The Southeast Network of PEARUSA will fold its 20 congregations into existing Anglican Church in North American dioceses, its bishop the Rt. Rev. David Bryan announced last month. At the close of the meeting of the network’s clergy at the Church of the Apostles in Columbia, South Carolina, Bishop Bryan released a statement on 8 Feb 2016 saying the “best way forward for our network” was to “move fully and solely under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church in North America. This means that the current Missionary District of PEAR, of which we are a part, will come to end in June, 2016.” Comprising churches in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and North and South Carolina, the Southeast Network will join local geographically ordered dioceses but form a interdiocesan convocation that would maintain its roots in the Church of Rwanda. Bishop Bryan said he “would submit” himself to the “authority of each of these diocesan bishops and serve our churches and new plants as a suffragan or assisting bishop.” Bishop Bryan stated that he hoped the decision to subordinate the network’s ecclesiastical claims to jurisdiction to the wider needs of the ACNA would be something “we can model … to the wider church which is already struggling with the issue of overlapping jurisdictions and at the same time safeguard our own affinity and commitments developed over many years.”
