Catching the Pendulum: Peter Toon and the Growth of the Traditional Church

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

By Robin G. Jordan 

The late Peter Toon wrote the following article in 2004. It was was published on the Prayer Book Society website as “Worship Simply, Engage in Mission Joyfully: How to Grow a Traditional Church” and on the Virtue Online website as “Causing Traditional Churches to Grow.” It was subsequently removed from the PBS website but remains on David Virtue’s site. I have taken the liberty of posting the article in its entirety and adding my own commentary in italics after the various sections of the article. I have also included links to earlier articles that I wrote in which I expanded upon a number of the ideas in Peter’s article and presented several ideas of my own. At the time Peter wrote the article, he was the vicar of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor and St Anne's, Brown Edge. He was also president of the Prayer Book Society.

The pendulum swings this way and that. Right now the pendulum that swings at the heart of American evangelicalism is in motion away from the programmed mega-church, committed to evangelism and involved in a general dumbing down of historic Faith and discipline. It is apparently moving towards a type of church that takes seriously the public and private reading of the Bible and its application to life, the basics of the Christian Year, a recognition of the value of ordered worship, and a sense that mission is more than evangelism and includes ministries of compassion to needy people.

Importantly, the pendulum’s movement is indicating that for the first time in a long time the “evangelicals” are beginning to recognize that the basic and real purpose of “a service of worship” is simply to offer worship – as praise, thanksgiving, confession, petition and intercession, but chiefly praise – to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Further, to see that all genuine ministry & mission flow from and surround such holy, God-centered, corporate worship.

In the recent past, “worship services” (often like a show or a concert) have been promoted and seen too much as a means to an end – e.g., evangelism or church planting or community-building – and have appeared to be (by the evidence of the way folks dress) a special kind of leisure activity.

When Peter wrote his article in 2004, churches were already shifting away from the seeker-service model to a seeker-friendly model. The churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek that had pioneered the seeker-service model had discovered that the seekers who attended seeker-services and became believers did not make the transition to believer services that focused upon the worship of God. They also discovered that these believers lacked spiritual maturity: they were not making the transition to disciples. This shift appears to be what he is referring to when he describes the pendulum as swinging away from “the programmed mega-church committed to evangelism and involved in a general dumbing down of historic Faith and discipline.” This shift occurred as churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek came to recognize the inadequacies of this model.

The seeker-friendly model seeks to combine the seeker-service with the believer-service. The focus is the worship of God but in a format that eliminates or reduces the real and perceived barriers to becoming believers that the unchurched encounter in traditional churches.

A major drawback of this approach is one that it shares with the seeker-service model. A large number of the attendees rather than actively participating in the corporate worship of God are passively observing the worship of God by a team of musicians and vocalists. At the same time they are acquiring the misperception that what they are doing is worshiping God.

The smaller number of attendees who are actively engaging in the worship of God are engaging in a type of activity which may be described as parallel worship. Parallel worship is akin to the parallel play observed in small children. They are play in the same room in close proximity to each other but they are not playing together. They are not interacting with each other in their play. They are engaging in solitary play.

 In the case of this smaller number of attendees they may be singing along with the team of musicians and vocalists, they may be praying silently or aloud, or they may prostrate upon the floor, slain in the Spirit. They are not worshiping together with those on the platform.

A second drawback of this approach is the elimination or reduction of what are perceived or real barriers to becoming a believer that the unchurched encounter in traditional churches may not based upon a careful study of the unchurched in a particular community, county, or region. Rather it may be motivated by longstanding biases within a particular ecclesiastical tradition that may go back as far as the sixteenth century. Being a barrier to becoming a believer provides a new rationale for an old prejudice. 

In regards to what done in “worship” on Sundays and other occasions, those who are most rigorous in eliminating or reducing such barriers may be described as the Puritans of the twenty-first century and may have inherited their dislike of robes, responsive readings, and other elements of traditional worship from their Puritan forebears. In the process the baby is thrown out with the bathwater. Many elements of traditional worship (e.g. Scripture readings, prayer, congregational singing, etc.) that have proven their usefulness in the transformation of inquirers into believers and believers into disciples are discarded on the grounds that they present a barrier for the unchurched even when there is no empirical proof to support this conclusion.

On the other hand, the model that Peter is himself championing also has its drawbacks. Except perhaps for its more orthodox view of the Bible, it does not differ greatly from the model that is followed in the modern-day Episcopal Church.

