The Articles are very clear on the importance and the nature of the Bible and on how Scripture relates to other statements of faith.
The Sufficiency of Scripture
The first sentence of Article 6 encapsulates this essential reformation doctrine perfectly: ‘Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation.’ This was (and remains) a direct attack on both Romanism and extreme or radical Protestantism. Rome claims that the church may define doctrines not described in Scripture and insists that they be accepted by those wanting to be saved; fairly recent examples are the teachings about the ‘immaculate conception’ and the ‘assumption’ of Mary, the mother of Jesus. In 1854 Pope Pius IX decreed that all Christians were to accept the idea that Mary, from the moment of her conception, was free from all sin, original or actual. In 1950 Pope Pius XII taught, again as an article of faith, that Mary did not die but was taken bodily straight to heaven. As long as doctrines like these remain part of official Roman Catholic teaching (which must be accepted in full by the faithful) it is hard to see how Rome and Protestantism can be reconciled. The doctrine of Scripture is at stake.
But extreme Protestants also add to what the Bible teaches. The insistence that speaking in tongues in a necessary sign of conversion, or that church leaders must be obeyed in all areas of life, or that the State has no rights over the Christian believer; these unfortunate aberrations have all been taught, and continue to be taught. In each case church leaders are setting themselves above Scripture.
But the truth of the sufficiency of Scripture is not just for the sake of defending the Faith against Catholic and Protestant extremists. It is a robust assertion of a glorious and comforting message, learnt by the Reformers at great cost to themselves. Even when the Church hides or distorts the message, the believer may go straight to the source, to God’s very voice, and hear for himself or herself. Even when the church or its leaders appear to be teaching rubbish or laying heavy burdens
on us, our confidence in God and his salvation need not be shaken, because we do not depend on the Church or its leaders for salvation: we depend on God alone, saving by the power of his Word. Praise him for that! To read more, click here.
A clear manuscript is a far cry from a clear message to the hearerAs pastors we have to have people tracking with us. They need to follow us, know where we're going, and stay with us all the way.
I emphasize oral clarity, because oral clarity is a different animal than written clarity. Most of us have been trained to be clear in our writing, and when we write something, such as a sermon, we are writing it for somebody else's eye to read it. That's instinctive in us. We do not realize we are writing for somebody's ear to hear it. But oral clarity is vastly different, and there are certain skills of oral clarity that ought to be built into every sermon. To read more, click here.
Reports differ on Nadarkhani’s status and next steps.In response to international condemnation for Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani's death sentence, the Iranian government has changed its story.
Though Nadarkhani was found guilty and sentenced to death for apostasy in 2010, the semi-official Iranian news agency Fars News reported on September 30 that he will now be executed for Zionism, rape, and extortion. The Iranian Embassy in London also issued a statement, saying the Iranian Court of Appeals had made no official ruling in Nadarkhani's case. But Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has official documents that prove otherwise, said Khataza Gondwe, CSW team leader in Africa and the Middle East.
"CSW is in possession of original court documents that state clearly that the charge against Pastor Nadarkhani was apostasy, and that the death sentence for apostasy was upheld by the Supreme Court," Gondwe said. "These belated efforts to fabricate unsubstantiated charges against the pastor appear to be a desperate effort to justify the passing of a sentence of death, and reflect badly on the Iranian regime." To read more, click here.
The Bible reading/s in our weekly gatherings should be a high point of the service, but experience shows it can be hit and miss. The combined ability and preparation of the Bible reader can impact how listeners (the congregation) digest the passage, and prepare for the sermon.
How we train our Bible readers and congregations for the Bible reading is perhaps a discussion for another day. However, I was recently reminded that there's more than one way to read the Bible in church. To read more, click here.
In the past, residents from Warrawee on Sydney’s north shore have not had an Anglican church to call their own. However, due to a partnership between St James’, Turramurra and St Philip’s, Turramurra South, that is all about to change.
Both parishes had separately recognised the need for a church plant in Warrawee but, on their own, neither had the numbers or resources to do it properly. So the logical decision was to work together.
“There is a pocket of land around Warrawee Public School that neither of us is really connected with,” said the Rev Michael Stead from St James’. “We saw the untapped potential there and thought we could reach these families if we worked together.”
The church plant will commence in January next year with a group of about 50 people from both churches. The new church, which will be called Warrawee Anglican, will meet in the public school hall. To read more, click here.
Bishops in the Church of Ireland convened this week for crisis talks on the rift over human sexuality.
The talks come weeks after a senior minister prompted outcry after confirming that he had entered into a civil partnership in July.
The Dean of Leighlin Cathedral, the Very Rev Tom Gordon, was the first Anglican clergyman in Ireland to enter into a civil partnership.
Although the Church of Ireland has no official stance on homosexuality, the dean’s civil partnership has hurt conservative members of the Church, who issued a joint statement warning of a split. To read more, click here.
An Appraisal of American AnglicanismBy Robin G. Jordan
In this second part of my article,” Bad to the Bone: An Appraisal of American Anglicanism,” I continue my examination of the problems besetting Anglicanism in North America and what lies behind these problems. The two areas upon which I will be focusing in this part of the article are the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal annexed to the 1662 Prayer Book, and the Thirty-Nine Articles form together the long-recognized doctrinal standard of Anglicanism.
