Last update for this page: MAY 24, 2007
The view above is of the AFP office, located in St. George's (Crescentwood) Anglican Church, 168 Wilton St., Winnipeg, Manitoba
The office is open, Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. (except during the summer months). Telephone number is 204-475-5942. When office is closed, calls are recorded by our TAS - and replies are made a.s.a.p.
PRAYER REQUESTS are accepted by telephone.
There is a lending library, which includes not only books, but videos and audio tapes. There is no charge for this service.(see links below to full listing)
We have available, for reading on this site, a 6-page brochure entitled "Parish House Groups". It covers a general overview of what a House Group is, and answers some often-asked questions. To read it now, CLICK HERE.
TIME SENSITIVE NOTICE:
MEETING of the ANGLICAN FELLOWSHIP OF PRAYER --- Monday, JUNE 4, 2007
You are invited to this special meeting, taking place at St. George?s Anglican Church?Crescentwood,
beginning at 7 p.m. with dessert and coffee etc.
We will discuss what we are doing for General Synod, a Quiet Room including the Prayer Vigil for Synod,
and what AFP has done this past year.
St. Chad's rep is Ann Hunt.
Diocesan Rep's Report- 2003 Annual Meeting
"FAMILY PRAYER" - a Talk given by Nancy Phillips at the AFP Annual Meeting, May, 2002.
The AFP / Diocesan Resource Centre Catalog is now online.
All three sections are ready for viewing:
Click on section below to view
ANGLICAN FELLOWSHIP OF PRAYER
Even before Dr. Samuel M. Shoemaker came to Calvary Church, Pittsburgh, in the spring of 1952, God was laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer. In New York, his wife, Helen, and her friend Polly Wiley, were members of a small group of women who had met for prayer and study since the days of World War II. This group nurtured other groups, not only in New York, but elsewhere. There were Pittsburghers who were already aware of Dr. Sam from having read his books, and of his wife Helen through her schools of prayer. Thus, relationships were formed among members of other denominations as well as Episcopalians, before their arrival.
Because of these contacts, the Shoemakers' desire to make prayer groups a vital part of their ministry in Pittsburgh went forward quickly. By the December of 1953 there were nine active prayer groups whose roots were laid at Calvary: one at Harvard Yale Princeton Club, one at Trinity Cathedral, one at Homestead Works of Carnegie-Illinois Steel, and others in private homes. Over 125 members came together at a dinner meeting held at Calvary in the fall of that year.
Dr. Sam came to love Pittsburgh and in 1954 he gave us the vision to make Pittsburgh "a city as famous for God as it is for steel". While his emphasis was evangelism, his wife's was prayer. But there were other things to capture the attention of Pittsburghers going on at the time, as well as to people all over the country. Television enthralled us with "I Love Lucy", "What's My Line?" and Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now". Ike was in the White House, as Davy Crockett and Marilyn Monroe were "in" with the public. McCarthy and Welch held us spellbound as we watched them debate our basic freedoms on TV.
Perhaps because Helen Shoemaker was the daughter of Senator Alexander Smith, she never lost sight of what was going on in the world or how important it was to pray about the issues confronting our nation's leaders. Dr. Sam made use of the media by preaching over KDKA radio every Sunday night on "Faith At Work", and his sermons, "This Week's Word", were mailed out across the nation (eventually reaching over 3000 people) so that his voice and ministry became well known beyond the bounds of Calvary's pulpit.
By 1957, interest in prayer groups had grown to such a degree that Bishop Austin Pardue gave his consent to an annual Prayer Group Conference for those groups who wanted to come together to share and learn. The first such conference was held at Calvary Church in 1958 with 250 people attending. The Rt. Rev. Cuthbert Bardsley, Bishop of Coventry in England made this an unforgettable experience for those who attended. The second conference, held in 1959 with the Dean of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Very Rev. John Coburn as leader, was attended by 400 people. By 1960 there were 600 people who came to hear Bishop Marmion of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, and in that same year the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer came into being as an outgrowth of the Prayer Group Movement.