If you visit the Episcopal churches in western Kentucky and neighboring western Tennessee, you will discover that many fit the model which Peter describes: “a type of church that takes seriously the public and private reading of the Bible and its application to life, the basics of the Christian Year, a recognition of the value of ordered worship, and a sense that mission is more than evangelism and includes ministries of compassion to needy people.” Among the crucial things that are missing is the recognition that proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ and making disciples is the primary task of the Church.

Just as the Father sent the Son, Jesus sent the disciples and sends us. The eleven represented the Church in all time and in all places when he told them that, when the Holy Spirit came upon them, they would receive power, and they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Peter did not like what he saw happening in churches like Saddleback and Willow Creek and his disappointment with these developments colored his judgment when it came to the place of evangelism and fellowship in the Church.

Worship is one of five functions which every church must do to fulfill the Great Commission. These functions include evangelism, discipleship, ministry, and fellowship. A church cannot pick and choose between these functions and engage in one or more to the neglect of the others. A healthy, growing church engages in all five functions.

Unfortunately too many churches have neglected the functions of evangelism, discipleship, and ministry. The result has been dead and dying churches in the evangelical denominations as well as the mainline denominations. The Episcopal Church has fallen into decline and the Continuum has not flourished like Continuers had hoped that it would.

The negative attitude that Peter displays in this article toward evangelism weakens what is otherwise a spot-on article about the steps that traditional churches need to take in order to grow. He seems to be unable to separate a particular method of evangelism from evangelism itself, that is, the spread of the gospel and the making of disciples. He unfortunately reinforces a prejudice against evangelism that has characterized the Episcopal Church since the late nineteenth century and which the disaffected Episcopalians who left the Episcopal Church in the second half of the twentieth century brought with them into what would become the Continuing Anglican Church.

The truth is sharing the gospel with others, having gospel conversations with them, leading them to Christ, discipling them as new believers, and forming them into full devoted disciples of Jesus Christ is integral part of being a follower of our Lord. We may praise God with our lips when we gather on Sunday and at other times but our worship is empty words if our lives do not honor him when we disperse into the world.  As James tells us in his epistle, “… be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).  

Peter’s inference from the more casual dress of churchgoers that they view Sunday worship as a special kind of leisure activity, I believe, is baseless. People dress more casually than they have in past for occasions on which an earlier generation would have worn more formal attire.

The Bible tells us that God does not judge us by our outward appearance but by the state of our heart. He is far less concerned about whether we are wearing a shirt, tie, and jacket to church as he is about whether we are clothing ourselves in the beauty of holiness.

For much of the Church’s history people did not wear special attire to church. Only the wealthy and the privileged owned more than one suit of clothes. The vestments that we see in Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches were originally the everyday street wear of the early clergy – a poncho-like cloak, the chasuble; a long tunic, the alb; and a scarf, the stole.

My next door neighbor told me that reason she no longer goes to traditional churches is that at the last traditional church she tried to attend, she was turned away because she was wearing slacks. The church had a dress code and she did not meet the requirements of that code. I have heard similar stories from other people, including a former rector who, while he was on vacation, attended a church in an open collar shirt. He received frowns from the members of the congregation throughout the service and during the coffee hour afterwards. Their attitude toward him, however, changed when they discovered that he was a priest.

Our Lord, when he walked this earth, mingled with all kinds of people – poor people in rags, prostitutes with uncovered heads, tax collectors who dressed like Gentiles, and Pharisees who scrupulously followed the Old Testament dress code.

When our Lord returns with glory to judge the living and the dead, he will demand an accounting from each of us about how we lived our lives - what we said and did; what we did not say and do; and not what we wore to church on Sunday and other occasions.

If we wish to see our churches grow, we need to follow our Lord’s example and not look askance because one of our guests is not dressed like ourselves. We should extend a warm welcome to every guest irrespective of what he or she is wearing.

To this day I remember a woman who attended St. Michael’s, Mandeville, Louisiana for several months when I was senior lay reader of that church. She came from a blue-collar, working class background when almost all of the church came from a white collar-professional, middle class background. She wore her “Sunday best” but among the smartly-dressed, more affluent members of the congregation she looked and I suspect felt out of place.

One Sunday she brought a friend with her to church. Her friend also looked out of place. She did not return the following Sunday.

Because she did not look like one of them, the members of the congregation avoided her. They did attempt to engage her in conversation or to make her feel at home. In effect, they ostracized her. This may have been unconscious but was clearly at odds with the hospitality that Jesus extended to all people and which he expects us to extend to them too.

Now the possibilities are opening up for traditional churches to attract younger people not by gimmicks but by an obvious, serious and sincere attempt to read the Bible as God’s Word and to apply it to life’s journey, needs and questions, to engage in worship which is directed wholly towards the Father in the Name of the Son and with the Holy Spirit, and to participate in mission which takes the real needs of the world seriously. [Of course in the USA there will be the standard need for a decent building and car park with childcare etc.]

