In June 2025, General Synod elected then-bishop of Ottawa, Shane Parker, as primate of the Anglican Church of Canada and voted to approve the six pathways for transformational change aimed at updating and streamlining church structures for the demands of the 21st century. One year into a triennium of significant change, the Anglican Journal sat down with Archbishop Parker to discuss the church’s progress so far and his experience leading it as primate.
It’s been a year since you took on the role of the primate. An interesting way to explore that might be to consider your expectations versus reality. What did it look like it was going to be? How has it shaped up to be?
As everybody knows, I had not built up a lot of expectations about the position because I had no intention of letting my name stand. When it came my way, the first two months, July and August, were spent analyzing the situation. I knew I needed to lead quite assertively and get onto it as soon as possible.
On my holiday last year, as I walked on beaches on the northeast corner of Cape Breton, I began to conceptualize what the challenge was. That’s when I realized the leadership of our church is standing on a platform that’s balancing on three pillars—the property pillar, the church house pillar, and the pathways pillar—and there needed to be integrated but separate management of each. In other words, the leadership cannot be drawn to one at the cost of another.
My expectation was that we would move swiftly to create the provisional structures we need to address each of those pillars and we would begin to engage each of them. The transformation task force and the property task force came into being, the offices of the primate and general secretary were quickly integrated and began a full review of everything that was happening in the national office we call Church House.
As things [have] progressed, I am pleased with what has been accomplished on each of the pillars. The one where perhaps the deepest actual changes happened is the Church House pillar, the staffing and operations of the national office.
Is that because that’s under the most direct control of the executive of General Synod?
Correct. The primate as CEO [and] the general secretary as chief operating officer have considerable authority to manage the national office. By creating a very collaborative senior staff culture, we were able to do the reviews and use that authority to address a number of staffing, operational, programmatic things—but more importantly, to be guided by a vision of the national office centred around the three Cs: convene, connect, communicate.
How that relates to the way we do work on matters of liturgy or national programs of ministry is something that will be determined by the pathways. The core functions this office performs for the church as a whole will continue and relate to the convene, connect, communicate mandate.
As we’ve alluded to, while the synod executive has direct control of some things, there are other parts where other partners are involved.
The property pillar is an interesting one. We are in negotiations with respect to the repudiation of the lease on 300 Bloor Street West. The decision to settle that is vested in CoGS [Council of General Synod] and it is important to recognize the authority of CoGS when it comes to those types of things. At the same time, CoGS did authorize the establishment of a property task force [and] gave it a budget. We are now waiting, as we do this interview, to see the architect’s report on how we can optimize our use of Church House and monetize as much of the space as possible to pay for national operations. The approval of the funds required to do that—and it will cost money to do that—is something CoGS will offer even though it could be seen as being within the operational authority of the executive.
I feel it’s very important to be transparent and to consult with CoGS wherever possible. I think we have built a lot of trust in the last year to move ahead in a collaborative manner within our governance bodies.
How is the work being evaluated in terms of spiritual alignment?
Spreading the good news of God’s indestructible hope and eternal love, as we do in community, in worship, in our acts of service to the wider community, in our fellowship, is really at the heart of it all. If we are preoccupied with our structures or our property, we are distracted from the core things that comprise our life together, which is to be in communion with God and with one another by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
Henry Chadwick, the Cambridge scholar, said like a stained-glass window, [the church] needs to be held by oak and iron in this world. Our structures are important, our canon law is important, our budgets are important, our buildings are important. But if we’re not managing those in a way that frees us to express the beauty of Christ through the stained glass, so to speak, then we have a problem.
An expectation I placed on myself—which I think is part of the job—is to go to the dioceses, to go where the people of God in the Anglican Church of Canada are. Over this first year, I have been in a large majority of dioceses and met with people literally from coast to coast to coast.
I believe the people of the Anglican Church of Canada want to love their church. There’s every reason to love their church. People want to have hope and there’s every reason for hope. I think [we’re] communicating that by indicating change is possible, but the change is not random or sporadic. There is a vision we’re following to be a well-run, coherent church that’s highly collaborative, using the gifts of people across the country in a cost-effective manner to proclaim the good news of God in Christ.
There’s lots of good news happening, and we need to be able to tell that news and not be encumbered by structural stuff as we proceed.
You’ve often said the primate brings the national church to the local and vice versa. Is there anything else the people you’re visiting have had to say recently?
As I’ve travelled, talking about the changes that have happened, people are pleased—not to overgeneralize, but it gives hope. We are reshaping something. There are plans in place that will make it easier for our national church to operate without being as dependent on dioceses for resources. It leaves more money in the dioceses for their ministries, and it is promoting a high degree of collaboration across the country. One of the things I’ve observed is that places that are gifted in certain ways are very willing to offer their expertise and time and wisdom to other places. Working collaboratively doesn’t require a large bureaucracy in Toronto. It requires people talking to one another and seeing possibilities together and being free to pursue them.
The last question I had was about your personal experience of the primacy. What’s it like?
When I relinquished and allowed my name to stand and when I was elected, everything changed. The trajectory of my vocation as a bishop changed, my work changed, my path to retirement changed. But the fundamental change was coming to accept and understand why I was called at this time to serve in this role.
I was aware of an alignment between the will of the church as expressed through General Synod, the three pillars we stand on at this time, and the various experiences and other things God has given to me. I think in that sense it’s a unique time in the life of the church because there is a very strong alignment between the body of the church expressing a need to move in a direction and the leadership, the primate, being predisposed to lead change in a manner that’s consistent with the expectation.
I’m thankful to be doing this. It is good to feel the results happening, to feel the efforts of the many people who are serving on the transformation task force and its teams. There’s incredible talent across our church and it’s really satisfying to feel people responding to that alignment between what the church wants and the way God has made me.
I’m aware my time [as primate] is one-third of the way passed and the momentum of a shorter primacy creates an appropriate sense of urgency—now’s the time to act, now is the time to do these things.
I am thankful there’s clarity as well as receptivity to the leadership I’m called to give, and I look forward to the next two years of deepening and consolidating the work that began a year ago and to considering how best to prepare for the next primacy and for the kinds of priorities or restating of the pathways that the church will need to undertake. I’ve always said that if you lead effectively, you should be able to walk away and important things continue. It cannot be all about any one individual.
What is it that makes you predisposed to work on that change?
I’ve led organizational change before, both in the church and outside the church. I was trained as a sociologist to see broader patterns, to understand organizational behaviour or the behaviour of human groups. I worked with very skilled people when I was the dean of Christ Church Cathedral Ottawa to develop a multimillion-dollar project. I’ve also had the experience of tasting the most challenging personal difficulties of human life and proceeding through those as a person of faith.
I guess I’m someone who can see what needs to happen. At the best, that’s vision. At the least, it’s just a clear sense of direction. I’m very inclined to follow those things and to make sure I’m gathering people in and not to be deterred by things that might derail us while being open to correction along the way.