The Book of Common Prayer. The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today write:
We should not expect uniformity of liturgy across the Anglican Communion, but we should look for a common theological base.(Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 47)
They go on to write:
The 1662 Prayer Book provides a standard by which other liturgies may be tested and measured. (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 47)
If we test and measure the liturgies used in the North American Church from the 1789 Prayer Book on, we discern a persistent movement away from the theology of the classical Anglican formularies not only that of the 1662 Prayer Book and the annexed Ordinal but also that of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
This movement began with the adoption of the 1789 Prayer Book, which replaced the Prayer of Consecration of the 1662 Prayer Book with that of the Scottish Non-Juror Prayer Book of 1764. The latter was compiled by two Scottish Non-Juror bishops—the surviving members of the Usager party, a Non-Juror faction that maintained that Christ made atonement for the sins of the world, not on the cross but at the institution of the Lord’s Supper. He offered or gave his natural body and blood under the emblems or symbols of bread and wine. He was only slain on the cross. The Usagers further held that a mixed chalice, invocation of the Holy Spirit, and the oblation of the elements in the Prayer of Consecration are necessary for the valid consecration of the sacrament. The Holy Communion is a “true and proper sacrifice commemorative of the original sacrifice and death of Christ for our deliverance from death and sin—a memorial made before God to put him in mind” of Christ’s sacrifice, a reminder to God of what Christ has done. (Mason Gallagher, The Protestant Episcopacy of the Revolutionary Patriots Lost and Restored, pp. 82-83)
Most histories of the Episcopal Church tell us that the Scottish bishops consecrated Samuel Seabury on the condition that he would champion the Episcopal Church’s adoption of the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Prayer of Consecration. What they neglect to mention is that Seabury himself held this particular view of the Holy Communion, which is in direct antagonism to that of the English Reformers and the 1662 Prayer Book. (Ibid., pp. 82-83)
The 1552 and 1662 Prayer of Consecrations, unlike the 1549 Canon and the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Consecration Prayer contain no invocation of the Holy Spirit, a deliberate omission as such an invocation is not only unscriptural but also suggests a change is wrought in the substance of the bread and wine. There is no oblation of the bread and wine, either at the offertory or during the consecration of the elements in the 1552 and 1662 Communion Offices. Anything that might suggest that the Holy Communion is a sacrifice is omitted. The Prayer of Oblation is placed after the Communion, not in the Consecration Prayer as in the 1549 and 1764 Scottish Non-Juror Communion Office.
The invocation of the Holy Spirit in the 1764 Scottish Non Juror and 1789 Prayers of Consecration differs from that in the 1549 Canon and follows the Words of Institution. The invocation in the 1549 Canon precedes the Words of Invocation. These differences are significant. They express doctrinal differences between the 1764 Scottish Non-Juror and 1789 Consecration Prayers and the 1549 Canon. The 1764 Scottish Non-Juror and 1789 Consecration Prayers are more open to interpretation as supporting the belief that in the Eucharist the priest reiterates or represents the sacrifice of Christ, substantively present under the forms of bread and wine, a doctrine rejected by the Thirty-Nine Articles.
As can be seen the movement away from the doctrine of 1662 Prayer Book began at a very early stage in the North American Church, as soon as the Episcopal Church became an independent province from the Church of England. It would become more pronounced in the twentieth century with the 1928 Prayer Book in the United States and the 1962 Prayer Book in Canada. There are significant differences between the 1928 Prayer Book and the 1962 Canadian Prayer Book and the classical Anglican Prayer Book.
E Clowes Chorley in The New American Prayer Book: Its History and Contents, published in 1929, states that the changes in the 1928 Prayer Book were "far reaching and sometimes radical." Edward Parsons and Bayard Jones in The American Prayer Book: Its Origins and Principles, published in 1937, share this assessment of the 1928 Prayer Book. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the 1985 Canadian Book of Alternative Services are even further removed from the 1662 Prayer Book.
In a number of Continuing Anglican jurisdictions the American Missal has been used since the late 1970s – early 1980s. The additions to 1928 Prayer Book from the American Missal completely change the doctrine of the 1928 Prayer Book. They move it further away from that of the classical Anglican formularies.
An Anglican Prayer Book, published in 2008, was a joint undertaking of then Anglican Mission in America and the Prayer Book Society of the USA. The services ofAn Anglican Prayer Book were supposed to be contemporary language versions of the services of the 1662, 1928, and 1962 Canadian Prayer Books, providing a bridge to the traditional language services of these three Prayer Books for congregations accustomed to the contemporary language services of the 1979 Prayer Book. The editors of An Anglican Prayer Book could not resist the temptation of making doctrinal changes in the services of the three Prayer Books through additions and alterations to the services. Needless to say none of these doctrinal changes move An Anglican Prayer Book closer to the theology of the 1662 Prayer Book.
The Reformed Episcopal Church authorized a new Prayer Book for use in its churches in 2003. While this Prayer Book was touted as bringing the theology of the REC Prayer Book into conformity with that of the 1662 Prayer Book, it did nothing of the sort. What it did was replaced the theology of the 1785 and 1874 Prayer Books with that of the 1928 Prayer Book. The modern language version of 2003 REC Prayer Book, authorized this year, moves that Prayer Book further in an unreformed Catholic direction.
The Book of Common Prayer 2011, edited by Keith J. Acker, if it was adopted, would move the REC Prayer Book, in an even more unreformed Catholic direction.
The new ACNA ordinal, approved by the ACNA College of Bishops this past summer, represents a decided movement away from the Ordinal of the 1662 Prayer Book. Among its defects are that the Preface of the classical Anglican Ordinal has been altered to reflect a particular interpretation of the Preface on which Anglicans are not agreed. The ordinal does not require blanket belief in the canons of the Old and New Testament. A number of changes bring the ordination services more in line with pre-Reformation Medieval Catholic and post-Tridentian Roman Catholic theology of apostolic succession, the sacraments, and ordination and introduce into the services doctrines and practices that the Anglican Reformers rejected. They also sanction associated doctrines and practices that are not agreeable to Scripture and are antagonistic to the classical Anglican formularies and historic Anglicanism. The rubrics make a distinction between the ordination of deacons and priests and the consecration of bishops regarding the singing or recitation of a Hymn to the Holy Spirit, which is not found in the classical Anglican Ordinal.
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) called for the recover of the classical Anglican formularies. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal annexed to it are two of these formularies. But as we have seen, there has over the past 200 years been an ongoing movement away from the doctrine and liturgical usages of the 1662 Prayer Book and the Prayer Book Ordinal in the North American Church. There has been no evidence of a reversal of this movement in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Rather there has been fresh evidence in the form of the new ACNA ordinal that this movement continues despite GAFCON’s call to return to the formularies.
The Thirty-Nine Articles. A decade would pass following the adoption of the first American Prayer Book in 1789 before the General Convention of the Episcopal Church would adopt the Thirty-Nine Articles. The Thirty Nine Articles had their opponents in the Episcopal Church from the outset. In 1799 the following resolution was brought to the floor of the General Convention:
Resolved, That the articles of our faith and religion as founded on the Holy Scriptures are sufficiently declared in our Creeds and our Liturgy as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, established for the use of this Church, and that further articles do not appear necessary.
It echoed a widespread sentiment in the young denomination.
The House of Delegates would adopt the resolution. The House of Bishops would veto it. While the bishops were not particularly enamored of the Thirty-Nine Articles, they were of the opinion that the Episcopal Church needed to adopt an official statement of doctrine.