This situation provides a real and vital opportunity for Anglican churches either to be planted or for existing churches to be revived (retooled!) to catch the movement of this pendulum. Whether they will rise to the occasion is doubtful (based on what they have done in the past) but one must seek to be optimistic, as one notices how the Orthodox Churches, for example, benefit from this situation.

I fear that the way that much traditional Anglican worship as is conducted and presented now in small churches will not catch the flow of this pendulum. Indeed it will not notice its movement or the breeze that it creates, for it is locked into a kind of 1950s type of experience and model. And neither, I fear, will the generic, charismatic-type of Anglican worship, which has parted company with the basics of liturgy and the Church Year since the 1980s and which is so committed to using “worship services” as a means to an end, be it that of personal fulfillment or evangelism or community building.

People’s spiritual needs are “real” needs. If they are estranged from God, they need to be restored to a right relationship with him.

The insights of the psychologist Abraham Maslow are useful in understanding human needs. Depending upon the circumstances of an individual, it may be necessary first to address their physical, psychological, safety, social relationship, or esteem needs before addressing their spiritual needs. These different levels or stages of needs are also “real” needs. Both the individual Christian and the local church can help people to meet their needs in each of these levels or stages.

With this statement, “of course in the USA there the standard need for a decent building and car park with childcare etc.” Peter is voicing what is an unrealistic expectation for many twenty-first century churches. Prohibitive real estate prices and unfriendly zoning laws are making it much more difficult for churches to own a building. This is one of the reasons that Thom Rainer and others are encouraging churches that are about to close their doors to sell or otherwise turn over their property to another church rather letting it be converted to secular use.

The reality is that a church does not need a traditional worship center/sanctuary in order to engage in the five functions necessary to fulfill the Great Commission. A church does not need to go heavily into debt to build or purchase this type of building only to discover that after the short-term growth spurt which occasionally (but not invariably) accompanies the construction or purchase of such a building, the building is not the panacea for its growth problems that that church thought it would be.

 Peter was pessimistic about the ability of Anglican churches to “catch this movement of the pendulum,” a pessimism borne from what they had done in the past. The early twentieth century evangelist Billy Sunday, when he was once asked his opinion of the Episcopal Church allegedly replied, "She is a sleeping giant, and if she ever wakes up, look out!" But she slumbers on and as she slumbers, she has declined. The Continuum appears to have caught the same disease from the Episcopal Church and it slumbers too, wasting away as it sleeps.

Peter’s hope was that here and there a church might wake up and take advantage of this shift. The Holy Spirit does have a way of disturbing a church’s slumber and producing a growing conviction in its leaders and members that it is on the wrong track so Peter’s hope is not entirely unfounded. Our God is a god of miracles. He can do the impossible. He can raise the dead to life and can turn a dying church around.

Peter’s description of the state of much traditional Anglican worship in small churches in 2004 was reasonably accurate. It was, in his word, “locked into a kind of 1950s type of experience and model.”It is still a reasonably accurate description of that worship thirteen years later albeit a number of small Anglican churches have come to the realization that it is no longer the twentieth century and what worked well in the 1950s does not work at all in the twenty-first century.

It is unclear to me to what churches Peter is referring in his reference to “generic, charismatic-type of Anglican worship which has parted company with the basics of liturgy and the Church Year since the 1980s.” Perhaps he is referring to Anglican churches in United Kingdom where he was a vicar in 2004 and which were using New Patterns of Worship from Common Worship (2001). 

The charismatic Anglican and Episcopal churches here in the United States with which I was acquainted in the 1980s and 1990s and even less than a decade ago had not abandoned the basics of liturgy or the Church Year. The primary focus of their services was the worship of God present in the midst of his gathered people. The clergy wore vestments. The reading and exposition of the Scriptures and the celebration of the Holy Communion were prominent features of the services. Both the liturgies of the 1928 Prayer Book and the 1979 Prayer Book were used. 

The charismatic congregations were more demonstrative in their worship and enthusiastic in their congregational singing than non-charismatic ones. They lifted up their hands both in praise and prayer; they moved to the music of the livelier hymns, praise choruses, and worship songs. The services usually began with several opening songs. The lyrics of songs were projected on a screen. A variety of musical instruments - guitar, piano, violin, various wind instruments, and some forms of percussion (djembe, conga, box drums, stacked bells, and bell lyre but not drum kits) - were used to accompany the congregational singing. 

