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THE GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL is for all peoples and nations and so, as Christians, we are called to exercise hospitality and practice generosity in the face of difference since we are all beloved children of God.
This recognition will lead us to audit our spaces and parish cultures for cultural biases or preferences and to assess how appropriately to open ourselves to other languages and cultures, including music, food, symbols, art, etc. How might we be led to sacrifice some turf to make a space for others? It should lead us to reflect on how we might better prepare our churches for the continuing and accelerating arrival of Anglicans from other parts of the communion and those who come to us from “places” unfamiliar to us.
Alongside these reflections, we need also to recognize that there are limits to what can be rightly and faithfully called “Christian” and “Anglican” and have common understandings of these limits. Turning to Grace attempts to do just that.
It needs to be said that we are already a more Diverse Church than even a decade ago, particularly but not exclusively in urban areas. We want to learn from this already existing diversity and see it as a gift to all of us and to our communities. It is a question of engaging with and learning to live with difference and find life in it. To do so may well involve difficult or painful conversations but there is an existential need for embracing difference: either we exist in a much more diverse church in the future, or we may not exist at all. To succeed, these conversations need to be approached with an attitude of curiosity and not of judgement.
Across the Diocese there are already communities of new Canadian Anglicans forming within some of our parishes. All Saints, Waterloo hosts a Filipino worshipping community and a new one is in formation in London as a Bishop’s Mission. St. Mark’s, London has seen the development of a large Nigerian community. There are doubtless others. There is also the Migrant Farmworkers’ program active in Brant-Norfolk, Oxford, and Essex and other wonderful ministries like it—which can happen in virtually every Deanery. We want to encourage parishes to recognise and foster the communities that are developing within parishes and to see this ministry as a gift and not as a threat; indeed, it is likely that some people may continue in both the original and the new communities.