Provincial Council 2011: Archbishop’s State of the Church Address:

[Given by the Most Reverend Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America, on 21 June A.D. 2011, at Long Beach, California.]

Your love, O Lord, forever will I sing;
From age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness. Psalm 89:1

These words from the first verse of Psalm 89 are our words as this Provincial Council opens. Our God has been so abundantly good to us – despite all the challenges we have faced – that we are profoundly aware of His love for us and His faithfulness to us. My task in this annual State of the Church Address is to rehearse some of what has happened, especially in this last year, and to remind us of how God’s hand of blessing has been so obviously upon this movement to rebuild a biblical, missionary and united Anglicanism in North America.

The Anglican Church in North America came together at Bedford, Texas, when its Constitution and Canons were adopted two years ago this week. Since then, the Provincial Council has met at Toronto, Canada; at Amesbury, Massachusetts, and now at Long Beach, California. We have covered a great deal of territory, both literally and figuratively. the rest

I will just share one final detail. It is a small one, and hidden in the statistical reports. (There is so much to be found in the materials prepared for this meeting. I commend it all to you.) According to the data submitted in the Annual Parochial Reports there were, in the year 2010, 987 baptisms of adults over thirty, 424 baptisms of young people aged sixteen to thirty, and 1647 baptisms of children in the ACNA dioceses, not including the congregations of our Ministry Partners. What is so stunning about this data is that the number of baptisms of those 16 and older is almost equal to the number of children baptized. What this says is that we are reaching adolescents and adults who have never known Christ, never been part of a church. This is to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, one sign among many that something quite extraordinary is unfolding. To God be the Glory!