The congregation would at times "sing in the Spirit," blending their voices in improvisational singing in praise of God - what the early Church fathers referred to as "jubilation." There was an openness to the gift of prophesy, either in English or in tongues with interpretation. Intercessory prayer teams were stationed near the communion stations for communicants who might desire intercessory prayer after they received the sacrament.

What I think will probably succeed (by God’s blessing) to catch the pendulum’s movement is a local parish that:

1. On Sunday morning has simple, dignified worship, using the classic text of the BCP as is, without additions from other books (e.g. Missals); has good music, and uses minimal but well executed ceremonial and ritual to accompany the words.

2. takes the public reading of the Bible seriously as a means of grace and also takes expository preaching of the same seriously as a further means of grace (15-20 min well prepared sermons).

3. open to the use and development of modern (dignified) forms of music to accompany psalms and canticles, alongside the creative use of traditional music.

4. places emphasis upon real fellowship in Christ Jesus between people not only of the same generation but across generations

5. teaches the habit and discipline of Daily Prayer using the Offices in the BCP along with the Bible, and offers such daily in church.

6. teaches the value of the Church Year as a means of grace and ordered piety and keeps its major Feasts reverently.

7. has provision mid-week and on Sunday afternoons/evenings for Bible Study, fellowship, serious discussion and questioning.

8. has definite outreach ministries to the locality focusing on needs that can be addressed.

9. has clergy and lay leadership which, while highly esteeming the heritage of the Anglican Way, is keen to find appropriate ways to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and to serve him in his world, in this generation and in this culture.

10. is open to the presenting of the texts of the services in attractive booklets in a modern typeface and with suitable illustrations and explanatory comments – and even open to projecting the text on to a screen if this is necessary and useful.

11. which distinguishes between being simple and being simplistic and which learns to major on majors not on minors (e.g., does not major on the minutiae of ceremonial or of clergy dress).

12. that advertises in ways which reflect the ethos of the church (rather than imitate modern advertising of goods) and which is not afraid to go into the public square to make itself known.

13. that is geographically situated in a place which is easy to access and which has the basic facilities (or the potential for them) for activity outside the worship area.

14. that has a bishop, clergy and leadership who are sensitive to the movement of the Spirit in the Church and world and who are men of God, first and foremost!

One could continue. The point is that the classic Anglican Way has sufficient within itself by God’s grace to address and meet the need of those young people today who look for an attractive yet substantial way of worshipping the Holy Trinity and serving Him in His world. What is urgently needed are dedicated, wise and gracious persons to become engaged (or in some cases) to continue to be engaged in the MISSIO DEI as it presents itself at this time in this place.

The ideas that Peter presents in this section of the article are sound and applicable today as they were in 2004. Anglican worship at its best is characterized by a “noble simplicity” – the judicious application of the liturgical principle of “less is more.” The addition of liturgical texts from other sources, with the exception of occasional prayers, thanksgivings, and blessings, not only often changes the doctrine of the Prayer Book services but also frequently introduces superfluous or redundant elements into the liturgy, unnecessarily increasing its complexity, length, and prolixity and making the liturgy more mind-numbing and wearisome than it should be.

For example, if a service of Holy Communion begins with a hymn and a procession of the ministers with lights and a processional cross, the presiding minister does not need to recite or sing an introit, a snippet of a Psalm that formerly accompanied the entrance of the ministers. If an introit Psalm is desired, then the choir, if the church has one, should sing a Psalm in place of the hymn at the entrance of the ministers. Or the congregation should sing a metrical version of a Psalm such as “Come, Loud Anthems, Let Us Sing” (Psalm 95) or “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” (Psalm 100).

Like the offertory rite and the closing rite of the Holy Communion service, the entrance rite has historically tended to accumulate a clutter of unnecessary elements that do little if anything to enrich the common prayer of the people but rather have the deleterious effect of making it needlessly taxing upon the congregation. 

Long, tedious services do not appeal to unchurched people.

Empirical research has shown that the quality of the music that a church uses in its worship was a factor in why formerly unchurched people chose to attend the church. It was not the type of music so much as it was the attention that the church gave to its performance. This conveyed to unchurched guests attending the church for the first time or returning to the church the message that the church took the worship of God seriously. Rare is the small church that cannot find some kind of music that it can do well. It might be singing American folk hymns from a shaped-note hymnal like Southern Harmony or “celebration songs” from the 1970s and 1980s. The important thing is to not confuse “good music” with a particular type of music.

If a church is going to reach the community, its members need to get involved in the community. As Mark Clifton points out in the Revitalize and Replant Podcast, “Should a Church Replant Change Its Name?” a church that wishes to change the community’s perception of the church needs to serve the community with abandon. It needs to spend its time loving the community and changing its reputation in the community. 

