CANN Anglican News has an interview with David Crawley, Archibishop of the Anglican Church in BC and the Yukon. The focus of the interview is on the same sex blessing ceremonies that are a hot topic in Canadian Anglican circles. I found the insousance of the Bishop's attitude in this passage to be noteworthy:

INT: --and some churches now looking to other-- uh-- to other leaders?

ADC: Well, the Anglican Church of Canada is a geographically-based church; that is to say our dioceses are geographical areas, and our parishes are geographical areas-- and a parish cannot leave the Anglican Chuch as a whole body-- we are not a congregational church. The members of a parish-- en masse or part of them, and in the eight parishes or seven parishes that are disaffected by this in the Diocese of New Westminster, there are people in every parish who do not approve of what their parishes are doing. Now, uh, those people could choose to leave, but they can't take the parish with them. D'you see what I mean?

They can't-- a parish can't leave the Anglican Church. The members can, but the parish itself can't go, so--

But if there's no members left in that church--
ADC: [interrupts] Yeah, but there will be always-- there are all of these places have people that are there. But you see, the churches don't belong to the parish, they belong to the, to the community of the church-- they don't belong to the congregation. The congregation at any given moment, by and large, isn't the one that built the church, and sustained it's life for however long it's life has been-- it's the congregation of the moment.
Now, there's-- there are seven parishes that are Now, there's-- there are seven parishes that are upset about this, that are disaffected, that feel that it's the wrong thing to do and are withdrawing their money from the diocese and so on, and that's very sad that that has happened, and it's very sad that they're seeking jurisdiction outside the Diocese. But in order to get jurisdiction outside the diocese, they-- they will have to leave the Anglican Church of Canada, those members who do, who wish it--

INT: [jumps in] Archb--

Is the Anglican church doing so well that it can afford to lose seven entire congregations? Having been involved in several of these cases, I wonder if the denominational leadership doesn't look at the whose thing as a good news/good news situation. If the congregation stays, great - the denomination gets it tithes. If it leaves, the denomination gets the property and can sell the property to fund the pension plan. [Or it can rent former church facilities to strip joints for $8,000 a month like San Francisco's Glide Memorial United Methodist.] The hierarchy gets richer, until its composed of a few like minded progressives.