ACL Annual General Meeting 2021 — Report

Posted on June 19, 2021 
Filed under News, Sydney Diocese

The 2021 Annual General Meeting of the Anglican Church League took place on Thursday 10th June at Moore Theological College, Newtown.

ACL President the Reverend Andrew Bruce (pictured) spoke on Acts 1:1-14. He encouraged the meeting with the reminder that Jesus is the ascended Lord, that his gospel will go to the ends of the Earth, and that this will happen through the testimony of his disciples, in the power of the Holy Spirit. He pointed out that the apostolic mission began with earnest, dedicated and united prayer.

Reverend Bruce exhorted all present to wait on the Lord and engage in devoted prayer as we continue this significant task of gospel proclamation. Humanly speaking, the “odds” of being able to proclaim Jesus to the ends of the earth seem impossible. Yet this impossibility is the normal situation for God’s people. In the end, the risen and ascended Lord will see his gospel go out. Thus, we can only engage in this mission through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Andrew then moved on to provide some thoughts on some of the aspects of Sydney Diocesan life. He emphasised the need to be reinvigorated in our lives and our churches with gospel confidence. As a Diocese, we are in constant danger of focusing on the “urgent” matters that our world sees as priorities, rather than the truly important things of gospel ministry: prayer, godliness, evangelism, and recruiting and training.

Reverend Bruce exhorted us to ensure that the “urgent” does not take up all of our resources so that we neglect the important. We do not have unlimited resources – indeed we are quite stretched – and so we need to be wise, courageous and sacrificial in saying “no” to things that seem urgent but are not central to what we do.

He also exhorted us to reinvigorate our evangelism. All ministry today is cross-cultural, because of the vast difference between our aggressive secular culture and our gospel culture. So evangelism must be relational and person-to-person. This means we need to engage deeply with the laity, since one-to-one mission is primarily lay-led. This requires gospel courage and endurance.

We must also reinvigorate our recruiting and training. We need to ensure there are strong numbers of Anglican candidates in training at Moore College, that they sign up in good time for us to evaluate them, that we recruit Rectors, and that we retain those we have trained.

The ACL can play a key role in advocating for Diocesan structures to make courageous and bold decisions to seek always to value the important over the “urgent”.

The President closed his address with a reading from Romans 12:1-2 and prayer for our Diocese.

The meeting received the Treasurer’s Report, approved positions for Elections Secretary, Recruitment Secretary, Membership Secretary and Communication Secretary, and elected office holders. Office holders for 2021-2022 are listed here.