Anglican Communion to study problems stemming from the consecration of Gene Robinson, the first noncelibate self-identifying gay priest to be ordained as an Anglican bishop, in the Episcopal Church in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. The Commission, chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames, published its findings as the Windsor Report on 18 October 2004. The report recommended a covenant for the Anglican Communion, an idea that did not come to fruition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglican Diocese of Canada</span> Anglican realignment diocese in Canada

The Anglican Diocese of Canada is the Canadian diocese of the Anglican Church in North America. Established in 2005, prior to becoming a founding diocese of the ACNA, it originated as a group of congregations and clergy that had left the Anglican Church of Canada to affiliate temporarily with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, a province of the Anglican Communion. In 2024, the diocese formally adopted its current name.

The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events that contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed to be the next Bishop of Reading in the Church of England and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Jeffrey John ultimately declined the appointment due to pressure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada</span>

The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion. The first General Synod session was held in Toronto in 1893, with the proviso that the parameters of its authority would not undermine the local independence of dioceses.

The Anglican Church of Canada is the third largest church in Canada, after the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada. After many years of debate, the first blessing of a same-sex partnership took place in 2003, by the Diocese of New Westminster, in Vancouver. This was not considered a marriage ceremony, but rather a blessing of "permanent and faithful commitments" between persons of the same sex.

The Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition with churches in Europe. Formed as part of the worldwide Anglican realignment, it is a member jurisdiction of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) and is under the primatial oversight of the chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council. ANiE runs in parallel with the Free Church of England (RECUK). GAFCON recognizes ANiE as a "proto-province" operating separately from the Church of England, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Church in Wales and other Anglican Communion jurisdictions in Great Britain and the European continent. ANiE is the body hierarchically above the preexisting Anglican Mission in England; the former is the equivalent of a province whilst the latter is a convocation, the equivalent of a diocese.

Daniel Christian Gifford is an American-born Canadian bishop of the Anglican Church in North America. In February 2022, he was consecrated as coadjutor bishop of the Anglican Network in Canada and succeeded Charlie Masters as diocesan bishop in November 2022. He was previously archdeacon for the Vancouver area in ANiC and vicar of St. John's Vancouver.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Leung</span> Canadian Anglican bishop

Stephen Wing Hong Leung is a Canadian bishop. Since 2009, he has served as suffragan bishop with responsibility for Asian and multicultural ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Canada, a diocese of the Anglican Church in North America formerly known as the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trevor Walters (bishop)</span> Canadian Anglican bishop

Trevor Walters is a British-born Canadian bishop of the Anglican Church in North America. From 2009 to 2021, he was suffragan bishop with responsibility for western Canada in the Anglican Network in Canada. As a priest in the Diocese of New Westminster in the early 2000s, Walters played a major role in the Anglican realignment in Canada.

Felix Clarence Orji is a Nigerian-born American Anglican bishop. A former Episcopal priest who left the Episcopal Church as part of the Anglican realignment, Orji was consecrated a bishop in Nigeria in 2011 to serve the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. Since 2013, he has been the diocesan bishop of the Anglican Diocese of All Nations, which was a dual member of both the Church of Nigeria and the Anglican Church in North America from 2013 to 2019, a member of the Church of Nigeria North American Mission from 2019 to 2022, and a sole member of the ACNA since 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. John's Shaughnessy</span> Anglican church in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

St. John's (Shaughnessy) Memorial Church is an Anglican parish in the Shaughnessy neighborhood of Vancouver. Founded in 1925, the church is part of the Diocese of New Westminster in the Anglican Church of Canada. Once reported to be the largest Anglican church in Canada and a bastion of evangelicalism, most of the congregation and clergy left during the Anglican realignment and the church is today much smaller and aligned with the progressive wing of Canadian Anglicanism.

Michael Stewart is a British-born Canadian Anglican bishop. He was consecrated in 2024 as bishop suffragan of the Anglican Diocese of Canada in the Anglican Church in North America, where he serves as area bishop for western Canada. He was previously in parish ministry in Abbotsford, British Columbia, where he participated in the Anglican realignment in the 2000s.

References

  1. 1 2 Lewis, Charles (June 16, 2011). "Breakaway Anglicans lose last legal avenue to claim ownership of church buildings, land". National Post. Retrieved 5 December 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Our Story of Blessing" (PDF). St. John's Vancouver. p. 9. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Graham, Jonathan. "A House Divided". Vancouver Magazine. No. September 2008. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  4. 1 2 3 Lewis, Donald M. (April 8, 2011). "The Passing of Harry Robinson". Regent College News. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  5. ↑ Ryken, Leland (2015). J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life. Crossway. ISBN   9781433542558.
  6. ↑ Careless, Sue (July 20, 2020). "Anglican Evangelical J. I. Packer Dies at 93". The Living Church. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  7. 1 2 Matas, Robert (February 15, 2008). "Anglican church seeks oversight from bishop in South America". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  8. ↑ Lewis, Charles (November 15, 2010). "Dissident Anglicans can't keep churches, B.C. court rules". National Post. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  9. ↑ Percy, Natasha (June 5, 2008). "Canada bishop threatens Short". SydneyAnglicans.net. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  10. ↑ Packer, J. I. (January 1, 2003). "Why I Walked". Christianity Today. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  11. ↑ Ferguson, Julie H. (2006). Sing a New Song: Portraits of Canada's Crusading Bishops. Toronto: Dundurn. p. 265. ISBN   9781550026092.
  12. 1 2 "New West approves same-sex blessings". Anglican Journal. September 1, 2002. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  13. ↑ Hume, Mark (October 28, 2003). "Anglican priests face sanctions as same-sex fight grows". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
  14. ↑ Larmondin, Leanne (June 18, 2002). "New Westminster Synod and Bishop approve same-sex blessings". Anglican Communion News Service. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  15. ↑ Davies, Matthew (November 21, 2003). "Episcopal oversight debated in New Westminster". Anglican Communion News Service.
  16. ↑ "Canadian conservatives plead case to sympathizers at U.S. conference". Anglican Journal. November 1, 2003. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  17. ↑ DeSantis, Solange (November 22, 2007). "South American province opens arms to dissenting Canadian parishes". Anglican Journal. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  18. ↑ "Nine priests, two deacons, hand in their licences from the Bishop". Diocese of New Westminster. April 23, 2008.
  19. ↑ Todd, Douglas (24 November 2009). "Anglican diocese retains ownership of four disputed church properties". Vancouver Sun. Retrieved 1 November 2022.
  20. ↑ "THE RIGHT REVEREND DAN GIFFORD". Anglican Network in Canada. Retrieved 2 November 2022.
  21. ↑ "About". Artizo Institute. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  22. ↑ "Artizo Clergy Directory". Artizo Institute. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  23. ↑ Graham, Jeremy; Strecker, Joel. "A Mission to Multiply" (PDF). St. John's Vancouver. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  24. ↑ "Helping Point Canada". St. John's Vancouver. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  25. ↑ "Ratanak International". St. John's Vancouver. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  26. ↑ "Malawi Partnership". St. John's Vancouver. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
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