The Anglican Diocese of Huron has a new bishop. Rev. Todd Townshend was ordained last week, and spoke to London Morning host Rebecca Zandbergen Tuesday about his priorities.

Why is climate change one of your top priorities?

It's probably the most urgent thing over the long haul, over the next couple of decades. I'm interested generally in environments for people and all of creation to live in. So everything from that macro environment, of the whole earth, to the environment of a workplace, the environment of a family, internal environment. But this is the one in which we all live. And it's been urgent for a long time. Human beings have had quite a negative impact and a positive impact on the world. But this is starting to get to a point where it's an emergency.

What can the bishop do to make this a top priority?

Well this role is a ministry where you have some influence. But it really is like other leadership positions, getting people to move in a certain direction if they agree to. So internally, in the life of the church, to change our habits is a very difficult thing to do. It's a large group of people – it's spread out … into small communities – but they can have local impact. Together it's a voice that could contribute.

The Anglican Diocese of Huron has a new bishop. Newly appointed Bishop Todd Townshend tells London Morning tackling climate change is his top priority. 7:24

What are some of your other top priorities?

One of the things that has happened in religious life in North America and in Western Europe especially in North America, is that the value of a religious life, of a faith life, has become less important to more and more people. So there's fewer people involved. But it does provide an opportunity for churches and other communities to rethink their central purpose. So one of the priorities for me is to get people who are either long-time Christians and Anglicans, or are new to it, to consider the central things: to have a focus on the mystery of God in life, how faith is beneficial, what a community is like, and how it's different from much of the society around them.

I would agree that in traditional churches, you know your membership is going down. But we do see these giant evangelical churches doing quite well. Why do you think people are moving in that direction, and moving away from traditional churches?

Well globally in the southern hemisphere it's also a huge number of new Christians, so huge growth. I think there's different approaches to it. One of the things that is dying is an understanding that religion is a central established role in society, that is privileged. So in many ways these communities have been de-privileged. Some of the evangelical churches are much more active in sharing what they have. They also are newer. They don't have some of the traditions that hold people back. But there's a lot of reasons for the change, especially globally.

So for your church, and being the bishop and you know membership is declining, what do you do differently? How do you attract, or keep the folks you do have?

To let go some of the things that we held on to in the past. A lot of energy goes into maintaining structures and buildings that are either old or simply not needed for what the community wants to do. So letting go is a difficult thing to do. But there but there are other ways to go about it.

Do you mean closing some of the buildings down?

Sometimes it's a church that needs to close. Often it's because the population has changed. Shifts in demographics have as much influence as shifts in attitude or religious belief. But there are parts of our diocese where the population is reduced considerably. There just aren't people there. And the same people will spend all their time trying to keep a building open when they could form a new way of being a community, in a home, or link with other people, and be freed from some of that burden.

And so do you suspect that some churches will close under your leadership?

Yes. They have been for a while, and it will continue, and it's a painful thing because these are precious locations. They're not just buildings to us. They're symbolically and really an important part of our life. Wonderful things have happened in them. So that's difficult to do, but that will continue. I think it'll level out at some point when we have the right kind of resources for our mission.

What about repairing some of the relationships with Indigenous communities, is that something that is a focus for you as well?

Yeah that's really a big important one for me, along with the climate environmental things, that is interrelated. We can learn a lot from Indigenous people, about how to live on land and how to be part of the earth, a lot from their spirituality. But the broken relationships are still a very painful part of it. There are a lot of Anglican Indigenous people so one of the first things I want to do is to meet more of them and to learn from them how we can work well together. Because we are brothers and sisters already. Beyond that, in the country of Canada, it's also one of the three big priorities along with another interrelated thing, which is the reduction of poverty.

There has been as well, in the last decades, mistrust of the church now because of some of the sexual abuse that has gone on. And when you talk about Indigenous communities, I think that's a big part of it with residential schools. How will you face those sorts of challenges that the church has now?

Well that it will be part of my job, a disciplinary and a safe guarding kind of role. There are policies for this. There are always people whose conduct becomes quite broken. And one of the goals will be to try to keep people who are in places of influence well-prepared for what they have to do, but also well rested, well supported, so that some of these terrible breaches don't happen again. We are human, and sin is involved in our lives. So things like this will come along. But to be very very careful about it and to really care about the well-being of leaders in particular will be important.

When you say you're in charge of disciplinary stuff, will there be any changes then in what you're suggesting?

No no. These are all policies and canons that we have.