Decline or Renewal in the West?

Some sobering stats including the graph above and an interesting read at the Church Growth Modelling blog here. I wonder where the Anglican Church of Canada would fall on the chart.

Interesting thoughts on the matter in a different post on the same blog where the writer wonders why the Church of England's decline is less precipitous including this:

Of the four denominations the C of E has been influenced more by Charismatic Renewal than the others, despite the “Renewal” starting with a US clergyman [10]. Additionally The C of E’s expression of charismatic renewal has also  been more evangelical, including a revival in expository preaching. Perhaps the C of E has been more open to revival than the others. (The rest here)

Something that blesses my Anglican Renewal Ministries heart and something for which to pray—that the Anglican Church of Canada would be not only influenced by Charismatic Renewal, but thoroughly refreshed and revived by it. Oh, yes!

Communion Cruets on the Credence Table

Sometimes I love being Anglican. It's even got a cross on it!

Towards Another Great Awakening: J Edwin Orr on the Welsh Revival of 1904-1905 and Some Anglican Connections

Listening again to J Edwin Orr, revival historian, in a talk entitled, “Welsh Revival: Facts and Fallacies.” I continue to be intrigued (encouraged, hopeful?) by how the Anglican Church was affected by such great movements of the Holy Spirit. For example:

Handley Moule was the Bishop of Durham. He wrote a prayer that was pasted into every prayer book of the Church of England: 

Revive, O Lord, we humbly beseech thee, the work of Thy saving grace in the Church universal, in our Church of England, in our diocese, in this parish wherein we dwell and in our own hearts; to the conviction and conversion of forgetful souls, to the quickening of thy true disciples in life and witness, and to the glory of Thy Holy Name, through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

I'm going to start praying that for "our Anglican Church of Canada," my diocese, parish and our hearts, too. It's what we need.

Orr goes on to describe how some Anglican bishops of the time responded to what was going on:

Thirty bishops of the Church of England met together to discuss what should be the attitude of the Church of England to the revival. The first speaker, a bishop, said, “Fathers and brethren, I’ve just come from Shropshire, where in a single parish church, I confirmed 950 new converts. The bishops voted for the revival.

I'm glad to hear it.  I wonder if the results would be the same today.

I love stories like this:

The Bishop of London was a high churchman but according the record it said he laid aside his mitre, cope and staff, and started holding evangelistic missions in London starting in Lancaster Gate with 2,000 people.

In response to a question, Orr also spoke of the earlier state of the society in the United States after the American Revolution and before the French Revolution:

The Lutherans were so badly off they discussed amalgamating with the Episcopalians to try and prop each other up. The Episcopal Church in the States was so moribund, that Samuel Provost, the Bishop of New York, quit functioning because he had confirmed no one for years. He decided to look for other work. 

I am uncomfortably reminded of how the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada are trying to work together these days. The language is "missional" and there's always some good in Christians working towards unity, but mutual propping-up of their "progressive" agendas is the reality, I fear. A real concern for people coming to old-fashioned saving faith in Jesus is either missing or buried so deeply that it would be little more than the unintended consequence of an afterthought.

Listen to Orr's whole talk here. It is one of a wonderful collection of his talks and writings here.

Going to The Office—Daily.

For the last two weeks I've been led to talk prayer; at StB two Sundays ago and in Saskatchewan last weekend at Emmanuel, St Louis; St Stephen's, MacDowall and St George's, Prince Albert. On October 20th at StB it was the gospel of the day and Jesus telling the parable about the "need to pray always and not to lose heart" in Luke 18:1. Last weekend in Saskatchewan it was The Following Jesus Weekend which culminated in the Rule of Life on page 555 of The Book of Common Prayer with its reference to "the practice of private prayer, Bible-reading and self discipline."

We Anglicans have no excuse. The Daily Offices; Morning and Evening Prayer, with their associated lectionaries, are simply brilliant. It doesn't matter how I feel, how articulate I am, how holy or spiritual I am feeling, the offices in either book, The Book of Common Prayer, The Book of Alternative Services, not to mention the Church of England's online offices, will pick me up with words of Holy Scripture set to prayer and carry me aloft into the heavenlies where the winds of God can whip through my hair. They will for you, too.

In "Breaking the Habit," over at The Community, Laura Marie Piotrowicz writes of the importance of "going to the office" every day:

My daily office is important to me; it keeps me grounded and connected and helps me find a holistic spirituality to my day. Establishing the habit of the daily office took some discipline, and I do my best not to break it. It doesn’t necessitate a lot of resources (there’s an app for that!), it doesn’t take a lot of time, but there is much benefit. As one person recently said at our bible study, it’s a chance to be “close and sweet with God.” 

So I live the habit. I pray, daily, because I choose to. It’s important to me to include prayer in my daily routine, as the practice enhances my day.

You can read Laura's whole piece here.

