Good Ground, Stony Places

The ACNA's first annual impact report tells donors all about the garden. It says almost nothing about the courtroom.

By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org  November 4, 2026

Jesus told of a sower who went out to sow. Some seed fell by the wayside, some on stony places, some among thorns, and some on good ground. The Anglican Church in North America has borrowed the last image for its inaugural annual impact report, Good Ground: Giving Thanks for Provision in Season. It would have done better to study all four soils.

The report runs to 24 glossy pages and was posted on the provincial website in May. The file name still reads "Draft 3." It is handsomely designed and pleasant to read, with photographs of smiling planters and verses from 2 Corinthians 9 framing every section. Read closely, it is also a gloss: a fundraising brochure dressed as an accountability document, written in the dialect of the nonprofit consultancy and seasoned with the language of Zion.

What Deserves Applause

Credit first, because credit is due.

The Falls Church Anglican became a fourth-generation planting church in January when the Church of the Holy Comforter opened in Hyattsville, Maryland. The Falls Church planted Restoration in 2009, Restoration planted Incarnation in 2015, and Incarnation has now planted Holy Comforter. Few congregations anywhere reproduce even once.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, Church of the Redeemer had wandered between rented halls for fifteen years. Then a closing Lutheran congregation, St. Stephanus (LCMS), offered them its historic building for one dollar. In Tuscaloosa, a two-year-old plant has filled with Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans and Burmese, the Global South gathered at a university altar in Alabama. Thirteen dioceses now have Clergy Care Funds for priests facing medical bills and rent shortfalls. ACNA priests serve as Chief of Chaplains of the Navy (Rear Admiral Carey Cash) and Acting Chief of Chaplains of the Army (Col. Rich West).

Set against the Episcopal Church, which has been shedding worshippers for half a century, the ACNA is still a church where something is happening. That is not a small thing, and I do not say otherwise.

The Growth Nobody Is Measuring Out Loud

The report speaks of "modest but steady growth" and puts average Sunday attendance at "98,000+." Modest it is. Steady it is not.

In 2023 the ACNA reported attendance of 84,794, then its highest ever. For 2024 the Province reported a 13.4 percent increase. For 2025, by the Province's own June announcement, growth fell to 1.5 percent. The report does not mention this. It gives no year-on-year comparison at all.

Jeff Walton of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, who has tracked ACNA numbers year after year, reported on October 29 that a data analyst has since revised the 2024 baseline downward. That lifts the 2025 increase to 2.55 percent, from 96,009 to 98,514. Walton is fair-minded about it. That rate puts the ACNA alongside the PCA and the Assemblies of God among the few American denominations still growing, and all but four dioceses grew. But he also calls it what it is: a slowdown after three straight years of double-digit gains.

Note, too, what the revisions reveal. The ACNA's 2024 attendance has now been reported as 96,148, then 97,032, then 96,009. Three numbers for one year, in a report that boasts of "higher-quality data." The Province's companion Mission Index, released at Tulsa, adds another sobering figure: 48 percent of ACNA churches have fewer than 50 people on a Sunday.

Congregations tell a similar story. In 2023 the province counted 1,013. This report counts 1,005 parishes. If the two counts are comparable, the ACNA has fewer congregations today than it did two years ago, and this in a report whose centrepiece is church planting. Even the new Diocese of the Mid-South, admitted at Tulsa in June, needed a waiver from the Executive Committee because it fell short of the minimum number of congregations. Its attendance was healthy; its parish count was not.

None of this is a catastrophe. But a province that has staked its identity on growth ought to tell its donors plainly when the growth slows.

Soilwork and the Sovereignty of God

The theological architecture of the report is something called "Good Ground," launched by Archbishop Steve Wood in June 2025 and carried on by Bishop Julian Dobbs. Local churches, we are told, do "seedwork." The Province does "soilwork," nurturing "the conditions necessary for natural growth to occur."

The soilwork turns out to be five strategic pillars, an annual "primary strategic deliverable," the Province's "first-ever central CRM system," a password management system, a searchable ministry database and more than 85 new policies and charters. The staff page lists an MBA from Georgetown, a CPA, and executives with "20+ years" in the corporate and nonprofit sectors.

There is nothing wrong with competent administration. A church does not need a password manager to be holy, though it may need one to be safe. But Paul's agricultural theology runs the other way: "I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase" (1 Corinthians 3:6). In Scripture the soil belongs to the Lord of the harvest. In this report it belongs to the provincial office in Bethel Park.

No policy manual ever produced a godly bishop.

One Paragraph for an Annus Horribilis

The ACNA has just lived through the worst year in its short history. The report gives that year a single paragraph. Bishop Dobbs writes of "allegations, trials, and discord, including the archbishop's pending trial and unresolved conflict with four episcopal members of the Chaplaincy," and then moves briskly on to the fruit. On the leadership page, beside Dobbs, sits a photograph of Archbishop Wood with four words beneath it: "Under Inhibition since Nov 2025."

That is the whole of it. Here is what has happened since the report went to print.

