From the Frying Pan into the Fire: The North American Anglican Dilemma

By Robin G. Jordan

The reform of the Anglican Church in North America’s system of church government is not a matter for the “Matthew 18 process.” It is a matter for free, open, and public discussion both inside and outside of the ACNA. The constitution and canons of the ACNA are clumsy, amateurish documents. They were cobbled together from a number of different sources, including the Code of Canons of the Roman Catholic Church. They need a serious overhaul.

At the time of the organization of the Anglican Church in North America former Archbishop Bob Duncan was very outspoken in promoting what he described as “minimalist” governing documents for the new province. Theoretically the idea of a “minimalist” constitution and set of canons is not a bad one. In practice, however, it suffers from a number of serious defects. These defects are very evident in the ACNA constitution and canons.

During his tenure as ACNA’s chief bishop it became quite apparent that Duncan’s real objection to a more detailed and more specific constitution and set of canons was that he did not like the restraints that these governing documents would place upon him. He would disregard the provisions of the ACNA’s “minimalist” constitution and canons and act as if he was “above the law.” What was even more scandalous was the College of Bishops refused to rein him in but went along with his extra-constitutional and extra-canonical acts. Or they looked the other way.

Among the defects of the ACNA’s “minimalist” governing documents is that they do not provide essential details where they need to provide such details. They fail to be specific where they need to be specific. They do not set necessary boundaries. They also do not provide important safeguards. Sections of these two documents may be compared to Swiss cheese except that they have more holes than cheese.

I have examined a number of governing documents of Anglican provinces. All of them have a clearly-defined procedure for adopting and revising a Prayer Book for the province. The exception is the Anglican Church in North America. It is one of the most glaring omissions in its governing documents. Was this omission an oversight? Or was it deliberate? In any case the College of Bishops has sought to take advantage of this omission and arrogate to itself authority to approve a Prayer Book for the province, an assumption of authority for which no real justification exists in the ACNA’s constitution and canons. It did the same thing with the ACNA’s ordinal and its catechism. In the case of ordinal, the College of Bishops went as far as declaring the further revision of the ordinal was off-limits.

If one searches the ACNA constitution and canons, one will find no provision which gives the College of Bishops any authority in these matters. One will find a provision that gives the Provincial Council such authority. The College of Bishops is essentially usurping the Provincial Council’s authority. The ACNA constitution and canons further stipulate that any action that the Provincial Council in relation to these matters must be ratified by the Provincial Assembly. Otherwise, the action of the Provincial Council has no force. What the College of Bishops is doing is both unconstitutional and uncanonical.

The College of Bishop’s usurpation of the Provincial Council’s authority has been a longstanding problem in the Anglican Church in North America. Initially the College of Bishops was content to let the Provincial Council function as a rubber stamp for the College of Bishops and the Provincial Assembly to function as a rubber stamp for the Provincial Council.

But as the College of Bishops has increasingly encroached upon the Provincial Council’s authority, the function of the Council has become more and more cosmetic. Since the bishops dominate the Provincial Council, its function was largely cosmetic in the first place. This has in all likelihood emboldened the bishops—this and the lack of serious pushback from the rank and file.

In a number of ways the Anglican Church in North America like a corporation in which the directors can do as they please and the stockholders’ meeting is powerless to do anything about it. In a number of ways it is also like the Roman Catholic Church and the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union. The important decisions are made by a small group of people at the top and then submitted to larger bodies of people for their automatic approval. The sole purpose of the approval of these bodies is to lend an air of legitimacy to the decisions of the church or party’s top leaders. In such a system the rank and file, the Roman Catholic parishioner and the Communist Party member, have little input into decisions that affect them.

As long as the Provincial Assembly cannot give proper consideration to the legislation submitted to the Assembly—debate the legislation at length, appoint task forces to study the legislation and report their findings to the Assembly, to amend legislation, and even to initiate legislation of its own—and to function as the central authority of the province in other ways, the College of Bishops can be expected to encroach further on the authority of not just the Provincial Council but the other organs of governance in the Anglican Church in North America. A strong Provincial Assembly would serve as a counter-balance to the College of Bishops, a check to its ambitions, and mechanism of accountability for it.

In the original proposal for the governance of the Anglican Church in North America the Provincial Council was elected by the Provincial Assembly and therefore was accountable to it. While this proposal did not go as far as authorizing the Provincial Council to serve as an interim body to the Provincial Assembly between its sessions and limiting its functions to those delegated by the Provincial Assembly, this is the role that similar bodies play in other Anglican provinces. It is a form of synodical government that the ACNA might have adopted (and still could).

A critical element that is missing from the Anglican Church in North America is accountability. Denominations that lack accountability mechanisms are likely to experience not only abuse of ecclesiastical authority but also theological drift. If ACNA’ers remove their rose-colored glasses and take a good hard look at their province, they will see that both are happening in the ACNA today. They did not leave the abuse of ecclesiastical authority and theological drift behind when they left the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Church of Canada. They simply traded one kind of abuse and drift for another kind.

Thursday's Catch: Church Revitalization in the Bible Belt and More

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The Bible Belt isn’t as unique as it once was in American culture. But revitalizing churches in the area often still requires some unique considerations. Listen Now

Why Church Planters Must Be Able to Teach [Podcast]

Anyone who aspires to plant a church must be able to teach the Word of God. Listen Now

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This week, walk around your church campus and try to see it through the eyes of a first-time guest. Here are some environmental factors to pay close attention to.... Read More

6 Needed Shifts for Reaching the Next Generation

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Few Churched Teenagers Become Devout Young Adults

Most young adults who attended church as a teenager say they believe in God today, but fewer consider themselves devout Christians. And as a whole, they have conflicting recollections about the churches they attended in high school. Read More

Pew: Sunday Regulars Are Happier and Healthier

Across 25 countries, active religious participation is linked with habits like nonsmoking, community involvement, and voting. Read More

"Wayfarers All" Revisited

By Robin G. Jordan

I originally posted this short article on November 30, 2010, over nine years ago. Pope Benedict had issued the apostolic constitution ‘Anglicanorum coetibus’ and its complementary norms almost a year earlier. The Anglican Church in North America had also been organized as an alternative province to the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada in 2009. The first Global Anglican Future Conference had been held two years before. It had issued the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration which upheld the historic Anglicanism’s long standing standard of doctrine and worship—the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, and the Ordinal of 1661.

Conservative North American Anglicans have reached another crossroads. The fingerpost points in a number of directions. They can join the exodus from the Anglican Church, abandon what small part of the Anglican heritage onto which they have hung, and become Roman Catholics. They can continue in their present direction away from authentic historic Anglicanism, pulled this way and that way by whatever ecclesiastic fad of the moment grips their imagination. Or they can turn back to the old paths of the Bible and the Reformation, of the Protestant faith of the reformed Church of England and her venerable formularies. They can once more set their feet upon the true Anglican Way.

Those who do will be pleasantly surprised to discover that the true Anglican Way in broad enough for High Churchmen in the Anglican Reformed tradition as well as classical Evangelicals. They will also find it broad enough for those who highly esteem the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, as a perusal of the Homily on the Holy Spirit for Whit-Sunday will reveal. While requiring uniformity on primary matters, the true Anglican Way permits liberty on secondary matters and encourages Christian charity in all things. The true Anglican Way has never sought to bind men’s consciences any tighter than the Scriptures bind them.

