Reshaping the 1928 Prayer Book Services for Mission – Part 1

The Holy Table at St. Mark's Anglican Church, Benton, Kentucky

By Robin G. Jordan

I have been a vegetarian for more than 40 years. As a friend of mine who is a former Russian Orthodox priest describes my eating habits, I am observing all year round the fast of an Orthodox Lent. I adopted a plant-based diet not too long after I left university. I began to lean in the direction of a plant-based diet while I was a university student. Several of my friends were exploring Zen Buddhism. One of them introduced me to Macrobiotics. The catalyst, however, was Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet published in 1971. A central premise of her book was a plant-based diet was much more sustainable than a meat-based diet and would make more food available to feed the planet’s growing human population. The environmental vegetarianism that she advocated made a great deal of sense to me.

You may be wondering, “What does adopting a plant-based diet have to do with reshaping the 1928 Prayer Book services for mission?” Let me explain:

Unless you live in Great Britain or on the West Coast, a vegetarian or vegan life style limits you to eating most of your meals at home. The cafeteria of my local university is vegetarian- and vegan- friendly but the one remaining local restaurant that had a vegetarian- and vegan-friendly menu has changed hands. It has a new proprietor, new management and a new menu. A second restaurant suffered an after-hours fire in its kitchen several years ago. The fire spread to the dining room and then gutted the entire building.

In my experience restaurants that are exclusively vegetarian or vegan are generally short-lived unless they are located in a community that has a sizable population that is vegetarian or vegan, is health conscious and recognizes the health benefit of a plant-based diet, or is otherwise open to dining at a vegetarian or vegan restaurant. The prices may be reasonable; the service may be great, the ingredients may be fresh and organic, and the food itself pleasing to the eye and to the palate, but in a community in which dining-out in the public’s mind is synonymous with eating meat or fish the restaurant will not prosper.

Many small Continuing Anglican churches face similar challenges. They are not going to flourish in communities where their way of doing church, of worshiping on Sunday, appeals to a very tiny segment of the population beside the members of their own congregation, if it appeals to anyone else at all. This is one of the reasons that a large number of small Continuing Anglican churches are struggling. It is not the only reason but it is an important one. It is also a problem situation that these churches can do something about. They can make changes in how they do church – changes that will not only increase guest attendance but also guest return.

From what I have seen, most small Continuing Anglican churches adopt a particular way of doing church either by chance or due to the influence of one individual. This individual may not even occupy a formal leadership position in the church but he (or she) may at the same time exercise considerable influence in the church. In some instances it may be a combination of the two. Whatever may be the case, the mission of the Church is generally not a major determining factor.

When many Continuing Anglican churches were launched, their start-up was not preceded by the kind of community assessment that has become normative in present-day church planting. These churches were launched with the expectation that a large number of Episcopalians would become disaffected from the Episcopal Church and would migrate en masse to the Continuing Anglican jurisdictions. This has never happened. While three exoduses of disaffected Episcopalians have occurred since the 1970s, they have not flocked to the jurisdictions that emerged from the Continuing Anglican Movement of the 1970s or to the churches forming these jurisdictions. Each group has started its own jurisdictions and launched its own churches. They too have expected to benefit from an influx of disaffected Episcopalians from the Episcopal Church. Like the older Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, they have been disappointed.

As a consequence very few of the Continuing Anglican churches are a good fit with the communities or regions in which they were planted. They have very small population bases and their population bases are shrinking. They are like the vegetarian or vegan restaurant that opens in a town in which the local restaurants that serve steak, barbecued ribs, and fried catfish draw crowds on the weekend. It may attract a handful of loyal customers but the business of these customers will not pay the costs of operation. They are doomed from the outset like the Seven Day Adventist vegetarian restaurant that opened in Paris, Tennessee, twenty miles from where I live. It folded in less than a year. Why? It could not attract enough customers to stay in business.

While restaurant start-ups have a notoriously high failure rate and vegetarian and vegan restaurant start-ups may have an even higher failure rate, some restaurants do succeed. At least two restaurants that served vegetarian entrees were able to establish niches for themselves here in Murray. One was targeted at Murray’s university community and featured international cuisine; the other, was run by members of a local Mennonite church and was devoted to promoting healthy eating habits.

Both of these restaurants accommodated local tastes and preferences in food and served meat and fish as well as vegetarian entrees. The food they served was nutritious, appetizing, high quality, and in the case of the second restaurant, locally grown or raised and organic. They made compromises but these compromises did not affect the nutritional value, flavor, appearance, and quality of the food. While they did not attract the crowds that one of the local steak houses attracts, they enjoyed a measure of popularity in the community and a steady flow of new and return customers from the community.

Just as these two restaurants were able to establish niches for themselves in their community so can small Continuing Anglican churches. The first step is to make the mission of the Church the primary guiding principal in how we do church. Here the concept of creating environments that help guests make the transition from unchurched nonbelievers or dechurched believers to gospel-sharing, disciple-making followers of Jesus Christ is a useful one. When we begin to think in terms of such environments, we also begin to think differently about how we are doing church not just on Sunday but throughout the week. We become more outward-looking. Our focus shifts from catering to our own preferences to reaching and engaging the unchurched and dechurched segments of the community’s population. Church growth and decline can be described as a bell-shaped curve with an upside and a downside. This shift is an important step toward moving off the downside onto a new upside.

A good restaurateur seeks not only create a dining experience that will cause restaurant’s patrons to come back but will also give the restaurant a positive word-of-mouth reputation in the community, a reputation that will attract new patrons. A good restaurateur also seeks to instill in the restaurant’s patrons a growing appreciation of the cuisine that the restaurant features.

What goes into a positive dining experience? A courtesy, friendly, and attentive wait staff. The promptness with which the meal is served after it is ordered. The food itself. The congenial atmosphere of the restaurant. Clean restrooms. The little extra effort that is put into everything and the other small touches which make a difference. Simply put, this experience is an embodiment of hospitality.

If they wish to fulfill the mission of the Church, small Continuing Anglican churches – indeed Continuing Anglican churches of all sizes – need to create a similar type of experience for guests who may attend the church on Sundays or during the week – a positive experience that will prompt them to tell others about the church and will cause them to return again and again. They need to extend the same kind of hospitality. Here I must emphasize that creating such an experience, extending such hospitality, while it is an important step toward fulfilling the Church’s mission, it is not the only step. Our Lord did not wait for people to come to him, he went to them. We must do likewise. We must go into the community and the region, meet and befriend their peoples, and become an indispensable part of their lives.

Image: Bella Raj