When a revised version of the Thirty-Nine Articles was adopted in 1801, it was given no regulatory force. The clergy of the Episcopal Church were not required to formally subscribe to the revised Articles, as the clergy of the Church of England were to the Thirty-Nine Nine Articles.
In 1925 the General Convention passed a resolution removing the Thirty-Nine Articles from the American Prayer Book and in effect abolishing the Articles as the Episcopal Church’s official statement of doctrine. The constitution of the Episcopal Church required the passage of the resolution at two successive General Conventions before it would be binding upon the denomination. In 1928 the General Convention the resolution failed to muster sufficient votes to pass a second time, apparently due to concerns that its passage might affect the passage of the revision of the Prayer Book.
The prevailing attitude toward the Thirty-Nine Articles in the Episcopal Church in the twentieth century was that the Articles were “foreign to the genius of the Church of England” and that "the adoption of such a detailed system of theology was contrary to her history and traditions…." The Thirty-Nine Articles were dismissed as being no longer relevant for today and representing “a watermark of a previous tide.” The Thirty-Nine Articles would eventually be relegated to the historical documents section of the 1979 Prayer Book.
The negative attitude toward the Thirty-Nine Articles that characterized the Episcopal Church in the twentieth century would carry over to this century and is found in the Anglican Church in North America, the Anglican Mission, and the Continuing Anglican Churches.
The Anglican Church in North America does not fully accept the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles, as can be seen from Article I.7 of the ACNA’s constitution.
We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.
The inclusion of the phrase “taken in their literal and grammatical sense” was at an early stage seen by Anglo-Catholics in North America as an endorsement of John Henry Newman’s fanciful, ahistorical approach to the interpretation of the Thirty Nine Articles, in which he reinterpreted the Articles in a Roman direction.
In earlier versions of Article I.7 the Articles to which Article I.7 referred were the Thirty-Eight Articles of 1563, which omit Article 29 and its recognition that the Holy Communion is no participation in Christ’s body and blood for the wicked and those in whom a vital faith is absent. The article “the” preceded “fundamental principles” in the phrase, “as expressing fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.” The dropping of this article would significantly change the meaning of this phrase and Article I.7.
Article I.7 was originally a part of the Common Cause Theological Statement. In the proposed Common Cause Theological Statement the following clause was put forward for what would eventually become Article I.7:
We affirm the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as foundational for authentic Anglican belief and practice and as correctives to doctrinal abuses.
Compare this clause and the final version of Article I.7 with Clause 4 of The Jerusalem Declaration:
We uphold the Thirty-Nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.
The Jerusalem Declaration identifies 14 tenets of orthodox Anglican belief. The purpose of The Jerusalem Declaration “is to define Anglican identity for contemporary Anglicans, in a way which is faithful to Scripture and to the Anglican formularies.” (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today, p. 147) Clause 4 fully accepts the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles. There is no mincing of words. It is a straightforward affirmation of their authority.
In the Anglican Mission the Thirty-Nine Articles have formal authority but they are neglected as a living formulary. In its willingness to subscribe without reservation to Article I.7 as a ministry partner of the Anglican Church in North America the Anglican Mission has shown its real attitude toward the Thirty-Nine Articles. In the Continuing Anglican Churches the Thirty-Nine Articles, if they are accepted as a standard of Anglican teaching, are apt to be reinterpreted as Newman reinterpreted them.
The North American Church is one of those parts of the Anglican Church in which “over the last two hundred years an unwillingness has grown up to bind itself to confessional formulae, such as the Thirty-Nine Articles” (Being Faithful: The Shape of Historical Anglicanism Today, p. 91)
The Episcopal Church has been at the forefront of the movement in the Anglican Church to demote the Thirty-Nine Articles from a test of faith to at best a historical background informing the life and witness of the Church. Those who broke away from the Episcopal Church to form the Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Mission, and the Anglican Church in North America brought this attitude toward the Thirty-Nine Articles into these bodies with them.
What might have been a positive development—the publication of Essential Truths for Christians, Anglican Mission Bishop John Rodger’s commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles and introduction to systematic theology, is blunted by Bishop Rodger’s propensity to make assertions in regards to Anglican belief and practice that are not supported by a careful reading of Anglican Church history, the Anglican Reformers, and the benchmark Anglican divines. This propensity throws Bishop Rodger’s scholarship into question.
The recovery of the classical Anglican formularies is emphasized in The Way, the Truth, and the Life, The Jerusalem Declaration, and Being Faithful: The Shape of Historic Anglicanism Today. Yet as we have seen in the North American Church a movement away from the formularies has been going on in that Church for the past 200 years. This movement shows no signs of abating. While liberalism has contributed to the movement away from the formularies, it is not the only factor driving this movement. The movement away from the formularies may be such an integral part of the North American Church that there is little hope of the recovery of the formularies in any of the present Anglican bodies in North America, including the Anglican Church in North America. Only in a new province in which the classical Anglican formularies comprise the theological foundation of the new province and in which there is a genuine acceptance of their authority along with the authority of the Bible can we hope to see the realization of the GAFCON vision. This may require a fresh start with clergy and congregations who are fully committed to the vision of a reformed North American Anglican Church ruled by the plain sense of Scripture and the classical Anglican formularies.
In the third part of this article I will complete my examination of the problems besetting American Anglicanism and what underlies these problems.
To read Part 1 of this article, click here.
The North American Lutheran Church is a mission driven, confessional Church body striving to mobilize its lay and clergy members for the sole purpose of enhancing Christ’s mission in this world. This document provides a broader framework of our work and lays down the strategic direction of our mission. Every mission is targeted and tailored to the local and contextual reality of individual disciples and congregations. Therefore each congregational setting requires to work on its own prayer based and Holy Spirit driven strategic mission plan. However when it comes to the NALC’s collective missional mandate this document sheds light on what we are called and commissioned to do together. To read more, click here.
Many churchgoers have heard of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion but few know much about them. Older church members may remember that new clergy used to have to read the Articles in full on their first Sunday in a parish (often they replaced the sermon). Those who have been to an ordination or induction recently may have heard the bishop asking the candidate if he accepts the Thirty-nine Articles as bearing witness to God’s truth.