The true Anglican Way gives great weight to the teaching of the Bible. For those treading its path the Bible is the Word of God written, and the final and supreme authority in all matters of faith and life. The Holy Scriptures is the test by which the truth of every doctrine must be tried. What weight the true Anglican Way gives to the Creeds, the Councils of the Church, to early Church Fathers, and the historic Anglican formularies comes from their agreement with the teaching of the Bible. Where their teaching parts from that of the Holy Scriptures, farers on the true Anglican Way part from their teaching.

The true Anglican Way gives a place to the sacraments, to Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in the spiritual journey of the Christian. Those who tread its path recognize these two ordinances of Christ as more than bare signs: they are means of grace. Through these two sacraments God shows his goodwill and favor to us. However, those to whom these sacraments are administered do not automatically or invariably benefit from them. Requisite conditions for them to possess the benefits of the sacraments are that they must also possess true repentance and a lively faith. They must turn from sin and to Christ. They must trust in Christ for their salvation. Repentance and faith are the fertile soil upon which the seeds of sacramental grace must fall in order to bear fruit.

Farers on the true Anglican Way do not count confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, or extreme unction as sacraments. They understand that these five “commonly-called (i.e., mistakenly called) sacraments” have grown partly from the corrupt following of the apostles. They are partly states of life that the Scriptures allow. Unlike Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, they do not have the nature of sacraments: they do not have any visible sign or ceremony that God ordained.

Those who tread the true Anglican Way are very mindful of the vital role of the Holy Spirit in their spiritual lives. The Holy Spirit is the giver of life to those who are spiritually dead. Without the Spirit’s quickening we have no will to please God and without the Spirit’s working within us we have no power to do so. The Holy Spirit equips, empowers, guides, and sanctifies us, enabling us to bear much fruit to the glory of God.

Those who take the time to explore the true Anglican Way discover to their delight that the three elements of the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and the Spirit, three elements that the Ancient-Future or Convergence movement has appropriated, are very much a part of that path. At the same time the true Anglican Way does not depart from the Bible and the Reformation while the path of the Ancient-Future or Convergence movement leads those upon it into the howling wilderness of unreformed Catholicism and then disappears like a rabbit track in the woods, fading into nothing. The Bible and the Reformation are God’s gifts to his people—the first to keep them on the right path and the second to return them to the right path. They show us how to follow Jesus and to be a part of the true apostolic church.

Inside And Outside The Bible Belt: A Schism The American Church Must Address

The church has never found unity through sameness, but by celebrating how Christ uses the gifts of different parts of his one body.

There are two churches in America. The church inside the Bible Belt and the church outside the Bible Belt.

The ones inside the Bible Belt often look at the ones outside as compromised and soft on sin because of their rejection of long-held traditions.

Meanwhile, those outside the Bible Belt often look at those inside as behind the times and irrelevant because of their insistence on long-held traditions.

Neither side is seeing the other one accurately – or kindly. Read More

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

4 Ways to Avoid the Church Drop Out Danger Zone

Two-thirds of church-attending teenagers drop out as young adults and many of those rarely, if ever, come back. But they aren’t just leaving, they’re leaving at a specific time.

If churches can recognize when their students will potentially leave, they can make adjustments to keep them there. Read More

Guarding the Faith from Its Guardians

By Robin G. Jordan

Who will guard the faith from its supposed guardians? Who will protect the church from those who are primarily responsible for propagating error and superstition in the church—its bishops? This is the challenge that faces the North American Anglican Church in the twenty-first century, not just in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada but also in the Anglican Church in North America.

The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada have set off down one path that leads away from Biblical Christianity and authentic historic Anglicanism. The Anglican Church in North America has set off down another path that also leads away from Biblical Christianity and authentic historic Anglicanism. Each is following its own willow-the-wisp that lures it away from the safe path of the Anglican Way into the morass. .

At the front of each church, their eyes blind to the marshy ground beneath their feet, are the bishops of the church. They have strayed from the safety of the Anglican Way and they are taking their churches with them. They are heedless of the fate that awaits them--the horrors of the bog with its insatiable hunger, which will suck them and all who go with them down into its dark watery depths never to see the light of day again.

The English Reformers knew what lay beyond the safe path of the Anglican Way and they erected guard rails to keep travelers on that path from straying into the bog. They are what we have come to call the classical formularies of historic Anglicanism—the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, The Book of Common Prayer of 1662, and the Ordinal of 1661. They may be moss-covered and weathered but they still serve their purpose. They prevent travelers from wandering off the path and drowning in the bog.

Sadly these guard rails are viewed as outdated, old-fashioned, and unnecessary in certain quarters of the Anglican Church. “We do not need guard rails,” their critics explain. Look closely in the eyes of these critics and you will see the reflection of the flickering lights that hover above the bog and beckon them like the lights of a distant cottage. The old fairy tales have a name for it. It is “glamour.” It is the power to bewitch, to enchant, to mislead, to make things appear to be other than what they are. Those who are invited to a fairy feast, if they are fortunate, are able to see through the glamour and discover that the fragrant wine in a bejeweled chalice and the rich viands on a golden platter their hosts are offering them is muddy water in an acorn cup and poisonous toadstools on a leaf.

Some of us may prefer glamour to reality. We may cling to the mistaken belief that we are not disobeying God when we conduct a wedding ceremony for two men or two women. We may prefer the delusion that the early high Middle Ages was a golden age of Christianity, a time when the Church was everything that it should be. These beliefs, however, are the willow-the-wisps, the ignus fatius, that are luring us away from the safe path onto the wet muddy ground of the bog.

How do we meet the challenge that faces the North American Anglican Church in the twenty-first century? First, we must recognize that this challenge is not particular to the twenty-first century. It is a challenge that the Reformed Anglican Church has faced since the sixteenth century. One of the ways that it has met this challenge is to erect the guard rails that I mentioned earlier in this article—the Articles, the Prayer Book, and the Ordinal. Another way that the Reformed Anglican Church has met this challenge is to insist that its bishops and other clergy stay within these guard rails, that they do not ignore them, move them, or tear them down, that they do not encourage others to ignore them, move them, or tear them down.

At one time English parishes had an unpleasant but effective way of teaching the young people the boundaries of the parish. At each boundary marker they were beaten with a switch, thrown into the water if the marker was a brook or a pond, or had their heads beaten against the marker if was a stone or a wall. The object was that the young people should never forget the particular boundary marker. While I am not advocating the treatment of Anglican clergy and would-be Anglican clergy in this fashion, we do need to develop ways of firmly fixing in their minds the boundaries of Anglicanism. We need to help them understand why the English Reformers erected guard rails along the Anglican Way and the dangers that lie beyond these barriers. We also need to warn them against those who dismiss the need for such guard rails.

We need to do the same for congregations. They should be able to discern when the shepherd himself is straying. This entails helping them to have more than a passing acquaintance with the Articles, the Prayer Book, and the Ordinal and the dangers from which these guard rails protect them. We also need to teach them how to read, study, and interpret the Bible for themselves and to distinguish a questionable or inaccurate interpretation of the Bible from a sound one.

A fifth way that we can meet this challenge is to insist upon a clear definition of the authority of the office of bishop as well as to limit the power of that office. This may not prevent the supposed guardians of the faith from propagating error and superstition but it will reduce and weaken their influence. On one hand it is desirable to protect the occupants of that office from frivolous charges, to give them a degree of latitude in secondary matters, and to permit their authorization of minor alterations to the rites and services of the church. On the other hand it is also desirable to make provision for their prompt removal from the episcopal office when they no longer conform to the Bible in their teaching, go beyond the guard rails of the Articles, the Prayer Book, and the Ordinal, or encourage others to do so. Occupying a place on the episcopal bench should not free them from reproof, censure, or other disciplinary action. Not only should individual occupants of the episcopal office be subject to disciplinary action when and if warranted, but so should the whole episcopal college.

