FiF North America
FiF NA Assembly: Was Jesus an Unplanned Pregnancy?
Jun 21, 2009

Our Lady of the Snows, Belleville IL

Bishop Keith Ackerman

The Right Reverend Keith L. Ackerman began the opening of the 2009 Forward in Faith North America (FiFNA) Assembly asking, “Was Jesus an unplanned pregnancy? The world may have thought so, but God didn’t!” Jesus came at the fullness of time—at the right time.

For us a birth has taken place!” This is the right time, the God planned time, for the founding of this new province where Anglicans of historic belief have come from diverse places and diverse histories, but having the Lordship of Jesus Christ at its center. Bishop Ackerman described the formation of the new Anglican province in North America as the birth of a child. “Some of us have been waiting for the birth for 30 years!” This new province known as the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) came out prayer and a vision for historic faith and belief of Anglicans. This birth has brought many friends together and we are family. Many of the bishops and delegates present at the Assembly meeting June 17-19 will be going to Fort Worth next week for the inaugural meeting of the ACNA.

A first phase of our mission has been accomplished, and needs to be celebrated; but the birth needs to be followed by growth, growing and maturing—it takes time and we need to remember the new province is in its infancy. FiFNA’s mission is to provide good nutritious food for healthy growth toward maturity. FiFNA is a teaching organization including a Catholic understanding of the unity of the Christian Church. We have great witnesses to the faith like Bishop Charles Grafton, who ‘insisted that the true principle of Christian unity lies in the sacramental union of the members of the body with Christ, the head.’

“The principle which unites and make the Church one must be a principle which lays hold of and affects every member of the Catholic Church. It must be a principle operating at one and the same time upon the ever Blessed Virgin, the Blessed Mother of God, upon all the saints in glory, upon all the awaiting expectant souls, and all the members of the Church militant…the Catholic principle of unity applies to the whole body of the Church wherever any of its members may be, and it will last as long as the Church lasts, and it is in itself indestructible.”

Bishop Ackerman exhorted that FiFNA members join in the witness to historic Anglicanism as Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, describes our need for the past.

“By openness to the past the Christian can contemplate the life and death and Resurrection of Jesus…The life of Jesus is to be imitated, and the death and Resurrection of Jesus are to be shared. So the sacraments of the Church which convey the death and the Resurrection to the believers link the contemplation of the past with the reality of the present.”

The role of FiFNA is to bring those significant gifts of our past, our Catholic heritage, and the gift of ourselves, our practice of that living faith, and offer it, to shower it upon this new child. As FiFNA we have a wealth of the rich Catholic faith to offer to the new province, in our existing FiFNA diocese and in our new Missionary Diocese. This birth may have been unusual, but it was certainly not unplanned. We need to be there for this new child, to nurture and see that it grows to the full stature of Christ. So in the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, “draw close to God to bring Him close to other, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently.” 

“Together we have been part of this birthing. We will see to the raising of this child. We need to provide for this child, knowing that we are the Church, and we are family.”

Taken from notes on the opening address/sermon by Bishop Keith L. Ackerman, President of Forward in Faith NA and bishop retired of the Diocese of Quincy, preached at Evensong, Forward in Faith NA Assembly 2009, June 17th.