Anglican Church League

Presidential Address
Annual General Meeting - Thursday, 9th August 2001

The Rev. Canon Bruce Ballantine-Jones

Retiring President of the ACL


 

This is my last Annual General Meeting as President of the ACL. It has been a seven year run which is long enough, perhaps too long, for anyone to hold this position. I consider it a privilege to have been able to serve our League for that time and I trust that on balance my contribution as President has been for the good.

I joined the Council in 1970. I think I was the youngest member of the council back then and the leadership of the League was in the hands of the people like D.B. Knox, Dr. Allan Bryson supported by many other diocesan notables of that period.

When I joined the League it was with a burning conviction that evangelicalism was the most authentic expression of Christianity there is and its ascendancy in our diocese and the Anglican Church was necessary if our church was to survive and grow. Thirty one years in the ministry and my experience of wider church affairs has only strengthened this conviction.

The place of the ACL in securing the evangelical ascendancy has been central. For most of last century the League was instrumental in identifying and commending evangelical leaders in our diocese and through its educational activities it helped to create a climate of support for evangelical truth.

The blessings that many in our diocese enjoy today and even take for granted are to a large extent the result of this work and I believe that, under God, the ACL has been the most important single factor in preserving the evangelical character of this diocese.
Other factors, such as Moore College, successive archbishops, a strong independent synod, and in recent decades a financially strong diocese owe much to the vigilance, dedication and focused work of the ACL over many decades.

It is important that this continues. My hope is that there will be a significant shift of leadership in the ACL with a new generation of evangelicals taking the baton from many of those who have been running the race for many years.

I would say just this to those who might be elected to the council;

Never lose sight of the main game, which is the growth in the influence of biblical christianity in our church, both in local churches and in the diocesan machinery. Don't let personal ambition get in the way of your commitment to this cause. Never give up the struggle. People will criticise you, misrepresent you, and attack you. Never give up! You serve a cause that is greater than any of us and these are a small price to pay for such high stakes.

Now to some contemporary matters.

New Archbishop

It was a great joy to many to witness the election of Peter Jensen as our new Archbishop. Peter is a vice president of the League and has indicated to me that he would be delighted and honoured to continue in that position. I earnestly hope that we will accommodate him in that desire tonight.

His task is an immense one. Already he has indicated that gospel outreach is his number one priority. I hope and pray that we in the ACL, as well as the whole diocese, will give him our complete support for this great task. I believe we could be at the beginning of an exciting new era for our diocese and church. If the resources of this diocese, both human and material, could be harnessed for sustained and strategically driven gospel work, not only Sydney, and Australia but other parts of the world could be reached for Christ in ways not seen before.

The Anglican Church of Australia

Many of us recently participated in the General Synod meeting in Brisbane. Overall it was a disappointing occasion to me because little was done to address the deep problems that afflict our denomination. Liberalism still holds sway at the Synod, even though it appears that in the local churches, evangelicals are growing in number. What this liberal domination means is that the Anglican Church will continue to drift away from its reformation roots and structurally will continue to decline. National Church Life Survey findings from the 1991 and 1996 surveys indicate that outside of Sydney the attendance in Anglican Churches declined by 2%p.a. Nothing happened at Brisbane that is likely to reverse this trend.

I said to the Synod that it is clear that within our denomination there are now two churches - the evangelical church and the liberal church and they are like continental plates that are drifting apart.

The evangelical agenda is evangelism and reform of our church to more closely reflect biblical models. The liberal agenda is focussed on accommodating to issues like homosexuality, feminism and to reshape the church according to post modern criteria.

I sensed that more and more people at General Synod see these differences as irreconcilable. My suggestion that we should recognise this and seek ways to redefine the nature of our association to avoid continual conflict found more acceptance that I dared to hope.

It is my view that the shape of the Anglican Church of Australia in ten years will be vastly different from what it is today.

It will be looser, more diverse, with the catholic, liberal and evangelical groups doing their thing in ways which do not impinge on the others. Diocesan borders will diminish in importance and the General Synod itself will be more clearly seen for what it actually is, a place for discussion and minimal leadership. The dioceses and their churches will be where anglicanism will thrive or die. We may all retain the name Anglican, but that will be a term so comprehensive that it will mean little more than the word ìorthodoxî does to describe the family of churches in the eastern tradition.

I believe these developments are inevitable. We should welcome them as opening up new opportunities for evangelism and growth. Maybe in the future our denomination as a whole will rediscover its biblical and reformation roots and our structures will once again express a unity based on truth. But until that occurs those who are committed to the eternal gospel of Christ should not allow a natural hankering for denominalism to inhibit them from doing what has to be done to advance the kingdom of God through effective gospel proclamation.

Finally a few words about the future of the ACL.

For the ACL to be successful it has to be true to its own cause of promoting, and where necessary, defending the evangelical faith. Should it ever see that as negotiable in the interests of denominational unity or institutional strength it will have lost its reason for being and deserve to be discarded.

However in pursuing this great cause three things are necessary:

Firstly, it has to maintain a sound grasp of strategy and tactics, keeping in mind the big picture. Diocesan confidence in our recommendations is our basic currency and must never be devalued. That means that from time to time particular controversial issues will arise which members may feel deeply about but which divide our own constituency. The League must be careful not to pursue single issues at the expense of our core business which is to help to maintain the evangelical ascendancy in diocesan affairs. Passion must be tempered with wisdom or we run the risk of being marginalised.

Secondly, we must always remember that like a pyramid we are only as strong as our base. Unlike other organisations which have a narrow support base or trade on the saleability of a few prominent people we are an organisation which exists to give expression to the views of the vast majority of evangelically minded Anglicans in our diocese. That means that the Council must always keep membership recruitment at the top of its duties. If you accept nomination to the Council it should be on the basis that you are willing to do the hard work of recruiting new members and thus extend the base. In my view the privilege of being on the Council must be balanced by the willingness to do more than just confer at Council meetings, important as that is. We must seek to add value by doing other things as well and everybody should accept the pressing duty to recruit new members.

Thirdly, to fulfil its objectives the Council needs to maintain a high level of efficiency at the organisational level. Over the three year electoral cycle the ACL administers a very complex range of activities from publishing, major public events, several regional meetings, a web page that has a world wide following, monthly routine business and of course and most importantly the annual nomination and recommendations processes. To continue to be successful in all of these the Council must give attention to its internal processes so that it operates like a well oiled machine.

Thank you once again for the privilege of leading the League for these last seven years and my earnest prayer is that the future of the ACL will be greater and stronger than it has ever been and that the great cause that unites us, in the League, will flourish so that more and more people will come to know Jesus as their personal Saviour.


B.A. Ballantine-Jones.


BBJ

Canon Bruce Ballantine-Jones retired as President of the ACL in 2001. He continues on the Council as a Vice-President.

He is also Rector of the parish of Jannali.

Document added Friday, 10 August 2001.

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