Bishop Pardue urged Helen Shoemaker to coordinate the movement under his banner, and out of it grew an international organization with Field Representatives in many States as well as Canada and England. Mrs. Alexander Wiley, Mrs. Alexander Wiener and Mrs. J. Herbert Smith, along with the Rev. William Bradbury, the Rev. Don Hultstrand, the Rev. Canon John Clough, and Bishops Bardsley, Pardue, Lichtenberger, Wilkinson and Wright were, among others, actively engaged, with Helen, as founders of the AFP. The Advisory Board consisted of twenty bishops, including our Presiding Bishop, Arthur Lichtenberger, and the Archbishop of York, England, Frederick D. Coggan.
The Pittsburgh artist, Janet DeCoux, was commissioned to design an emblem for the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer. The emblem depicts the world, held in praying hands and raised to the Holy Spirit, which is represented by a Dove descending toward the world.
Under the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer many were encouraged to enjoy prayer and study groups, to learn about intercessory prayer and to partnership with others in prayer. Retreats and quiet days sprung up around the country, and indeed in other parts of the world, under the AFP leadership. Once again we were taught and encouraged to lift up in prayer our political leaders and to pray about the issues in our nation and the world, as well as in our personal lives.
When Bishop Bardsley returned to Pittsburgh in 1961 to conduct the fourth conference, a thousand people from 17 dioceses attended. Those who came went home spiritually renewed and refreshed and with new enthusiasm for sharing with others. On April 7, 1962, the fifth conference was led by the Rt. Rev. Frederick Wilkinson, the Lord Bishop of Toronto, and brought together people from 21 dioceses. Forty-three parishes of the Diocese of Pittsburgh participated in a great service of Corporate Communion which opened the conference with a powerful impact, as it was celebrated at the great central altar and the two side altars of Calvary Church.
At the close of 1961 Sam Shoemaker retired to "Burnside", his boyhood home in Maryland, but he and Helen returned to conduct the annual Conference in March of 1963. On the eve of All Saints Day of that year, Dr. Sam was called to his true Home in paradise.
The year brought the assassination of President Kennedy and ushered in the decade of the '60's, marked by the Beatles, hippies and Flower Children protesting the war in Vietnam; by black emergence at great costs ¾ including the loss of Martin Luther King, and yet great accomplishments in America's space program. There was much to hold up in prayer.
In 1964 Bishop Jones came from West Texas to Pittsburgh to lead the Conference. He gave our clergy time to sit down and share both their positive and negative experiences with him, a significant opportunity for them. Bishop Bardsley returned to lead a packed Calvary Church at the eighth conference in 1965. Our Roman Catholic neighbours invited us to hold seminars across the street at Sacred Heart Church. The late, beloved African Bishop Festo Kivengere, then studying for the ministry, was among those leading the seminars.
Three Virginia Dioceses co-hosted the 10th annual Prayer Conference at St. Paul's in Richmond, conducted once again by the now retired Lord Bishop of Toronto, Bishop Wilkinson. The 11th Conference was back at Calvary with Pittsburgh's new bishop, Robert Appleyard, as conductor. When one reads the Newsletter from the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer in these latter years of the '60's, it is apparent that prayer conferences were going on in many places, including Detroit (1966) and Toronto (1968). By 1969 there were 8000 mailings of the Newsletter.
In 1969 Bishop Bardsley wrote, "You will be delighted to know that the Lambeth Conference was quite wonderfully dipped in prayer ... It was this tremendous emphasis on prayer which made the Lambeth Conference infinitely better than either of the two previous Conferences that I have attended."
Bishop Bardsley had just become the Chairman of the International Executive Committee of the AFP and was also conductor of the 12th annual Prayer Conference, held at the Church of St. John the Divine in Houston, Texas on October 24-25, 1969, with the theme "Prayer and Action".
