For those who don't know, ACNA has a (non-geographical) diocese called C4SO ("church for the sake of others"). It was formed in the hubbub of ACNA's early days when things weren't as tightly run as today. By every measure it is the most progressive diocese in the entire Province, embracing all progressive winds of secular society; having views on homosexuality that come dangerously close to violating ACNA's canons; celebrating women's ordination; recently embracing Critical Race Theory; etc. Those of us in the rest of ACNA have been kind of stuck with this diocese, because what are you gonna do? Their bishop runs it the way he sees fit. But this has led to strained relations. But -- when in 2021 the College of Bishops issued the famous church teaching against gay marriage, C4SO's bishop issued a statement of his own, dissenting from the CoB and issuing his own statement almost in contravention to theirs. Later in 2021 it seems that the College of Bishops began to formulate new canons for how a bishop might be disciplined. Those canons were then applied against a few bishops caught up in immoral situations and a sex abuse scandal; but C4SO's bishop was probably not too far from the crosshairs as well. (And he also has a sex abuse scandal of his own.) So that brings us to the present day. There are stirrings that many of C4SO's churches have started dropping ACNA from their website, and hints started to appear about them departing from ACNA and going their own way (some sort of liturgical charismatic independent whatever). I can only pray that this is so, please God. Here are the latest updates: https://alivingtext.com/2022/01/31/acna-college-of-bishops-and-c4so/ -gives a helpful summary of all the changes that seem to be afoot -last week's really good episode of Anglican Unscripted (from which the above article takes its info); describing everything that's going on -yesterday's episode of Anglican Unscripted where they reveal possible rumors that Archbishop Foley Beach is calling for a conclave in March to specifically bring all this to a head. Wow.
Good. We don't need them. If some of C4SO stays they have to be put under their geographic diocese Bishops
The C4SO folks sometimes make an argument that they're needed, bc. they are a very large diocese. They used revivalist and evangelical church growth tactics to explode in members over the last 10 years. However, I think that a far larger contingent of people are heavily looking at Anglicanism and would stream to ACNA, if C4SO was not part of our identity.
They might or we might lose every single member of C4SO. I don't really care. I care about orthodoxy. If they can't be brought in line some how we don't need them polluting the water.
Some of their Texas parishes were interested in coming under the Diocese of Fort Worth just a few months ago, even the mega-church parish in Plano. I'm sure the CEEC would be happy to merge with C4SO and immediately more than double in size and probably triple their revenue. And revenue is the driver of most major decisions in CEEC.
Their large church in Plano is somewhat traditional, and has left C4SO to start a normal proper diocese of Dallas. So if C4SO burns down, the Plano parish will be with us, which I'm pretty happy with.
If C4SO goes the way of the dodo, I'd rather see their churches come under other ACNA dioceses than depart from ACNA altogether. I guess if they prefer to leave altogether, then they never were truly with us Anglicans in spirit. Surely (well, I hope) not all C4SO parishes have rectors as heterodox as their bishop sounds like he is. We might be painting with an overly broad brush, although maybe not; we just don't know for sure. Let us pray that our brethren will be led in the proper direction and not stray further away.