I was was working on "Church Planting Mistakes and Blunders--Part 2" when my high speed internet service was restored. My area had suffered an outage for more than 48 hours. I am posting Parts 1 and 2 of this two-part article series today. I was supposed to have posted Part 1 yesterday and Part 2 today.
Read Part 1
Robin G. Jordan
An Anglican Prayer Book should further the mission of the church as well as promote doctrine that is based on the Holy Scriptures and consistent with the historic Anglican formularies. To this end its rites and services should be simple, easy to understand, and not difficult to use. Its catechism should instruct inquirers in what is essential for them to believe for their salvation.
The book should use modern-day English or the vernacular of the congregations that will be using it. Theological terms, where they are used, should be accompanied by a simple explanation in the endnotes of a rite or service or in the text itself in the catechism.
As well as being simple, the rites and services should embody the principle of brevity. They should be free from unnecessary or superfluous elements. What goes into the book should be the barebones of the rite or service. Such elements as opening acclamations, the Ten Commandments, the Summary of the Law, the Kyries, the Gloria in Excelsis, the congregational response after the readings, and the like should be optional and might be placed in a section after the rite or service for congregations that wish to use them. They actually do not need to go into the book itself and might be published with other supplemental material on a web site. The web site could offer some guidance on how to use this material. This approach recognizes the not uncommon tendency to use optional elements without giving any thought to their suitability in a given set of circumstances simply because they are printed in the book. The result is not only a needlessly long service but also one overloaded with what are redundant elements.
The book should provide a framework that establishes the basic shape of each rite or service and to which may be added various optional elements depending upon such factors as the occasion and local circumstances. This approach provides a high degree of flexibility and adaptability, which are an absolute must on the mission field.
A number of elements to which some Anglicans have become accustomed and which in their view are indispensible in a rite or service actually are unnecessary or superfluous. Rather than being an asset on the mission field, they can prove a liability. They can make the rite or service drag on interminably. They can evoke a negative reaction from unchurched visitors or guests with a non-Anglican church background. They can also convey the wrong message.
Other Anglicans should not be hampered by the preferences of these Anglicans in their efforts to reach the unchurched and spiritually disconnected with the gospel. They should be able to tailor a rite or service to their particular circumstances—the community (or neighborhood), their ministry target group, their meeting place, the size of the congregation, its composition, availability of clergy, musical resources, and other considerations.
If an Anglican Prayer Book is to be missional, or mission-shaped, it must prioritize the spread of the gospel over uniformity of practice. It should not promote one particular form of worship, much less force the worship of every congregation into the same Procrustean mold. For those unfamiliar with the story of Procrustes, he would force his victims to fit an iron bed, cutting off their legs if they were too tall or stretching them if they were too short.
The notion that Anglicans should be able to find in the churches of a particular Anglican jurisdiction almost identical church services on a Sunday is not missional. It gives priority to ecclesial praxis over missional engagement. It treats Anglican churches as if their chief purpose is to serve Anglicans and not to fulfill the Great Commission. Doctrinal uniformity and missional engagement are far more important.
The particular circumstances of a congregation should be the determining factor in what pattern of worship they use for their church services. It makes no sense for a congregation that regularly has a substantial number of partially-evangelized, unbaptized, unchurched visitors in attendance at its church services to have a weekly Service of the Lord’s Supper solely on the basis of the belief that the Holy Eucharist should be the central act of Christian worship or the accompanying belief that the Holy Eucharist as means of grace is superior to all other means of grace. The Bible does not teach that faith comes from uncommunicating attendance at a celebration of the Holy Eucharist but by hearing God’s Word.
The book should offer an array of different patterns of worship for what Common Prayer: Resources for Gospel-Shaped Gatherings calls Services of the Word and Prayer and Services of the Lord’s Supper. The elements should be interchangeable to the extent that they do not affect the logic of a particular pattern. Such an array will give congregations freedom to choose the pattern of worship that will work best for them in reaching the unchurched and spiritually disconnected in their particular circumstances based upon their knowledge of the part of the mission field in which God has placed them.
Anglicans who champion a service of Morning Prayer or a service of Holy Communion as the preferred worship pattern for church services do not realize that the unchurched visitors will not experience these worship patterns as they do. Unchurched guests will not share their sentimental attachment to these worship patterns. Unchurched visitors may have no previous experience of the church at prayer, much less of liturgical worship. Such worship patterns may pose significant barriers to hearing the gospel for unchurched guests. They are likely not to stick around long enough to develop an appreciation for these worship patterns.
The chief task of the church is not to promote a particular form of worship or service book. It is to spread the good news to the remotest corners of the earth, to make disciples of all people groups, to baptize them, and to instruct them in what Christ has commanded. Gathering around God’s Word and worshiping God together is a part of discipleship. So is sharing the bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper, the tokens and signs of God’s redeeming love, the gospel made visible.
This action, however, should not be allowed to supersede the Great Commission in the hearts of Christ’s people and to become an end in itself. This unfortunately has happened in too many Anglican churches. Church members gather every Sunday to receive what they believe will make them more fit for heaven, not realizing that Christ gave this remembrance of his offering of himself, once for all time for the sins of the world, to invigorate, strengthen, and confirm their faith that they might serve him better in this world, that they might like Phillip lead others to him.
The 2019 proposed ACNA Prayer Book falls short not only in the critical area of doctrine but also in the critical area of mission. It exhibits none of the positive characteristics that I have just listed. The 2019 proposed ACNA Prayer Book appears to have been designed for a bygone era, not for the twenty-first century North American mission field. The design of the book suggests that it was intended to appeal to a particular segment of the Anglican Church in North America and not to provide the ACNA with a practical tool to help its congregations to fulfill the Great Commission. Its design further suggests that those who prepared the book had negligible experience in dealing with the challenges that congregations face on the twenty-first century North American mission field. As a result they produced a book that will impede the efforts of ACNA’s congregations to reach the spiritually disconnected and unchurched with the gospel. Instead of helping these congregations to reduce gospel barriers, it will create more of them.
If To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism and the 2019 proposed ACNA prayer book are adopted as the authorized standard doctrine and worship for the Anglican Church in North America, they will have a detrimental effect upon the North American Anglican Church. They will further exacerbate the theological confusion that has beset that church since the nineteenth century. They will foster within the Anglican Church in North America a theological environment that is unfavorable to Biblical Christianity and authentic historic Anglicanism and will ultimately leave North America bereft of a genuine Anglican presence and witness. They will not give those Anglican churches struggling to be biblical faithful, authentically Anglican, gospel-sharing churches in Canada and the United States the tools that they need to fulfill the Great Commission and to make disciples of all people groups in North America and to instruct them in a faith that has sustained generations of Anglicans, a faith based upon the Holy Scriptures, set forth in the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and shaped by the gospel. Rather they will propel the North American Anglican Church farther down a road that leads away from Biblical Christianity and authentic historic Anglicanism.
Also See:
It's Time to Talk Prayer Book
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