Creation and New Creation

CREATION AND NEW CREATION

THE DIOCESE OF HURON aspires to be a Church that is firmly Christ-centred and (New)Creation-focussed. We want to be a Church that is “open to every kind of Resurrection ‘newness’” (“Yielding to the Life of the Spirit,” Bishop’s Charge To Synod, 2021). This is an enlivening newness; a newness of freshness and fertility. It is not a “newness” in the sense of replacement—not “new and improved” like some product that is for sale. Nor is it “managed decline” or even “change management.”

Making new means being open and receptive to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and finding way to “resonate” with it. It means allowing ourselves to let go of some things in order to imagine and embrace new possibilities—and, with God’s grace, to be renewed in the spirit of [our] minds (Ephesians 4:23).

The Church, and the Diocese of Huron with it, is in the midst of a contraction. All living systems have periods of expansion and contraction. To the extent that it is possible, we yearn for the ability to guide and shape this contraction faithfully and prayerfully; to work intentionally with it rather than just passively let it happen. In the end, the overall objective is to consolidate—to have the right number of healthy, thriving, self-sustaining parishes full of people.

The world, including all of us, needs both God’s judgement and God healing grace. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself – we benefit and participate in this mission. And when we open ourselves, empty ourselves, to receive the gifts of God – this becomes possible (“Living Hope: Our Identity and Mission in Christ,” Bishop’s Charge to Synod, 2020).

So, we make-way for that Spirit. We do not want to yield to the spirit of the times, nor to the spirit of our own will, but rather to seek the direction of the Holy Spirit of God, the giver of life, the one who makes all things new (“Yielding to the Life of the Spirit,” Bishop’s Charge To Synod, 2021).

This is the deepest, truest, form of “new” possible. The kind that is good news for all. It is the kind of “new” that we hear described in the creation stories. It is the kind of new that was experienced at the empty tomb of Jesus. Sheer possibility. That is what our church is built upon. Faith in the possibility of a new creation, a new creation that is stretching out before us and that the Holy Spirit of God promises to lead us into. The whole history of the people of God has included liminal times like this. God always led them through— each and every time—to the new thing promised. (“Yielding to the Life of the Spirit,” Bishop’s Charge To Synod, 2021.)

In most respects, the church of the twentieth century is gone. The ways of thinking and acting, along with the culture and infrastructure, that supported ministry in that century are often barriers to imaginatively and faithfully meeting the challenges and opportunities of this century. It is good that some things are gone—such as an institutional Church that is deeply enmeshed in colonialism and Empire. Other things that are gone may still be mourned by some or even many. But they are gone. However, the things that remain are the central truths and practices of the Anglican church all gathered and centred around the Risen Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, what we inherit, and what will last, is both ancient and new. Like Creation itself, the church is sustained every day, every hour, every second by its Divine Creator. 

[F]or us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
(1 Corinthians 8:6)