On the Cusp of a New Church Planting Cycle

For Anglicans and Episcopalians in North American church planting may be cyclical. When one examines the dates that new churches were launched in Louisiana and Kentucky, there appears to be a discernible church planting cycle in which new works are started roughly twenty years apart. The events of 2003 may have disrupted this cycle in the Episcopal Church. The same period, however, saw the launching of a number of Continuing Anglican churches in response to these developments or earlier developments. If this observation is accurate, we are on the cusp of new church planting cycle.

The church planting in the Continuing Anglican Churches has tended to be reactive. A group will break away from an existing church and form a new church. Few new churches move beyond the stage of being a chapel for the families and individuals that formed the church. They tend to be churches who are “against” rather than “for” and this negativity blunts their appeal.

One of the appeals of the early Anglican Mission in America was that its approach to church planting was more proactive than reactive. The AMiA saw itself as an organization whose primary mission was to plant, grow, and strengthen dynamic new churches.

On the other hand, the second Anglican Church in North America has proven a mixed bag. One part of the ACNA is planting new churches and experiencing growth; another part of the ACNA, like the Continuing Anglican Churches, is experiencing decline.

In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, in the Kentucky Deanery of the Anglican Diocese of the South, Archbishop Foley Beach’s own diocese, church planting is confined to those areas of the state with high population density, areas of the state where the Episcopal Church has historically planted new churches and enjoyed a measure of success. In less densely populated areas of the state where the Episcopal Church has also planted new churches but in which very few of the new works have become self-supporting, very little, if any, ACNA church planting activity may be observed.

In my region of the Commonwealth of Kentucky are two tiny Continuing Anglican churches, one planted in 2005 and the other sometime later. The two churches are located in the same county and are roughly 15 miles apart. The second church, which was started by a former member of the first church, is a proprietary chapel, located on private property and next to a family cemetery. The two churches are affiliated with two different Continuing Anglican jurisdictions. They function as chapels for a small group of individuals, several of whom live outside the county in a community about 25 miles from the first church and about 35 miles from the second church. Whether the two churches will survive the COVID-19 pandemic is open to question. The first church has negligible connection with the community in which it is located. The second church is in a rural location. However, small churches can prove surprisingly durable.

The COVID-19 pandemic, while it is expected to lead to the closure of a number of declining, unhealthy churches, is also expected to spur a new round of church planting.

Anglican and Episcopal startups, while they face the same challenges as other denominational and non-denominal startups have some particular challenges of their own. For Continuing Anglican startups, the traditionalist base from which they could draw new members is simply not there. It has evaporated as old age, ill-health, physical and mental incapacity, and death have taken their toll. They must be evangelistic and reach and engage new segments of the population. This means that they must become community-focused, building strong connections between themselves and the communities in which they are planted. They must adopt new patterns of worship, patterns of worship which are engaging to the population segments that they are targeting, and which also energize the new congregation to take an active role in evangelizing these population segments.

The challenge that Episcopal startups face is that the segments of the population that share the values of progressive Episcopalians are disinterested in organized religion. They are the population segments that see little or no value in organized religion and are least likely to participate in its activities. Episcopal startups are faced with challenge of convincing a skeptical ministry target group that these activities are relevant to their lives and are worthwhile.

The Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church have common heritage of apathy and antipathy toward evangelism. This can be traced to anti-evangelical and anti-evangelistic attitudes which the then Protestant Episcopal Church acquired in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. These attitudes disaffected Episcopalians fleeing the Episcopal Church have carried into the Continuing Anglican Churches and the Anglican Church in North America. As the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century have shown, these attitudes are very much alive in the Episcopal Church today. None of these churches are known for their evangelistic fervor. Only a few non-geographic dioceses are responsible for the growth of the Anglican Church in North America and most of these dioceses were originally a part of the AMiA. This is what was the pattern of the Episcopal Church in the last century. Only a small segment of the Episcopal Church was active in reaching and engaging the unchurched and planting and growing new churches.

