Sunday mornings in the diocese of the Arctic sometimes find clergy blessing more bread and wine than their own parish needs. They then send the pre-blessed host to local airports where scheduled flights take them to parishes without clergy of their own to be used in future weeks, Bishop of the Arctic Alexander Pryor says.
It’s a mechanical solution to a spiritual need for these northern parishes. The lay leaders who run their Eucharist cannot bless the host without a priest, but they can distribute it to their congregations.
Anglican leaders in Canada’s northern and remote regions are used to finding creative ways to minister to widely spread communities with limited resources, says Bishop Clara Plamondon of the Territory of the People, an Anglican diocese in interior B.C.
As the church in the rest of Canada gets accustomed to fewer members and financial resources, she says, there’s much it can learn from the solutions dioceses in the North have been refining for years.
It can be a challenge to fill ministry openings in the North, Plamondon says, as there are limits to the available housing, infrastructure, amenities for families, employment for clergy spouses and room for pay-scale advancement. As a result, her diocese doesn’t always have enough applicants to staff even the parishes where it can afford to pay clergy. The Territory of the People has 18 parishes, some of which span multiple municipalities, and five full-time and four part-time paid clergy.
One strategy the diocese uses to stretch its resources is combining parishes with other denominations, especially the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) and the United Church of Canada, Plamondon says. Both run parishes in cooperation with the Anglican diocese, including one which serves congregations of all three denominations. In this arrangement, clergy hold services for each other’s denominations and minister to each other’s congregants, she says.
Both Plamondon and Pryor say their dioceses also rely heavily on lay leaders and members of the local community to perform services and prayers in parishes where ordained clergy cannot be present every week.
The diocese of the Arctic considers relying on lay leaders “a feature, not a flaw,” Pryor says. He encourages parishes with clergy to find opportunities for lay leaders to preach and run as much of the liturgy as possible, preparing them to run services alone when clergy are away.
This is part of a philosophy of finding and creating the re-sources, staff and solutions parishes need, instead of waiting for them to arrive, Pryor says.
Council of the North dioceses also face the same real estate and maintenance challenges as those in Southern Canada, says Bishop of Brandon Rachael Parker, chair of the council. As a result, northern dioceses must make choices “all the time” between paying for staffing and paying for other expenses, she says.
“What becomes more important? Having a person who can do the ministry or a building in which the ministry can happen?” she asks.
Thankfully, the North is blessed with clergy, retired clergy and lay leaders who show extraordinary dedication to meeting its ministry needs, Parker says.
“There is so much belief in what we’re doing and in understanding that if this is what God is calling us to do, the resources will be made available,” she says.