A sixth way that we can meet this challenge is to extend the process of making changes in the canons affecting the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the church over a period of several years, to require the thorough public scrutiny of each proposal by a commission of clergy and laity, particularly in regards to its conformity to the teaching of the Bible and the doctrinal and worship principles of the Articles, the Prayer Book, and the Ordinal; to give the general synod or its equivalent of the province the power to debate and amend such proposals; and to further require as a condition of their final approval a favorable vote of a specific number of clerical and lay representatives forming the province’s general synod or its equivalent at two or more sessions of that body. In the case of the Anglican Church in North America that body would be the Provincial Assembly.

At the time that the Anglican Church in North America was organized, it was argued that the deliberative process caused needless delays in decision-making. But the deliberative process gives a larger number of people an opportunity to examine a proposal, to expose its weaknesses to the light of day, and to draw attention to the possible repercussions if the proposal is adopted. The real motive behind this objection to the deliberative process was the desire to limit decision-making to a select few, enabling them to determine the direction of the new province. The deliberative process, however, gives all who have a stake in the ACNA a voice in determining its direction. It also affirms that Christ is the real authority in his Church, working his will not just through a small group of high-ranking clergy but all the members of the Church.

If they are unsuccessful in their efforts to reform the Anglican Church in North America, those clergy and congregations who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and longstanding Anglican doctrine and principles have one final option. They can do what the English Reformers did. They can break with a church hierarchy that is propagating error and superstition in the church. The English Reformers were following a clear precedence. Those who held the orthodox Christian belief that Jesus was the Second Person of the Trinity withdrew from fellowship with those who, like Arius, believed that Jesus was a created being. They refused to submit to their bishops. This was no disagreement over secondary matters. It was a disagreement over the very nature of the gospel.

What is happening in the Anglican Church in North America is also not a disagreement over secondary matters. At stake is how Anglicans have historically understood the message of the gospel, the order of salvation, and the nature of the sacraments. With the ordinal, the catechism, and now the rites and services of the church, one wing of the ACNA is endeavoring to make what the Reformed Anglican Church has historically understood to be false teaching the official teaching of the province. This is not a disagreement over ceremonial and church and clergy ornaments. It is a disagreement over the essentials of the Christian faith.

ACNA’ers who are fully committed to remaining faithful to the Bible and longstanding Anglican doctrine and principles are not duty-bound to follow the province’s bishops into the mire. They can stay on the solid ground of the Anglican Way. They can offer a hand to those foolish enough to follow the bishops into the muck and rescue them before they sink too deeply into the bog. They have something entrusted to them that is far more precious any ecclesiastical organization. It is the gospel of grace. Their first loyalty is not to an institution called the Anglican Church in North America. It is to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Related Article:
When Did the ACNA Adopt a Canon Authorizing a Prayer Book for the Province?

Tuesday's Catch: Generation Alpha and More

Meet Generation…Alpha

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When Did the ACNA Adopt a Canon Authorizing a Prayer Book for the Province?

A moment of truth has arrived for ACNA’ers. 

By Robin G. Jordan

As I anticipated, the College of Bishops in its most recent communiqué is claiming that it has approved a Book of Common Prayer for the Anglican Church in North America. One can search the governing documents of the ACNA—its constitution and its canons—and one will find no provision granting the College of Bishops authority to approve a Prayer Book for the province or recognizing that such authority is inherent in the College of Bishop. None what so ever!

The canons only give authority to determine what liturgical books may be used within his diocese to the ordinary of the diocese and then stipulate that the ordinary only may approve liturgical books that are in conformity with the teaching of the Bible. The canons do not give authority to the College of Bishops to approve a Prayer Book for the province. To claim that the College of Bishops has approved such a book is arrogate to that body authority that it does not have under the provisions of the ACNA constitution and canons and is interpretable as a violation of the constitution, a willful contravention of the canons, an abuse of ecclesiastical power, and a cause for scandal. All of these offenses are offenses for which clergy, including bishops, may be inhibited, tried, and deposed under the provisions of the ACNA canons.

In the same communiqué the College of Bishops quotes the following claim from the Preface of the proposed Prayer Book:

At the beginning of the 21st century, global reassessment of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 as “the standard for doctrine, discipline and worship” shapes the present volume, now presented on the bedrock of its predecessors. Among the timeless treasures offered in this Prayer Book is the Coverdale Psalter of 1535 (employed with every Prayer Book from the mid-16th to the mid-20th centuries), renewed for contemporary use through efforts that included the labors of 20th century Anglicans T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis, and brought to final form here. The Book of Common Prayer (2019) is indisputably true to Cranmer’s originating vision of a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries, highly participatory in delivery, peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots, culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people, and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice.

A careful examination of the proposed Prayer Book shows that it does not live up to this hyperbole. This claim for want of a better description is nothing more than revisionist twaddle!

One is prompted to ask to what “global reassessment of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 as ‘the standard for doctrine, discipline and worship’” is the Preface of the proposed Prayer Book referring. The Jerusalem Declaration makes no reference to such an assessment nor does the GAFCON Theological Resource Group’s official commentary, Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today. What they do, however, is uphold the three classical formularies of historic Anglicanism—the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, the Book of Common Prayer of 1662, and the Ordinal of 1661--in their role as the longstanding Anglican standard of faith and worship.

The Preface of the proposed Prayer Book makes a series of assertions that are far from the truth:

--indisputably true to Cranmer’s originating vision of a form of prayers and praises that is thoroughly Biblical, catholic in the manner of the early centuries….

The culmination of Cranmer’s efforts to give the English Church and the English people a thoroughly reformed, thoroughly biblical liturgy was the second Prayer Book of Edward the VI, the reformed Prayer Book of 1552, not the 1549 Prayer Book which was prepared to facilitate the transition to a more reformed, more biblical liturgy. The proposed Prayer Book whose rites and services embody unreformed Catholic doctrine and whose rubrics sanction unreformed Catholic practices is a far cry from the reformed, biblical liturgy that Cranmer sought to give to the English Church and to the English people.

--highly participatory in delivery….

The rites and services of the proposed Prayer Book could give a far greater role to the congregation than they do.

-- peculiarly Anglican and English in its roots…

When did the Roman Canon which has greatly influenced the shape of the Eucharistic Prayers in the proposed Prayer Book become “peculiarly Anglican and English?” As well as adopting the Roman Canon as the primary model for its Eucharistic Prayers, the proposed Prayer Book incorporates language taken from the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church. It authorizes practices that Cranmer and the English Reformers rejected on solid biblical grounds in the sixteenth century. When did this language and these practices become “peculiarly Anglican and English?”

--culturally adaptive and missional in a most remarkable way, utterly accessible to the people….

Saying that it is “culturally adaptive,” “missional,” and “accessible” will not making it so. The proposed Prayer Book is lacking into two essential characteristics for the North American mission field—flexibility and adaptability. -

--and whose repetitions are intended to form the faithful catechetically and to give them doxological voice

The repeated use of the proposed Prayer Book may result in the indoctrination of ACNA’ers in unreformed Catholic doctrine and their desensitization to unreformed Catholic practices. But it is not going to help them become more biblically faithful and genuinely Anglican in their beliefs and practices. As for giving them “doxological voice,” what is far more important is that they live their lives according to the rule of the Holy Scriptures, glorifying God not only in what they say but also what they do. The proposed Prayer Book is not going to help them do that

What we have in the proposed Prayer Book and the recent actions of the College of Bishops is an attempt by one wing of the Anglican Church in North America to impose its beliefs and practices upon the rest of the ACNA, beliefs and practices that do not conform to the teaching of the Bible or the principles of the classical Anglican formularies. They do not represent biblical Christianity, much less authentic historic Anglicanism.