Most Anglicans and Episcopalians lack the flexibility to pioneer a new church. They are finicky. They have become accustomed to a particular ambiance in their churches and expect the new church to replicate this ambiance. They are inclined to put their preferences before reaching and engaging the unchurched. Replicating their preferred ambiance in the non-traditional settings in which new startups meet is not only difficult, but it looks incongruous and, worst of all, tacky! As well as proving a wasteful use of resources, it can create obstacles to reaching and engaging the unchurched that form the new startup’s ministry target group. The mission of a new startup is to be the Church to a particular neighborhood or community or a particular segment of its population, to form and build relationships with the unchurched, and to point them to Jesus.

Among the particular challenges that Anglican and Episcopal startups face is that a weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist has become normative in most Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church. At the same time there is also a shortage of clergy qualified to preach sermons, administer the sacraments, and to lead and grow a new church. Ordination to the priesthood does not confer the knowledge and the skills that a church planter needs to lead and grow a new church. Subject to licensing by the bishop, it authorizes a pastor to preach sermons and administer the sacraments. Ideally a new startup’s pastor should be qualified to lead and grow the new church. In reality lay members of the launch team or core group may be far more qualified. Due to a variety of factors the pastor may prove a hindrance. He may lack energy. He may have inadequate people skills. He may have the wrong personality. He may have unhelpful preconceived notions of how to do church. He may be short on flexibility and creativity. He may be unable or unwilling to share leadership and delegate responsibilities. And so on.

In the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church the tendency is to organize a new congregations around the ministry of a priest or a transitional deacon who will be ordained a priest at a future date. This has several drawbacks. It limits the number of new startups. It conveys the idea that the work of ministry is the work of the clergy and not the whole church. It encourages overdependency upon the leadership of one person. It can lead to the collapse of the new work if the member of the clergy becomes physically or mentally incapacitated, dies, is involved in a scandal, or moves on. It limits the kind of church that can be planted, typically a conventional parish church large enough to pay a stipend to a priest.

We are living in an age of declining church attendance, the age of the nones, the growing number of people who say that they have no religious affiliation when they are surveyed. The folks who are experienced in connecting the dots are telling us that we can expect to see smaller worship gatherings, more neighborhood churches, more micro-churches, more multi-site churches such as house church networks and cell churches, and more co-vocational pastors. Megachurches will not disappear, but they will form a tiny segment of the churches in the United States. Most churches will be small, lean, and nimble. They will be connected to a specific neighborhood or community and will reflect that neighborhood or community. What are the implications for Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church?

Organizing a new congregation around the ministry of a priest or a transitional deacon will not be the good organizational principle for new church plants in the twenty-first century. The conventional parish church is expected to fall on hard times in the age of the nones. Conditions that enabled this kind of church to grow and flourish will no longer exist.

The Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church are not prepared for the kinds of churches that we can expect to see. They will be churches in which the laity play a much larger role in the worship, life, and ministry of the local church. They will people’s churches, churches that have a close interface with the population segment at which they are targeted. They will be serving this population segment not from a distance but in its very midst. They will make disciples by being disciples in their ministry target group.

The micro-church is one of these kinds of churches. A micro-church is a small group of mature Christians, new Christians, and seekers being the Church to a specific population segment of a particular neighborhood or community. To be fully the Church to such a population segment a micro-church must be able to baptize and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Within the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church, baptism is not possible without a deacon and the Lord’s Supper without a priest. This leads us to the delicate question of the lay administration of the sacraments.

The Anglican Diocese of Sydney broached this question as early as 1977. I am not proposing to rehash all the arguments for and against lay and diaconal administration of the sacraments but to touch on a few salient points. The Scriptures do not prescribe who should preside at the Eucharist. Until the first Council of Orange, which was a local council, not a general or ecumenical council, deacons were permitted to preside at the Eucharist in the absence of the bishop. Presbyters objected to this practice on the grounds that presiding at the Eucharist in the absence of the bishop was their prerogative. They based their case on tradition and custom, not Scripture.

