Anglican Diocese of Niagara

Bishop and Chancellor

Synod Proceedings (not official):

9:00        Organizing of Synod p- 161 of 245 eligible lay delegates 66%; 88 out of 103 clergy – 85%. Quorum. No privileges of the house need to be extended. Minutes of 1st session – approved. Notices of motion....are all included in the circular. Movers and seconders – total of 6 minutes. Speakers are allowed 2 minutes.
9:10       Worship occurred
9:30       Vision and Plan into the Future
Bishop’s charge – text included
Video – A New Day: The pursuit of excellence in ministry
Michael Patterson: Spoke about the vision
Introduced the petal: Central: Following Chris passionately – we pursue excellence, practise justice and grow.

Flourishing culture of innovation.
Prophetic social justice making.
Effective resource management.
Life changing worship experience.
Outstanding leadership for ministry.
It requires:

Spiritual discipline
Valuing diversity
Honesty and Integrity
Passion and hard work.

Comments from Microphone:

The Presentation was disappointing. I feel that we should “adjust” the pace of the vision – but not all of us need to slow down and some of us don’t want to slow down. A variety of paces would be good. We are excited by the bishop’s vision.
Michael Patterson (MP) I’m happy to hear this. Parishes that feel called to move – go for it!
(Could not hear)
What do we need from the diocese is what I hear – I would like to hear – what can the parishes do for the diocese – there is already wonderful stuff going on
Excited by vision. I will challenge myself to explore the vision during holy week. If this is vision implemented – will be convicted as Jesus was. Urge the bishop to come and talk to small group
I have an alternate vision – rather petal – let’s take a wrecking ball – let’s start at the top with the cathedral. Start the ministry before we dig holes. It’s a great vision.
I used to write essays by figuring out the conclusion and then wrote the rest. I got the marks – but not necessary the best way to move forward. I thought the glitch in the video was intential. But Michael said it would be fixed. I thought – don’t fix it. What I saw – we don’t have our act together and that’s ok. It will take a couple of takes before we get there.
We’re bringing the breakfast program with a twist. We’re working with partners – businesses and police are getting involved. We’ll breakfast to the children – we’ll go to their door instead of making them come to us.
We have to stop being afraid of losing people if we change. We do have to change! Our people are ready to change.
Why don’t we take our vision and sing it. We can create a song for each petal of the flower. Music is a very big part of our ministry.
Another idea: reduce DMM for all parishes. If ministry is going to happen at the “local”level – we need to reduce the burden of tax
Commend people who have put a lot of work into the vision. Commend for listening. When we do an environmental stand – I cannot help but point to St. Matthews house. People have no EI and they are laid off. It’s happening everywhere. I encourgage us to take a realistic look at the environment around us and the lives of people who are hurting
I hope we never have our act together. If we think we do – we will be in serious trouble. I hope we can be doing justice – however that happens for us. Thank you to those of you that are willing to carry on doing what we are doing! That’s part of being a family.I hope we can be people that will follow the way of Christ – sharing what we have with one another
At last synod worship – I did not see the culture of innovation. Today was wonderful – we saw a glimpse of what is possible for the rest of us.
We are children of God. The bishop get’s his insight from God. We get our insight from the bishop. Sometimes we get our own insight. We all have empowerment – for God’s sake use it – don’t’ do nothing. Our church needs healing – it has been torn apart. I hope and pray that we will overcome this now. I wish we could take more time to talk and listen to each other. I’m not hearing what people have to say to me.
We have been incredibly excited by the possibility of the vision. At all events that I’ve been to we’ve been excited. We need to understand this is a vision – not a program – not a plan – not a process – it’s a dream. We’ve been spending months to select a path by which we will choose as a parish to enflesh God’s presence. We’re not finished. We need to figure out we will bring this to the whole parish. It takes time. The movement of God’s spirit has been in our midst as we have talked together
There are 8 churches in our village – I would like many of us to look at DMM as ministry and mission. We need to meet mission targets – not meet our budget. We are doing mission through this budget structure.
It’s a challenge to get the rest of the community to feel the mission in their hearts. Listening and smaller group engagements are important so that the community can feel it in their hearts.
I heard that if we change too quickly we’ll lose people. It reminded me of a passage in a book – role of religion in modern society – should it be fluid, reflecting and changing? We have to ask ourselves if we will be this or move slowly.
Vision is very well thought out. Baby steps seem slow. If we move too fast we’ll lose the vision. The vision of the future needs to be the best thing that could ever happen to us. Thanks to Michael Bird. I appreciate the support of greening Niagara.

