A primate’s commission tasked with rethinking church structures is encouraging Anglicans to provide feedback on its seven intentionally provocative statements or “hypotheses” through an online survey.
The commission, Reimagining the Church—Proclaiming the Gospel in the 21st Century, established by former primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls, first presented the hypotheses in spring to the House of Bishops and Council of General Synod, then distributed them publicly in early June, says commission chair Archdeacon Monique Stone.
The hypotheses include dismantling colonialism in the Council of the North and church governance structures; eliminating either General Synod or the ecclesiastical provinces; returning to a model where the primate is also a diocesan bishop; reducing travel and meeting costs; looking at new ways of running the national office; and ending editorially independent journalism—specifically, the Anglican Journal—funded by General Synod.
Dean Peter Elliott, a member of the commission, says the hypotheses inviting Anglicans to respond to these hypotheses appeared on the Anglican Church of Canada website in late August. The survey went live Sept. 11 and Elliott says it will be online until around the end of October at anglican.ca/primate/tfc/reimagining-the-church. It includes a quantitative section, gauging how much respondents agree or disagree with each hypothesis and how urgent they believe each to be, as well as a qualitative section for written responses.
Elliott says the group wants to hear what members of the church think, particularly those with expertise in different areas related to the hypotheses. It will incorporate those responses when it presents its report to General Synod next summer.
“Something has to change,” Elliott says. He cites the decline of church membership at the local, diocesan and provincial levels—as outlined in reports from Canon Neil Elliot, the Anglican Church of Canada’s statistics officer—along with financial challenges.
“All the money that the General Synod has flows up from the bottom,” Elliott adds. “The current operation is not sustainable at the level that it is [now]—financially or, frankly, in volunteer terms… If that’s the reality … Where’s the change going to happen?”
The survey was originally designed for focus groups of Anglicans across Canada that the primate’s commission has conducted by speaking to provincial synods as well as by holding online conversations on Zoom. The commission has also held focus groups with members of the House of Bishops, Council of General Synod, Sacred Circle, the Council of the North. Through September and October, the commission will hold additional online focus groups with clergy and lay members of General Synod, including both those who were members in 2023 and those who have been nominated for General Synod 2025.
Elliott says the commission drew up the survey because it wanted to give all focus group participants a chance to further reflect and respond to the hypotheses.
“We actually think that’s better data to base our report to General Synod in 2025 on—not the initial response in a focus group, but the more thoughtful, reasoned response,” Elliott says. The commission then put the survey on the Anglican Church of Canada website for ease of access, he says, as well as for other Anglicans to have a chance to respond.
Archdeacon Nick Pang, the primate’s commission member who designed the survey, says its last section allows respondents to provide demographic information in order to give the commission a sense of who is responding across the county.
“A lot of these issues are live issues that are on the table for a number of bodies across the national church,” Pang says.
“But also we’re not bringing these as finished plans to anybody, including our hypotheses about what needs to happen next. We’re trying to get a sense of … the appetite of the Anglican Church of Canada for these changes” and their viability, he says.