It is time those who are faithful to the teaching of the Bible and the principles of the classical Anglican formularies to stand up to the College of Bishops and to demand a Prayer Book that is biblically faithful and genuinely Anglican; that is designed to meet the needs of clergy and congregations on the North American mission field; which, after lengthy open public examination and review and exhaustive revision, enjoys the support of the entire province; and which is authorized by a canon that has been, after extensive debate, approved by two successive sessions of the Provincial Assembly. It is time that they say no to any proposed formulary for the ACNA, whether it is an ordinal, a catechism, or a Prayer Book, that has not fulfilled these requirements.

It is time for those who recognize that the government of the Christian community properly belongs under Christ to the Church as a whole, both clergy and laity together, and not exclusively to the office of bishop, to reject the attempts of the College of Bishops to arrogate to itself authority that the constitution and canons do not clearly give to the College. It is time that they took the bishops to task for acting as if they are not bound by the province’s governing documents and are a law unto themselves.

The College of Bishops is hoping that no one says anything, that no one will question its actions. It was able to foist an ordinal and a catechism on the province. Now it is hoping to pass off as biblically faithful, genuinely Anglican, and mission-shaped a Prayer Book that falls short in all three areas. As long as the College of Bishops does not experience any negative or unfavorable reaction or response, it will keep pushing the boundaries to see what it can get away with. It will become more and more out of control.

Clergy and congregations in the Anglican Church in North America need to ask themselves, “Do we really want to be a part of a church that is nothing more than the Roman Catholic Church without a pope? Or do we want to be a part of a church that is committed to remaining faithful to the Holy Scriptures and to longstanding Anglican doctrine and practices?” “Do we really want to be a part of a church in which the bishops lord over their fellow Christians 'like the rulers of the Gentiles?' Or do we want to be a church in which Christian leaders are humble servants as Christ himself has called them to be?” They need to give serious thought to these questions. The fate of North American Anglicanism is in their hands.

Related Articles:
The Leadership Crisis in the Anglican Church in North America
A Prayer Book for the Whole Province
What Is Wrong with the Proposed 2019 ACNA Prayer Book?
A New Year, a New Prayer Book
How really Anglican is the ACNA?
The Place of the Caroline Divines in Classical Anglicanism

The foregoing posts touch on issues raised in the article above. This includes the issue of Anglican identity.

Is Your Church Stuck Or Just Small?

I spent a lot of years trying to unstick a church that wasn’t stuck.

I thought it was stuck because it wasn’t getting bigger. And I’d been told in virtually every church leadership conference and book that if my church wasn’t growing numerically, we were stuck.

I didn’t want to pastor a stuck church.

I still don’t.

So I went to all the conferences on how to get unstuck. I read all the books. I applied all the principles.

None of them worked.

Pastors of fast-growing churches are always writing helpful blog posts with lists of all the things churches must be doing wrong if we’re not experiencing numerical growth. So I read a ton of blog posts listing 10 Ways to Get Your Church Unstuck, then applied those principles to my church.

They didn’t work either.

So I prayed longer and harder.

Nada.

Then I starting wreading stories of pastors and churches that stopped trying to grow, but just implemented the principles of church health. As soon as they did that, without trying to help God grow the church—boom!—the church starteord growing like crazy.

So I relaxed and stopped worrying about church growth. Our church worked on getting healthy instead and...

Nah, that didn’t grow the church either.

Finally, I left the modern church-growth movement behind and went back to the source. I read, re-read, preached and taught about the growth of the church in the book of Acts.

Still nothing. Read More

SermonCentral does not identify the author of this post. However, the content and style of the article point to Karl Vaters. While I was unable to confirm it, I believe that I may have posted a link to it either on Pivot or NewSmallChurch.Com, Karl's two blogs.  In any case it is a helpful reminder that the size of a church is not a reliable indicator of the health of a church. A church can be small and healthy as well as small and unhealthy. It can also be large and unhealthy as well as large and healthy. It can be reassuring to a pastor learn that while his church is small, its smallness is not necessarily an indicator of poor spiritual health. On the other hand, we need to not let articles like this one make us complacent about our church's spiritual health. Some churches are both small and spiritually unhealthy and their smallness is tied to their poor spiritual health. 

How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing

Simon, his brother, and their business partners were fisherman whom Jesus called to a very different kind of fishing. “Follow me,” he told them. “From now on you will be catching men.” They were caught by Jesus so they could catch others. And in much the same way, we have been caught by Jesus so we can catch others for Jesus. We ought to see this as a tremendous privilege. Not just that we have been caught—we know that’s a great blessing—but that we get to join Jesus in catching others. We follow him so we can join him in his work. The great work God is accomplishing in this world is catching people for himself. He’s saving them by his grace and for his glory. What’s amazing is that he uses people like you and me to help accomplish that. He saves people through the good news of the gospel and he tells you and me to speak out that news. He calls us to be fishers of men, to catch people alive.

How can we do that? That’s where we can learn from the fishing metaphor Jesus uses in Luke 5 verses 1-11. In fact, I think we’re supposed to learn from the fishing metaphor, to think diligently about what it means and about how evangelism is like fishing. Just think about this: Jesus gets on a fishing boat with a fisher man to do a fish miracle all leading toward a fishing metaphor. He clearly wanted Simon to think about this word picture, and to live it out. He wants us to think about it. So let’s draw a few comparisons that, I trust, are legitimate without being trite. In what ways is evangelism kind of like fishing? Read More

Monday's Catch: The Downside of Church Growth and More

Breaking Church Growth Barriers Will Not Keep You From Crashing

A plea to my fellow pastors: The body of Christ wants you healthy and whole more than we need you to perform numerically. Read More

Be Aware of Human Trafficking and Pray as You Travel This Year

January is Human Trafficking Awareness month. Sadly, no community—yes, even here in the United States—is immune to the evils of human trafficking. That’s why we all need to be aware of the signs and if we see something, report it. Read More

What Paul Said to Young Pastors Still Applies

Young ministers need lots of reminders and many friends along the way who believe in them strongly enough to speak encouragement, truth, and discipline to them. Read More

Mega Pastoral Vacancies in Megachurches

You could see it unfolding. Boomer megachurch pastors are retiring. The number grows every month. And, as we thought might take place, the churches are having difficulty finding their successors. In fact, we are seeing search committees or their equivalents taking longer and longer to find a pastor. This trend will soon become a crisis. Read More

That Critical First Impression

By Robin G. Jordan

This week I have posted links to two articles on the importance of making a good first impression on first time visitors to a church. The two articles reminded me of the struggles that churches may go through to make that critical positive first impression that will cause these guests to return again and again.

Ideally a church should not have to be intentional about making a good first impression because in being the church it is doing everything right. But in reality we have to be deliberate about what we do. We want to create a good impression from the moment that would-be guests click on our church website to the moment they pull out of our church parking lot. More importantly, we want the good impression that we create to reflect who we really are as a church. If we are putting on an act, sooner or later they will discover it.

