ACL President’s Address — 2014 AGM

Posted on July 18, 2014 
Filed under News, Sydney Diocese

The Rev Gav Poole, President of the Anglican Church LeaguePresident of the Anglican Church League, the Rev. Gav Poole, spoke at tonight’s ACL Annual General Meeting –

“Psalm 145 is a song of praise about ‘praise’. The only fitting praise for the LORD, is perfect praise. Praise that is declared everyday, everywhere for ever and ever.

Praise of the LORD is a return to order, a reversal of sin, curse and rebellion. It is to tell of his character – abounding in love; wondrous works and mercy to all. It stands opposed to speech that blasphemes, bears false testimony, incites rebellion or ignores the LORD.

This is praise that my off-key voice, inept language skills and sinfulness cannot achieve.

Thank God for the king who praises his ‘God and King’ and leads the congregation of faithful witnesses.

The only acceptable praise now is praise through Jesus, the fruit of the lips that acknowledge his name. This praise is perfectly led, focused and all are invited to join in.

So whilst we attend to business tonight, we should only agree to do that which is focussed on declaring the praises of God, taking care to not let selfish ambitions, prevailing culture or poorly focused activity take over.

The ACL is led by the executive and council but exists to serve its members. Ours is a grass roots movement. Contrary to popular opinion, its influence is not based on powerful, impressive individuals but the membership base who delegate authority to those who will be elected tonight.

The first objective of the League is, ‘To unite in one Association those members of the Anglican Church of Australia who desire to maintain the principles of the Church as based on Holy Scripture, and set forth in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Thirty-nine Articles and the Homilies.’

So we respectfully support the hierarchy of our denomination but never wholly defer to them. We stand against self-promotion and for collegiality and testing when it comes to placement on boards, councils and places of influence.

You, our members, are of primary importance to the League and the elected officers are here to serve you, not to take over. In the Synod, our influence is significant with the majority of synod members taking seriously our recommendations.

It is with that in mind, our focus this year turned to you, our members. We asked questions as to the ‘responsibilities and privileges of ACL membership’. This led to research which was designed to listen to our membership. Thank you to the group who led that and to the members who responded to our survey.

The feedback convinced us that our membership believes we are doing a good job as far as preserving the protestant and evangelical character of our dioceses. You also believe that we are effectively supporting the nomination of candidates for boards and committees.

The loud and clear message that we have received is that we need to improve our communication to our membership base.

Our council needs to be organised around our goals and objectives. We have a numerous and gifted council who meets on a monthly basis. This resource needs to be fully utilised.

The council has adopted the recommendations of the research committee and steps have already been taken to organise our council into five key areas, the executive (who continue to focus on elections and running the business), membership, training (particularly for those elected to key positions), communication (specific and mass), advocacy and reform (within our dioceses and the Anglican communion world wide). We are yet to elect our executive and council but if you elect roughly the same people, we will be able to advance this initiative.

I have agreed to be nominated again as President but consider it a year-to-year proposition. The role must be kept fresh and dynamic. We should also be careful to ensure it is not used as a platform for selfish ambition or advancement. The president is a servant.

My hope and prayer is to see our membership expand, unite, become more informed and drawn-in. We do this to the praise of our God and king.

Gav Poole
17 July 2014.”