The Holy Spirit in the Prayer Books

This was published in the Fall 2015 issue of Anglicans for Renewal, the Anglican Renewal Ministries magazine. 

I'm an Anglican by marriage. Actually, we all are if you go back far enough. So I didn't grow up with the Prayer Book. I was pretty suspicious of it and the idea of praying out of books when I first encountered it. But I really wanted to be in the company and good graces of a certain intriguing and very attractive young woman who happened to be Anglican and attended Evensong at St Paul's Anglican Cathedral in Dunedin, New Zealand. It was in her company that my experience of praying out of a book began. She was a very comely incentive. God is good. 

Some years later when I came to a faith of my own, it was when I made television programs for a living. Most of the program's I made required a script. I directed the actors, performers, crew, images and sound to tell the script's story. One day I realized that the Prayer Book was like one of those scripts. We worshippers take the words of the page, into our hearts and offer them in worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. And The Story continues as it is told over and over again.

I became Anglican just after The Book of Alternative Services came on the scene. I have to confess that I enjoyed the contemporary language. It seemed more open to me. I still enjoy it. But those early years of praying the office, exploring The Prayers and Thanksgivings, Family Prayer, Compline and the rest followed by fifteen years of Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion on Sundays at 830 gave me some roots and prayers for real life.

Last June I experienced the joy of being present when my granddaughter was confirmed at St Mary’s in Regina. As he laid his hands on each confirmand, Bishop Hardwick used the second prayer For Confirmation in The Book of Alternative Services: “Defend, O Lord, your servant Emily with your heavenly grace, that she may continue yours for ever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until she comes to your everlasting kingdom. Amen. (p628) This is also the confirmation prayer from The Book of Common Prayer (p560) in contemporary English.

Now is that a wild-eyed, knock-down charismatic prayer, or what? “Daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more”? It was done very decently and in order, but those were the words prayed out loud, over my granddaughter (and everyone else who is confirmed in the Anglican Church of Canada) to the living God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Think about it. It’s a wonder we weren’t all thrown to the floor in a tangle of Anglican knees and kneelers. But we weren’t—at least not outwardly. I wonder why? Have we just given up on expecting God to act in such ways? Are we hoping for it, but God is saying, “Not now”? I don’t know.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that confirmation should only be valid when everyone is slain in the Spirit (although I’d love to see it one day). But what if you and I were to pay closer attention to the way the Holy Spirit of truth is woven through our prayer book prayers and liturgies bearing witness about Jesus (John 15.26) and what if we watch for them and pray into them? Might the Lord be waiting to release something new?

In that hope, Lord willing, I’m going to explore the references to the Holy Ghost/Spirit in our books to see where they lead. And what better place to start than with the SOLEMN DECLARATION 1893 (The Book of Common Prayer, p. viii), a foundational document for the Anglican Church of Canada.

“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen,” are the first words; an foundational invocation of the Holy Trinity. We begin with profound mystery. Such is the Holy Spirit. Such is the Father and the Son. We worship one God in three Persons. Indivisible. So when we focus on one Person, we do not deny or diminish the others. To be filled with the Holy Ghost is to be filled with all the fullness of God. And that is about as far as I dare go with that except to say that it is the best way to begin this expression of the Anglican church.

The next reference is in the third paragraph; a declaration that this church will “worship One God and Father through the same Lord Jesus Christ, by the same Holy and Divine Spirit who is given to them that believe to guide them into all truth.” Believe, and I am given that Holy and Divine Spirit to guide me into all truth. What is truth? God’s word is (John 17.17) and I am (John 14.6) says Jesus and truth is in Jesus, writes Paul (Eph 4.21). Not only that, but the Holy and Divine Spirit is the Spirit of that truth (John 14.17 & 15.26) and that pretty well wraps it up.

So the foundational document of the Anglican Church of Canada (after the Scriptures and the prayer book) affirms and attests that it is important to have been given the Holy and Divine Spirit because he will guide us into Jesus. Thus begins our trustworthy script for Anglican worship; a script which is essentially the Scriptures set to prayer.

As we learn our lines in worship and prayer may we make them our own while daily increasing in the Holy Spirit more and more until times of refreshing, renewal and revival come. Amen and amen.

