What Is the Real State of the Anglican Church in North America?

By Robin G. Jordan

In his Address on the State of the Church Archbishop Duncan made this statement:

“The 2013 congregational reports reveal a healthy Church.  Most of our people are at worship most Sundays. Of a total number of 3097 baptisms, thirty-one per cent, 969, are of those above the age of 16, converts not transfers. There were 3197 conversions reported. There were 6011 new people reported to have been brought into our congregations through evangelism and outreach. There were 2079 confirmations, 1312 receptions and 293 reaffirmations of Faith. (These figures are for the 763 congregations reporting.) Tremendous thanks go to Fr. Andrew Gross, Director of Communications, for his efforts at giving us a congregational reporting system that is finally adequate to our needs, and that most congregations are employing.”

The figures Duncan gave sound good, but are they? What criteria were used to determine what constitutes a “conversion”? Was this determination left to the congregations reporting conversions?  Only 969 individuals over the age of 16 were baptized. Of the 3197 conversions reported, what happened to the remaining 2228?

6011 new people are reported to be attending the worship services of a ACNA congregation. This is presumably what is meant by the phrase, “…have been brought into our congregations through evangelism and outreach.” The phrase is misleading. Only 3391 people are reported to have become official communicants of the ACNA by confirmation or reception. We cannot, however, assume that the entire number of confirmations represents newcomers who were baptized and joined an ACNA congregation. A number of the confirmands were in all likelihood already baptized members of an ACNA congregation. The figures are conflicting and do not provide an accurate picture of ACNA growth. A more detailed breakdown is warranted as well as a description of the criteria used for determining conversions.

I imagine that ACNA members, clergy and lay, welcomed these figures because they wanted to hear positive things about the denomination in which they are stakeholders. However, if they are really serious about their investment in the ACNA, they will want more information. As stakeholders in the ACNA, they should be provided with more information.

To put the number of newcomers to ACNA churches in the proper perspective, the population of the United States at the beginning of this year was 318,892,103. The population of Canada was 34,834,841. 6011 newcomers is a very tiny drop not in a bucket of water but in an ocean of water. I leave to the reader to calculate what percentage of the combined population of these two countries this figure represents.

763 out of 983 congregations that Duncan claims were active at the end of 2013 submitted annual congregational reports. 220 did not. If 6011 is divided between 763 congregations, each church had roughly 7.8 newcomers.

On another website I was reading an ACNA member’s description of the kind of growth that her church has been experiencing. I do not know how representative of ACNA churches her church is. However, what her church is experiencing may be significant.

She reports that her church is primarily attracting three groups of people. The first group of people have been attended an Anglican or Episcopal church but transferred their membership to her church because it is closer to where they live.  

The second group of people consists of two subgroups. The folks in this group have also been attending a church. Those in the first subgroup have changed churches because they are attracted to a more traditional or liturgical church. Some may fit the description of what the late Robert E. Webber labeled “evangelicals on the Canterbury trail.” The folks in this subgroup are attracted to the worship of a traditional or liturgical church, to its ambience, more than they are to its doctrine.

The folks in the second subgroup, on the other hand, were dissatisfied with their old church for a variety of reasons and had gone looking for a new church. What made her church attractive to the folks in this subgroup was that it was different from their old church. They are basically church consumers and her church is a new product.

The third group of people came from a church background. They had attended a church at some point in their life or even irregularly continued to attend a church. Some were baptized or even confirmed, depending upon their church background.

The smallest group in her church had no church background and had never previously attended a church.

In its make-up her church fit the make-up of the Episcopal church that I helped to plant in the 1980s. If her church is indeed representative of most ACNA churches, then the growth of the ACNA can be expected to plateau after ten years. I base this conclusion upon my experience with that church. The church grew initially, having been planted in a part of the county that was growing. It grew with the area. It did not grow because it had an evangelistic culture. Members of the congregation did tell friends, neighbors, relatives, and colleagues about the church and invite them to church services and functions. But once they exhausted their relationship networks, they did not try to establish new relationships in order to reach more people.

