During a commissioning ceremony at Lambeth Palace, Archbishop Canterbury Rowan Williams urged Janette O’Neill, USPG’s new chief executive, to surprise and engage the Church of England with new ideas for world mission.
Janette becomes the first woman to lead USPG, and the society’s first lay person at the top in nearly 300 years.”
This is where God has placed you in love and trust,” Archbishop Williams told O’Neill during the ceremony last week.
U.K.-based USPG works in direct partnership with Anglican churches in more than 50 countries, supporting their efforts in healthcare, education, leadership training and action for social justice, according to the organization’s website.
USPG stands for the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and was founded in 1701 by the Rev. Thomas Bray (as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts) to send priests to the American colonies to provide English colonists with access to the worship of the Church of England.
O’Neill was the US Episcopal Relief & Development’s senior program officer for Africa when she was appointed in late February. She began her work May 1.
In a homily that spelled out biblical qualities of leadership, the Archbishop urged O’Neill to have a prophetic vision and to “tell the truth with divine enthusiasm.”
“Whatever lies ahead in the management of this great historic fellowship that we love, we pray and trust that these gifts will be yours,” he said.
At a reception later, the archbishop said there was an opportunity for USPG and other mission agencies to surprise and engage the Church of England.
“For all the legacies, and the complications of colonialism, nevertheless our agencies can be grateful for what God has allowed them to achieve; God has allowed them to find ways of sustaining people [around the world] and to speak the words for God in their own tongue,” he said.
Archbishop Williams said that “this is a very key moment for the Church of England in thinking through how to join up its perspectives with the world church,” adding that the church must ask “difficult questions about how to make best use of this precious legacy of the mission agencies.”
Janette O’Neill said that she joins USPG “as it strides into the future, moving forward to support some of the most vulnerable and marginalized in our world — the people in the gap”.
“My hope is to bring together development and mission, and to be in partnership with our church partners around the world in doing that, so that the result will be transformation and change in communities,” she said.