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[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

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99-091

Convocation of churches in Europe moves towards formation of 
diocese

by James Solheim

(ENS) A consultation of the Convocation of American Churches 
in Europe has advocated formation of its eight parishes and five 
mission congregations into a diocese--and expressed determination 
to work with other Anglicans in Europe to form a new province of 
the Anglican Communion.

The May 7-9 consultation in Nice, France, also developed a 
mission plan that includes training centers for lay and ordained 
ministries, a youth ministry, additional mission churches and an 
effort to create multi-cultural European forms of Anglicanism.

In his letter of invitation to the Mission 2000 
Consultation, Bishop Jeffery Rowthorn described the event as a 
sign of a "new missionary awareness" emerging in the parishes.

Last summer's Lambeth Conference of the world's Anglican 
bishops encouraged efforts to establish a new province in 
partnership with Anglicans in Spain and Portugal as a "multi-
national, multi-lingual and multi-cultural Anglican fellowship 
within the New Europe."

The convocation originated with parishes in several European 
cities catering to wealthy American expatriates, many of them 
chaplaincies. The American church provided a suffragan bishop to 
serve the loosely organized Convocation.

That ministry has broadened in recent years as people with 
mixed cultural and religious backgrounds have found a home under 
the broad tent of Anglicanism--including refugees and local 
Christians. Worship is now offered in French, Italian, Spanish 
and Chinese, as well as English. And the role of bishop has also 
expanded so that it is now a full-time position, still tied to 
the American church. (Rowthorn has announced his intention to 
resign, telling Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in his letter of 
resignation that he and his wife Anne "have been exhilarated by 
the new missionary challenges and ecumenical opportunities which 
present themselves daily in the New Europe.") 

In his keynote address to the consultation, Prof. Ian 
Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts spoke 
of the need for Anglicanism to find an authentic European 
expression--not in order to advance Anglicanism itself, "but 
rather for the sake of restoring all people to unity with God and 
each other in Christ."

In his own address to the consultation, Bishop Michael 
Nazir-Ali of Rochester in the Church of England addressed the 
"shape of the church to come." In examining the various forms the 
church has taken over the centuries, he agreed with Douglas that 
Anglicanism should find a distinctive European form to express 
its catholicity in an authentic way.

In its Statement of Mission Intent, the consultation said 
that the time is ripe for the "re-evangelization of Europe," 
calling on the participation of all Christians. "We do not seek 
to convert Christians who are already faithful in another church, 
but rather to join with them in their witness to the power of the 
Gospel in modern societies which are dominantly secular and 
pluralistic," the statement said.

--based on a press release written by Joe Britton, canon 
missioner to the bishop of the convocation and priest at a 
mission congregation in France.