The offices, of course, are liturgy. Some people find liturgy repetitive and, therefore, tedious. Too bad. I need repetition because I leak and I forget. Some people call liturgy empty ritual. So fill it. Matt Marino over at his excellent The Gospel Side blog has something to say about liturgy and repetition in his "Spiritual Baseball: the unlikely path to intimacy with Jesus":

What I discovered was that the power is precisely in the repetition…that, as a rough rock in a stream becomes a smooth stone from years of water flowing over it, the Christian is formed into the image of God when we surrender ourselves to the three-fold pattern of daily immersion in the Scriptures, weekly feeding in the Eucharist, and the annual cycle of the Christian year, combined with contemplative practices like those of the desert fathers. I have found that these are re-orienting my perception of reality, the way I view time, life, and the world around me, in ways that words on a page cannot fully capture. It is freeing me to love those who oppose me and work for the good of those who seek my harm.

You may not be interested in walking the path to the ancient Church, known in Anglicanism as “the Canterbury trail.” I was not either. Ironically it is a journey that has given a depth to my walk with Christ that I never imagined. Like someone who has never tasted ice-cream, I didn’t know what I was missing.

His whole piece is worth a read, as usual, especially since it's World Series time.

Going to the office, daily, is a great way to pray always and not lose heart whether I feel like it, or not.

Not Just Rotary With a Pointy Roof: Archbishop Justin Welby on His Faith and the Church He Serves

An encouraging read this morning. Charles Moore, a school mate of Justin Welby, writing in The Telegraph. Apart from the title of this post, the following statements caught my eye particularly:

Does he know Jesus? “Yes. I do. He’s both someone one knows and someone one scarcely knows at all, an utterly intimate friend and yet with indescribable majesty.”

Because he came to faith dramatically, he has few prejudices about which tradition to inhabit. “I am a spiritual magpie,” he says. As well as speaking in tongues (a Protestant practice), he adores the sacrament of the eucharist (a Catholic one). He also says the morning and evening office, Book of Common Prayer version, in the chapel of the palace, every day. “Today it was Psalm 51, which is penitential. If you come in thinking how brilliant you are, it’s good to say that psalm.”

All here. H/T Anglican Down Under.

 

Posted with Blogsy

++Rowan on Authority, the Covenant and an Holy Flash Mob

Thoughts arising from the Presidential Address by the Archbishop of Canterbury at ACC-15 recently.

On Authority

When the people say of Jesus that he speaks with authority, not like the experts, I don’t think they mean that he’s simply a good problem solver. Those words occur when Jesus has performed spectacular acts of liberation. The authority in question is an authority to act and an authority to make a difference. An authority that enables and empowers. 

The Archbishop thinks the Communion needs to be more about enabling authority, which "astonishes people" and out of which liberation comes, than corrective authority.

I don’t say that the one removes the need for the other. I don’t say that the one is more vital than the other. But I do believe that the one is more distinctively of the Gospel than the other. 

Yet, enabling authority ought not to trump corrective authority with what the Bible calls sin.

The Covenant

I still hope and pray, speaking personally, the Covenant has a future, because I believe we do have a message to give the Christian world about how we can be both catholic and orthodox and consensual, working in freedom, mutual respect and mutual restraint. Without jeopardising the important local autonomy of our Churches, I think we still need work on that convergence of our schemes and systems, and I say that because I believe we all need to wake up to the challenges here if we are not to become less than we aspire to be as a Communion.

Shared orthodoxy and mutual restraint have been the biggest challenge.

Holy Flash Mob

I love the way the Archbishop referred to the work of Christchurch young people after the earthquake as a "flash mob of grace." That would be a good way to describe the revival I've been on about in previous posts. Pray for the church to be transformed into one.

Worth the read. All here.

Anglican Drift: Canadian Dioceses and Same Sex Blessings, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Bible in the Life of the Church Project

…upset with the continuing drift in the Anglican world. 

Canada 

The Anglican Essentials Canada Blog recently reported that the Diocese of Rupert’s Land has now joined British Columbia, New Westminster, Edmonton, Niagara, Huron, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in making the blessing of same sex unions possible. That's a third of the dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada. 

It seems that in deciding not to make a decision on the matter, General Synod 2010 was not so much allowing time for growing consensus as making the way clear for dioceses to go ahead severally. There has been no intention of holding off for the sake of the communion. It's hard not feel duped. 

The Anglican Consultative Council meeting in NZ

Things are not much better on the international level. Canon Phil Ashey, Chief Operating and Development Officer for the American Anglican Council writes: 

In terms of what seems to be emerging, I would respectfully suggest the following as a “pincer” movement that ACC/ACO is going to place upon confessing Anglicans: 

1. Through Continuing Indaba dialogue and stories, bolstered by the work of the Bible in the Life of the Church (BILC) resources, Biblical interpretation of human sexuality and its limits will be rendered value-neutral with no limits on Biblical interpretation within the Communion. Lambeth 1.10 will be declared in effect non-binding; 

2. Then, through the new Code of Conduct and the Safe Church resolution, any objection to sexual expressions that are not Biblical will be deemed “harassment,” chilling any speech and bringing consequences to those who, in Anglican communion meetings, dare to raise the subject. 

I pray I am mistaken, but that is my best look into the future. 

…also from The Anglican Essentials Canada Blog and just as disturbing. 

