|
On 16 February, 2008, to fulfill our mission and vision, we became a church in the Anglican Network in Canada. Our mission is to help ordinary people be confident, joyful disciples of Jesus Christ. A short form of "our" vision - really our prayerful understanding of who our Lord wants us to be and what He desires us to grow into - can be expressed as: "A community of disciples being shaped by God's grace to make a difference and bring Him glory." As a parish, we seek to be biblically faithful - this is a key element of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. A disciple of Jesus Christ is one who has first turned away from all alienation and separation from God by turning to Jesus Christ. We turn to Jesus Christ in trust and gratitude. We trust that He is the saviour, the one who can truly reconcile us to God. We are grateful that by His death upon the cross and His resurrection, He decisively dealt with all that separates us from God. We turn to Jesus Christ as our saviour, and then we seek to follow Him as our lord and master. We seek to learn from Him; be led by Him; be convicted and comforted by Him; be obedient to Him. This means that we will seek to be more and more surrendered to the Holy Spirit and more and more formed by God's word written, the Bible. As a congregation, St. Alban's came to the real and hard realization that the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Diocese of Ottawa, by their actions and decisions, had significantly departed from biblical faithfulness. We came to the heart-rending conviction that in a significant way, they had turned their back on biblical teaching. So, since we understand ourselves to be Christians whose mission is to help ordinary people be confident, joyful disciples of Jesus Christ, we felt in conscience that we must separate from the Diocese of Ottawa. Since we desire to remain Anglicans and be full members of the Anglican Communion, we did not merely leave the Anglican Church of Canada. We separated from the Diocese of Ottawa and immediately were received into the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone. This friendly Anglican province, seeing the crisis caused by the Anglican Church of Canada, on an emergency and pastoral basis, received the Anglican Network in Canada as part of its province. We are grateful for the godly oversight we receive. We continue to press ahead in our mission and vision. It is our prayer that God will renew us day by day by His Holy Spirit and that day by day we will be reformed by His word written, so that we will be a church community close to His heart. "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we that ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21. |
