That We All May Be One

“The Primates and provincial secretaries of Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de American (IARCA), La Iglesia Anglican de Mexico, Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil, and the Episcopal Church in the Philippines, along with Bishop Edward W. Neufville of the Episcopal Church of Liberia and Sandei Cooper, Liberian diocesan treasurer, addressed the council during its October 27 afternoon plenary session.”

The above line from Episcopal News Service summarizes what was a pretty amazing day at our Executive Council meeting in Detroit. I call this web log “That We All May Be One” and the topics usually revolve around the ecumenical movement for church unity or efforts to preserve the unity of our Anglican Communion.

What must never be forgotten, however, is the unity in mission we already enjoy with so many overseas partners. In addition to our dioceses in Central America and South America, Taiwan, and Europe who are full members of our House of Bishops and General Convention (therefore part of The Episcopal Church) the dioceses listed in the first paragraph above have special covenantal links with The Episcopal Church, receive some level of support from us, and enrich us in return by their faithfulness in mission.

The amazing stories of such mission in war-torn (now “post war”) Liberia were particularly moving, but the commitment and zeal of our covenant partners in Central America, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines also inspired and encouraged us.

Whatever “Anglican Covenant” we may eventually come up with (and a special task force of Executive Council has written a very thoughtful response to that Covenant Process — about which more, soon),  let us pray that it can be mission-focused like the covenants we have with the churches listed above. Most of them are not so much interested in some kind of “confessional statement” which has the potential of defining some of us “in” and some of us “out” of the Anglican Communion.

Rather, they (and we) hope for a Covenant which can facilitate the mission to which we are called. God’s mission of reconciliation…in all the world! 

This entry was posted on October 28, 2007 at 11:36 am and is filed under Blogroll, Church Life, Ecumenical, Emergent Church, Religion, Scripture, The Episcopal Church, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.