CoGS approves new chancellor, vice-chancellor

Video: Meet some of the new members of the Council of General Synod

David Jones has been appointed chancellor of General Synod. He replaces Ronald Stevenson, who has retired.

“We’re delighted with this appointment and I certainly look forward to your counsel for the work of the Council of General Synod,” Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, told Jones at the Nov. 18 to 22 meeting of CoGS. The appointment was approved by consensus.

Jones has served as chancellor of the ecclesiastical province of Rupert’s Land since 2005 and as chancellor of the diocese of Edmonton since 1995. He has taught law at both McGill University in Montreal and at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and has had a private practice in Edmonton since 1988.

A member of General Synod in 2007 and 2010, he has also chaired the Governance Working Group. Archbishop Hiltz credited the working group for accomplishing “a huge amount of work in the last triennium that enabled the church to make some significant decisions at the last General Synod” [in Halifax]. The group’s tasks included researching and preparing resolutions on reducing the size of the CoGS and integrating the Sacred Circle gathering of Indigenous Anglicans, the Anglican Council of Indigenous Peoples (ACIP), and the National Indigenous Anglican Bishop into the church’s constitution.

In addition, Ann Bourke was nominated and approved as vice-chancellor, replacing Brian Burrows, who resigned in October. A member of the bar of the Upper Canada Law Society since 1992, Bourke has served as vice chancellor for the diocese of Ottawa since 2001, working on redrafting canon law, bylaws and regulations to incorporate a new diocesan structure. “Those skills are going to be quite helpful to us as we embark on a new course as the General Synod,” said Archbishop Hiltz.

The Rev. Mary Lysecki, a priest in the diocese of Rupert’s Land, was approved as a CoGS appointee to the board of the Anglican Fund for Healing and Reconciliation. The fund, established in the wake of the Indian residential schools crisis and managed by Esther Wesley, receives about 30 to 70 applications every six months for funding grants of up to $15,000.