Putting the Growth of the ACNA in Perspective

By Robin G. Jordan

In one vision of the Anglican Church in North America the ACNA is primarily seen as a rescue operation. The ACNA offers an alternative ecclesiastical structure to which disaffected Episcopalians can flee from an increasingly liberal and heretical Episcopal Church and where they can find a safe refuge from the encroachment of modernism, postmodernism, and pluralism. This particular vision of the ACNA places little or no emphasis upon real evangelism and church planting. Its main concern is Episcopalians who are no longer well disposed to The Episcopal Church. Its principal focus is persuading such Episcopalians to leave The Episcopal Church and joined the ACNA. Its notions of starting a new church are limited to reconstituting a former Episcopal congregation or a large segment of one into a new ACNA church and to gathering smaller groups of former Episcopalians and enfolding them into an ACNA church.

In this vision church growth is seen in terms of numerical growth from former Episcopal congregations and former Episcopalians joining the ACNA. Those who embrace this vision like to point out that the ACNA is growing through the addition of new congregations while The Episcopal Church is declining. They generally downplay the fact that the new congregations are largely made up of the recently unchurched—former Episcopalians. The growth of the ACNA is principally due to the migration of churchgoers from one denomination to another, what is known as “transfer growth.”

This kind of growth cannot be compared to the kind of growth that the global South Anglican provinces have been experiencing. In these provinces the main concern is the segment of the general population that is not Christian and have never been churched. (This is an increasingly growing segment of the general population in Canada and the United States along with the formerly churched—those who were at one time churchgoers but now no longer regularly attend a church.) Their focus is upon reaching and evangelizing this population segment, discipling new believers, helping them to become mature Christians, equipping and releasing them for the work of gospel ministry, and enfolding them into new churches with the same focus—fulfilling the Great Commission. These provinces are not just throwing out a lifeline to Episcopalians drowning in one small backwater; they are braving the open seas to save all whom they can reach with the life preserver of the gospel, often at great danger to themselves.

While rescuing Episcopalians may be one of the ACNA’s subsidiary purposes, it is not its chief purpose. This purpose is articulated in its constitution, in Sections 1 and 2 of Article III.

1. The mission of the Province is to extend the Kingdom of God by so presenting Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit that people everywhere will come to put their trust in God through Him, know Him as Savior and serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of the Church. The chief agents of this mission to extend the Kingdom of God are the people of God.

2. The work of the Province is to equip each member of the Province so that they may reconcile the world to Christ, plant new congregations, and make disciples of all nations; baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything commanded by Jesus Christ.

The danger in seeing the ACNA as primarily a rescue operation to Episcopalians is that those who adopt this view of the ACNA are at high risk of loosing sight of the central task of the Church—the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Rather than measuring the growth of the ACNA in terms of how many new congregations the ACNA can form from disaffected Episcopalians who have left The Episcopal Church or who can be persuaded to do so, leaders and members of the ACNA need to measure it in terms of gospel growth. They need to keep a close eye on “conversion growth.” This is growth arising from non-Christians becoming believers, accepting Christ as their Saviour and Lord and beginning a personal relationship with him. Conversion growth, however, is only one facet of gospel growth. They also need to keep track of how many converts are moving along the path from new believer to mature follower of Jesus Christ, how many have been equipped and released for gospel ministry work, and how many are engaging in that work, and how many people in each of these categories are being enfolded in new Great Commission churches. The data collected in relation to these critical indicators will give a much better picture of the ACNA’s growth and vitality than the number of former Episcopal congregations reconstituted as ACNA churches or the number of ACNA churches formed from groups of disaffected Episcopalians.

Relying upon The Episcopal Church as a source of new members for the ACNA has its drawbacks. Episcopalians are likely to bring a lot of unwanted baggage with them into the ACNA—attitudes, expectations and ways of thinking that may actually hamper or hinder the ACNA congregations in their efforts to spread the gospel and make disciples of unchurched people groups in Canada and the United States. This includes preconceived notions of how church is done. They have been immersed in an ecclesiastical culture that emphasizes the power of the sacraments over the need for personal conversion and faith, denigrates the authority of the Bible and the Anglican formularies, and fosters an anti-gospel and anti-evangelistic identity. Even conservative or orthodox Episcopalians have not escaped its influence.

Reaching and evangelizing the unchurched with little or no church background or previous churchgoing experience may be more challenging than gathering Episcopalians looking for a new church home and enfolding them into a new church. For the diocese it involves reorienting and reorganizing to serve the local congregation. For the local congregation it entails placing making disciples of Christ first and foremost above everything else, mobilizing all its resources to accomplish this one end, and paring away all groups, organizations, and programs that do not contribute to its accomplishment. For individual Christians means moving out of one’s comfort zone and mingling with non-Christians, becoming friends with them, and committing oneself to an ongoing relationship with them even if that relationship does not bear fruit in the form of a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and a commitment to follow him as his disciple.

The kind of growth that comes with faithfulness to the Great Commission is God-given growth. It is the kind of growth that endures for all eternity. It adds more living stones to the edifice that God himself is building—to that temple in which his Spirit dwells. It is this kind of growth for which we as Christians should always strive, going about the business of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ and making disciples as our Lord has commanded us to do and leaving the rest in God's hands.