Representatives from every parish across the diocese gathered online on April 20 for the launch of a major collaborative initiative to shape parish ministry for the future.
Bishop Shane Parker opened the evening’s discussions by affirming the importance of parish ministry. Parishes are “where we experience community and belonging, a sense of place… where we are visibly and tangibly in communion with one another,” he said. “It’s where we feel our community of faith in the most profound ways. And for that reason, parishes need to be healthy, sustainable and well-resourced.”
As critical as parishes are, “parishes are not really our church,” the bishop said. “In our Anglican tradition, our diocese is the church we all belong to.” He then went on to explain that a helpful image is to see Christ as the head and the diocese as a body with two arms. One arm represents community ministries — “how we together use our resources and our skill to reach out into our community in the form of ministries that serve those who live precariously, are marginalized or disenfranchised.” Parish ministry is the other, equal arm, Parker said. “The work that we’re about to do in many ways asks us to think as a diocesan church about our parish ministry as a whole.”
Then the bishop sketched the outline of the challenges the Diocese and larger church face. “As there have been changes in population distribution, in the composition of our population, as there have been social and cultural changes, as secularism and pluralism and relativism have done their work, we have been changed,” he said. “The shape of our parish ministry has been changed in many ways without our consent. There has been in the last 10, 15 years about a 30 percent drop in the shape of our parish ministry.”
Framing the situation in personal terms, Parker said, “So I don’t know about you, but I am not fond of being shaped by change. It’s not a good feeling to have your life shaped by other factors than what you would choose. Instead,” he said, “I would rather consciously guide change, and I hope and pray that you will join with me in guiding the changes we must make to the shape of our parish ministry at this time.”
2021 is the 125th anniversary of the creation of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. In his sermon on Easter Sunday at Christ Church Cathedral, the bishop challenged his listeners to honour the past by vitalizing the future. He echoed that challenge to those gathered to begin the work of reshaping parish ministry in the diocese. “Let’s think of ourselves as the generation who has been tasked to do this. Other generations in the 125 years of our diocese and before that were tasked with building the structure, the shape of parish ministry, and in many ways we’re still living from the vestiges of that structure. But we are the generation that has been tasked to address fundamental issues in the shape of parish ministry,” he said.
“We must take on this task together as a diocesan church,” he added. “The whole is greater than the parts. The body is much stronger and more resilient than any of the parts, than either arm, and the body needs to take on this task.”
Parker then introduced the team leading the work on the shape of parish ministry. The Rev. Jon Martin and Anne-Marie Clysdale are co-chairs, and the team members are Ann Chaplin, Barbara Gagné, the Rev.Tim Kehoe, the Rev. Rhonda Waters, and Archdeacon Mark Whittall. “They are the team that will facilitate our conversation, to keep us on track, to keep us focused, working very closely with me, over the next 18 months to bring us to the point where, God willing, you will tell me, because we have discerned together, what the shape of our parish ministry is to look like and where we are to have buildings.”
The team leading the process includes Anne-Marie Clysdale (co-chair), Rev. Dr. Jon Martin (co-chair), Ann Chaplin, the Rev. Tim Kehoe, the Rev. Rhonda Waters, Archdeacon Mark Whittall, and Barbara Gagné.
Stage 1: Generating a Parish Profile • May 2021 – Oct.2021
One of the members of the Shape of Parish Ministry consultation team and another person assisting them will come to each of the parishes. “We will be sitting down to learn about your parish and get you to answer some questions for us. At the same time, we’ve also been going through the 10-year summaries of statistical return data for each of the congregations and parishes as well,” Martin explained. “We’re going to ask participants to prepare an approximate age demographic break down of the people on their parish list. … Once that stage is done, we’re going to send that information back to you and say hey, did we get this right?”
Stage 2: Analyze and work with the profiles • Nov. 2021 – Feb. 2022
Martin explained that the team will analyze the data and work with parishes as they go through their profiles to understand them better but also to begin the work of looking at the profiles of their neighbours. “Some of you may assume that when I say neighbours that means maybe the parish next door and that could be the case, however, we’re also going to be looking at our neighbours in the sense of what do we have in common with some of the parishes across the diocese. If your parish offers a magnificent lunch program and someone on the other side of the diocese also does that, maybe the two of you would want to gather together for a conversation about what’s been working, what hasn’t, what the struggles are. …We will be providing a toolkit to help you process the information you get and start to be curious about the information about other places.”
Stage 3: Gather with neighbours and build proposals • March 2022 – Aug. 2022
With support from the SPM team, participants will learn about change processes, and consensus decision making models, develop a curiosity about other parishes, meet with their neighbours very intentionally, and the SPM team will gather and organize proposals for discussion at the upcoming synod in October 2022.
“It’s going to be an intense 18 months of work. It will require all of us to bring our best selves and insights to the entire process,” said Martin.
— From the Rev. Jon Martin’s conversational overview of the 18-month process, presented to attendees before they broke into small groups for discussion.
Christ Church, Bells Corners — Deanery of West Ottawa