Reflections of a Canadian Churchman

As churches in this diocese have engaged in a self-evaluation process called Natural Church Development it has become clear that surveyed Anglicans feel that they lack a “passionate spirituality.” “Passionate spirituality” is one of several categories under which survey responses are collated and evaluated using this valuable assessment tool. While churches have high scores in a variety of other areas such as worship, small groups, leadership and effective structures. There has been a general concern that Anglicans across this diocese are not spiritually engaged. In the parish in which I serve as Assistant Curate, “passionate spirituality” has certainly been one of our weaker rankings. With parishes in our dioceses fairly consistently ranking “low” in “passionate spirituality,” a recent clergy conference was held with “passionate leadership” as its theme. The call has gone out to work on these results. While tools such as the NCD survey are quite useful in taking the pulse of our congr...