Hot on the heals of the UEC and ACC communion agreement comes a letter from the ACC's archbishop calling for greater cooperation with the UEC and the other St. Louis movement body, the APCK. Unity movements like this are a positive step in the right direction towards greater unity, cooperation, and understanding among Anglicans. They are especially good for the clergy because it gives them greater opportunities to serve. Unity movements and concordats can invigorate the church and give it a real shot in the arm, which is what I saw back in Maryland with the REC and APA churches in that area. Unfortunately this group does not want anything to do with us (or with FACA) because they see our Covenant Union with Nigeria as uncatholic, and our inter-communion with the REC as problematic. While our modus operandi could be compared to the way the United States engages countries like China, while theirs could be compared to the way North Korea or Iran engages the west.
The unspoken side to many of these unity schemes though is that they seem to be done in large part merely for survival. Sadly, our churches (the continuing churches) are really not very large or influential, and they are that way because we are not, by and large, evangelists, and because we have inherited historical American Anglicanism's idea that maintaining the institutions of the church is the most critical aspect of churchmanship (the book "Growth and Decline in the Episcopal Church" shows this quite clearly). My former diocese in another jurisdiction has fewer parishes in it than they did several years ago. Other dioceses in this same jurisdiction seem to have faced similar stagnation and/or decline. The same could be said, if we are honest, about most of the rest of us too. Have we really grown much over the years?
Do we evangelize and plant new churches, or do our dioceses grow by "trading parishes". In most of our jurisdictions it seems that there are parishes that were once in another jurisdiction, and so on. My old parish went from UEC to ACC to ACA. So while on the surface it may look like a lot of great things are happening with our various jurisdictions in terms of unity, or while it may look like we are growing because St. Swithun's parish just joined us from some other jurisdiction, on a deeper level are we really growing and reaching people? Or are we just in a fight for survival, and is this our last chance to be relevant and contribute anything to the conversation? Does the "shot in the arm" wear off after a while and do we return to the staus quo? I think that as long we pray for and tout unity and/or cooperation, and if God gives it to us, He then expects us to then go and do something with that - namely, fulfill the Great Commission.
