Anglican Deacons Canada (ADC) held their latest national conference from June 13 to 16 at the Sorrento Centre. ADC president the Rev. Lisa Chisholm-Smith (wearing pink jacket) is seated fourth from left in the front row. Photo: Ken Gray
Deacons in the Anglican Church of Canada are seeking to redefine their role in a changing world as they look toward next year’s General Synod—where diaconal ministry is set to be a major topic of discussion.
Anglican Deacons Canada (ADC), the national association of Anglican deacons, held its first in-person national conference since the start of the pandemic from June 13 to 16 at the Sorrento Centre in B.C. The conference saw deacons offer feedback on a draft theological statement on the diaconate, which the national office’s department of Faith, Worship and Ministry (FWM) is helping prepare with a goal for adoption at General Synod in 2025.
Speaking to Council of General Synod (CoGS) May 31, Dean Emerita Ansley Tucker, director of deacons in the Anglican diocese of Islands and Inlets (also known as the diocese of British Columbia), noted that FWM is bringing a set of revised ordinals to General Synod, including a revised ordination rite for deacons. Deacons are developing the theological statement, Tucker said, to understand and define what the diaconate is in part so that the revised ordinal reflects their theology.
The theme of the 2024 ADC conference, “Beacons of Hope in a Messy World,” underscored how deacons are viewing their role at a time of widespread societal crisis, including climate change and growing poverty in Canada. The ADC typically holds its national conference every three years. Its last in-person meeting took place in 2017, but the following conference was delayed due to COVID-19 and held online in 2021.
“Deacons are called particularly to care for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, to be a sign of Christ’s compassion and loving care for that, and also to call other Christians into those ministries of care and service,” ADC president the Rev. Lisa Chisholm-Smith told the Anglican Journal.
Along with the draft theological statement on the diaconate, the ADC conference provided feedback on a third draft of the new strategic plan. By mid-August, the board had ratified a fourth and final draft of the strategic plan, Chisholm-Smith said.
Consistent understanding of diaconal ministry sought
The impetus for the theological statement, the ADC president said, came after a national survey of deacons in December 2022.
“One of the biggest things that deacons said that is hard for them is just the lack of consistency in understanding and practice across dioceses in Canada,” Chisholm-Smith said. “That’s what led to the push to put something in writing that’s clear enough to be meaningful and substantial, but also spacious enough to allow for the varying context.
“If we could at least agree together in Canada or in the Anglican Church on some of the basic principles, then hopefully those basic shared principles would guide all policies around deployment of deacons across Canada, recognizing there is going to be variation because of the different context.”
The draft theological statement itself provided insight into how deacons view their ministry amid the current state of the church and broader society.
“The recovery of a robust diaconate promises renewed relevance for the Church in a fractured world,” the draft said. Traditionally, it said, the work of Christians ordained as deacons has been to “bring the light of Christ where there is darkness,” recognize and respond to injustice and need, organize and distribute resources to remedy them, and bring the “brokenness and hunger of the world to the attention of the faithful for prayer and healing.”
As the western church increasingly overlapped with mainstream society, the draft said, the focus of diaconal ministry began to shift inward to the church’s internal needs. Deacons today, however, operate in a different environment.
In more recent times, the draft said, “we have experienced global shifts towards secularity, changes in societal values, and diversity in religious belief and practice, along with a growing distrust in institutional religion, and a reduction in the Church’s reach and influence.” It identified in these changes both an opportunity and urgent need for the church to renew its mission outside its own doors.
“An ecumenical renewal of our ecclesiology has highlighted the responsibility of all the baptized to strengthen the Church’s capacity to witness and serve on the edge of the dominant culture,” it said. “Many Christian denominations are rediscovering the diaconate
as an order particularly suited to help the Church meet this sacred challenge.”
National Indigenous archbishop: Church must strengthen presence of deacons
The deacons’ conference included a panel discussion featuring National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Chris Harper, National Bishop Susan Johnson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), Bishop Kathy Martin of the ELCIC B.C. synod, and the conference’s keynote speaker the Rev. Christian Harvey.
This session was not made available for people attending the conference online, including the Anglican Journal; organizers wanted to allow panel members to speak more freely, Chisholm-Smith said. But Harper said he spoke during the panel about how the church has overlooked or underacknowledged diaconal ministry, even as he believes deacons will be one of the church’s strengths going forward.
“I believe that we need to nourish, build up and strengthen the presence and role of deacons within the church because they are going to be that saving grace that we need when we can’t find the priests, when they need to get work done,” Harper told the Journal.
The national Indigenous archbishop told the panel that deacons are “servants of the church”—the term comes from the Greek word for servant, diakonos—and that all Christians are called to be deacons.
Part of strengthening diaconal ministry, he said, involves “better respect for everyone’s ordination role, whether you are a deacon or even a lay reader … and even for the bishops, priests and archbishops to remind themselves that they are deacons at heart and at the very foundation of where we start.”
While deacons are re-considering their own role by preparing a theological statement, Harper said the broader church is also examining its place within society amid rising secularism.
The national Indigenous archbishop said the church must recognize that people, especially the young, are seeking relevance, along with honesty and truth about what faith is meant for and who it is directed to.
