Episcopal Press and News
MASSACHUSETTS: Members leave third diocesan parish for African affiliation
Episcopal News Service. October 25, 2007 [102507-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The majority of the members of a third Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts congregation have decided to leave the Episcopal Church and affiliate with an Anglican province in Africa.
The departing members of Holy Trinity Church in Marlborough will celebrate their last Eucharist in Holy Trinity's building on October 28 and then process to the nearby First United Methodist Church where it will re-form as Holy Trinity Anglican Church. That congregation will be part of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). The AMiA calls itself "a missionary outreach of the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda."
The departing members have already re-configured the parish's website to bear the name of Holy Trinity Anglican Church.
"The prayers of the bishops are with the Rev. Michael McKinnon as well as with the members of Holy Trinity who feel God calling them to this path in their faith journey," said Maria Plati, diocesan communications director.
The diocese and leadership of Holy Trinity have been in cordial conversation for at least three years following Massachusetts Bishop M. Thomas Shaw's decision to allow the parish to be under the 'delegated episcopal pastoral oversight' (DEPO) of Donald F. Harvey, retired Bishop of Newfoundland and Labrador in the Anglican Church of Canada, Plati said. Harvey ordained McKinnon in 1996.
DEPO is a plan developed by the House of Bishops to accommodate congregations that, due to theological differences, do not believe that they can "receive appropriate pastoral care" from their own bishop. The bishop delegates another mutually agreed-upon bishop to provide pastoral care. DEPO provides temporary oversight while other steps toward restoring the relationship between a diocesan bishop and parish are pursued.
"This process of discernment has been marked by mutual respect for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and for the different theological views that have brought us to this place," said Plati.
No decision has been made about the status of the Holy Trinity Episcopal church property which remains with the diocese, according to Plati.
When individual members of the Episcopal parishes in Attleboro and West Newbury (both named All Saints Episcopal Church) left those parishes and formed congregations affiliated with Anglican provinces in Africa, the Episcopal parish remained, she said.
Other Massachusetts Episcopal congregations have grown over the last few years, Plati said, including those in Groveland (next to West Newbury), Lowell, Bedford, Chatham, and Norwood.
Some individuals have left the diocese in years past over theological differences with the Episcopal Church over the adoption of the Book of Common Prayer in 1979 and the ordination of women, Plati noted.
McKinnon, in a statement provided by the diocese, attributed the move first to a "growing membership" and second to a desire to be with others who are "uniting for the Gospel and traditional Anglicanism in North America."
According to the information supplied in the parish's 2006 parochial report, Holy Trinity has slightly more than 80 baptized members and a worship-attendance rate of just under 40 people.
"Our faith, preaching and teaching is grounded in the Holy Bible as God's Word," McKinnon continued. "We describe ourselves as evangelical, sacramental and Spirit-filled. We claim both the historic Faith and Order of the ancient Christian Church and the principles of the English Reformation of the 16th Century as our own."
He said the members are "very grateful" to Shaw for allowing the DEPO arrangement the last three years.