Who wrote them? Where are they to be found? Why are they so important to the Church of England? What do they say? Are they at all relevant today? Those are the questions I hope to answer in this series. In this introduction we will look at the background to the Articles. Then in the following chapters we will look in some detail at what the Articles actually say and how they apply in today’s world.
You can find the Articles of Religion at the back of the Book of Common Prayer. They were not included in the Alternative Service Book 1980, as that book was designed to go alongside, not to replace, the older prayer book. Their wording is in places old-fashioned but they can still be understood with some effort. Where I think it will help, I have rendered them into slightly more modern English for the purposes of these studies. To read more, click here.
The Episcopal Church is alleging that Bishop Mark Lawrence has abandoned the church through his leadership of the Diocese of South Carolina that has distanced itself from the national church because of its policies of ordaining gay bishops and sanctioning same-sex unions.
Lawrence was contacted last week by the Disciplinary Board for Bishops of the national church. The letter said the board had evidence establishing the "abandonment of the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church."
The letter mentioned, among other things, eliminating mention of national church in the diocesan charter purpose statement, a resolution that the local diocese is a "sovereign diocese" and that Lawrence has done nothing to stop local parishes seeking to leave the national church.
The national church has also asked for the records of the Standing Committee of the diocese comprised of 28,000 parishioners in 47 parishes in eastern and lower South Carolina. To read more, click here.
Sometimes the simplest changes have the biggest impact.
I’m frequently asked questions like, “What’s the best small group strategy?” or “When’s the best time to launch new groups?” Right on the heels of those two questions I’m asked, “How to work around my senior pastor’s lack of passion for grouplife?” and “How can we find enough leaders?”
And while those are great questions and they are part of the equation and getting it right will make a difference in your small group ministry, they’re not really focused on the part of the equation that will have the biggest impact.
What’s the part of the equation that will have the biggest impact? It might not be what you think it is. To read more, click here.
God’s Way to Transform NationsJesus bypassed the cumbersome religious structures and irrelevant worship practices of his day, and started something living and organic. The word “organic” is a good one to describe a spontaneously reproducing simple church movement because it describes something that grows naturally, without artificial additives. It consists of elements that exist together in natural relationships that make growth and multiplication possible. That is how a simple church movement grows: it is not a top down hierarchical organization, but a movement held together by people who share the same vision and values. I have observed that successful churches in the conventional church model can actually be a hindrance to a simple church planting movement.
Notice the way Jesus got the disciples exercising gifts of leadership from the outset, before they were “ready.” Jesus didn’t wait for disciples to be born again, baptized, trained theologically and supervised under a safe religious system with guaranteed controls before He was involving them in leadership. He got them out telling others about Him within a few weeks of being with Him (Matt 10:1–14). He led the movement He began from underneath, very quickly involving the disciples in leadership assignments without mentioning positions or titles. He had a radically different paradigm from that of the religious leaders of His day, and of our day as well. He was training them to lead before they were actually born again, in our evangelical understanding of what that means. After all, the journey of discipleship doesn’t start when a person comes to faith in Christ, but long before. To read more, click here.
Scripture tells us a lot about interpersonal relationships.Scripture is full of specific instruction on how we should treat each other. If we are serious about following Christ, we will heed his admonition that "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40).
The following Scriptures explain clearly what God expects from us in this regard. Read them carefully and consider how to apply them in your life:
Leviticus 19:11 Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.
John 13:14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. To read more, click here.
An Appraisal of American AnglicanismBy Robin G. Jordan
The ACNA Prayer Book will be the last piece in the puzzle. It will complete the picture. The pieces—the constitution and canons of the Anglican Church in North America, the creation of offices and structures for which these governing documents make no provision, the making of appointments by individuals that they do not authorize to make such appointments, the new ordinal, and the recent consecrations and investitures—as they have been fitted into place show more and more of that picture. It is not a picture of a province in which the clergy and the laity share in the governance of the church at all levels, major decisions are made openly and transparently, and constitutionalism and the rule of law is respected and valued. Nor is it a picture of a province in which there is genuine Anglican comprehensiveness, room for the Protestant/reformed catholic faith of the classical Anglican formularies, and universal acceptance of salvation by grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone as the essence of gospel teaching. The final piece will confirm what the other pieces have been telling us. North America continues to need a biblically faithful, mission-oriented, orthodox Anglican province.
There are folks both in and outside the Anglican Church in North America who want to pretend that with the establishment of the Anglican Church in North America the problems of American Anglicanism have been fixed. But this is not really the case. In this three-part article I will look at the problems besetting American Anglicanism and what lies behind them. I will be focusing on seven areas—the Bible, the Protestant Reformation, the Prayer Book, the Thirty-Nine Articles, bishops and episcopacy, the sacraments, and mission.
I took the title for this three-part article from the title of a song by George Thorogood and the Destroyers, released in 1982 on the album with the same name. It is a reminder that the problems of American Anglicanism are not superficial. They are deeply entrenched and longstanding.
The Bible. The classical Anglican position on the authority of Scriptures is that the Bible is God’s word written. Scripture is totally true in all that it affirm, “telling us all that God wills to tell us and all we kneed to know for salvation and eternal life.” Scripture is also perspicacious, that is, it is “straightforward and self-interpreting on all matters of importance.” (J.I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, p. 17) This position, while valuing reason and tradition, takes Scripture seriously as canon, as “a functioning rule of faith and life,” and “systematically submits all human thoughts to Scripture.” (Ibid., p. 18) For this reason, Canon A5 of the Church of England’s canons states:
The doctrine of the Church of England is grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures [my emphasis]. (The Canons of the Church of England, p. 7
In the North American Church two other positions have to a large part displaced the classical Anglican position in the past 200 years. These two positions are the Catholic and liberal positions. The Catholic position, while it maintains that Scripture is divinely inspired, turns to tradition and to the church as the infallible interpreter of tradition to understand the Bible. Tradition, the Catholic position claims, is also divinely inspired and the church in interpreting tradition is guided by the Holy Spirit. Tradition, it argues, continues where the Scripture leaves off. Indeed Scripture is just another form of tradition.
The liberal position rejects the divine inspiration and authority of Scripture and does not regard Scripture as trustworthy or expressing God’s mind. At the same time it maintains that through the Holy Spirit’s leading wisdom from God may be found in Scripture.
The Catholic and liberal positions, while they refer to Scripture as the canon, do not take Scripture seriously as a functioning rule of faith and life. As J. I. Packer puts it,
Thus they do not in practice fully accept its authority, and their Christian profession, however, sincere, is thereby flawed. (Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, p. 18)
From the point of view of working theology, the two positions make the church the ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice.
