But leaving the diocese didn't mean leaving behind its missionary mandate.

"We've always seen ourselves as a church plant," said Bill Glasgow, who serves as warden to Holy Cross pastor Rev. James Wagner.

Two years after the events of December 2003, the congregation numbers upwards of 50 people who continue to gather each Sunday for worship in Abbotsford's Matsqui Recreation Centre. They may look more like a nondenominational community church than the typical Anglican congregation, but that's to be expected for a community that's part of the emerging face of Anglicanism in North America.

"We're Anglican in substance but not in name," Wagner said, noting that the parish is a member of the Anglican Communion in New Westminster, which currently has no official bishop. But banishment from the strictures traditional hierarchies impose has inspired Holy Cross to interpret its vocation in Abbotsford through ministries such as Street Hope, an outreach program to those living on and working the streets of Abbotsford's inner core. During the week, church members meet for discipleship courses and to discuss parenting issues in a coffee shop at the heart of one of the fastest growing cities in Canada.

And in January, Holy Cross will launch Ultimate Fitness at the Matsqui Recreation Centre, a program designed to serve those seeking both physical fitness and teaching in their political, sexual and spiritual lives.

These ministries have provided fodder for discussions surrounding a vision statement Holy Cross is drafting for itself, Glasgow said. The questions participants are asking are different from what he suspects they would have been asking two years ago.

"It's really been helpful for us because we're asking questions like, 'What does God want us to do? Where does God want to take us with this church?'" Glasgow said. "[Two years ago] we were saying 'What does the bishop want us to do? Maybe we should ask the bishop what kind of church he wants us to be.'"

Though members of Holy Cross recognize the importance of episcopal leadership, Glasgow is glad Holy Cross is now free from what he considers "Biblically revisionist diocesan priorities and programs." Members now focus on serving God in their community rather than fighting a diocesan agenda he believes was "leading the diocese out of the Anglican Communion."

An art camp this past summer drew dozens of neighbourhood children to two one-week programs that gave kids a chance to develop both relationships and art skills. Though Bible stories were the basis for the program, the emphasis was on practical outreach in a neighbourhood with a high number of immigrants and significant levels of substance abuse.

"There's a great need to reach school children," Holy Cross warden Glory Gerevas said. She notes that the program not only reached children, it attracted instructors who had been raised Anglican but hadn't attended church for years.

For Wagner, who began life in a Lutheran home in Lima, Ohio with no thought of ordination, practical forms of outreach have long been integral to his approach to ministry.

Several years ago he ran a 24-bed shelter for homeless people in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Many of the people at the shelter were there because they lacked relationships that could have prevented them from being homeless, Wagner said.

He subsequently spent three months in Nigeria where he saw a church that was adding a million members a year.

In between, he became an Anglican and in 1997 was ordained.

Though similar in many ways to the Lutheran church in which he was raised, the Anglican church helped Wagner make sense of his diverse experiences of Christianity. While one might expect Wagner to be disappointed that Holy Cross now operates independently of its parent diocese, he said it has become a witness to what the Anglican church can be, rather than what it is not.

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