People and parishes in the dioceses of New Westminster, British Columbia and the Anglican Parishes of the Central Interior were not only welcoming and “very pleased” that General Synod sent a member of the national staff to “listen and work with them,” but they were also “genuinely interested” in how the money that they send annually is being used.
These were some of the impressions gathered by Andrea Mann, Asia-Pacific mission co-ordinator of the national church’s partnerships department, during her recent five-month stay in British Columbia, where she worked from the Vancouver synod office of the diocese of New Westminster. Ms. Mann said she had been invited there “to tell the PIM (Partners in Mission) story locally” and to “respond to the call of the Framework (a strategic plan approved by General Synod in 2004) to be a helpful, pro-active resource to the church at large for congregational development and mission.”
(PIM is a national church committee whose mandate is to promote and develop mission “in order to engage the church in circles of partnership locally, nationally, globally and ecumenically.”)
Ms. Mann said her stay made her realize that too many people still do not know “about our church’s historic relationships with churches around the world.”
She said that some were unaware of the route that their Sunday offering and donation to the Anglican Appeal take once it leaves their hands. “People were genuinely interested and appreciative to know that a portion of their offering found its way to primary evangelism, to trauma counseling training in churches living in the midst of war, to the development of Christian education books for children, to Bible translation, to the purchase of desks and computers for Anglican seminaries, and so on,” she said.