Bishop Derek Jones, former head of the chaplaincy jurisdiction, was found guilty by an ACNA court in August on all four charges against him, promoting schism among them, and referred to the College of Bishops for sentencing. His Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy is now suing the ACNA in federal court for trademark infringement and unfair competition. The report describes the successor Special Jurisdiction as "successfully integrated" into the Provincial Office. It does not mention that the chaplaincy will supply 10 percent of provincial revenue in the coming year, which suggests the fight is about money as well as unity.

Archbishop Wood's trial ran from September 7 to 11 in Charleston, with 38 witnesses over five days. He faces charges of violating his ordination vows, abuse of ecclesiastical power and sexual immorality. The court has until December 21 to rule. On the eve of that trial, the Province brought misconduct charges against Bishop Chip Edgar of South Carolina, whose diocese had been among the most active in pressing the case against the archbishop.

Behind all of it lies the acquittal of Bishop Stewart Ruch last winter and the Province's subsequent hiring of the law firm Lathrop GPM to review how that case was handled.

A reader of Good Ground would learn almost none of this.

Transparency Deferred

The report praises the Province's Title IV reform for enhancing "integrity, transparency, and effectiveness." Consider what happened at Provincial Council.

The dioceses of South Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic brought resolutions calling for the release of the transcript of the Ruch trial. According to the Province's own June 20 release, the resolutions were withdrawn "in favor of dialogue." The revised Title IV canons, ratified by the Provincial Assembly on June 25, will make public church trials the norm, with some exceptions. They take effect on January 1, 2027. They will not apply to Archbishop Wood.

So the sunlight arrives just after the cases that most needed it.

The report also touts a new "Episcopal Election Customary to strengthen the vetting process for bishops." That is a tacit admission that the old process failed, and the most senior bishop it vetted is now awaiting a verdict. The canons have been rewritten. The culture that elected the men now in the dock has not yet been examined.

Follow the Money

The provincial budget for 2025–26 was $2,976,493: $1.88 million in diocesan tithes, $915,000 in raised funds, and the rest from events and other sources. Administration and development consumed 41 percent of spending; "strategic priorities" received 59 percent.

The report boasts that more than $500,000 was "restored to previously depleted cash reserves." Depleted by what? The report does not say. In a year of two episcopal trials, a third presentment, an external legal review and a federal lawsuit, it is a fair question for any donor to put to Bethel Park.

For FY27 the budget swells to $4.5 million, largely because grants and the chaplaincy now appear in the general operating budget. Grant revenue will supply 18 percent, anchored by a five-year, $10 million Anglican Formation Network partnership with Trinity Anglican Seminary. Heavy reliance on a few large funders is not the "diversified" stability the report claims.

Then there are the clergy. The report lists 1,758 priests and 618 deacons for some 98,000 Sunday worshippers: one ordained minister for every 41 people in the pews. The stories that illustrate the Clergy Care Funds are moving. There are priests who could not pay for medical and dental care, a retired priest short on rent, a bi-vocational planter who could not fix his car. They are also a warning. A church that ordains faster than it can feed its clergy is storing up trouble.

The Silences

What a report omits often tells you more than what it includes.

There is not a word about women's ordination, the question that has already deadlocked at least one episcopal election and divides the Province's Three Streams. There is not a word about GAFCON, the Global South or the Global Anglican Communion, though the ACNA owes its existence to the GAFCON Primates who recognized it in 2009. There is no statement of doctrine, no mention of Lambeth 1.10, and no defense of the faith once delivered.

And there is the Province's own data, which it presents as "opportunities." Only 45 percent of ACNA churches support cross-cultural mission. Only half serve their local communities. The report concedes "significant opportunities to grow in evangelism." For a church whose stated mission is "to reach all of North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ," that is a polite way of saying the main thing is not yet the main thing.

Draft 3

Smaller slips matter too, in a document that boasts of "professionalized staffing" and "higher-quality data." The Frederick, Maryland church-plant story dates Easter Sunday to "April 5, 2006." The clergy funds are "Clergy Care Funds" on one page and "Emergency Care Funds" on another. Affiliated ministries number "30+" on one page and "32+" on the next. One sentence promises insight into "who are leaders are."

These are proofreading errors, not scandals. But a province that wants to be trusted with the big things should be able to date Easter.

The Account We Must One Day Give

The report closes with the stewardship collect from the 2019 Book of Common Prayer, asking for grace to honor God with our substance, "remembering the account which we must one day give." It is the truest line in the document.

Our Lord did not tell the parable of the sower to flatter the sower. He told it to warn the hearers. The seed on stony places "forthwith sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: and when the sun was up, they were scorched." The seed among thorns was choked by "the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches."

The ACNA's growth is real. The question is depth. Quick growth with shallow roots withers when the sun comes up, and the sun is coming up in a Charleston courtroom.

Good ground is not cultivated by consultants. It is broken up by repentance, by bishops willing to be examined before they are elected and judged in the light rather than behind closed doors. The Province can count its parishes. It has yet to count the cost.

David W. Virtue, DD, is the founder, managing editor, and publisher of VirtueOnline. His writings can be accessed here: www.virtueonline.org His writings on the Middle East can be viewed here: davidvirtue2.substack.com