The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada passed three motions coming from its Faith, Worship and Ministry (FWM) department June 27—adopting and commending the 2025 Theological Statement on the Diaconate, commending a document on best practices for deacons and adopting a thematic stream of lectionary readings. The three followed a set of four passed earlier in the week, including one resolution to make the Feast of the Creator part of the liturgical calendar, and another on anti-Judaism in Holy Week and Easter.
Resolution A120 officially adopts the Theological Statement on the Diaconate, a document, written by a working group of Anglican Deacons Canada (ADC), the national association of Anglican deacons, that seeks to restore the order to what it sees as its traditional role of bringing hope to the world outside church walls. It commends the document to theological colleges and ministerial training centres associated with the Anglican Church of Canada—as well as ecumenical and full communion partners and official dialogues—for study and feedback, with reports due back to the FWM Coordinating Committee by October 2027. The resolution also requests that the national House of Bishops devote significant time to discuss their understandings of theology and practices related to the diaconate, reporting back to the FWM Coordinating Committee.
Bishop of Kootenay Lynne McNaughton, who moved the resolution, said the new theological statement built on the Iona Report adopted by General Synod in 2016, which had mainly focused on diaconal formation and competencies.
“This current theological statement goes more deeply to help animate our theological imagination, to deepen our understanding of the role of the diaconate in the church,” McNaughton said.
The ADC, monitored by the FWM Coordinating Committee, she said, wrote the statement based on wide consultation with the ADC’s 2024 national conference, the houses of bishops for each of the church’s four ecclesiastical provinces and theological colleges.
The purpose of A120, she said, was to commend the statement to the whole church for full engagement. “Our hope was to give us as a Canadian church [from] coast to coast to coast a shared theological basis for local practice of the diaconate,” McNaughton said.
Drawing upon primate-elect Bishop Shane Parker’s metaphor the previous day about a church full of insulation, which can be helpful but can also insulate people from others, McNaughton added, “Deacons, I think, will help us as a church, in this wild time in the world, to get rid of layers of insulation between the church and the world.”
The Very Rev. Chris Dowdeswell, clergy delegate for the diocese of Calgary, spoke in favour of the motion.
“For many generations the church has forgotten our first call, which is to follow the way of Christ in proclaiming the kingdom of God to those on the margins of society … The diaconate is not just a stepping stone on the way to priesthood,” Dowdeswell said. “The diaconate is meant to be a unique order devoted to serving those outside our walls.”
General Synod needed to pass A120, he said, “to re-empower the diaconate to help the church feel again what it is like to be on the outside and to find the face of Christ revealed to us there.”
Bishop of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Sandra Fyfe said the Theological Statement on the Diaconate filled a growing need.
“We are seeing in this time in the life of the church a resurgence in calls to the vocational diaconate, which we are actively encouraging,” Fyfe said. “We see the need for the church to be outside in the world and bringing back the cares of the world to the church. I think our failure, at least in our diocese, has been what we do with that information.” Having a shared theological statement, she added, would “encourage our deacons who have been faithfully doing this work.”
Bishop of Quebec Bruce Myers supported the motion but asked for clarification on the distinction between General Synod “adopting” and “commending” the theological statement. Canon (lay) Clare Burns, chancellor of General Synod, said adopting a document means “it is substantively something that General Synod has approved … Commending something is simply sending it with the recommendation in a positive fashion to the theological colleges and the ministerial training centres.”
The Rev. Eileen Scully, director of FWM, responded directly to Myers. “I think the sense is that we are entering into a period of time where we’re going to do a lot of work around the diaconate … We know the importance of even having adopted it, getting it out there to our partners, receiving anything they have to say about it,” Scully said. Reflections from partners, she added, would go into further work on the diaconate and shaping additional resources.
The Rev. Jordan Draper, clergy delegate for the diocese of Saskatchewan, expressed concern about General Synod simultaneously adopting a statement while soliciting feedback that could lead to future changes. “Adopting this as an agreed theological statement while simultaneously seeking engagement from it seems a little bit at odds and counterproductive,” Draper said. He moved an amendment to remove the first paragraph of A120 that calls on General Synod to adopt the Theological Statement on the Diaconate “as an agreed theological statement.” General Synod voted against the amendment, then voted for Resolution A120 in its original form.
‘More fulsome expression’ of diaconal ministry
The second FWM motion General Synod passed that day was Resolution A121, which commended the 2025 compendium Practices for a Restored Diaconate to the church as a working document.
A121 requests that dioceses actively engage with the compendium within their own ministry contexts, study and experiment with its recommended principles and practices and report back to the FWM Coordinating Committee by October 2027. It likewise commends Practices for a Restored Diaconate to Anglican Church of Canada-associated theological colleges and ministerial training centres, as well as ecumenical and full communion partners, for study and feedback.