On Being (Quietly) Charismatic

The following was published in the Summer 2015 issue of the Anglican Renewal Ministries magazine, Anglicans for Renewal. Subscriptions available here.

Hi, my name is Gene and I’m a charismatic. I’m not a very loud one. Pretty quiet, actually. I’ve not shouted, rolled (as in Holy), shaken or stomach-crunched yet.

A few people have been blessed, a couple even healed when I’ve prayed for them. Quietly. No sparks or gold dust. Hardly anyone seems to have noticed, which is probably a good thing.

The LORD gave me the gift of tongues—a prayer language. Nobody has come up to me and said, “I didn’t know you could speak Mandarin (or Thai, or Hungarian or whatever)” yet, but I know it’s real because after being prayed for many times and trying to make noises myself all of a sudden one day it just took off with a fluency that surprised me. Again, no lightning or spectacular manifestations, just a switch thrown somewhere in my spirit or soul or heart and off I went. It took about two years of praying with various degrees of intensity for that particular gift until that switch was turned on. Reading Dennis Bennet’s Nine O’Clock in the Morning was what really got me going on it. But I know that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ touched me with the power of the Holy Spirit. Amazing. A reminder for me when doubts assail.

I’ve been “slain in the Spirit” a couple of times. Gently and quietly. I could have remained standing. I felt a weight pressing down through me—the weight of glory someone said. I found myself swaying and let go to fall back as if into pillows, but I’ve not yet experienced going down involuntarily as if shot. I’ve seen it but I haven’t had it happen to me yet.

The LORD also gave me some prophetic gifting; the 1 Corinthians 14.3 strengthening,  encouraging and comforting kind. I’m certainly not a capital P Prophet. Nobody is today, in my opinion. Nobody carries the office, but many people exercise the 1 Corinthians 12.10 and 14.1-5 gift. Every now and then somehow the Holy Spirit puts things into to my mind that I could not know about the person for whom I am praying and it blesses them because they know I couldn’t have known and their faith grows because they realize that God does know what’s going on their lives and cares for them. It’s amazing to be a part of God doing that.

My priest used to say we’ve drifted away from believing that God can or will really act these days and that the Holy Spirit has been lost in the ecclesiastical shuffle somehow. Today’s Holy Trinity is God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the silent partner. One of the reasons that has happened is fear, I suspect. People are afraid of extremes—people falling over, or laughing, or shaking, or saying, “Thus saith the Lord!” Some feel left out when nothing seems to happen to, or around, them when they pray, so they give up. Some feel criticized or abused by over-enthusiastic charismatics or people who have got charismatic things just plain wrong. The trouble is that all of church, charismatic or not, includes a fair dose of the world, the flesh and the devil. There will always be unhelpful disturbing behaviour.

Despite it all, however, the Holy Spirit is a major player in the Scriptures and in the Church. From his first creation appearance in the second verse of the whole Bible, to his last mention in the fifth to last verse, the Holy Spirit blows throughout and continues to do so. Most often he is a gentle, barely perceptible breeze, these days it seems, yet every now and then he blows things over and sets the church bounding across the waves.

So, my name is Gene and I’m a charismatic retired Anglican priest. I’ve not experienced anything that has been particularly spectacular. I suspect that’s because The LORD knows only too well how easily I could get full of myself. But I believe in it. I believe in it all. I believe that without the power and the gifts of the Holy Spirit working in me, I can do nothing worthwhile. I believe that Jesus still miraculously heals and changes lives. I wish he would do it more often in ways that I can see, but that’s up to him. I believe that people really are strengthened, encouraged and comforted by ordinary Christians exercising the spiritual gifts God has given. I believe that every now and then God still even raises people from the dead. I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve read about it. I believe in revival and hope to see another one soon—especially in the Anglican church. And that’s why I serve on the Anglican Renewal Ministries board and write for this magazine.

UPDATE: since this article was published in the magazine a couple of good folk have taken me to task over what I've written above about the office of Prophet with a capital P. Citing passages such as 1 Cor 12.28, Eph 4.11 and others they believe there are still Christian prophets and a prophetic ministry operating today  I have to confess that I had missed these rather obvious references to there being an active Christian prophetic ministry in addition to the gift. I agree that some people do exercise the ministry today. It would have been better if I'd included that, but I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of a capital P Prophet as an office in today's Church.