I have been involved in a number of churches over the years—new church plants as well as established churches. I have spent a good part of my life in pioneering new churches. When I was an infant, one of the first churches that I attended with my mother, my older brother, and my grandparents was a new mission that held its services in a corrugated iron Nissen hut. I have no memories of the time but I do remember the church after it moved into its new building, which doubled as a community hall.* Folding panels separated the liturgical area—communion table, pulpit, etc.—from the rest of the hall and were shut when the hall was used for children’s parties and other community activities. The congregation sat on folding wooden chairs which were apt to collapse with a loud bang, startling the babies in the congregation. The building is still in use. The Anglican congregation that meets there describes itself on its website as “evangelical and charismatic.”

I do not believe that I began to fully appreciate the importance of making a good first impression until I returned to the Episcopal Church in the early 1980s after having drifted away from the church while I was a university student. But even during my college years I had an inkling of its importance.

I was confirmed later than most of the young people who attended my parish church. As I recollect, I took my confirmation rather seriously. I was disappointed in the preparation that my fellow confirmands and I received for our confirmation. It was not what I had expected. The focus was on being a good churchman rather than a devoted follower of Jesus Christ. However, I went off to college enthused about having made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and eager to grow as a Christian. Like a number of other mainline and evangelical denominations, the Episcopal Church had a student center near the campus. Unlike the student centers of these denominations, the Episcopal Student Center was locked as tight as a drum except on Wednesdays when the Canterbury Club met.

Canterbury Club meetings consisted of a Holy Communion service, followed by a fried chicken dinner. The rector of the local Episcopal parish presided at the communion service and the women of the church provided the dinner. There was no sermon, just communion. The dinner menu never varied—fried chicken, tomato and letter salad, mayonnaise dressing, rolls, and butter. I do not remember if they served dessert.

My first impression was not a good one. After attending two or three meetings I stopped going. I envied the Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Roman Catholic students whose centers were open every day.

The message that the locked Episcopal student center conveyed to me was that the Episcopal Church did not care about its students away at college, not enough to give them with opportunities to grow spiritually or even a quiet place to study. The sermon-less communion services conveyed the impression that it did not care enough about them to offer them a word of encouragement.

How different was my former parish church when I returned after an absence of almost 10 years. The usher handing out worship bulletins in the narthex was big guy with a broad smile who exuded welcome. The members of the congregation also appeared genuinely glad to see me. The parish had grown since I had left. It was bustling with energy. There were a lot of new faces. There were also plenty of opportunities for ministry and spiritual growth.

I would become involved in number of ministries. I eventually was invited to serve as worship coordinator for the launch team that planted the church where I served as senior lay reader for 15 years. While the new church was launched as a satellite congregation of the parish, the intention was that it should not become a “chapel of ease” for parishioners in the community in which it was launched. Rather it should become a mission of the diocese and then a parish in its own right. Throughout the time I served at the church, not just during its early years, the realization that first impressions really do matter was brought home to me again and again.

During our early years as a mission the other churches of the diocese treated us as a convenient dumping ground for whatever they wanted to get rid but did not know how to dispose of. Or they simply could not bring themselves to send them to the garbage incinerator or land fill where they should have been rightly sent. We had donated to us tattered, dog-eared Prayer Books and hymnals often with missing pages and ripped covers. We chose not to use them, knowing that they would have made a very poor impression on visitors to our services.

Worshiping in a storefront also brought out the worst tendencies in certain members of the congregation. Among the suggestions was that we cover the windows with plastic film that would make them resemble stained glass windows and hang ornamental crosses and other religious doodads from the area’s Christian bookstores on the walls. People who showed a very refined sense of taste in the decoration of their homes lost that sense of taste when it came to the appointments of the room in which they worshiped.

We would end up with an antique lectern that was always in danger of toppling over because the founding pastor of the new church thought that it had “character.” Our vicar who was later installed as the church’s rector was not able to pass up anything that was free. We also ended up with a dozen or more white enamel wedding chapel candle stands, several dozen wooden straight-back chairs, and several dozen faded red velvet hassocks, or kneeling cushions. When we moved into the first building of our own, the wedding chapel candle stands were stored in the attic. To my knowledge they were never used in the 15 years that I served at the church.

 Members who regularly attended services at the church were encouraged to sit on the straight-back chairs and to leave the more comfortable, padded stacking chairs for first time visitors and newcomers. My nieces and I and later my grandnephew and I made a point of sitting in them in order to set a good example for the other members.

The hassocks soon joined the wedding chapel candle stands in the attic. It was discovered that in order to kneel on one of them, a worshiper needed something to hold onto such as the back of a chair. However, the chair was apt to tip over backwards as the worshiper was lowering herself onto the hassock. The hassocks were small and the worshiper could easily slip off the hassock and land painfully on her knees.

The vicar also accepted a gift of a wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin, which was placed in a planter next to the main entrance of the building. This was not surprising since he was a former Roman Catholic who became an Episcopalian when he married his wife who was a Methodist.

I have been involved in six other church plants since that time—three that were successful and three that were not, and my involvement in these new works has reinforced in my own mind how critical a visitor’s first impression is. Over and over again I have heard accounts of how a positive first impression led to a first time visitor returning, how the return visit reinforced that impression, and led to further visits and eventually greater involvement in the church. I have also heard the stories of those who visited a church and chose not to return because of a negative first impression.

For a little over two years I have been involved in a small Anglican church located in a community about a half an hour’s drive from Murray. During this time I learned how difficult it can be for some churches to make a favorable first impression with first time visitors. The building may be clean and well-maintained. The grounds may be well-kept.. The congregation may be friendly. However, the size and age of the congregation, the near-empty parking lot, the congregation’s preferences in music and worship, and the lack of a children’s ministry can create obstacles that are not easy to overcome. A tactless remark made by a member to another member in the hearing of a visitor or made to the visitor can also contribute to an unfavorable first impression. Having few visitors a small church can become insensitive to visitors.

For such churches, however, it is even more important for them to make a positive first impression. It is a matter of life or death. If they make a positive first impression, the visitor may tell friends, neighbors, relatives, and colleagues and they may also visit the church. On the other hand, if they make a negative first impression, the visitor is even more likely to tell these people and they will avoid the church.

*After I wrote this article, I did some investigating. According to a Stevenidge community website St. Peter's Church's present building was constructed in 1945 and dedicated ten years later in 1955. My mother and my grandparents talked about how the church had originally met in a Nissen hut and I concluded from what they said that they were talking about the church after I was born. They had lived at Welwyn during the war and had moved to Stevenidge when I was an infant. Welwyn was the name of a house that my grandparents owned. My mother was a teacher at the St. Nicholas Church of England Primary and Elementary School , which was the first school that I attended. One explanation is that construction was begun on the building in 1945 but was not completed until later. 10 years is a long time to delay the dedication of a building. 

Assess Your First Impressions

Every week we are holding worship services, we are preaching and teaching, we are singing and giving.

Everything we do makes sense to the regular attendee. They are not going to wander around looking for the worship center or the bathroom. They are not going to walk into your building and wonder if their kids stay with them or if they need to go to a completely different part of the building to check them in.

Something we all need to do from a church of 10 to 50,000 is assess our entire first impressions from when someone drives onto our property until they leave at the end of the service.

This is so important because the quality of your first impressions will directly correlate to how many first time guests you will ever see again. Read More

Southern Equip: What Evangelism Is. What Evangelism Is Not.

