ACN Launches “Good News Initiative” with Dr. Michael Green and Bishop Keith Ackerman on Leadership Team
The Anglican Communion Network (ACN) has formally launched its newest ministry initiative, the Good News Initiative, which will bring a renewed focus on evangelism to all its member dioceses, convocations and parishes. The initiative will focus on holding training events throughout the U.S. aimed at equipping local clergy and lay leaders to reach out effectively with the life-changing Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Rev. Cn. Dr. Michael Green has committed the remainder of 2007 to the Network as a chief trainer and head of the Good News Initiative’s core team.
The core team consists of Dr. Green and his wife Rosemary; the Rt. Rev. Keith Ackerman, bishop of the Network Diocese of Quincy; Ms. Carrie Boren, missioner for evangelism for the Network Diocese of Dallas; the Rev. Canon Daryl Fenton, ACN’s chief operating officer; and Mrs. Jenny Noyes, ACN’s coordinator of communications. The core team will also work closely with the Network’s other initiative directors, as the area of evangelism cuts across all ministries of the church, especially the areas of church planting and children & youth.
The Good News Initiative core team brings together an experienced group of leaders in evangelism. Dr. Green and his wife, both citizens of the United Kingdom, have been planting a new Anglican Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, for the past eighteen months. Author of over 50 books, Green has served as Principal of St. John’s Theological Seminary, Nottingham; Rector of St. Aldate’s Church in Oxford; Professor of Evangelism and Apologetics at Regent College, Vancouver; and on Springboard, an initiative of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York that is very similar to the Good News Initiative now being launched in the U.S. He was Advisor for Evangelism to the two English Archbishops. Before coming to the U.S., he served for eight years as Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University.
Bishop Ackerman, President of Forward in Faith North America, is passionate about evangelism and has years of experience as a speaker, leader, and pastor. Ackerman has served as a guardian of the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, England, where he has exercised a powerful preaching ministry. His lectures on evangelism at Chichester Seminary in England are the basis of a book by Ackerman and his wife Joann entitled To God Be the Glory which explores the role of priest as evangelist.
Boren, 36, studied under Green at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, receiving degrees in theology, evangelism and apologetics. Boren has been missioner for evangelism with the Diocese of Dallas for two years. In that time, she has helped identify and train a lay evangelist in every one of the 77 parishes in the diocese, using an effective one day course she created called “Evangelism 101.”
“Our small core team is like a microcosm of the Anglican church – young and old; male and female; low church and high church; evangelical, charismatic and catholic; lay and clergy,” said Fenton. “The excitement we feel is like a small Gideon band with a big job ahead of us. I think this excitement will begin to spread as God calls His church back to its mission of telling people about the life-changing power of knowing Jesus.”
The first Good News training event is scheduled for May 18–20, 2007 in El Paso, Texas, at the invitation of the Southwest Deanery of the Network Diocese of Rio Grande. This training event will include three days of evangelistic teaching, training and “hands-on” outreach, to put into practice the biblical mandate to “go into all the world.” The event will be held at the Pro Cathedral Church of St. Clement in El Paso.
Other local and regional events are being planned as dioceses, deaneries and parishes catch the vision for evangelism and realize the need to equip “laborers for the harvest.” Bishop Ackerman’s Diocese of Quincy is hosting a diocese-wide “Good News” evangelism training June 7–10 in the Quad Cities area on the Illinois-Iowa border. Network parish Christ Church in Savannah, Georgia, has offered to host a parish evangelism weekend in October. Training events targeting clergy, one general and one specifically geared toward young clergy, are also being planned.
“I am very keen to do as many of these local, regional and national training events as time and the good Lord will allow,” said Green, 76, who has 4 children and 14 grandchildren awaiting his return to the U.K. at year’s end.
The ACN will continue to publicize evangelism training events as details become firm. If you would like to host a training event, please contact Jenny Noyes at jnoyes@acn-us.org or call 412–325–8900.
Posted 2/20/07