Churches often believe that they are engaging in meaningful outreach by giving money to clinics that provide free pregnancy tests, free ultrasounds, pregnancy options education and STD testing, donating non-perishable food items to community food banks, and supporting other agencies and organizations that serve the community. There is nothing wrong with doing this sort of thing. But if a church wishes to raise its visibility in the community, if it wishes to have a real impact upon the community, it needs to become more incarnational: the church members themselves need to reach out and engage with the unchurched and the unreached in the community. They need to embody God’s love for the world that he created. They need to become the most generous people in the community, not just with their money but with their time, their building, and whatever else they have to offer. They need to do this primarily not out of the desire to grow their church but to serve Christ – to love others as he loves them.

A church does not need a worship center/sanctuary with stained-glass windows, a communion rail, needlepoint kneelers, an ornately covered altar, and a brass cross and candlesticks in order to worship God in the beauty of holiness. The misuse of the phrase “the beauty of holiness” can be traced to Archbishop William Laud who employed it to justify the so-called “reforms” in church and clergy ornaments that he and his royal patron, Charles I, imposed upon the Church of England. His misuse of the phrase has nothing to do with its biblical meaning. “The beauty of holiness” to which this phrase refers is the beauty of a life lived in accordance with God’s will, a life devoted to the honoring of God in word and deed. To worship God in the beauty of holiness is to worship Him clothed in the holiness that comes from seeking to be holy as the Lord himself is holy, with the help of His grace. It is a holiness that we cannot achieve by our own efforts alone.

In the twenty-first century a church not only needs to have a well-designed website and Facebook page but it needs to know how to use them. From what I have seen on the Internet, many traditional churches have not grasped the importance of these tools. A church also need a large, illuminated sign in front of its building with its name and service hours and little else in large, easy to read lettering (not Old English or Gothic). The official emblem or logo of the jurisdiction to which a church belongs means nothing to unchurched people. Some churches may need to put out portable signs directing to the church along the roads leading to the church early on Sunday morning. A church also needs to investigate what is the best kind of advertising for its particular community, county, and region. What works in one area may not work in another. The unchurched do not read the religion page of the local newspaper, a page which is usually read by churchgoers.

One of the best forms of advertising is word of mouth. This is one of the reasons why it is important that church members get involved in the community. It also one of the reasons that the church needs to create a friendly, welcoming environment for unchurched guests attending the church for the first time or returning to the church. If they have a positive experience, they not only will come back but also they will tell other people about their experience.

As retailers know, location is key to a successful business. Location can also impact the growth of a church. A church that is located on a back street, that is screened from the road, and which is difficult to find is not going to experience the kind of growth that a church that is located on a well-traveled street or even a main artery of the community and which is visible from the highway will experience. I am personally acquainted with two churches that suffer poor attendance because of their location and one whose location was a factor in its eventual closure. All three churches were built in the middle of subdivisions due to the mistaken idea that the residents of the subdivision would attend the church most convenient to them. It did not happen.

With the rising construction and real estate costs the church building that has separate worship and fellowship areas may be a thing of the past. Among ten major trends that Thom Rainer has identified is that more churches are moving into retail space. Churches are also downsizing worship centers/sanctuaries. This means that more churches will be opting for multiple purpose buildings in which the worship area will be used for a variety of activities beside worship. This is not the first time in Church history that church buildings are serving multiple purposes. The nave of the Medieval two-room monastic church was originally a storage barn and was put to a number of different uses in the Middle Ages.

Whether a church grows ultimately rests in God’s hands. This knowledge does not mean that we should adopt a do-nothing attitude. We should seek to be faithful in fulfilling the Great Commission, using the reason, the talents, and the spiritual gifts that God has given us and the skills, knowledge, and experience that he enabled us to acquire. As a good farmer knows, while he works the soil, plants the seed, tends the young plants, it is God who gives the harvest.  

See Also:

The Traditional Church in the Twenty-First Century: Revitalizing the Liturgy -  Part I'

The Traditional Church in the Twenty-First Century: Revitalizing the Liturgy - Part II

The Traditional Church in the Twenty-First Century: Revitalizing the Liturgy - Part III

Thoughts on the Revitalization of the Traditional Anglican Church in the Twenty-First Century

Several links in the above articles no longer connect with Dr. Toon's articles to which I refer in these articles as they are no longer archived at the Prayer Book Society website. They are not among his writings archived on the New Scriptorium website. If anyone is familiar with a website where his articles are still archived, please let me know.  .  

Image: Bella Raj