Four Essential Elements of Evangelism

Whether you have been a Christian for a few months or a few years, Jesus Christ calls you, through his Word, to practice evangelism for his glory, your neighbor’s salvation, and your joy. Read More

Seven Things We Often Mistake for Evangelism

We have not obeyed the calling to evangelize until we talk specifically about the person and work of Jesus Christ and the necessity to believe in him. Read More

Practical Preaching Advice for Pastors and Lay Preachers #35

Seven Steps to Writing a Sermon - Step Four - Crafting Your Points

Have you ever wanted a step-by-step guide to creating a sermon from scratch? In this series of posts, we are unpacking a practical guide to go from a blank page to ready for Sunday in seven steps. If you work through the seven action steps in this series, you’ll have a sermon written and be ready to go.... Read More

12 Things to Do While Waiting For Your Chance to Preach [Video]

You’re looking for that opportunity, but you can’t seem to find it. What do you do while you wait for your chance? Well today, we’re going to talk about that. And I want to give you 12 things to do while you’re waiting for your shot to preach. Watch Now

Five Ways To Turn Off Younger Listeners

If you're still in your first 5 years as a preacher, don’t give up! God has this wonderful way of drawing straight lines with crooked sticks. Read More

Here's Why We Should Never Preach Legalism

Legalism always produces two kinds of people: Those who know they do not measure up to God’s standards; and those who pretend that they measure up to God’s standards. Read More

The Secret to Getting Ahead on Sermon Writing [Video]

How do other pastors get ahead when I’m so busy, and I’ve got so much going on every single week outside of just my preaching responsibilities? How do they do it?” Well, I want to tell you the secret of how pastors get ahead. Are you ready for it? Watch Now

Don’t Preach Microwaved Leftover Sermons

Microwaved sermons are generally about as good as most microwaved foods. If you are working on your sermon only as you find time, the Word of God and its preaching are not receiving the care and devotional attention that makes the best preaching so rich and delicious. Read More

Do You Preach To Real People Or Straw Men?

Preaching in the abstract means missing real lives and real people. Here are four ways to connect to real people. Read More

Don't Kill Your Message!

What’s the difference between a sermon that flops and a sermon that people still buzz about years later? Read More

Restore Passion To Your Preaching: 3 Essential Steps

Do you sometimes find yourself preaching only because "Sunday is coming"? Read More

Saturday Lagniappe: No Salvation in the Mormon Church and More

Why You Can’t Get to Heaven through the Mormon Faith

Despite the rate at which it has grown, Mormonism contains fatal doctrinal problems. Though it has attracted many, it cannot be said that adherence to it will lead one to heaven.  Read More

The Problem With Using Numerical Incentives In Church Leadership

When we require the promise of numerical increase to motivate us to behave biblically, something is wrong. Read More

9 Common Sense Practices That Are Challenged When The Pressure Is On

As leaders, we usually talk about things like vision, strategy, staffing, etc., and they are incredibly important. But you and I can blow it, even with the best vision and strategy, if we mess up on the “simple” stuff – the things that are considered common sense. Read More

Practice Defeating Your Distractions

Distraction is not a simple foe; it must be fought on numerous fronts. Victory is achieved not by one glorious coup d’état of resolve, but by the slow insurgency of developing distraction-reducing habits. Read More

The Word Became Visuals 

How data visualization is helping readers better understand the Bible. Read More

Growing Stronger Through Worship

The Bible gives us three ways we can help our congregations grow stronger through worship. Read More

Friday's Catch: Generation Z and More

Emerging Adults Most Socially Progressive Generation

Generation Z is the most educated, affluent, and diverse in American history. They may also be the most socially progressive. Read More

Generation Z Looks a Lot Like Millennials on Key Social and Political Issues

No longer the new kids on the block, Millennials have moved firmly into their 20s and 30s, and a new generation is coming into focus. Generation Z – diverse and on track to be the most well-educated generation yet – is moving toward adulthood with a liberal set of attitudes and an openness to emerging social trends. Read More

Gen Z Christians Break from Peers on Morality

Members of Generation Z are the most likely to say morality changes over time, but committed Christian teenagers are still likely to hold on to their beliefs. Read More

5 Ways to Engage With Gen Z People

This article, which originally appeared on HRTechnolgist.com, discusses ways to reach Gen Z workers; however, the tips provided are applicable to teaching, communicating and connecting with Gen Z members in your church. Read More

10 Marks of a Happy Church

Once in a while, I get to know a church that genuinely seems “happy.” I know that term is subjective, but I trust you get my point – these churches are just different from the church that is dealing with dysfunction and turmoil. Here are some markers of happy churches.... Read More

Church Revitalization: How & Where to Start

To expect different results, you need to do ministry differently. Read More

Reconsidering Worship Service Alternatives Beyond Sunday Morning [Podcast]

More and more churches offer alternative worship service times. This podcast addresses the when, where, and how of this trend. Listen Now

When Prayer becomes an Excuse for Indecision

Sometimes prayer can be an excuse for indecision, lack of obedience to God’s revealed Word, or a substitute for courage. How often have we heard a Christian “pass the buck” by foisting upon God the very thing that he has called them to do? How often do churches blame their inactivity and lack of growth on God? Read More

3 Questions to Ask When Helping Someone to Find the Right Bible

Here are three questions I used as a Christian bookstore manager to train my employees on how to connect people to the right Bible. These questions are gleaned from Bible-training programs provided by Bible publishers and can be incorporated into churches’ evangelism-training classes. Read More

While my church uses the King James Bible in its worship services, indeed the church's bylaws require its use, I would not recommend the Authorized Version to a new Christian who wants a Bible. Why? I found that a lot of people do not understand the Jacobean English in which it is written, especially people for whom English is not their first language. I do not want to see new Christians put down the Bible because they are struggling to understand its language. I grew up with the King James Bible, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare but a lot of people that I know did not. They really have a difficult time with the language.

When There Is No Bible

When a group of believers does not have God’s Word in their own language, three challenges emerge that could extinguish any young church. Read More

3 Ways to Share the Good News like It’s Actually Good

Here are three ways to communicate the “old, old story” in high-definition color. Read More

Thursday's Catch: The Multi-Site/Satellite Church Planting Model and More

Finding the Right Church Planting Model Part 6: The Multi-Site/Satellite Model

I’ve been in favor of starting new sites, but have separated that from church planting. I still do, theologically, but I think that practically these approaches have much in common, particularly the Large Launch and Multi-Site, that we should include them in the list of models. Read More

5 Myth-Shattering Reasons We Have To Change Our Thinking About Church Size

History has regularly shown us that any time we equate bigger with better in the kingdom of God, it leads to problems. Big problems. Read More

Six Creative Ways to Deal with a Deteriorating Facility

Churches in need of revitalization often need facility help, too. Today Thom Rainer and Jonathan Howe discuss ways to improve your facility without too much expense. Listen Now

7 Reasons to “Assign” Seating at a Fellowship Meal

I know some readers will balk at this idea. It’s different than the way most churches think, and it’s certainly different from the way “we’ve always done things.” Nevertheless, my suggestion is this: for at least one church fellowship meal each year, assign seats. Tell members where they need to sit. Here’s why I think this approach matters. Read More

Assigned seating also keeps members from forming their usual “holy huddles” and excluding newcomers and guests.

The State of Apatheism

There was an article in the Atlantic Monthly in which the author was describing his spiritual condition. Someone asked him about his religion. He was about to say “Atheist” when it dawned on him that this wasn’t quite accurate.

“I used to call myself an atheist,” he ended up responding, “and I still don’t believe in God, but the larger truth is that it has been years since I really cared one way or another. I’m (and this was when it hit him) an... apatheist!”

He then went on to describe his state as a “disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s.”

But it’s what he wrote next that haunted me.

