Canon Minns Elected Missionary Bishop for Church of Nigeria

From The Living Church
6/28/2006

The Rev. Canon Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church, Fairfax, Va., was elected a missionary bishop for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a missionary initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, during a June 27-28 meeting of the House of Bishops in Abuja.

“We have deliberately held back from this action until now because of our hope that The Episcopal Church USA would heed the cry of the Anglican Communion as expressed in the essential elements of the Windsor Report and the Dromantine Communiqué,” said the Most Rev. Peter Akinola, Primate of Nigeria, in a press release. “The elections and actions of their 75th General Convention, however, make it clear that far from turning back they are even more committed to pursuing their unbiblical revisionist agenda.

“We believe we are continuing the tradition of missionary bishops that has always been an essential part of Anglicanism and which the Church of Nigeria has embraced in response to the 1988 Lambeth Conference Call for a Decade of Evangelism.”

Canon Minns was informed of his election by telephone at 10:15 a.m., today.

“I’m thrilled and honored that they have put this kind of trust in me,” Canon Minns told The Living Church.

Canon Minns said his episcopal election was one of several to occur during the meeting of the Nigerian House of Bishops. All of the other bishops-elect are for dioceses in Nigeria, he said. Canon Minns said several months before his election he had informed his parish of his intention to resign and that a search process is already underway to find his successor as rector.

“I made it clear to them that I felt it was time for them to get a new rector,” he said. “The vestry has asked me to stay on until the new person is in place.”

The Rt. Rev. Peter J. Lee, Bishop of Virginia, according to Canon Minns, is already aware of the plans for what Canon Minns described as a “coadjutor process for a rector.” He was not aware where or when his consecration and ordination as a missionary bishop in the Church of Nigeria was to take place, explaining that the Church of Nigeria typically goes through about a week of further discernment after an episcopal election.