The two positions have, in some quarters of the North American Church, become fused together. Of Scripture and tradition, the latter is seen as the more trustworthy, and is treated as a last court of appeal, except where it differs with the liberal consensus on a particular matter. As a result a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the consecrated elements of the Eucharist may be combined with a commitment to radical inclusion, the acceptance of women’s ordination, and the normalization of homosexuality in the church.
The fusion of the two positions is not confined to the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church but is also found in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission (formerly the Anglican Mission in America) and surprisingly to some degree in the Continuing Anglican Churches.
The dominance of Catholic and liberal positions on Scripture in the North American Church help to explain why the authority of the Thirty-Nine Articles is not accepted in the North American Church. For Catholics the Articles are too Protestant; for liberals, they are too biblical.
While some clergy and congregations in the Anglican Church in North America and the Anglican Mission have recovered the classical Anglican position on the authority of Scripture, there is no evidence of a church-wide movement to recover this position.
The Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation as a spiritual movement that flowed from the recovery of the New Testament gospel in the sixteenth century is not fully appreciated in the North American Church if it is appreciated at all. Within the North American Church there is a tendency to dismiss the Protestant Reformers and their teaching and to maintain that the Church has moved on since then and is more enlightened in its beliefs and practices. The latter is defined in liberal or unreformed Catholic terms or a combination of the two.
The reformed catholicism of classical Anglican formularies is a development of the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant Reformation occurred in the British Isles as well as on the Continent. The English Reformers “used the standard of Scripture, applied by reason, to correct whatever needed correcting in the church’s inherited forms.” (Roger T. Beckwith, The Church of England: What It Is And What It Stands For, p. 25)
Within the North American Church there is a tendency to redefine the term “reformed catholicism” to mean a form of unreformed Catholicism with a vernacular liturgy or a form of liberalism in unreformed Catholic trappings. Neither definition is an accurate representation of reformed catholicism of Anglicanism, which, while “it retains the ancient common heritage of Christendom, in a biblical form,” is reformed not only in its vernacular liturgy but also in its emphasis upon the Bible, in its Thirty-Nine Articles, and in the place it gives to the laity in the government of the Church. (Ibid., p. 25)
The place Anglicanism gives to the laity in church government is not well understood and requires explanation. In the Church of England it would take the form of the royal supremacy in its government. The English monarch would become the supreme governor of the Church with the right to nominate and appoint the bishops of the Church. Any changes in doctrine, order, and practice in the English Church would require the approval of the English Parliament and the assent of the English monarch, as well as the Convocations of the two Provinces forming the English Church. The reformed model of church government that was adopted in England was that of the Swiss Reformed Churches with the exception of Geneva. In the Swiss city-states, exclusive of Geneva, the magistrate governed the Church with the Church serving as the magistrate’s conscience. In England the monarch was the magistrate, and governed in concert with Parliament. The Protestant Episcopal Church would adopt a system of conventions and standing committees through which lay delegates would share in the government of the Church with the bishops and the clergy.
Where Continuing Anglican Churches have adopted prelatical forms of church government, modeling their form of church government upon that of the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and reducing the laity to a purely consultative role at best, they have abandoned a major reformed element of Anglicanism. This is what has happened in the Anglican Mission where the laity has a role in church government only at the local congregational level. It is what is happening in the Anglican Church in North America at the provincial level and may over time happen at the diocesan level.
The provisions of the ACNA constitution and canons permit a diocese to adopt a constitution in which the bishop appoints the standing committee and nominates two or three candidates from whom the College of Bishops chooses his successor. The ACNA governing documents do not prevent a bishop from selecting two or three nominees in consultation with his fellow bishops with the result that the College of Bishops could eventually become self-perpetuating.
The participation of the laity in the selection of a successor to the bishop of a diocese has a long history going back to the early Church. The practice of bishops selecting bishops as in the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches is a later development.
In the mode of selecting bishops adopted at the time of the Reformation the laity at least indirectly took part through the English monarch and his Privy Council in the selection of a new bishop. The Protestant Episcopal Church would move closer to the primitive mode of selecting a bishop in its vesting of the choice of a new bishop in a diocesan convention made up of clergy and laity.
Lay involvement in church government at all levels is a must if Anglicanism is to retain its reformed character. This includes participation of laypersons in the discussion and decision-making affecting major issues in the Church, including the selection of bishops. The laity is a part of the Church. They have, as "An Homily Concerning the Coming Down of the Holy Ghost for Whit-Sunday" reminds us, received the Holy Spirit. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit they have been given are for the whole Church. This includes the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and foresight. Such gifts are not confined to one person in the Church or to one class of persons. To scorn the spiritual gifts of the laity is to spurn the One who gave them.
In the second part of this article I will continue my examination of the problems besetting American Anglicanism and what underlies these problems.
A mob of several thousand Muslims from the village of Elmarinab in Edfu, Aswan province, demolished and torched St George's church, which was being renovated.
According to Mary Abdelmassih, writing for AINA - Assyrian International News Agency , the mob demolished the dome, walls and columns, after Friday prayers then went to the church depot where the lumber to be used for construction was stored and torched it. The fire lasted 2 hours, but the attack continued until 7 PM.
AINA says that in an interview on Coptic TV channel, Father Salib of St. George's Church said: "The Imam of one of the village mosques called on the people to take matters in their own hands." Other witnesses named the Imam as Sheikh Sabry. To read more, click here.
Related article:
Muslims Blockade Christian Village in Egypt, Demand Demolition of Church
How to grapple with time, avoidance, strange people, and unrealistic expectations?Building communities within our church is hard work. It shouldn't be hard work, since God created us for community. But we live in a broken world that has altered and inhibited the relationships God created us to enjoy. For that reason, it's helpful for us to examine the different road blocks that often prevent communities from being formed, and that damage communities that used to be healthy.
In my experience, here are four of the biggest community killers that we as church leaders have to overcome. To read more, click here.
A global church-planting group portrays the challenge of sharing the Gospel in predominantly Muslim Indonesia in its first video of a series called, Multiply, released this week.
Pioneers, an evangelical missions movement with 2,400 members, is producing the online video series with the hopes of telling the story of how native and missionary Christians in Muslim countries are able to help increase the number of churches in a primarily hostile environment.
