In this season of giving thanks, I write my first words to you in my new role as your acting primate with heartfelt gratitude for the gift the Anglican Church of Canada has been to me for close to 40 years—and with profound thanks for the dedication, Christ-centred leadership and commitment of our 14th primate, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, who recently retired.
I arrived in Canada a stranger and a foreigner without much hope of finding work in my occupation as a teacher. Aside from the love of family and friends, the one certainty in my new homeland was my faith and the familiarity of the liturgy of the Anglican church. When I stepped (with some trepidation) into St. Thomas the Apostle in Ottawa on a bitterly cold January day in 1987, I realized my fears were unfounded. I experienced an immediate sense of belonging through the Eucharist and in the warmth of the welcome offered—a parishioner even helped us furnish our tiny apartment. I knew I had come home and that all would be well.
The journey from then until now has not always been straight or easy. There have been mountaintop moments, days of desert wanderings and a good chunk of time in the valleys of darkness and despair. But through it all I have experienced God’s faithfulness and the abiding presence of Jesus in word and sacrament and in the community of faithful companions given to me along the way. I have tried to return the welcome that has been given to me by making inclusivity and hospitality hallmarks of my ministry.
On the eve of my consecration as bishop of Algoma in 2017, I received a letter from then-primate Archbishop Fred Hiltz. He knew how overwhelming the call to be a bishop could be, Hiltz wrote, but he said he took heart in advice given by Archbishop Howard Clark, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1959 to 1971, to Ted Scott on his election as bishop of Kootenay in 1971: “Any call from God is a frightening and glorious experience and always there is a note of mystery. We know little about the ways in which prayer works, but we know it works. We know equally little about the economy of grace, yet I am sure grace is abounding. Just put your trust in God and go ahead with the work. You will find yourself marvelously and wondrously equipped for your task.”
This new call to be acting primate, even though it is just to bridge the gap until next summer’s General Synod, is daunting. But over the years I have experienced the hand of grace as it has been extended to me, and seen first-hand how prayer does really work. I know I do not go alone into this new role, for our church is filled with Spirit-filled, gifted individuals who are immersed in the church’s work and eager to help.
Let us continue to embrace this church with its amazing gift of hospitality, where over and over again we are invited to the Lord’s table to, in the words of the American Presbyterian theologian Eugene Peterson, “eat and drink our Lord’s life in the company of his friends.”
