tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post4313661334565336781..comments2023-10-28T05:58:07.377-07:00Comments on Anglicans Ablaze: Pastoral Ministry in the Small Membership ChurchUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-3393777800318129792010-05-25T15:01:05.170-07:002010-05-25T15:01:05.170-07:00Rob,
My concern is how the expectation of weekly ...Rob,<br /><br />My concern is how the expectation of weekly communion can affect how people perceive themselves as the Church of Christ and how it can limit the use of deacons and readers in pastoring small-membership churches and planting new one. I agree with you that proper catechesis is important for people to benefit from frequent communion. As an Evangelical I am not opposed to offering frequent Communion Services where it is practicable. A number of Evangelical Church of England parishes had, when I lived in England, what my mother tells me the students of Hockerill Teachers' College called "Early Effort" - an early morning Communion Service. Both Cranmer and Calvin sought to restore the practice of frequent communion. However, a lot of folks need help seeing that while frequent communion may be desirable, it is not absolutely essential for their spiritual health and well-being and they are still the visible Church of Christ if the sacrament of Holy Communion is administered less than weekly. The Articles emphasize the preaching of the pure Word of God and the right administration of the sacraments as the marks of the visible church but they do not say anything about frequency of administration. The 1662 BCP sets as a minimum standard at least 3 times a year particularly at Easter. In 1 Corinthians 11:24-26 we read:<br /><br /><i>And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. <br /><br />After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, this cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. <br /><br />For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.</i><br /><br />While these passages use terms like "oft" and "often," they do not establish a requirement as how often we should observe the Lord's Supper but that, the gathered church, when it drinks the cup of blessing, should do so in remembrance of Christ and his death on the cross.Robin G. Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09511384478845569163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-88320249270919696322010-05-25T05:15:19.629-07:002010-05-25T05:15:19.629-07:00Robin,
Surely the same argument used most commonl...Robin,<br /><br />Surely the same argument used most commonly against frequent communion (namely, if we do it too often, it becomes wrote) is equally applicable to offering Matins and Vespers, or even preaching. Why bother to come to Church even? <br /><br />The same issues you cite with Sacramental frequency are equally applicable to other aspects of Christian life. <br /><br />The root problem is lousy catechesis. We don't catechize our people anymore... preferring instead Sunday Schools for the kiddos which, ultimately, seems to only ensure a high proportion of loss among the youth when they reach adulthood.<br /><br />I will say that I do respect and have growing sympathy with the idea that perhaps Matins and Vespers should be the primal public services on Sundays - anyone can attend and not be excluded from worship (except by their own choice) - but not to the point of excluding Holy Communion from the mix. I must confess to being far more Lutheran in this respect than Reformed... <br /><br />I grew up with frequent (read multiple times each week) communion, and, while my current circumstances don't always permit that, I still value the Sunday Eucharistic liturgy as the source and summit - both scripturally and sacramentally - of my week. These are supported and enriched by my daily offering of the Offices.<br /><br />Rob+Bishop Robert Lyonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10264379235175793061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-85807140185966991822010-05-24T14:44:43.045-07:002010-05-24T14:44:43.045-07:00"Among the consequences of this change weekly..."Among the consequences of this change weekly communion became an expectation. Small membership churches that could meet this expectation did not feel like they were real churches."<br /><br />"...could..." should read "... could <i>not</i>..."Robin G. Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09511384478845569163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-28170725786713465092010-05-24T14:41:57.495-07:002010-05-24T14:41:57.495-07:00In the Episcopal Church were weekly communion is t...In the Episcopal Church were weekly communion is the expectation and the rule, it has not from what I have seen made any difference in the lives of the communicants. They receive the sacrament each Sunday and lead lives no different from the non-Christians around them. <br /><br />Don't get me wrong. I value the sacrament of Holy Communion for its enlivening and strengthening of the faith of the believer and its other benefits but I do not believe that it is necessary to receive the sacrament every day or even every week. In my experience, less frequent celebrations of the Holy Communion, accompanied by careful teaching in regards to the sacrament and preparation in advancing of receiving it have actually helped communicants to gain a greater appreciation of the place of the sacrament in the life of a Christian.<br /><br />When folks are able to receive the sacrament frequently--every Sunday or more often, they are apt to take the sacrament for granted or develop magical views of the sacrament. In a previous article I wrote:<br /><br />"It further teaches that the baptism enables a child to benefit from the sacrament even though he is unrepentant and unbelieving. The condition of the child does not take away the effect of the sacrament or diminish the grace of God’s gift. Like the fire berry that every morning a bird brought the retired star Ramandu from the valleys in the Sun in C. S. Lewis’ <i>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader</i>, it imparts something to the child even though we see no evidence of what it imparts in the child. Each fire-berry took away a little of Ramandu’s age, and when he became as young as a child that was born yesterday, he would take his rising again and once more tread the great dance in the heavens. This change, however, was discernable. Any change the sacrament is supposed to affect in the child is not." <br /><br />This is similar to the kind of magical thinking about the sacrament that folks are prone to acquire.Robin G. Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09511384478845569163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-23006670850782318142010-05-24T14:30:03.160-07:002010-05-24T14:30:03.160-07:00Rob,