“I have Christian friends who organize their lives around an intense and personal relationship with God, but who betray no sign of caring that I am an unrepentantly atheistic Jewish homosexual. They are exponents, at least, of the second, more important part of apatheism: the part that doesn’t mind what other people think about God.” Read More

Too many of us act as if we are indifferent to the spiritual condition of others. Are we as Christians suppressing what should be sympathy and concern for them? If so, why? Or have we we become desensitized to their spiritual condition? As I was writing this comment, I found myself think about Paul's description of a seared conscience. A person with a seared conscience no longer feels guilt about his actions even those actions undeniably conflict with God's will. The part of his conscience that would be disturbed by his actions has been burned away. This prompted me to wonder whether our spiritual condition may be worse than theirs.

Wednesday's Catch: First Impressions and More

7 Reasons First Impressions Matter

You’ve heard it said (and I’ve written it on this site) that people often give a church one shot to make an impression. We may not like that fact, but it’s reality. Here’s why....Read More

Six Symptoms of a Dysfunctional Church [Video]

In this Rainer ReportThom Rainer examines six symptoms of a dysfunctional church. Watch Now

10 Distractions Regarding Worship Music

Chuck Lawless posts the findings of his church consulting teams in regards to the musical element of worship over a period of 15 years. Read More

This is a repost but in my estimation it is worth reading more than once.

We Don’t Sing for Fun

Singing is serious business! It is as serious as preaching and prayer and communion. Read More

A definite must read

5 Ways Your Church Can Leverage YouTube

Eric Geiger suggsts five ways that churches can best reach those who use the video service YouTube with both the gospel of Jesus Christ as well as with information about their local church. Read More

A professionally-produced and edited video of your church's worship can give visitors to your church's website a taste of worship at your church. Panning a video camera across the chancel or platform and the congregation during a worship service and posting the video on your church's website, however, will not produce a favorable impression. I have seen both on YouTube. My reaction to the first was, "Wow! I'd like to visit that church!" My reaction to the second was, "Blch! I think I'm going to throw up!"

How to Make a Greater Impact on Culture

Why aren’t Christians making a greater impact in the culture? In my opinion it’s our actions (or lack thereof.) People don’t listen to what you say as much as what you do, and in that category Christians are failing miserably. The truth is, to change today’s culture we don’t need more legislation, boycotts, criticism, outrage or even evangelism campaigns—we just need to change the way we live. To that end, if Christians would start doing these 10 things, I believe there would be no limit to the impact we could have on the world.... Read More

Has Your Congregation Stopped Singing?

By Robin G. Jordan

One of yesterday’s posts, “Worshiping a Limitless God with Limited Resources,” prompted me to give thought to the state of congregational singing in North America. It has fallen to a low point in a growing number of churches. At the same time a growing number of churches are experiencing a resurgence of congregational singing. Overall, congregational singing is not what it could be or should be.

In many churches the guitar has become the instrument of choice for worship gatherings due to the influence of various forms of popular music. However, the guitar is not a good instrument for accompanying congregational singing unless the musician playing the guitar can sing, can carry a tune, and has a strong voice. It is not enough that he or she is a competent musician. The guitarist must also be a competent vocalist, or singer. This is most evident when the guitarist is the sole accompanist for the congregational singing.

The congregation does not pick up the melody of the hymn or worship song from the chords the guitarist is playing on the guitar. The congregation picks it up from the guitarist’s singing of the hymn or worship song. The guitarist’s playing of the guitar actually provides accompaniment to the guitarist’s singing of the hymn or worship song, not to the congregation’s.

When a church has a band or music group, the congregation picks up the melody from the group’s vocalists’ singing of the hymn or worship song. For this reason, it is critical that whoever selects the songs for worship gatherings chooses songs with a strong melody and the vocalists, when singing the songs, stick to the melody. The songs should be also repeated with sufficient frequency that they become familiar to the congregation.

The group’s vocalists, like choirs of the past, may complain of boredom when they are asked to sing this type of song over and over again. They want to demonstrate their virtuosity. However, a core repertoire of songs of this type is essential to encouraging a congregation to sing. One of the ways that we discourage congregations from singing is by using songs that they cannot sing.

The best instruments for accompanying congregational singing is a well-tuned, upright piano or a good quality electronic keyboard played on the piano setting. The sound from an upright piano goes outward while the sound from a baby grand goes upward. The notes of the melody of a hymn or worship song are sharper and consequently easier for the congregation to hear and follow when played on the piano or the piano setting of an electronic keyboard than they are an organ or the organ setting of the keyboard.

While few people gather around a piano and sing like they once did in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many people still sing. They sing along with the songs of their favorite artists while listening to them on a smart phone or other portable electronic device or watching them on a video. They also sing along with the songs played on various electronic karaoke devices.

Churches have been slow to use modern technology to encourage congregational singing. While churches record sermons and post them on their websites, they do not do the same with the hymns and worship songs they are using. Jamie Brown has posted on his blog Worthily Magnify a video teaching the congregation of his church a new communion setting.

Cradle of Prayer offers tutorials for a selection of the Daily Office canticles. These tutorials include recordings of various chant settings of these canticles sung by a cantor without musical accompaniment. Click “Canticle Tutor” at the top of the page and a menu will drop down listing the canticles for which the website has tutorials.

Electronic recordings of most of the tunes of the hymns in The Lutheran Book of Worship can be downloaded from the website Lutheran Hymnal.Com. Small Church Music.Com has electronic recordings of a long list of hymn tunes. These recordings may be downloaded free of charge. They include the music group accompaniments to these tunes as well as organ and piano. Small Church Music.Com also has links to recordings of hymn tunes on a number of other websites. These recordings may be downloaded for a small fee. The hymn tunes are not in the public domain.

YouTube has videos of a number of hymns and worship songs. These videos feature the melody of the tune accompanied by the words of the song. They vary in quality. Some are quite good; others are abysmal.

I have not so far come across a church website that regularly posts electronic recordings or videos of the songs that it is using in its worship gatherings—recordings and videos that attendees of these worship gatherings can access from their smart phone or other portable electronic device. We have all kinds of technology at our fingertips but we seem unable to use it to help the local church and the larger community to discover the beauty of congregational singing.

Yes, congregational singing is beautiful. It may not sound beautiful to some ears but it is beautiful. It is the sound of God’s people lifting up their voices in praise and adoration of the One who called them out of darkness into his marvelous light. It is the sound of a congregation of the faithful, in the words of the apostle Paul, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making music from your heart to the Lord…” Ephesians 5:19, HCSB.

Encouraging congregational singing, however, does not require technology any more than worshiping God in song requires musical instruments and sound systems. How many churches have tried a good old-fashioned congregational hymn sing? How many churches have congregational rehearsals in which the congregation learns and practices the new songs that they will be asked to sing?

Both congregational hymn sings and congregational rehearsals convey the message that congregational singing is important. With a little careful planning congregational hymn sings can be a lot of fun. Combined with a meal and a nursery for infants and toddlers, they provide a congregation with an opportunity to learn one or two new songs, to practice a couple of unfamiliar ones, and to reacquaint themselves with some old favorites. Among the benefits of congregational hymn sings is that they provide opportunities for community-building. They also reinforce a sense of continuity with the past. For this reason children should be encouraged to participate with their parents or other caretakers. They will be exposed to the rich tradition of congregational singing that has been a characteristic of Anglican and other Protestant churches since the Reformation.

Congregational rehearsals can be conducted before or after a service. A few minutes before the service on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, or a weeknight can be devoted to learning and practicing a new hymn or worship song or new service music. It can form a part of the gathering process which begins as people prepare to go to church and culminates in the first act of worship of the service. This process turns a loose aggregate of people into a worshipping assembly, the body of Christ at prayer.