Bible in the Life of the Church

There was a report from the Bible in the Life of the Church project at the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in New Zealand. Why do such projects so rarely call for deeper submission to Scripture in the Anglican world? On the contrary, the authority and reliability of Scripture is constantly called into question. Personal experience, a culture of victimhood and postmodern progressive cultural mores trump the Scripture every time.  

Anglican Down Under comments on the Anglican Consultative Council and the report:

if its celebration of the report on the Bible in the Communion is a guide, any time there is disagreement about truth, we celebrate our diversity instead of mourning our loss of unity. Such response is scandalous, a stumbling block to true Christian "progress"…

Celebrating diversity constantly is a shell game, an avoidance of the hard work finding the truth involves. The point of theology is to seek truth. Stopping when the going gets hard with a celebration of diversity of viewpoint is intellectual laziness. We will only progress as a Communion when we repent of our apathy and move forward zealous for the truth.

But then, there's no longer such a thing as objective truth. All is relative.

Anglican Down Under, also shared this comment on the project: 

After three and half years of worldwide research, the Bible in the Life of the Church project has found that Anglicans around the globe share “a high common ground” over the essential place and use of the Bible in Anglican life. 

How can a communion which can't agree on whether it is even God's Word possibly have a "high common ground"? And that's before we get onto interpretation, criticism, contextualisation etc. The authors appear to have done a thorough job in their research, but it doesn't seem to pass the common sense test. Why is our communion falling apart if we all agree on our foundational text and its meaning for us today?

To me it always feels like the truth of Scripture and the importance and uniqueness of Jesus as Saviour is always being called into question and watered down. I continue to be saddened by it all.

Anglican unDoctrine

What I love and what frustrates me, all at once, about being Anglican:

Many Anglicans know, and all should, that Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher (d. 1972) famously said about Anglicanism, “We have no doctrine of our own. We only possess the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and these creeds we hold without addition or diminution. We stand firm on that rock.” These words ought plaster the top of every formation handout given to Anglican in parish formation classes. ++Fisher’s statement is profound, scriptural, patristic, and humble. Its truth guides our tradition.

From here.

Posted with Blogsy

Prayer Day

 Time for a little striving (Rom 15.30) and struggling (Col 4.12) in prayer.

Come, Holy Spirit, renew the heart of our city!

Silence.

Wonderful Prayers at Midday FOR MISSIONS in The Book of Common Prayer, page 16:

• That all mankind may look unto to thee and be saved.
• Illumine the world with the radiance of thy glory, that all nations may come and worship thee.
• Forgive, we pray thee, our unbelief, and so enlarge our hearts, and enkindle our zeal, that we may fervently desire the salvation of all, and with more ready diligence labour in the extension of thy kingdom.

Salvation, illumination, worship, largeness of heart, fervent desire. O, yes!

Posted with Blogsy

The Anglican Mess: Kiwis, Yanks, Comprehensiveness, Liberal Theology and the Bible

Both New Zealand's General Synod and The Episcopal Church's General Convention have just taken place. The Kiwis and Polynesians have decided to study the theology of marriage with a view to somehow "progressing" beyond the merely heterosexual. The Episcopalians have approved a rite for blessing same-sex couples and have decided that transgender issues may not inhibit a person from leadership in the church and ordination. There are plenty of Canadian Anglicans who want to go there, too—several dioceses already have.

There has, of course, been considerable commentary on it all. For example, Anglican Down Under (ADU) who works for Bishop Victoria Matthews and the Diocese of Christchurch, feels that these developments threaten the comprehensiveness he believes has been the Anglican advantage up to now:

Personally I would be deeply saddened to find that the comprehensiveness of the church to which I belong, through birth, baptism, conviction and license, is jettisoned. But worse, I see signs that it would be the beginning of the end of this church. As Anglicans used to being the largest and greatest church of the land, we can miss seeing the bigger picture of contemporary Christianity in these islands. In that bigger picture we are increasingly a smaller player. The growth areas in congregational life are in churches of other denominations and even of no denomination. Anglicanism could disappear tomorrow off the face of New Zealand's earth and Christianity would continue to thrive, grow, permutate and develop. In particular, Christianity of the non-Anglican variety is showing itself as particularly adept at winning young people to Christ. And, guess what, most are joining up to a discipleship programme which is not liberal/progressive. 

I see a huge temptation in the GS of 2014 to determine that when most of the rest of Christianity in Aotearoa New Zealand is conservative, traditional, biblical in its orthodoxy and orthopraxy, ACANZP can become the liberal/progressive alternative. My prayer, wish, agenda and campaign here (for what it is feebly worth) is that our church does not take that turn, but determines, whatever re-examinations take place in the next two years, that we will both remain a comprehensive church and be part of the mainstream future of Christianity in these islands.

In that same post (all here) ADU also refers to a New York Times piece on the subject: "Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?" in which one, Ross Douthat, comments on the headlong Episcopal push to progressive-liberal theology:

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase. 

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message. 

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance.

All here.

There's more! ADU puts his finger the underlying and real issue behind and through it all in another post entitled "Let's change the Bible. No, let's silence it!"

It's a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, Ollie, and that's a fact!

Posted with Blogsy