“Is [the church] a societal gathering place of like-minded people, or is it something that is there to be a vessel of justice being the voice for the voiceless and an advocate for the powerless?” Harper asked.
“I think this is where the deacon’s role is starting to … rise up, because it is a ministry that thinks and acts a little bit more laterally within the church itself… The deacons have always had that more grounded connection with the people and at the same time with the surrounding landscape.”
In the Indigenous church, Harper said, the potential of diaconal ministry has sometimes been overlooked. Because of the restrictions on what deacons can do—unlike priests, for example, deacons cannot consecrate the elements for Holy Communion—communities often prefer parish priests to deacons, and the role is often seen only as a stepping-stone to the priesthood.
However, becoming a deacon can be more accessible and achievable than being a priest for many due to the education demands, Harper said. While priests must have an M. Div from seminary or theological school, deacons may have other forms of education such as a master of theological studies.
The diaconate can be “promoted a little bit more with a better understanding of what the diaconal role is and what it means still to be ordained in ministry—and at the same time, the value that every deacon or the diaconal role can play within the Indigenous community and ministry itself,” Harper said.
Turning ‘thoughts and prayers’ into action
To guide ADC’s work for the next several years, the deacons’ new strategic plan has two main pillars. The first is to extend ADC’s external impact by helping deacons connect with and support each other, enhance shared understanding on the role of the diaconate among Anglicans and the wider community and create support networks for deacons.
The second is to build internal capacity by increasing and diversifying ADC’s revenue sources, growing membership through improved recruitment and retention, and attracting and deploying more engaged, committed volunteers from both within and outside ADC.
Along with reviewing the draft theological statement and strategic plan, deacons divided into groups to work on a document on best practices—including in areas such as discernment, formation, liturgy, and licensing and deployment of deacons—which the church would not formally adopt but could act as a future resource.
They also focused on the role of deacons in turning “thoughts and prayers” for social and ecological justice into meaningful action. Chisholm-Smith cited the words of Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, who delivered a homily at the conference.
“Increasingly, the role of a deacon is being understood also to be an advocate and to be, as the primate said, a thorn in the side of the church—to constantly be reminding it to not become internally focused, but to continue to seek and work for the just and compassionate world that God desires,” Chisholm Smith said.
As keynote speaker, Harvey—founder and co-executive director of One City Peterborough, an organization that promotes housing and other social needs in the city of Peterborough, Ont. —used Martin Luther King, Jr.’s six principles of nonviolence as a framework for how deacons could practice activism.
“As deacons and as a church, how do we engage this process of being the agents of vision in our community?” Harvey asked. King, he said, held that “non-violence is a way of life for courageous people” in the form of active nonviolent resistance to evil, which seeks friendship, understanding, redemption and reconciliation to create what King called the “beloved community.”
Non-violence for King aims to attack forces of evil, not people doing evil, he said. It accepts suffering without retaliation for the sake of the cause to achieve the goal. Avoiding both internal violence of the spirit as well as external physical violence, King said, the principle of nonviolence asserts that “the universe is on the side of justice” and that justice will eventually win.
Harvey further expanded on these principles with five concrete steps for effective activism. These included gathering information, educating people on the issues, personal commitment, negotiation with those in positions of power, and direct action.
Conference encouraging for deacons, ADC president says
Chisholm-Smith said the conference was an encouraging experience for deacons.
“We had a very successful online national conference in 2021, but it just isn’t the same as being in person,” she said. The ADC president estimated that there are currently about 427 Anglican deacons across Canada, including 362 active and 65 retired.
“We often feel very isolated because there are quite a bit fewer that of us compared to priests and so we really don’t get together that often,” she said. Chisholm-Smith highlighted the chance for Anglican deacons to spend time with deacons from the ELCIC.
“Sometimes the church doesn’t get who and what we are and what we’re about,” she said. “When you have a gathering of deacons together, we’re on common ground and we understand each other and it’s just really encouraging.”
Additional sessions at the deacons’ conference included a theological workshop led by Sylvia Keesmaat, biblical scholar from the Institute of Christian Studies; and a virtual workshop on faithful advocacy facilitated by the Rev. Alison Kemper, deacon at St. Matthias, Bellwoods in Toronto.
In the theological workshop, Keesmaat connected Harvey’s keynote address and the idea of creating a “beloved community” to the stories of two women in Old Testament, Tamar and Ruth, whose insistence on “justice for themselves wound up affecting those who are in positions of power,” she said.
Deacons also had the opportunity to participate in activities such as hiking, visiting a local farm and taking part in Ignatian prayer practice.
Chisholm-Smith said ADC officially became a registered charity after the conference, having obtained a charitable number from the Canada Revenue Agency. Previously membership fees made up ADC’s only source of revenue, she said, and the deacons’ hope is that having charitable status will now encourage people to donate, being able to receive tax receipts.
Charitable status will also now allow ADC to directly apply for grants. At the 2024 conference, because ADC was not yet a registered charity, both the Sorrento Centre and Anglican Diocese of Kootenay had to apply for a grant from the Anglican Foundation of Canada on ADC’s behalf.