Bishop’s Column

New relationships with our land and neighbours

May 1, 2023

The Diocese of Islands and Inlets has title to 46 church properties. How these properties came to be part of our diocese are stories we ...

Embracing the world

March 31, 2023

“…the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great ...

The neighbours that God has given us

March 1, 2023

March is the month when the diocese asks that all parishes complete their annual Parish Information Return (PIR). The data collected in this form helps ...

Recommitting ourselves for Lent

February 1, 2023

Those in our diocese taking part in the lay leadership in worship course have read Joan Chittister’s The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the ...

The most secular diocese in North America

January 2, 2023

As we begin 2023, I’d invite us all to consider the recent census that suggests we are the most secular diocese in North America. According ...

Waiting on Advent

November 30, 2022

Advent, the first season of the liturgical year, is a season of waiting. But it’s not a passive or a bored or an empty waiting. ...

Empty pews and self-emptying

October 30, 2022

In 2021, Russell Daye and Robert Fennell published Turning Ourselves Inside Out: Thriving Christian Communities. Having researched thriving mainline Christian communities in Canada, the thesis ...

Anglicanism and Anglianism

October 6, 2022

At the end of September, our diocesan conference, We Together, was held in Nanaimo. In the opening address on the Friday night, I spoke about ...

Asking the right questions

August 31, 2022

While I am incredibly proud of how all our parishes have innovated and persevered through COVID-19, I am also hearing a common refrain about how, ...

A new thing rising amidst grief

May 31, 2022

As a diocese we are all experiencing the shifting realities of our lives in similar and distinct ways. Our past is marked with both stories ...

Discerning a postcolonial presence on ‘Yalis

May 1, 2022

During the second week of May, I will be travelling with Brendon Neilson, vision animator, and Elizabeth Northcott, archdeacon of the Mid-North Islands region, to ...

Where God might be calling us next

April 1, 2022

About a month ago, all the clergy of the diocese gathered (on Zoom, of course) and, together, we pondered the question of where God might ...

Looking injustice in the eye

March 1, 2022

Recently I found myself talking with members of the Parish of Pender and Saturna Islands and one of them reflected that COVID-19 has brought out ...

A place of love and safety

February 3, 2022

During the month of January, the lectionary worked its way through some of Paul’s first letters to the church in Corinth. We heard Paul remind ...

Humility and hope

January 1, 2022

“Liminality: A quality of ambiguity and disorientation that occurs in transitory situations and spaces, when a person or group of people is betwixt and between ...

Bishop’s Column

Renewed Hearts, Renewed Spirits, Renewed People