The church offered a mother’s day out program and operated a preschool. While these programs attracted some new families, the lion’s share of the families that these programs served were already a part of the church or were otherwise churched.

The church was symptomatic of a wider problem in the Episcopal Church, which is true today as it was then. Very few churches had an intentional strategy of evangelism and outreach, much less an evangelistic culture. The denomination relied upon these churches, the appeal of its worship, its reputation as a “bridge church,” and births to maintain its numbers. The liberalization of the Episcopal Church and the normalization of homosexuality in that denomination was a serious blow to the denomination. It not only lost members, congregations, and even dioceses but also its new reputation as a liberal, gay-friendly church failed to offset the losses. Liberals and gays are also not known for their large families and church attendance. The Episcopal Church’s liberal, gay-friendly reputation has proven to be a liability to date.

Churches that are really growing in North America are churches that teach the plain sense of the Bible. They are also churches that practice what they teach. The unreformed Catholic doctrine that is countenanced by the ACNA fundamental declarations and stated or implied in the ACNA canons, ordinal, trial eucharistic rites, catechism, and proposed rites for admission of catechumens, baptism, and confirmation is based on a particular tradition and consensus in the interpretation of the Scriptures. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox doctrine that these formularies (not be confused with the classic Anglican formularies) permit ACNA clergy to teach has the same basis. It does not fit into the category of the plain sense of Scripture. (It also does not fit into the category of the plain sense of the classic Anglican formularies and is identified with liberalism as a major challenge to the authority of the Scriptures and the classic Anglican formularies in the twenty-first century Anglican Church in the Fellowship of Confessing Anglican’s 2008 document, The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future.) As in the case of liberalism, it does not fully accept the canon of the Bible as “a functional rule for faith and life.”

Like the Episcopal Church’s liberal, gay-friendly reputation, the unreformed Catholic doctrine of its formularies may prove a liability to the ACNA over time. Denominations that share this doctrine are not known for their spectacular growth in North America. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, is only growing in those parts of the United States and Canada where the Roman Catholic population which continues to attend Mass and send their children to parochial schools is growing. Elsewhere in North America the Roman Catholic Church is consolidating and closing parishes and parochial schools.

The ACNA catechism that is a linchpin of the ACNA mission strategy is the longest of the revised Anglican catechism that I have examined. (I am being generous in describing the catechism as “Anglican.” A more apt description would be “independent Catholic.”) The ACNA plans to establish a process in that denomination similar to the Roman Catholic Church’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). In the Roman Catholic Church RCIA is used to gradually introduce interested adults and older children to the Roman Catholic faith and way of life. RCIA has not proven entirely effective in indoctrinating participants in the process in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise it has not proven effective in helping the Roman Catholic Church keep its members. The Roman Catholic Church has been haemorrhaging members, losing a substantial number to evangelical churches.

In 2006 and 2007 I was involved in a Southern Baptist church plant that was attracting lapsed Roman Catholics. A major reason they gave for attending an evangelical church was the lack of clear Bible teaching in the Roman Catholic Church. (This church was also attracting Episcopalians who had left the Episcopal Church over developments in that denomination. The lack of clear Bible teaching in the Episcopal Church was also a major reason they gave for attending an evangelical church.)

The unreformed Catholic doctrine of the ACNA formularies and the canonical requirement that all clergy must conform in their teaching to that doctrine is off-putting to evangelical pastors who are attracted to traditional or liturgical worship. This is also true of a number of practices associated with this doctrine. These factors are going to significantly reduce the ability of the ACNA to attract these pastors particular those who are committed to evangelism and church planting. What the ACNA is doing is making the same mistake that the Episcopal Church made in nineteenth century when it failed to heed the Muhlenberg Memorial.