Multiply Indonesia is available for free viewing on the group's website. Pioneers begins production of it's next video about church planting in the African country of Chad while on location next week.
In Multiply Indonesia, viewers learn how churches exist in homes instead of church buildings because of the need for secrecy. Pioneers asks, “Imagine if following Jesus cost you your home, your family, your job, your life. What would it take to reach you with the gospel?”
The Pioneers video explores these questions from the perspective of church planters serving in the Muslim world.
"The house churches we're planting are simple, not liturgical," said Michael [not his real name], an actor that portrays a church-planter in the video. "We praise God, we pray, we share testimonies. We read one story from the Bible and repeat it together." To read more, click here.
Iranian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, originally arrested on apostasy charges and sentenced to death, now could be accused of Zionism and could be in more danger than ever, one of his chief American advocates said Oct. 3.
"The charge of being a Zionist and thus a traitor, terms that imply he is some kind of spy for Israel and opponent of the Islamic Republic, is among the most serious accusations that can be made in Iran," Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, wrote in an update on the group's website.
Sekulow said Zionism is the charge Iran levies "to justify executing people who were actually arrested, imprisoned and tried on completely different charges."
"While these new charges may be, as I said before, an attempt to deflect media and international attention, the fact that it is possible the pastor could actually face these charges means that his life is in more danger now than it has been at any other time since the trial began," Sekulow wrote. To read more, click here.
Okay, that title is homage to James MacDonald, who says congregationalism is from Satan and whom I had the privilege of spending a couple days with at the recent 9marks @ Southeastern Conference. During the Baptist21 Panel, our moderator stirred up a bit of a hornet’s nest by asking me what I thought about multi-site churches. Why me? I thought. Mark Dever is sitting right there. He loves talking about this stuff. Aww… man. Ask me about basketball.
So, after I finished my pity party, I answered my brother’s question, stated something like: “Thabiti, what arguments for multi-site have you found persuasive?” My articulate response: “Uh, none.”
Okay, this should be the end of the post. But because I’m in the Miami airport and the people-watching has become a bit weird, I think I’d rather invite you all to my misery and discovery. To read more, click here.
For a contrasting view of multi-site churches, "Failing Churches Find New Life as Outposts for Megachurches," click here. For the December 2009 USA Today article, "Multi-site churches mean pastors reach thousands," click here.For the March 2010 Church Executive article, "Misplaced perceptions of multi-site ministry, click here.For another viewpoint, "Are Multi-site Churches Biblical?" click here.As you can see, there is a debate going on about multi-site churches.
The recent news that Mark Stokoe had been dismissed from the OCA Metropolitan Council and his Diocesan Council by Bishop Matthias is deplorable but not surprising, given the history and culture of the Church, and a pronouncement this spring from the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America.
Among their concerns, many laudable, the bishops pointed out that June was “internet safety month” and urged “priests and parishioners to raise awareness and secure appropriate protection for our children and communities from the many and diverse prevalent dangers, including pornography, cyberbullying, perils by predators, risks of geotagging, and in particular dissension in the Church.” (Emphasis added.)
Dissension in the Church is apparently more important than pornography for the bishops when it comes to the Internet. It is interesting that they coupled dissension with the Internet. Did they have Mr. Stokoe’s web-site in mind? A few years ago, in the Greek archdiocese, then-Archbishop Spyridon would have liked to have the web-site “Voithia” (“Help”) taken down, but Voithia was “speaking truth to power”, and it was the Archbishop who was removed by Patriarch Bartholomew, after the ground-swell from the faithful. To read more, click here.
To visit the OCA News web site and read the latest articles, click here.
If you want your church to have the impact of the early church, the book of Acts shows us 8 essential characteristics we need in our congregations --
Supernatural power (Acts 2:3-4) -- We don’t just talk about God; we experience Him. This is what makes the Church different from every other organization on the planet. We have the Holy Spirit. Microsoft doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. The United States government doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. The Red Cross doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. No other organization has the power of God in it. God promised His Spirit to help His Church.
Use everybody’s language (Acts 2:4) -- This passage isn’t about speaking in tongues. It’s about the gospel being communicated in real languages. People actually heard the early Christians speak in their own languages -- whether that was Farsi, Swahili, German, Greek, or whatever. God says from the very first day of the church that the Good News is for everyone. It’s not just for Jews. It’s amazing grace for every race. But the power of Acts isn’t just about the language of your country of origin. It’s also about languages spoken only in particular subcultures -- like mothers of preschoolers or people into hip-hop or accountants or truck drivers. God says in His Church, everyone’s language gets used. Are you helping your people use their “language” to reach people with the Good News? To read more, click here.
A hole in Earth's protective ozone layer above the Antarctic has become an annual event for the last 25 years, greatly increasing the South Pole's exposure to ultraviolet rays. Now, the same thing is happening above the Arctic Circle
The ozone layer is found roughly between 20 and 25 miles above our planet's surface. Primarily composed of the oxygen compound ozone, this layer serves to absorb about 97-99% of all ultraviolet light that reaches Earth from the Sun, shielding us from its more dangerous effects. But due to the heavy use of various human-manufactured compounds — in particular chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which have since been largely banned — the ozone layer has become depleted, opening up holes over as much as 5% of the Earth's surface ever since the mid-1980s.
Until now, the vast majority of those holes were found high above Antarctica, but now it appears this severe ozone depletion has migrated to the other pole. An international team of researchers discovered that a mix of ozone-depleting pollutants and unusually cold temperatures above the North Pole drove the creation of a new Arctic ozone hole unlike any we've seen before. To read more, click here.
One impact of Tractarianism has been that practices that had not happened in the Church of England for 300 years were reintroduced, tolerated, permitted and now in a few cases almost prescribed. Although evangelicals at first opposed these things as springing from a different gospel, along the way many seem to have become numbed to them and even adopted the practices for themselves. There are many examples we can give of this. I remember for example someone expressing incredulity that a well known conservative evangelical church used a communion prayer with a definite epiclesis as part of it but we will look at just two issues. To read more, click here.
The story is told of an Anglican bishop who at an ecumenical gathering greeted his Orthodox counterpart with a threefold embrace. Afterwards the bishop’s chaplain congratulated him on his symbolism, recognising how keen our Orthodox friends are on the doctrine of the Trinity. “I’m afraid it wasn’t that at all,” came the reply, “On the first embrace I lost my glasses in his beard, and I had to go back twice to find them!”