In The Episcopal Church the snippets of Scri...Rob,<br /><br />In The Episcopal Church the snippets of Scripture suggested by the new lectionaries do not cover the entire Bible and the whole counsel of God and the talks given after the readings I would not describe them as sermons. "Rite III" requires only a single reading from the gospel. Rather than having two highpoints--the proclamation and exposition of the Word and the Communion, the rite has one focus--the Communion. Even where two or three lessons are read and a homily or sermon is preached, the emphasis from how things are done in the service is upon what follows the Liturgy of the Word. The service is not a balance of Word and Sacrament. <br /><br />The point in my article is that we have so raised churchgoers' expectations that the service must include communion every Sunday that these expectations have become problematic. I was baptized in the Church of England; I attended Church of England services for the first ten years of my life. I do not recall attending a communion service until my family immigrated to the United States and we began attending the then Protestant Episcopal Church. Even then we had communion only twice a month. On other Sundays the service was Morning Prayer with hymn, canticles, lessons, and a sermon. This changed with the adoption of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which relegated Morning Prayer to obscurity and gave central place to the sacrament of Holy Communion on Sunday morning. Among the consequences of this change weekly communion became an expectation. Small membership churches that could meet this expectation did not feel like they were real churches. It was no longer enough for a deacon or lay reader to provide pastoral leadership to a small membership church, it had to be a priest, preferably one in full time ministry, another expectation small membership churches were unable to met. I recall reading how the late Boone Porter was a part of a team of deacons and lay readers that planted new churches. My own home church had at one time been served by a deacon in the late nineteenth century who planted a number of new churches in towns along the railroad that linked my hometown with these towns. He planted three churches. In the early twenty-first century I was briefly involved with a new Episcopal church plant that required an Episcopal deacon and two Episcopal priests and a Continuing Anglican bishop to get it off the ground. Eight years later that church is no bigger than it was then. It meets in a local Lutheran church and shares a priest with an Episcopal church twenty-five miles away. The two local Episcopal priests want nothing to do with it because it is charismatic! I at one time surveyed the deanery for areas of the deanery that had a high potential as the site of a new church plant. There was a number of them. But no new churches were planted because the diocese did not have the funds for a priest/church planter. The charismatic Episcopal church was the work of priests from another deanery who were involved in full-time ministry in that deanery. Only the Episcopal deacon and the Continuing Anglican bishop lived in the area. This experience and other experiences has convinced me of the validity of my premise that the expectation of weekly communion can be an obstacle to providing pastoral leadership to small membership churches and planting new churches.<br /><br />Cont'd.Robin G. Jordanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09511384478845569163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-3504482597847877382010-05-24T09:53:16.364-07:002010-05-24T09:53:16.364-07:001662BCP -
My Sunday preference is for Matins at 8...1662BCP -<br /><br />My Sunday preference is for Matins at 8 AM, Communion at 10:30 AM, and Vespers at about 6:30 PM.<br /><br />My weekday preference is for Matins and Vespers at 8 AM and 5 PM respectively, with Holy Communion at some point in the day on any days with a proper collect, epistle, and gospel.<br /><br />I definately do not want to see the daily offices displaced, nor do I want to see the Eucharist displaced. Both have their own purposes, logics, and goals. <br /><br />Further, since I am not about to think about joining ACNA (they'd have to completely eliminate the ordination of women to the presbyterate, and then take a stand on Holy Scripture as the authoritative Word of God before I'd start considering it) what they promote or fail to promote is rather secondary in my book. <br /><br />Rob+Bishop Robert Lyonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10264379235175793061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-19762045196991580732010-05-24T08:07:23.991-07:002010-05-24T08:07:23.991-07:00Father Robert,
I don't think you'll have t...Father Robert,<br />I don't think you'll have to worry about the primacy of the Communion service being supplanted any time soon in the ac/na as the tradition of Morning Prayer on three Sundays per month and the Lord's Supper on one has gone the way of the Dodo bird. Nor will you ever hear the Homilies read in any of these churches. So don't worry.RMBrutonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15017576806723146013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-57507123593403070072010-05-24T05:35:30.243-07:002010-05-24T05:35:30.243-07:00In my entire life, I have never attended a celebra...In my entire life, I have never attended a celebration of the Lord's Supper that did not include the Word of God and preaching. <br /><br />From ancient times, the service of Word and Table (call it what you will) was the central worship, teaching, and sacramental gathering of the Church, and it was held at least weekly, unless a cleric was unable to be present.<br /><br />I can't follow your logic in claiming that the rise of the primacy of the Communion service has directly lead to the decline of preaching. Of course, that being said, I did not grow up in the Episcopal Church, so I don't have a strong association with its history during the turbulent years of the twentieth century.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the idea of recieving Communion only a few times a year is mortifying to me. Weekly preaching and communion should be the rule and standard, not the exception - and both should be conducted in such a way as to emphasize the central teachings of the faith, the doctrines of grace, our responsibilities in light of the Word, and the nourishment that comes to us in both Word and Sacrament in the celebration of the Holy Supper.<br /><br />Rob+Bishop Robert Lyonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10264379235175793061noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9073400.post-37367733253386462342010-05-23T01:20:34.750-07:002010-05-23T01:20:34.750-07:00An excellent analysis of "the holy communion ...An excellent analysis of "the holy communion knot" tying up Anglican Christianity in decline. <br /><br />Are the two bound together....knot and decline? <br /><br />You bet! <br /><br />Abandoning the primacy of Preaching the Word reaps sin, and institutional decay. <br /><br />It's as simple as that.John Haneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07355477431749454105noreply@blogger.com