Bishop Nominations, ACNA Updates & Safeguarding Meeting
St. Augustine of Hippo once said that the church of Jesus Christ will always be a mixed bag of saints and sinners. We are imperfect people seeking to love and follow a perfect God. But our imperfections cannot be an excuse for us to eschew our God-given call to protect the vulnerable and ensure that our churches are safe spaces for people to experience welcome, healing, care, and growth.
A lot has happened over the past few months in our diocese (the Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes) and our national church (The Anglican Church in North America). This summer, our bishop, Mark Engel announced his retirement timeline and the search for his replacement has now begun. Additionally the Washington Post has featured multiple stories on 4 ACNA bishops facing various accusations of abuse. None of these stories in any way implicate our diocese or Bishop Mark. However, these stories understandably raise concern. Given the seriousness with which we take these situations as a church, we want to make sure you know how both our local church and diocese have been proactively working to promote and ensure safety within our regional body as well as our local church’s ministries. We also want to highlight how your participation in the bishop search process as well as our local church ministries can help us continue to promote and ensure safety.
Bishop Nominations
Our diocese has now published a diocesan profile which gives the lay of the land for who we are as a regional body of church and provides the criteria for the type of leader we are seeking in our next bishop. Any male priest over the age of 35 in any diocese of the ACNA is eligible to be nominated as bishop. Any clergy person resident in the Diocese of the Great Lakes as well as any confirmed member of an ADGL church (like The Mission Cincinnati) can nominate a candidate for bishop. If you are a confirmed member of our congregation, you are invited to prayerfully participate in the process. Your nominations of faithful, wise, and Christ-like leaders help ensure our diocese can select among a variety of wonderful people to shepherd our regional body of churches into the future. Links to the Diocese’s bishop search page as well as a direct link to the nomination form can be found below. If you have questions about this process, please contact Rev. Kristen Yates at kristen@missioncincinnati.org as she is serving on the bishop’s search committee.
Mission Cincinnati Safeguarding Meeting
Wednesday, January 21st | 7 - 8 PM | Zoom
Members of our clergy and Vestry will host a one-hour Zoom meeting that will provide:
An update on Bishop Mark’s retirement and the bishop nomination process
An update on the current state of ACNA leadership
A review of our congregational and diocesan safeguarding policies: what we have in place to protect people in our church and how to voice a complaint of abuse when and if one arises.
Space to pray for survivors of abuse, the ACNA, our diocese, and health, safety, and flourishing in our local church.
This meeting is intended to address any questions you have either about our local church or diocesan policies, the bishop nomination process, or wider issues happening right now in the ACNA. Any regular attender of The Mission is invited to submit questions to Fr. William at william@missioncincinnati.org by no later than Sunday, January 18th. We will address the questions we receive as a part of the meeting. The meeting will also be recorded and made available to the church via the Mission Minute listserve in case you are not able to make it in-person.
We will send a Zoom Link to the congregation via the Mission Minute listserve the morning of the meeting.