An amusing story, but it underlines the fact that symbolism can be misunderstood. No-one was more aware of this than the sixteenth-century Anglican Reformers, who recognized that there was much in the liturgical practices of their day which could be misleading. There is an old Latin saying lex orandi, lex credendi, which highlights the fact that the way we pray will shape what we believe. They were therefore very careful to remove from our liturgical patterns anything which would encourage the promotion or continuation of false doctrine.
To this end Archbishop Cranmer in his first revision of the Book of Common Prayer wrote an explanation Of Ceremonies, why some be abolished, and some retained.1 This is still printed in the 1662 book, and is part of the historic formularies of our Church, to which all ministers are required to give assent. In his essay, which is well worth reading, Cranmer points out that some ceremonies are necessary for any liturgical order, and that the Prayer Book retains those which edify, but has put away those which were regarded as excessive, or could lead to superstitious blindness. Hence, for instance, the use of signing with the Cross in baptism was retained in spite of those who wished to see it dispensed with. To read more, click here.
Rites of Ordination were never a vital interest of mine until 1973 when I was ordained deacon in Walton Parish Church, Liverpool, at the age of thirty-four. To my surprise I found that the Rite used was a combination of Series 2 Holy Communion, the Anglican-Methodist Ordinal (1968) and the Ordinal of 1662. The only parts of the latter which were used were the two imperative formulae which begin: “Take thou authority . . .” These took the place of the Prayer of Ordination from the Anglican-Methodist Rite (see Section 4 below). I believe that the reason for this insertion was to ensure the legality of the ordinations. The experience of this service (when I was a lecturer in theology in a College of Education), my subsequent appointment to the staff of Latimer House, and my joining the Liturgy Group served to encourage me to study rites of ordination. What follows is part of the result of that brief study. I wish to record my thanks to my colleague, Roger T. Beckwith and to members of the Liturgy Group for their help.
After I had completed the manuscript of this booklet the ACCM Report on the Diaconate appeared, as did also the book by E. Echlin entitled, The Story of Anglican Ministry. Also, after the completion of the writing, I was ordained priest in Liverpool Cathedral. The contents of the service of ordination were so extraordinary that I have, at the proof stage, added an Appendix listing them. I feel justified in listing them and making a few comments because, when I saw the order of service, I fervently requested of the Cathedral staff that they restore the service to a closer relation with the Ordinal of 1662. My request was refused. I do now hope and pray that, until Synod approves the trial use of a new Ordinal, the diocese of Liverpool (whose Bishops I highly esteem in the Lord) will continue to use that of 1662. It is not only respect for law and order which prompts me to write this. Another concern is ecumenical. How can members of commissions of the Church of England discuss reunion and the validity of Anglican rites and orders when they cannot guarantee to Roman, Orthodox, Presbyterian or other non-episcopal bodies that the dioceses of the Church of England (or the chapters of Cathedrals) use the appointed rites of the Church? To read more, click here.
This booklet on the ordinal and its revision was written by the late Peter Toon and was published by Grove Books in 1974. It represents Dr. Toon's earlier thoughts on the revision of the classical Anglican ordinal.
You don't just have reception lines at weddings. At Archbishop's House on Wednesday night for a fundraising evening for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, guests lined up to shake hands with Mgr Keith Newton, Cardinal William Levada and Archbishop Vincent Nichols.
The atmosphere of the occasion was celebratory. After all, in two years, the British ordinariate has been formally established - the first one anywhere in the world - with 52 priests and roughly 1,000 laity.
Ecclesiastical initiatives usually take a lot longer to get off the ground. But despite the early success, the ordinariate faces an uphill task in terms of finance and organisation. The evening, which took place in the Throne Room where a painting of that famous Anglican convert Cardinal Manning, holding his last audience, hangs, was arranged by the "Friends" of the ordinariate who are helping it to raise money. To read more, click here.
Does your church advertise to let people know who you are? How do you decide what to say?Zooming down the freeway through a major Texas city, I thought I saw a billboard that said, "Finally, a church we can believe in." The next day, heading back the other direction, I confirmed it. There was an older white couple bigger than Dallas, as they say, his arm around her shoulders, smiling down on the traffic and announcing they had finally found a church they could believe in. The church's name and logo were also big and easy to read.
This was an expensive advertisement. No doubt, the tagline came out of focus groups, surveys, and the kind of process professional consultants lead. The phrase-makers belie the assumptions underlying their church growth strategy: people are looking for a safe place to belong, a place of comfort.
The statement is also theological. It begs for exegesis. They are, of course, suggesting churches exist that people "cannot" believe in. But, "A church you can believe in" is also code for something else. "Change you can believe in," Obama's slogan, comes to mind. But based on the billboard's colors, pictures, and fonts, I inferred they are quite intentionally not about change, unless it is a reversal, a going back to the way things used to be, "when God was famous" (as a teenager put it in Christian Smith's Soul Searching). To read more, click here.
It all began for you as a believer when you trusted Christ and He entered the door of your heart. At that moment, Jesus took up residence in the home of your soul. He enjoys being with you in every room of your soul except one. He will never spend time with you in the basement.
If the electricity goes out and someone in the family needs to go into their dark basement to find some candles, how many children do you know who would volunteer to go downstairs alone? And yet incredibly, God’s children often voluntarily venture “downstairs” all alone to enter a dark room in their soul. The Bible calls this dark area our “sinful nature.”
The Apostle Paul wrote these words about the basement of his soul: “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.” (Romans 7:18) There is not an ounce of goodness in the basement of your soul.
Your sinful nature is separate and distinct from your heart and your mind. Your heart and mind only become filled with junk from your sinful nature when you bring it upstairs with you from the basement. The heart can remain pure by meditating upon things that are excellent and noble and good. (Philippians 4:8) Your free will is always choosing whether to remain upstairs with Jesus, or to head downstairs to the basement.
The most miserable people in life tend to be Christians who are spending regular periods of time in the basement. They are living in willful sin as they make deliberate decisions everyday that go against God’s Word, the Holy Spirit’s leading, and their conscience. There is no joy in their soul because a Christian will never be at peace when he is living in sin. The Lord is not pleased. The Holy Spirit is grieved. (Ephesians 4:30) The believer is dealing with guilt and shame. Everyone in the “house" is bothered by the sinful decisions of the believer's free will. The home of the Christian's heart becomes filled with tension and unrest.
