Dear All,
Welcome to the NCAN website. Please send the link to friends everywhere and encourage them to sign up to the subscribers’ mail list. We plan to send out a newsletter on a regular basis each year to keep people up to date, provide useful links and keep people in conversation.
The website contains articles and information introducing readers to NCAN, and explaining its origins and purpose. I won’t repeat that here. I want to address the relevance of NCAN at this period in our life as Anglicans in Australia.
NCAN does not intend to set itself up over against other entities, movements, organisations or trends and trajectories in the Church. Itis not just another player on the ecclesial field. NCAN exists to help the Anglican Church understand itself better as part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
We offer a forum for a continuing conversation and open dialogue in the Church about the things that matter that belong to the Gospel of God, and that concern us as Christians. We join with all who long to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, to uphold and promote the unity of the Church and to bear witness to the Gospel. The Church is called to be the place where the multifaceted and rich wisdom of God is manifest (Ephesians 3:10), welcoming diversity, because harnessing disagreements belongs to the DNA of the Church of God. It has ever been thus from New Testament times, though the history of the Church indicates that we have a poor track record on these matters.
If you are interested in what I have written about how disagreements and Christian unity might be understood in a life affirming way in the cut and thrust of our common life, I invite you to seek out my chapter, ‘Disagreement and Christian Unity: re-evaluating the situation’, in the General Synod Doctrine Commission’s publication, "Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage and the Anglican Church of Australia, Broughton Publishing 2019". It is freely available online: https://anglican.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Marriage-Doctrine-Essays-Final.pdf.
I commend NCAN to all who share our hopes and dreams for a closer and deeper understanding of what it means to be one-in-Christ.
Grace and Peace
+Stephen Pickard
Chair, NCAN
