Ecclesiastical Province of Canada: David Edwards elected new Metropolitan
By Sue Careless
IT IS COMMON knowledge that a bishop is spiritually responsible for a diocese. What is not as well known is that the thirty dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada are also grouped or clustered into four ecclesiastical provinces and that each province is headed by a metropolitan.
On June 16th it was announced that the members of the provincial synod for the most easterly cluster of dioceses, known as the Ecclesiastical Province of Canada, had elected Bp David Edwards to be their new metropolitan. To be elected in that particular province, a bishop needs a majority of all three houses (lay, clergy, bishops). Edwards won on the third electronic ballot.
He succeeds Archbishop Ron Cutler, bishop of the Diocese of Nova Scotia & Prince Edward Island, who retires at the end of July. (The metropolitan usually is addressed as an archbishop.) With COVID-19 restrictions in place, there is not yet any plan for an installment.
The Archbishop-elect has been the Bishop of Fredericton (which covers the civil province of New Brunswick) since 2014. As metropolitan he will now oversee seven dioceses: Western Newfoundland, Central Newfoundland, Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador, Fredericton, Nova Scotia and PEI, Quebec and Montreal.
Edwards was born and educated in Shropshire, England and studied at Loughborough University and Homerton College Cambridge. He taught high school history before completing diplomas in Religious and Evangelism Studies followed by a Master of Arts in Applied Theology at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Both prior to and following his ordination in 1995, Bishop Edwards served in parish ministry in the Diocese of Chelmsford, including as Bishop’s Advisor in Evangelism.
In 1998 with his wife Janet, he immigrated to New Brunswick to be Principal of Taylor College of Evangelism. He was a Church Army officer (as was Janet) and the college was the national training centre for the Church Army (now Threshold Ministries) at the time. He has also served at St Mark’s, known as the “Stone Church,” in Saint John, as Parish Development Officer for the Diocese of Fredericton and as Vice-Chair of Safe Harbour Transitional Youth Services in Saint John.
In 2015 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Divinity from Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, and now serves on the College’s Board of Trustees. He also serves on the Board of Governors of St Stephen’s University in St Stephen, New Brunswick, and on behalf of the Anglican Church of Canada, as Liaison Bishop to Mission to Seafarers Canada. He is also the Episcopal Visitor to the Anglican Communion Alliance. In 2019 he was elected to the Council of General Synod.
Janet Edwards died in 2018 and in early 2020 Bp. Edwards married Debbie Collicott.
For the past five years he has taught at the St Michael’s Youth Conference and during the current pandemic has given brief, daily video talks to his diocese. He enjoys reading, walking and – as a spectator – British football, which we in Canada call soccer.
Edwards believes that the first function of a bishop is “to provide a point of unity for the diocese; everything else flows from this.” For him, episcopal ministry is sustained “by prayer and worship.” He maintains that the bishop should lead in three areas: “pastoral care to both clergy and laity, to be responsible for the administration of the diocese, and to lead in mission.”
Also, the bishop is to be “a role model for clergy and others in self-care and to be concerned about the self-care of others.”
He admitted that it is difficult to have a clear vision for the Province at present because it is unclear what the effects of the pandemic will be:
“[W]e are likely to be more supportive of each other across the dioceses in the future, in particular with development of mutual mission and ministry models. It is likely we will have to revise our provincial vision in order to help us all to adapt to whatever the ‘new normal’ will be.”
The other three metropolitans are Abp. Anne Germond, Province of Ontario (7 dioceses); Abp. Greg Kerr-Wilson, Province of Rupert’s Land (10 dioceses); and Abp. Melissa Skelton, Province of British Columbia and Yukon (6 dioceses).
Over all four metropolitans is the Primate, Abp. Linda Nichols, who was elected in July 2019 as the national leader of the ACC. TAP