If a congregation rehearsal is held after to the service, it is a good idea to combine it with a meal. Adequate notice of the rehearsal should be given ahead of time. A nursery should be provided for infants and toddlers. A week or two before a new liturgical season is a good time to have a congregational rehearsal. The rehearsal can be used to introduce new service music as well as new hymns and worship songs that will be used in the new season and to go over songs that the congregation has not sung for a while.

Congregational hymn sings and congregational rehearsals emphasize the importance not only of congregational singing but also of the congregation’s contribution to the service. They convey the message that those who attend the church’s services are participants and not consumers.

It is noteworthy that whenever the church has experienced a spiritual renewal of some kind whether in the form of a reformation or a revival or some other movement of the Holy Spirit, it has also experienced a resurgence of congregational singing. During the earlier part of the reign of Elizabeth I when the English Reformation which had been suppressed during the reign of Elizabeth’s older sister Mary was once more able to flower, huge crowds numbering into the thousands gathered at King’s Cross to sing metrical psalms for the better part of the day. Housewives as they performed their daily chores and ploughmen as they tilled the soil sung them. Elizabeth derisively referred to their tunes as “Geneva jigs” but authorized their use before and after services and before and after sermons.

Just as encouraging congregational singing does not require technology, worshiping God in song does not require musical instruments or sound systems. Both Scotland and the United States have churches that have a tradition of singing without accompaniment. Among these churches are the Churches of Christ, which are well-represented here in Kentucky and in neighboring Tennessee. The Churches of Christ congregations typically have one or more song leaders or choruses that begin each hymn or worship song and lead the congregational singing.

A number of the Churches of Christ congregations preserve the tradition of the shaped-note singing schools which were popular in the nineteenth century. They use shaped-note hymnals. Benton, Kentucky, which is about 18 miles north of Murray, is the site of the Big Sing, an annual gathering of Southern Harmony enthusiasts. Southern Harmony is one of the oldest shaped-note hymn collections. The Big Sing is held on the third Sunday in May of each year. The participants devote the morning to practicing and the afternoon to singing. The Big Sing is open to the public.

Unaccompanied congregational singing is not confined to churches in Scotland and the United States. Eastern Orthodox churches generally do not use musical instruments in their services. Their liturgical singing is vocal music. They also sing a large part of their services.

A number of African congregations also sing without any form of accompaniment except for rhythmical foot stamping. These congregations sing in four part harmony! Those who lead the congregational singing lead it from the midst of the congregation and are undistinguishable from the other members of the congregation.

Inviting the congregation to occasionally sing a familiar hymn or worship song without any accompaniment allows the members of the congregation to hear themselves singing as a congregation. It can be an effective way of reinforcing their singing.

Congregations that do not sing but listen to others sing may be an aberration—a Western aberration. In the Western Church the cathedral choir and the monastic choir would take over the role of the congregation as the chief musical instrument of the church in the Middle Ages. Since that time the pendulum has swung back and forth between the congregation singing and the choir or some other group singing, between the untrained voices of the congregation and the trained voices of the professional or semi-professional chorister or vocalist. In the Middle Ages more devote attendees at Mass said their own private devotions while the choir sang polyphonic songs and the priest inaudibly recited the service. The less devote attendees chatted quietly to each other or nodded off to sleep.

We appear to have returned to that time except the band or music group has replaced the choir. The attendees sing along with the band’s vocalists, listen to the group, gaze intently at the tiny glowing screens of their smart phones, or as I have on at least one occasion observed kiss and fondle each other with abandon. The young couple in question was trying to provoke a reaction from those around them.

What we are increasingly seeing in a growing number of churches is what may be described as parallel worship. Parallel worship is like the parallel play in which small children engage before they learn to play with each other. They play in each other’s presence but they do not play together. Parallel worship, however, is not corporate worship. The band on the platform and the people in the congregation may be worshiping in the same room but they are not worshiping together. Corporate worship by its very nature requires the active participation of the entire assembly in each act of worship.

This participation may differ with each act of worship. For example, the congregation may listen attentively while a lector reads a passage of Scripture and then reflect upon what has been read during the silence that follows the Scripture reading. They may join with the cantor, choir, or music group in singing an acclamation of praise before the next Scripture reading. The way they are taking part may change but they are taking part.

One of the first things that a friend of mine noticed when she visited our local Episcopal church one Sunday was the high level of congregational participation in the service. She had never experienced corporate worship. She was impressed.

At her church parallel worship is the rule of the day. Attendees at its worship gathering have the option of singing along with the band, listening to the band, or entertain themselves in some fashion during the band’s worship set. The worship set precedes the sermon. Its purpose is not so much to worship God in song but to prepare the congregation for the main event of the service—the sermon. A video buffer sometimes ties the worship set and the sermon together. The only other elements in the service are the collection of an offering, a short prayer, and the dismissal. The latter is brief, usually along the lines of “See you all next Sunday.

Before we pat ourselves on the back and say to ourselves, “We are not doing anything like that at our church,” we need to ask ourselves, “What are we doing to engage our congregation in singing the hymns, worship songs, and service music? What we doing to encourage their active participation in the other acts of worship in the service?” “Are we intentional in the way that we introduce new songs to the congregation?” “Do we give the congregation sufficient time to master a new song before we introduce another new song?”

“Are we keeping to a minimum the long unrelieved portions of the service that provide little opportunity for congregational participation?” Are we judiciously applying the important liturgical principle that less is more, eliminating redundant elements of the service?”

For example, do we really need to begin every Holy Communion service with a hymn, the Collect for Purity, an introit psalm, the Decalogue, the Summary of the Law, the Kyries, the Collect for grace to keep the Commandments, and the Collect of the Day? Do we really need to drag out what is an unnecessarily long part of the service in the first place? Would not a hymn, the Collect for Purity, the Decalogue or the Summary of the Law and the Kyries, and the Collect of the Day suffice?

What about inviting the congregation to join in the Collect for Purity as they do the Prayer of Humble Access and the Post-Communion Prayer?” What about making the lengthy Prayer for Whole State of Christ’s Church more participatory by making a minor adjustment to the prayer and adding a versicle and response after each section of the prayer such Lord in thy mercy: Hear our prayer? These are the sort of questions that we should be asking ourselves.

It is also worth mentioning that the Anglican tradition of church music holds two divergent traditions in tension. One is the tradition of congregational singing. The other tradition may be described as the cathedral choral tradition. In the first tradition the people in the pews or on the chairs or benches and in some Japanese Anglican churches on the mats on the floor are the congregation and their voices are the congregation’s principal musical instrument. In the second tradition the choristers in their stalls in the choir of the cathedral are the congregation and its principal musical instrument. While the people in the nave of the cathedral may be invited to join in the hymns, they are not the congregation. They are spectators. Choral Evensong is the most widely-known expression of that tradition. While hymns may be sung in cathedrals, college chapels, and parish churches, cathedral choral music is best performed in cathedrals and college chapels. We do not want to repeat the mistake of the Oxford Movement and suppress congregational singing and try to introduce the cathedral choral tradition in the parish church. Most churches do not have the trained voices and the acoustics to pull it off. When we give too larger place to the choir, we also deny the people their place in the music of the church.

The Anglican tradition of congregational singing may have had a lowly beginning. It started with the humble metrical psalm but was enriched with metrical settings of the Prayer Book canticles and other Prayer Book texts. It has been further enriched with hymns and spiritual songs. It is a tradition that we should cherish, a tradition that we should pass on to our children and grandchildren. It is a tradition that is a part of our Anglican heritage.