The main Anglo-Catholic argument against lay and diaconal administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is that only a priest can consecrate the sacramental bread and wine, transmogrifying these elements into the grace-filled Body and Blood of Christ. At the priest’s ordination the bishop confers upon him by the imposition of episcopal hands and the anointing of the priest’s hands with blessed oil a special gift of the Holy Spirit which enables the priest to confect the elements into Christ’s Body and Blood. This view is also held by the Roman Catholic Church. It was rejected by the English Reformers in the sixteenth century on the grounds that it has no basis in Scripture and was contrary to what Scripture taught. It was reintroduced into the Anglican and Episcopal Churches during the Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century.

The main evangelical argument against lay and diaconal administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is that it is not the historic practice of the Anglican and Episcopal Churches. Unsaid but implied is the claim that it has been the longstanding prerogative of presbyters to preside at the Eucharist in the absence of the bishop.

It is sometimes asserted that only ministers of the gospel should administer the sacraments. This argument can be traced to the Puritans who in the earlier seventeenth century objected to the practice of midwives baptizing in private houses newborns who were not expected to survive. Their objection was not on biblical grounds. It was based on their belief that only a minister of the gospel should administer the gospel sacraments. The practice of lay administration of the sacrament of baptism has been the practice of the Church since New Testament times. The counterargument is that lay readers and deacons, which the Anglican Diocese of Sydney was proposing to license to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper under special circumstances, are also ministers of the gospel.

For those who argue that there is no precedent for lay and diaconal administration of the sacrament of Holy Communion, a number of instances of the practice may be found in the history of the Church. In the Middle Ages several monastic communities practiced lay administration of the Holy Communion when they were unable to secure the services of a priest. They used a selection of psalms to consecrate the elements. The Reformed Episcopal Church at one time permitted the licensing of lay readers and deacons to administer the sacrament of Holy Communion in missionary districts, mission churches, and mission chapels. The Evangelical Lutheran Church has a similar practice. Under the provisions of its constitution the presiding bishop of the Church of England in South Africa, now the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa, can authorize a lay reader or deacon to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper under special circumstances. While it may carry little or no weight with Anglicans and Episcopalians, Baptists and Congregationalist Churches have a history of lay and diaconal administration of the gospel sacraments. As Archbishop Glenn Davies in a pastoral letter to the Anglican Diocese of Sydney on online communion noted, while lay administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is not an Anglican practice, it is a Christian practice.

It is worthy of note that the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion do not require that those exercising the office of public preaching or administering the sacraments should be ordained, “only lawfully called and sent” by those who have public authority to do the same. There is nothing in the Articles that prohibits the giving of that authority to a mission board or the congregation itself. They further state that ceremonies and rites which are ordained only by man’s authority may be changed provided nothing may be ordained that is contrary to God’s Word. It is also noteworthy that while the New Testament may describe what may be a primitive form of ordination, it does not prescribe a particular form for ordination or require ordination at all.

Anglicans and Episcopalians have a lot of baggage associated with this issue and is not ready to move past it. The issue will for the foreseeable future prove a unnecessary hindrance to church planting in their respective ecclesial bodies. It will restrict the use of micro-churches in these bodies as a church planting strategy.

An alternative to lay and diaconal administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which the Episcopal Church adopted in the last century, is the ordination of local priests and local deacons. They are recruited from a particular congregation, trained at the diocesan or local level, and then ordained to serve the congregation from which they are recruited. This process can be as time-consuming as the process for recruiting, training, and ordaining regular priests and regular deacons. It also requires an existing congregation.

An innovative approach, which is not entirely without precedence, is for the bishop to ordain the entire launch team. The members of the launch team are technically the elders of the new church. They form its leadership team. In the not too distant future it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some farsighted bishop will lay hands on the entire congregation of a micro-church in recognition of their calling as a priestly people. The whole congregation would be concelebrants at the Eucharist with one their number serving as the “tongue” of the assembly.

If the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Church in North America, and the Episcopal Church are to have a future in the age of the nones, they need to start thinking out of the box. They also need to be rethinking their stances on key issues. One of the biggest barriers to these Churches reaching and engaging the unchurched and planting new churches are the Churches themselves. They need to take a hard look at how they are getting in their own way.