DON ARMSTRONG ON TITUS 1:9
4/20/07
Don Armstrong Says:
April 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Not that this is particularly relevant to this thread, but I do want to make clear a couple of matters concerning ACI.
The confusion concerning ACI’s own funding by my parish is born out of an single action taken by a vestry trying to fight a full frontal attack by the Diocese of Colorado (that included my own inhibition and absence from the system) and people writing on blogs whose major source of information is bad newspaper reporting.
The goal of the Diocese of Colorado has been and continues to be my own ruin as a human being, the destruction of my family, and the end of the ACI. Collateral damage is Grace Church–but what is that to an already dying institution. This is obvious on every level to anyone with half their brain tied behind their head.
In the midst of this, the vestry did not want to leave dangling $170,000 that had been spent by ACI since 2003 and thus categorized it as a loan–when in fact by resolution in 2003 the vestry had previously decided to fund ACI with money restricted from the diocese by parishioners–and by the Diocese’s own determination had to be used beyond the parish.
So ACI owes the parish nothing. All ACI funds were spent for flying the ACI team literally around the world–and the individual members of the team received no personal pay for their time, which was considerable.
The original Anglican Institute did continue some of its ongoing work under ACI, but that was an extension of parish ministry and not part of the brief of the ACI Fellows–whose work we funded so it could be free of the worries of administration and not influenced by the fund raising politics surrounding the current debates in the church.
ACI funds were never given to my children as scholarships–the full explanation of the scholarship assistance I received, about which inquiring minds need to know, will just have to wait until the vestry has completed their report. It is interesting to know that one of my biggest critics on this website has three children who themselves have received significant scholarships from Grace Church.
Folks are making far more out of a simple parish in a small town trying to do good things for the sake of Christ’s Church. If more people put their shoulders to the plow and wrote checks to the alphabet soup organizations instead of worrying about things that are none of their concern, we might as conservatives have not become marginalized to the fringe.
I commend everyone involved with ACI for their courage and effort. I can tell you these are selfless and good men sacrificing much for the kingdom.
Because I no longer share the hope of those involved in the ACI project–I have removed myself from that fellowship so that my own actions won’t confuse people about ACI’s work. Certainly I wish them well as we have been good friends and shared in the theological wars literally all over the world. I will also continue to read what they write as valuable input to a much longer discernment in which we will all be involved.
