ANGLICANS are due to gather in Belfast from 28 June for the 19th triennial meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
The ACC is one of the four “instruments” of the Anglican Communion, and includes bishops, clergy, and laity as representatives, with voting rights, of its 42 member Churches.
On the theme “Called to One Hope”, the eight-day meeting will be hosted by the Church of Ireland. Given the spectrum of views among members (the Churches of Nigeria, Uganda, Rwanda, and Sudan are staying away), the Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Revd John McDowell, believes that Ireland has much to contribute regarding reconciliation.
Wednesday 1 July will be devoted to a pilgrimage to Derry/Londonderry. “The fact that I have to [use both names] says something about the history of Northern Ireland and how, after many years of conflict, we are edging towards forms of reconciliation,” he told a press conference on Thursday.
“It was very well known as a divided society, but, over the 20 or 30 years since the Good Friday Agreement, the civic groups, including Churches, have worked very hard [to ensure that] hugely different traditions can be accommodated within one small city. It’s one of the things we hope we can share.”
The opening and closing services in St Anne’s Cathedral, and the welcome session, will be livestreamed, but many of the conversations will take place in discussion groups. Evangelism and discipleship, safeguarding, the environment, refugees and migrants, education, and interfaith issues are among the items on the agenda.
The Nairobi-Cairo proposals for reform of the Communion (News online, 16 June; Comment, 10 April) will occupy two slots. The first proposes an updated description of the Anglican Communion, intended to reflect its current structure and reality; the second suggests a broadening of the leadership to reflect better the Communion’s diversity.
The growth of the Communion had come with “widely publicised disagreements and differences”, the chair of the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), Dr Graham Tomlin, said. He commended the way in which IASCUFO had worked as it wrestled with the issues across “different geographical, theological, and contextual differences among ourselves and as a group”.
A church-planting initiative will seek to create one million new churches and worshipping communities by 2036. This is double the present figure, which is estimated to be 500,000 among the Communion’s 42 member Churches, with 100 million worshippers, 900 dioceses and 50,000 parishes.
“The Anglican Communion is already planting churches at an impressive rate,” the director for theology and implementation at the Anglican Communion Office, Canon Stephen Spencer, said. “The Commission is proposing we set ourselves the ambitious target of multiplying that by two. It hopes very much that the ACC will allow this movement to be spread across the Communion, and for others to be invited to be part of it.”