11:10 2009 Budget

Presentation given – budget is included in resources
Budget is interim and transitional
Much is unalterable due to commitments
Line items are realigned
Bishop’s priorities

5% of DMM set aside to be granted on a by application basis
150,000 set aside for the cathedral to cover fair share division of expenses

We had to find 300,000 given the priorities
Major cuts to Canterbury Hills, Niagara Anglican, Bishop’s discretionary fund, S and Fd office, - 185,000
Interest will be charged on aged receivables
Expected increase in the DMM income
Discussion

There was discussion for reduction of DMM for activities that bring the vision to fruition

The 150K set aside grants by application is for this purpose

What is a transitional budget – budgets only last for a year

The hope was that the budget would represent the entire vision of the bishop – we could only make some changes – we could not cover all aspects of the budget

We are a parish in transition like budget – we look with dismay with the interest on receivables – because we cannot afford it.

We felt that this was an appropriate time to have cost-allocation for interest at source. If there is a problem – we need to focus on that and help those parishes move forward

Pg 19 – legal fees – based on court cases – is this an estimate

Normal legal fees that we incur in day to day operation. All breakaway parish legal costs are not reflected in this budget

Questions on regional budget and vocational deacon budget
If are looking at parishes with larged age receivables – they will be sunk. Do we want to maintain rural ministries ? We have to look at the Jewish method of cancelling debt and moving on. (Jubilee)

We are supplementing salaries etc. This is not black and white. Our rural ministries are critical to our diocesan family

Confused on Pag 19 – new arrangement on sharing expenses with the cathedral. It’s not clear why the Christ’s church cathedral is recorded as an expense.

It is seen as a recovery cost- its’ a cost we receive back – we could have put brackets around it - it was taken out of the total.

Canterbury Hills program 95K

That is the fee being charged by Canterbury – covers over-head costs of running the camp

Cathedral expenses – why are we paying money for the cathedral We don’t know why people say the cathedral is so important to the diocese

We have a task force coming together quickly that will address these concerns for the next synod

Niagara Anglican – are we putting our “stories” being put at risk.

We have a challenge of budget/responsibility

BUDGET WAS APPROVED (7 opposed)
Motion regarding pre-authorized synod – moved to defer to November 2009 – Carried
Chancellor’s update:

Litigation with ANC – these comments are on public record
Feb 08 – 3 congregations withdrew
Preliminary Court hearings took place in Feb and then in March 08
She ruled on the sharing the buildings by D of N and ANC – costs to be paid by withdrawing congregations. Application for appeal was denied and costs were awarded. The wardens of the withdrawing congregations are the defendants
St. Peter’s later passed a motion to withdraw in June of 08
Costs have been adjudicated in one case – in favour of the diocese 20,000. This has been paid. Our request was for 180,000. The justice was looking at whether these costs are to be assumed personally by the wardens. We do not have a decision yet from the judge.
There is a provision if there is a difficulty in the interim arrangements – this can go before an arbitrator. We have given a list of things that need to go before the arbitrator.
The network lawyer has an application to move the court case from Hamilton to Milton. This application is to be heard on Apr 5. We oppose this.
There is a case in the Diocese of New Westminster. In our case we applied for our right to hold these parishes. In their case the network are plaintiff and the diocese is the defendant. That matter is to be heard in May.
We continue to work with the people of St. Peter’s to bring them into the main body of the litigation.
If we get a decision on costs in a reasonable period of time – there would be a possibility that we will be in court in the fall of 2009 – on the main action. That is optimistic.
Everything in this report is on public record.
No questions

Bishop offer thanks to chancellor. Bishop gives assent to this synod. Thanks to staff at Cathedral place. Thanks to Mark Tiller and agenda team. Thanks to Rick Jones, Secretary of Synod. Thanks to Karen Nowicki for her synod work. Thanks to Alison D’Atri for organization. Thanks to Chris and John for video and web work. Thanks to Ian Chadwick and Carol Summers. One final thanks to budget team.
Closing worship

11:40     Payroll Pre-Authorized
11:50     Chancellor
12:10     Bishop’s Assent given

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