The general ministry of the Anglican Foundation was begun nearly 50 years ago by lay people (men) who believed in the witness of the Anglican church because they saw needs within the church in Canada that were not being answered by other sources. What began with a very small fund has eventually developed into a large financial benefit each year to the Anglican Church of Canada.
Our general ministry provides solutions to the physical needs of church buildings and church programs and has now been expanded into a host of other benefits through defined trusts dedicated to liturgical arts, music, preaching training, indigenous needs (translations, prayer/healing circles, bursaries), Orthodox/Anglican relations, Council of the North, theological student bursaries, and special compassionate needs.
The Anglican Foundation has taken on and administers 28 trusts. Some have their own committees responsible for accepting applications and distributing funds available. Two of the larger trusts are the Bishop Kenneth Maguire Trust and the George and Esther Snell Trust. The Maguire trust is administered by the Foundation annually in October and distribution is made to the retired clergy and spouses of the diocese of Montreal at Christmas ($7,400), to the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund for its work ($48,361.37), and to LOFT (Anglican Houses) ($27,016.82). Disbursements in 2004 totaled $84,978.19. The Snell trust funds are distributed to specific churches in Toronto to support a lecture series by international theologians, and arts in the church programs, as well as indigenous training bursaries
Funds to maintain the general ministry come from benefices, bequests, insurance policies, planned giving, memorials and memberships. We have endeavored to maintain a personal relationship with Anglican people and churches across this country through the maintenance of memberships and are most grateful for the thousand or so committed Anglicans who each year renew their memberships by contributing between $50 and $1,000.
We ask bishops to permit us to have a special day set aside in the church year to let us tell our story to parishioners and to provide envelopes and materials to reveal and uplift our good works. This means that we can respond with grants and not just loans in times of churches' need.
Each church in Newfoundland is a member and many churches throughout Canada are also members. It is this grass-roots involvement that makes the life of the Anglican Foundation viable, by providing the opportunity for even the least among us to become involved directly with the life and work of the whole of the Anglican church in all of Canada. This is truly a great investment in the church that will provide the space to grow and build. We are thankful for this commitment and personal involvement of people and parishes.
That is the upside. There is also a downside. It is with sadness that even with the help we receive, we have experienced a growing need for a greater increase of funding. As time has passed, more and more needs are expressed and it has been important that we grow in service and in resources. The difficulty is that with the increased demand, there has not been an equal increase in financial support for the general ministry, and that results in more and more needs not being met.
Until now we have not been privileged to ask directly the Anglican churches that have been recipients of our larges across the country, to have a “Foundation Sunday.” We ask bishops to permit us to have a special day set aside in the church year to let us tell our story to parishioners and to provide envelopes and materials to reveal and uplift our good works. This means that we can respond with grants and not just loans in times of churches' need.
In the future we will bring in an executive vice-president to administer fundraising. This will be a volunteer position and support the work of the executive director so that we can open new fields beyond buildings that will allow us to help create national support and training programs. The Anglican Foundation has asked General Synod's Planned Giving Program to study the process of making our work more viable in the eyes of church members.
Even though there are obvious success stories, there are also crying calls from churches around the country for help to repair leaking roofs, rotting foundations, mildewed walls, windows falling out of their casements and crumbling floors; to make rectories habitable for young priests or make parish halls acceptable for children in Sunday school. Clergy who struggle with their preaching look for help, theological students who will have lifetime debt unless they can find extra support, northern clergy faced with the cost of transportation to hospitals in the south for desperate health needs, some indigenous people who need healing and restoration circles to live through the dreadful situations they were in as children in church schools.
We are asked to assist where there are great needs, and our board of directors is sometimes hard pressed to find enough money to answer some of these broken systems. Our hope is to put clergy and churches throughout this country on equal par, giving every opportunity to each parish and diocese in all parts of the church to be free from some of the inequality that prevails.
We are one church, but it is not an equal church, for in some places there is no clergy, the stipends in one part of the country are so much lower than another, sometimes there are no stipends only government pensions, and clergy need help in a society in which they too sometimes become victims of physical and verbal abuse.
As a corporation separate from General Synod, the Anglican Foundation answers needs in Canada similar to those addressed by General Synod's international agencies. We are also preparing to work with churches that are willing to help with HIV/AIDS work and housing; to work with church daycare centres that support single mothers; to establish dialogue for newly ordained clergy with others who are struggling in their first parishes. The Anglican Foundation is willing to work with the hidden brokenness of the church.
This is why we must open up our work, not only through our small staff, but also through the help of friends who will be our eyes and ears across the whole church. These friend will endeavor to tell our story across the country in the hope that people will have a deeper understanding of our work and hopefully choose to contribute financially to the Anglican Foundation. It is only through increased contributions that we can answer the cry for help that is heard from so many areas.
