Prestigious appointment for Down & Dromore rector
The Standing Committee of the General Synod has appointed the Revd Dr Maurice Elliott as a Church of Ireland member of the Anglican Consultative Council. The Anglican Consultative Council is an instrument of the Anglican Communion alongside the Primates' Meeting and the Lambeth Conference.
Dr Elliott is currently Rector of Shankill Parish, Lurgan in the Diocese of Dromore. Prior to ordination he worked for a time within the Scottish Episcopal Church and has a personal interest in ministry in the Anglican Church in Uganda and the Anglican Church in Chile.
Speaking after the appointment was announced Dr Elliott said: "I count it an enormous privilege to have been elected to represent the Church of Ireland along with Miss Kate Turner (Connor Diocese) whose term of office will end at the next meeting. I greatly look forward to this, not least for the reason that ACC 14 is to take place in Jamaica. The meeting however is not scheduled to take place until 2009!"
The ACC was established out of the 1968 Lambeth Conference and since then it has met on 13 occasions in various locations all around the world. According to its constitution, the purposes of the ACC are to facilitate co-operation amongst the member churches of the Anglican Communion, to share information about developments among provinces, to advise on inter-Anglican relationships, to develop agreed policies in world mission, to guide Anglican participation in world ecumenism and to serve as an instrument of common action. As a result, the agenda of any ACC meeting ranges through issues of theology, liturgy, finance, ecology, environment, ethics, young people and communication, all of which are firmly grounded in both bible study and corporate worship.
Traditionally the ACC has been seen as one of the instruments of unity for world Anglicanism alongside the Lambeth Conference and the Primates' Meeting. It is interesting to note that at its most recent meeting in Nottingham in 2005 a resolution was adopted that in future it should be referred to as an instrument of communion, and not unity. It is evident that the thinking of the Windsor Report concerning the wider crisis within Anglicanism lies behind this change.