The Diocese of Kansas and its largest parish recently announced an amicable separation agreement which calls for Christ Church, Overland Park, to pay $1 million over the next 10 years to retain its property, and for the clergy and parish to be relieved of canonical obligation to the Episcopal Church. Left unresolved is whether the parish will later affiliate with another province of the Anglican Communion.

“We’re looking to the wider Church to come to a broader consensus on these issues,” the Rt. Rev. Dean E. Wolfe, Bishop of Kansas, told The Living Church.

Christ Church was organized in a Kansas City suburb as a parish of the Diocese of Kansas in the 1950s and grew to be one of the Episcopal Church’s largest, with an average Sunday attendance of more than 1,000, according to its 2002 parochial report. Shortly before his Nov. 8, 2003, consecration, Bishop Wolfe said the rector of Christ Church informed him that as a consequence of the New Hampshire consecration, the parish would not be sending its $190,000 contribution to the diocese and by extension the program portion of the General Convention budget in 2004. Instead it would forward an amount agreed to by individuals of the parish.

That decision placed the burden of funding the diocese on its other churches, many of which have fewer than 100 members and exist in rural, struggling areas of the state. A long series of conversations ensued between representatives of the parish and diocese. Gradually both sides came to the realization, Bishop Wolfe said, that they were not talking about reconciliation, but separation. The parish is scheduled to vote on the proposal April 3.

A new entity, named Christ Church, will assume the current $1.75 million mortgage debt of the parish and purchase its assets from the diocese over the next 10 years for $1 million. Christ Church will cease to claim any affiliation with the Diocese of Kansas and the Episcopal Church. The diocese will release Christ Church and some of its clergy from their obligations to the Episcopal Church.

Left unresolved in the agreement is whether the new Christ Church will affiliate with another Anglican Communion province. Christ Church has long-established ties with the Anglican Church of Uganda and its primate, the Most Rev. Henry Orombi. Archbishop Orombi agreed with the terms of a communiqué from last month’s primates meeting [TLC, March 20] which called for no new crossings of diocesan borders by bishops to provide sacramental ministries. Archbishop Orombi has made it plain, however, that he will respect that aspect of the communiqué only as long as the Episcopal Church respects the parts of the communiqué addressed to it.