During the General Convention in 1970, the AFP co-sponsored a Fellowship of Prayer Booth with the Order of St. Luke and the Daughters of the King and the impact of their prayer support was felt and acknowledged by those attending the Convention, doing much to dispel antagonism between opposing factions. In the Spring of 1971 the 13th Conference was held at St. Andrew's Church in Kansas City, Missouri, with Pittsburgh's retired Bishop, Austin Pardue, as conductor.
To help celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Diocese of Albany, Bishop Allen Brown invited the 1972 AFP Prayer Conference to be held there. Eighteen hundred people attended this conference where Bishop Cuthbert Bardsley said, "God is not the Great Judge, the Schoolmaster, the Big Policeman. He is not the Great Conscience. He is the Great Lover who never lets us down, never lets us off, and never lets us go." The banquet speakers were Mr. & Mrs. Harry Griffith, and it is Harry Griffith who is now the Executive Director of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer.
On to Orlando, Florida, the Conference moved in 1973, with people coming from as far away as Sweden to hear Catherine Marshall LeSourd who was the banquet speaker and the Rt. Rev. C. Kilmer Myers, Bishop of California, Conference leader. The 16th Annual AFP International Conference, held at Gethsemane Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, featured two gifted preachers: Bishop Gaskell and Bishop Pardue. And in the summer of 1974 we read in the AFP Newsletter of other conferences on prayer being held in Jamaica, in New York, Michigan and Maryland. God's work was still growing.
The Rt. Rev. Albert W. Van Duzer of the Diocese of New Jersey hosted the 17th annual Conference at Atlantic City. Bishop James W. Montgomery of Chicago was the main speaker, and a former Pittsburgher, the Rt. Rev. David K. Leighton of Maryland addressed the banquet. By now, Don Hultstrand was Chairman of the International Board, and the format of Renewal shared within small groups, Evangelism as outgoing communication and the Ecumenical attitude of the AFP, were still firmly in place. At this Conference, Helen Shoemaker and Polly Wiley, founders and co-directors of the AFP, turned over the directorship to Don Hultstrand.
In 1976, the Bicentennial Year of our nation, the annual AFP Conference was held in Philadelphia with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. John M. Allin officiating and Senator Mark Hatfield as the opening speaker. Bishop Allin called for prayer for the General Convention, also held that year, calling prayer "our chief work". The following year found Bishop John Coburn back to conduct the 19th Conference in Los Angeles. Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie was the banquet speaker.
In 1978 the Conference was held in Detroit with Bishop Bardsley, now retired, as the principal speaker. His theme was 'Prayer in Action', and he sent the conferees out into the streets of downtown Detroit to speak with Detroiters about what their concerns were for their city and about the power of prayer. Don Hultstrand left the leadership of the AFP in 1979 and Harry C. Griffith, who as a layman had worked with his wife Emily in many different areas of the AFP, became the executive director.
| -1980 | Three outstanding speakers headed the Conference in New Haven, Connecticut: Bishop Festo Kivengere of Uganda, Bishop Alexander Stewart of Western Massachusetts, and Rosalind Rinker, a well known writer and speaker. |
| -1981 | Indianapolis, Indiana brought together Bishop Bardsley as the opening speaker and Madeleine L'Engle who gave the banquet address. Dr. Charles Price from Virginia Theological Seminary gave the keynote lectures. |
| -1982 | At the General Convention of New Orleans, the House of Bishops unanimously endorsed the works of the AFP and Pewsaction as uniting clergy and lay people in prayer. Toronto hosted the International Conference, with Bro. Bernard Franciscan. |
| -1987 | The Conference held at Ridgecrest Conference Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, was planned as a training session of prayer, with its leader the Rt. Rev. Donald M. Hultstrand, Bishop of Springfield. Keynoter was Canon Herbert O'Driscoll of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, while M. Verna Dozier, educator, led daily Bible study. |
| -1988 | Montreal hosted the 30th Anglican Fellowship of Prayer Conference with the theme "Prayer Releases God's Mighty Power". The keynote speaker was Bishop Patrick Harris, known for his worldwide training of lay people. |
| Anne H. Gross | |||||||
| Nancy B. Grove |
