Richard Kew has a post that works through his thinking on the ecclesiastical implications of what is happening in the Anglican Communion at the moment:

“It is hard to see what the long term outcomes of the Communique’s proposals are likely to be, and I am certainly not eager to make brash predictions, but this does appear to be the first formal step down a road that will ultimately result in something rather different emerging, gathering strength and authority, and enabling Gospel ministry in this century.

The Primates are attempting to honor the received approach to being church while at the same time taking into account the effect of the anomalies which have surfaced with increasing intensity since August 2003. A dozen years or so ago when we were thinking about future structures we had in mind a network of networks — now that possibility of that is beginning to emerge.

What I find so fascinating is that the so-called ‘progressives’ are so retrogressive about and hostile to all this. One would have thought that those with an eager desire to recast Christian doctrine and behavior in a more contemporary mode would readily embrace a recasting of the old-fashioned way in which the church manages itself, but quite to the contrary. The only thing any one can say about this is that perhaps there is some other reason for their penchant for the tired and worn-out…

I love the words of Loren Mead written in the 1990s, and Loren is hardly a theological conservative. ‘Both the church and the world are always in flux, but usually we bring to that constant change a stable and unchanging paradigm, a mind-set that sometimes last for centuries. Sooner or later, however, the thousands of minute shifts and changes bring such pressure to bear that the stable mind-set cracks, shifts, or falls apart. That has happened to us’ (Once and Future Church, 1991).”

Read the rest here: Radical Ecclesiastical Reconfiguration

(Via The Kew Continuum.)