One of the results of the debate over the place of Reformed theology in the Southern Baptist Convention is the recognition that Arminian and Reformed pastors and churches in the SBC are in agreement on The Baptist Faith and Message, a faith statement adopted by the SBC. The Baptist Faith and Message is so worded that Anglicans who are Reformed or otherwise conservative Protestant in their theological orientation would not disagree with most of what it upholds. The exception would be the statement on Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

The ACNA needs such a faith statement—one on which conservative Protestant Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics can genuinely agree. The doctrine of the rites and services of its Prayer Book, including its Ordinal, needs to be based on this statement and where necessary, separate rites need to be developed for the use of conservative Protestant Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics. I do not believe that the ACNA has a bright future unless a genuine attempt is made to make the denomination more inclusive of the whole range of conservative opinion.

In his address Archbishop Duncan also made this claim: “Our DNA all across this Church has been coded for church-planting.” But has it? Duncan does not identify what churches are doing the church planting and where they are planting new churches. While Duncan would have those he is addressing believe that church-planting is denomination-wide, only some ACNA churches are replicating themselves. Others are not. He should not have made this claim unless all ACNA churches are involved in church planting networks and are planting new churches. This includes new plants themselves. If some churches are carrying the burden of launching new congregations, then the situation in the ACNA is not much different than it was in the Episcopal Church in the last century, up to and during the Decade of Evangelism.

In the Anglican Diocese of the South, Archbishop-Elect Foley Beach’s diocese, no new churches have been planted in the Kentucky deanery since the diocese was formed and Beach elected its bishop. The Kentucky deanery has exactly three churches, all of them formed from breakaway groups that left the Episcopal Church over the election of a practicing homosexual as an Episcopal bishop. Beach’s diocese covers ten states and consists of fifty churches. Beach’s mission strategy to date is to entrust the planting of new churches to the deaneries in the diocese. This was the mission strategy of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. It is not an effective strategy. It would produce only one new church. The election of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 would kill this church, then a mission of the diocese. Attendance of its church services plummeted and the mission was eventually closed.

The ACNA, if it is to spread the gospel and fulfill the Great Commission, needs more flexible and innovative approaches to evangelism and church-planting than the traditional geographic-based diocese and deanery. It needs to hang onto its existing affinity networks and form new ones. Affinity networks have proven highly effective in these two areas.

Planting new churches in the shadow of existing ones is an accepted church planting strategy. It can motivate existing churches to become more outward-looking and evangelistic. It also makes the spread of the gospel and the fulfillment of the Great Commission the number one priority, which is what they should be.

The entire vineyard, we are apt to forget, belongs to the Lord and no part of the vineyard is the turf, or property, of a particular denomination, judicatory, or congregation. The Lord sends workers into whatever part of the vineyard He wills. Those working in that part of the vineyard have no right to complain if fresh workers are sent to that part of the vineyard.

For those who may be curious as to what percentage of the combined populations of the United States and Canada is the number of new people that Archbishop Duncan described as being brought into ACNA congregations through evangelism and outreach, my calculations show it to be .0016993337054471032888801205938103 percent. It is a minute fraction of their combined populations.

The Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, and the Continuing Anglican Churches historically have not enjoyed large population bases. This figure indicates that the ACNA, like these churches, is not only a small denomination but also has a small population base.

The Episcopal Church primarily has a small population base, not because it is a liberal, gay-friendly denomination (albeit its liberalism and normalization of homosexuality in the denomination have not helped it) but because it focused its ministry of a particular segment of the population—Americans who were affluent and educated, who were professionals—doctors, college professors, lawyers, school teachers, etc., who lived in the commercial centers of the nation, and who were drawn to the ambience of its worship. While Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian missionaries went west with the pioneers, traveling on horseback, in oxen-drawn wagons, or on foot, Episcopal missionaries waited for the advent of the steamboat and the railroad.

The Episcopal Church developed elitist proclivities at an early stage and has passed on these proclivities to its offspring, the Continuing Anglican Churches and the ACNA, (By "elitist: I mean that Episcopal Church is for the most part a church for elites.) The same proclivities are a factor in why the population base of these churches is small.

If the ACNA is to become a truly missionary denomination, reaching a wide segment of the North America population, its leaders need to examine how their decisions are limiting the ACNA’s population base and to take appropriate corrective action.