The future generation of Continuing Anglican Churches should have a holy discontentment with the status quo, a restlessness that does not allow us to sit in our hands and remain ineffective for this present and coming generation of unbelievers. In the past, the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions have exhibited inertia that causes them to settle in and makes them very hard to move off of dead center.
Moving forward, we need to have a desire to change, to move, to reach out, to grow, and to take the traditional Anglican Church into new dimensions of ministry. We should have the spirit of St. Paul, who said in Philippians 3:13–14, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Leaders are always very goal-oriented people. We need to be goal oriented people in the Continuum.
God’s history of redemption is not finished. The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is shot through with imperfections, lost sheep are still not in the fold, needs of every sort in the world are unmet, sin infects the saints. It is unthinkable that we should be content with things the way they are in a fallen world and an imperfect Church, regardless of past schisms, unrest, and personality conflicts.
Therefore, God has been pleased to put a holy discontentment and restlessness into some of his people, and those people will very likely be the leaders of the Church in the coming decades.
The Rt. Rev. Robert Todd Giffin
Bishop Ordinary, Diocese of Mid-America, Anglican Province of America