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Hallo again to all. This week we're celebrating Christmastide with all of you, but we're also celebrating ten years of Anglicans Online! (Note: All links in this letter will open a separate browser window, so you can keep reading without interruption.) Created in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on 27 December 1994, Anglicans Online has outlasted most dot-coms and many big-budget websites. For three years AO was under the inspired guidance of Tod Maffin, its founder. Cynthia McFarland took over the management in September 1997 and was soon joined by Brian Reid and a handful of other dedicated colleagues. We celebrated our fifth anniversary in 1999 and published a brief history at that milestone. And now we are 10. From the beginning, we've been assertively independent, unpaid, updated every week without fail, and relentlessly devoted to the Ecclesia Anglicana, to which, online, we have now devoted a good portion of our lives. A few stats. In 2004, AO had
Those are the numbers; now for some of the stories behind them. In the last fortnight we've received an abundance of letters from readers of AO about how they use this site. (We wish we could have published them all.) We're deeply honoured to learn something of what AO has enabled through the years. Late at night on Sunday when we're labouring on a new edition, the work can seem very 'unreal'. We wonder, 'Well, what's all this, then? We're not feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless... How much can this matter? Is this really helping advance the kingdom of heaven?' Mostly we push away those late-night maunderings and get on* with linking the next parish website or news story. But these last few weeks, many readers (bless you!) have enabled us to see something of what our work has enabled. We've
We'll end with a letter from a young man in the States named Joshua Matthew Shawnee, because the church is always one generation from extinction. If we've helped Joshua 'keep the faith', then we know our work has a life that will outlast ours. I'll put this briefly because I have a final exam in ten minutes. Anglicans Online has meant one thing for me: Thanks to each of you for being a part of our ten-year's journey. We hope you'll stay with us for the next 10! If you can help us by making a donation, in any amount, that would be splendid. Or perhaps you'd like some little item in our AO shop. But more important than gifts of money, we'd ask this: Tell your friends about AO. Keep reading. Keep praying. Keep loving. Keep the faith ... and keep being Anglican, in the best, truest, most large-hearted sense of the word. And we'll see you here next week, as always, online. All of us here at Anglicans Online -- Cynthia McFarland, Brian Reid, Simon Sarmiento, Gillian Barr, Peter Owen, Frederic McFarland, and Richard Mammana -- wish each of you a blessed AD 2005.
Last
updated: 26 December 2004 *Meister
Eckhardt: 'Wisdom is simply this: to do the next thing that has to be done,
to do it with all your heart, and to take delight in doing it'. |
This web site is independent. It is not official in any way. Our editorial staff is private and unaffiliated. Please contact editor@anglicansonline.org about information on this page. ©2004 Society of Archbishop Justus |