Pastors.com has republished Thom Rainer’s article, “Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 11 Things I Learned." The article is retitled “Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 11 Signs of Doom." If you have not read the article, I recommend that you do so.
The Episcopal Church and the Continuing Anglican Churches are small denominations with large numbers of very sick and dying churches. Rather than trying to convince the members of their denomination and themselves that it is not going to happen to the Anglican Church in North America, its leaders need to study what is killing and has killed churches in these Anglican entities and to apply what they learn to preventing the same thing from happening in their own denomination. The Anglican Church in North America bears many similarities to these Anglican entities and shares their shortcomings and weaknesses.
One of the ways that the Anglican Church in North America is similar to the Continuing Anglican Churches is that the Anglican Church in North America, like these Anglican entities, has an element that, to use Douglas Bess’ words, “holds to an extreme form of Anglo-Catholicism” that does not view historic Anglicanism as “Catholic” enough and seeks to reconstruct Anglicanism along Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox lines. While this element would come to dominate the Continuing Anglican Churches, its legacy has not been a healthy one. Where it has flourished, churches have sickened and died and larger religious bodies have declined.
ACNA leaders need to include the study of the contribution of this element in their research into what is killing and has killed churches in the Continuing Anglican Churches. Since the same element exercises considerable influence in the Anglican Church in North America, this undertaking may prove a difficult one. However, it is essential to the survival of the denomination.
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