What does it mean to shape the future of the church as a woman in leadership? That question guided Shaping the Future, a retreat organized by the Niagara School of Missional Leadership (NSML) on Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17 at St. Mark’s Anglican Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
The gathering brought women together for prayer, reflection, fellowship and conversation about the opportunities and challenges of leadership in the church. With a focus on both lay and ordained ministry, the retreat invited participants to consider how women’s gifts and experiences can help shape the church’s future. The 50th anniversary of women’s ordination to the priesthood in the Anglican Church of Canada provided an important historical backdrop, but the conversation looked beyond milestones to the work of leadership, mentorship and mutual encouragement that continues today.
The retreat began on Friday night with a wine and cheese social followed by a compline led by Nicola Zhang, rector of St. Michael’s in Hamilton. Dena Thomas, rector of St. John the Divine, Cayuga, opened Saturday’s program with a service of morning prayer.
Bishop Susan Bell reflected on the theme of this gathering with a lecture titled “Shaping the Future: Women’s Leadership in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Church Universal.” Drawing on Scripture and church history, she reflected on the women who helped shape the early Christian community, including Mary Magdalene, who was sent to tell the apostles about the Resurrection, and Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla and Lydia, whose leadership and ministry are described in the New Testament.
“The real historical puzzle here is not how women’s leadership got into the church. It was there from the beginning,” Bishop Bell said. “The real historical puzzle is how it got edited out, and who did the editing, and why it took the rest of us the better part of two thousand years to notice.”
Bishop Bell also reflected on the history of women’s ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada. On November 30, 1976, six women were ordained to the priesthood in four dioceses. Two of them, Canon Beverley Shanley and Mary Lucas, were ordained at Grace Church in St. Catharines.
The anniversary, she emphasized, belongs to the whole church. Women’s leadership had long been essential to parish life through roles such as Sunday school superintendents, altar guild directors, synod delegates, and parish administrators.
“Ordination gave a small number of women a new office. It did not invent women’s leadership in our church,” she said.
Che Marville, Archbishop Linda Nicholls, Bishop Susan Bell, Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, and Beth Green
The retreat also included a time for individual and group reflection with prompts developed by Monica Romig Green, diocesan faith formation coordinator. A Eucharist, presided over by Bishop Susan, with Archbishop Linda Nicholls, former primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, preaching, nourished all those in attendance. There was also a panel discussion featuring Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, past president of the Canadian Council of Churches and retired director for Unity and Order for the Anglican Communion; Dr. Beth Green, president of the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto; Che Marville, CEO of Ellivram Group of Companies; and Archbishop Nicholls. Participants later gathered in small groups to reflect on women’s leadership and consider how they might help shape the church’s future.
For Hannah Keller, registrar for NSML, the retreat demonstrated the value of creating opportunities for women in ministry to connect.
“The overwhelming success of this retreat really shows that there’s a hunger in this diocese for events and programs geared specifically towards women,” Keller said. “It also demonstrated to us the impact of providing a space and time for women ministry leaders to nourish themselves spiritually and connect with those who share their experiences.”
Emily Hill, parish development missioner for the Diocese of Niagara and an NSML steering committee member, said the retreat was intended to be a life-giving space for women to rest, pray, share, laugh and enjoy fellowship.
“Hearing the room abuzz with conversation over lunch, seeing women praying together in small groups, and watching the attentive faces as Bishop Susan spoke, I felt such joy and gratitude that we could provide this space for women to connect, be encouraged, and grow together,” Hill said.
The retreat invited participants to look beyond the milestone of women’s ordination and consider how women’s leadership, in all its forms, can continue to shape the Church.
“Shaping the future is not a project we finish and file away,” Bishop Bell said. “It is a discipline, practised meeting by meeting, mentorship by mentorship, for about as long as any of us will be alive to practise it.”