McNaughton moved A121 and described the compendium as “a working document acknowledging that there are differences across the church of practice, that this has to be contextually responsive—but with this theology of the diaconate, how do we live that out in the most effective way in our own contexts?”
She added, “We’re very clear in both the theological statement and in the practices document that deacons are to call all of the baptized into our ministry to the world… The intention of this motion is for there to be a robust period of good engagement across the church to examine and discuss what works best in our own context, for us to have further discussion about what has worked [and] how we call ourselves into more fulsome expression of that diaconal ministry.”
New lectionary option
The third FWM motion passed June 27 was Resolution A124-R1, in which General Synod—while still giving preference to a semi-continuous stream of readings—adopted the thematic stream of lectionary readings presented in the 1992 Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), for use at Pentecost or Ordinary Time where the ordinary permits. Synod had approved a friendly amendment to Resolution A124, adding mention of preference for the semi-continuous stream, and passed the amended resolution.
Dion Lewis, lay delegate for the diocese of Montreal, moved the original A124 motion. The RCL, which lists Bible readings for worship on particular days and occasions, offers two distinct “streams” or tables of readings for the season after Pentecost up to the Reign of Christ, the last Sunday of the Christian liturgical year.
One offers a somewhat continuous stream “in the Old Testament narrative, which is linked to the psalm” and is called the semi-continuous stream, Dion said. The other, known as the thematic stream, “continues the pattern of other seasonal tables by a thematic connection between the gospel and the first reading.”
When the Anglican Church of Canada adopted the RCL in 1995, it approved only the semi-continuous stream of readings. The argument at the time, Dion said, was that the semi-continuous stream “allowed more of the integrity of those Old Testament narratives to be held.” Over the decades, however, many clergy have begun to use the thematic stream.
“I suspect that there are a good number of Canadian Anglican clergy who do not know that the thematic stream of readings is not officially permitted,” Dion said. “This in itself is no argument towards permission.” However, in conversations with the Liturgical Advisory Committee and FWM, Dion had found that “the thematic readings are being chosen intentionally by some, with reports of appreciating the flexibility for good historical, analytic and liturgical reasons that suggest that a change in legislation would do well to follow practice and open up to Canadian Anglicans officially the use of the thematic stream of RCL meetings in Ordinary Time.” But Dion added that this could only be enacted where permitted by the ordinary, i.e. the diocesan bishop.
Canon Iain Luke, clergy delegate for the diocese of Saskatoon, said during discussion of the motion that while use of liturgical principles adopted by the church can vary, “the place to address that is within the diocese and in the authority that the bishop has to standardize or to inquire as to what’s going on and why. We don’t need to police or enforce that decision.”
The Rev. Caleb Sangoya, clergy delegate for the diocese of the Arctic, pointed out that many parishioners in his diocese worship in Inuktitut and use prayer books that were last revised more than 50 years ago.
“Our diocese is large, but we don’t have any translators at this moment,” Sangoya said. Many parishes must translate materials on their own without permission from the bishop, he said. As a result, even if the motion passed, it would not have the same effect on the Arctic as on Anglicans in other parts of Canada.
Four more FWM resolutions passed on no-debate list
Along with resolutions A120, A121 and A124-R1, General Synod passed four more FWM motions earlier in the week on June 25 as part of a no-debate list.
Resolution A122 adopted the Feast of the Creator as a major feast within the Anglican Church of Canada’s liturgical calendar, to be celebrated on Sept. 1 or a Sunday within the Season of Creation. It directed the FWM Coordinating Committee to keep monitoring work by the Consultation on Common Texts—an ecumenical group of scholars in Canada and the United States who produce liturgical texts and three-year lectionaries—to establish common proper readings for the feast in a three-year lectionary cycle, and to present a table of feast readings for authorization.
The resolution also directed the FWM Coordinating Committee to oversee development of proper prayers for the feast along with a collection of prefaces, intercessions, Eucharistic prayers and other liturgical resources, and to present them for authorization. It directed the committee and the Public Witness for Social and Ecological Justice Coordinating Committee to compile and develop further resources to support participation in both the Feast of the Creator and the Season of Creation across the Anglican Church of Canada.
Resolution A123 received and commended Addressing Anti-Judaism in Holy Week and Easter, an April 2025 statement from the Consultation on Common Texts. Resolution A125 and A126 offered greetings and congratulations to the United Church of Canada and the Presbyterian Church of Canada on their 100th and 150th anniversaries, respectively, and encouraged further ecumenical collaboration.