In many ways, it is much easier for unbelievers to spend lots of time in the basement. They don’t have the Creator of the Universe living in their heart waiting for them to get back upstairs. Unbelievers often don’t experience much conflict between their choices and the way they want to be living. There is also no conflict between their sinful nature and the Holy Spirit because they do not have the Holy Spirit living inside of them. To read more, click here.
WARNING: The following post IS graphic…I use some language that may be considered offensive by some. This is NOT an apology…just wanted you to know!
I had the privilege of speaking at Clemson’s FCA the other night and I felt led to go in a direction towards the beginning of the message that I hadn’t planned on…and so I want to expound a little on a few things here.
I said, “My daughter is going to date one day…and the last thing I want her bringing home to meet me is a ‘nice Christian boy.’ If she does that I will probably have to punch that dude in the throat!”
Why? Simple – nice Christian boys are one of the reasons Christianity is not advancing the way Jesus has called us to. Why? Because a “nice” Christian boy will go to church, Bible study, raise his hands in worship and then go back to wherever he lives, sit at his computer look at porn and masturbate. And “boys,” it’s incredibly difficult to lead the charge against the gates of hell with your pants around your ankles. (Uh…this isn’t just college students – some married men are struggling with this as well! AND let me say I’ve struggled with this and the Lord delivered me from it seven and a half years ago!)
(YES…I said that word – and if it ticks you off then I invite you to get your head out of the sand and face reality…in fact, I did an entire post on the subject of masturbation…you can read it here!)
And the LAST thing I want my daughter growing up to be is a “nice” Christian girl. Why? Because these are the girls who WILL NOT necessarily have sex with a guy…but are not afraid to have oral sex and then justify their actions by saying, “well…we didn’t ‘do it!’” To read more, click here.
The Mothers’ Union Choir from Seoul, South Korea will hold a concert at St Thomas’ Cathedral, McDougall Road on Monday (Oct 3).
Choristers and music enthusiasts are encouraged to attend the free concert, which will begin at 7.30pm.
The 35-strong choir conducted by Professor Gabriel IH Cho will present pieces such as ‘Serve The Lord With Gladness’ by George Frideric Handel, ‘Wir Eilen Mit Schwachen’ from the Cantata ‘Jesu, Der Du Meine Seele’ by Johann Sebastian Bach, and the Korean folk song ‘Arirang’. To read more, click here.
Last week I wrote about gospel generosity and the need to pray for and display gospel generosity in giving up resources from our congregation to other ministries.
During the week many people have asked questions and made comments so I thought it helpful to think a bit more about the topic by moving out from congregational generosity to consider generosity more widely in a parish and Diocesan setting.
Generosity is always a gospel issue and an issue of the heart. By the grace of God, through the power of His Spirit, God makes us willing to seek the good of others at cost to ourselves. That said, generosity seldom comes naturally and so we need to think of ways to entrench generosity in the way we relate to others. To read more, click here.
The House of Bishops of the Church of the Province of Uganda elects new bishop for the newly created diocese of South AnkoleThe House of Bishops of the Church of the Province of Uganda sitting at Commonwealth Speke Resort Munyonyo on September 28, 2011 elected Rev. Canon Nathan Ahimbisibwe as the 1st Diocesan Bishop of the newly created South Ankole Diocese. The Diocese was carved out both Ankole and West Ankole Dioceses.
The Rev. Canon Nathan Ahimbisibwe holds a Masters of Arts Degree in Christian Education from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississipi in the USA; a Bachelor of Divinity from Uganda Christian University, Mukono and a Diploma in Education.
He joined the priesthood in 1997 under the Diocese of Ankole and was appointed Canon of St. Peter’s Cathedral, Bweranyangi. Rev. Canon Ahimbisibwe has served as Lecturer at Bishop Stuart University in Mbarara; Tutor of theological Education by Extension in Ankole Diocese; and Director of Admissions/ Lecturer at Uganda Bible Institute. He has also served on various Boards.
Currently, he serves as the Chaplain at St. James Chapel, Makerere University Business School. He is married to Lillian Ahimibisbwe and they have four children together.
His consecration and enthronement will take place at St. Matthew’s Church Kyamate, Ntungamo on the January 8, 2012.
Signed,
Rev. Canon George Bagamuhunda
Provincial Secretary
In J. I. Packer’s 1973 classic Knowing God, he points out that “ignorance of God-ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him-lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.” The ignorance to which Packer refers is first and foremost theological. To some, the term theology evokes images of scholasticism and ivory tower elitism with little practical use. However, the science of theology is simply the organized and systematic study of God. Every Christian is called to know God and if we deny that responsibility then we deny what it means to be Christian. Therefore every Christian is to be a theologian in the strictest sense of the word.
I think many in the American church know God in the same way they know the president-they know some facts about him, where he lives, what he does, and so on-but they do not have a relational knowledge of the actual person who is president. This could be described as a cultural theology. A biblical theology is more akin to the relationship between a child and a good parent. The child in this sense has a much more intimate knowledge that, through time and maturation, transmits the character and expectations of the parent. Experience only confirms this knowledge, producing trust, which in turn fosters obedience.
Others may take seriously the study of the president and his office, its history, legal powers, and so forth, but this is only theoretical since this knowledge exists apart from any relationship with the person who is president. For many, this is their approach to theology; it is only theoretical knowledge that often serves to “puff up” and make people intellectually proud. In the end, they may be more enamored with the office of the president than they are the person of the presidency.
A proper biblical theology that every follower of Christ should pursue is one that seeks to know the character, nature, and will of God as revealed in Scripture so that they may live in a way that pleases him. There is a practicality to theology that produces relevant wisdom for living in the real world. Some refer to this as the Christian worldview, which is really only another way of referring to a coherent biblical theology; it functions less as a set of academic facts than as an analytical framework for living properly. How can one successfully live in the world without knowing about the one who made and continues to govern that world? To read more, click here.
Can church leaders get much-needed breaks in a communications-saturated world?The flow of information never stops for the Rev. Dr. Todd Adams, the associate general minister and vice president in the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
He fields up to 150 emails a day. He spends afternoons trading text messages about the church’s strategic plans. And he once tuned in to a conference call via cellphone while cutting the grass.
On a recent night, he and his wife had climbed into bed to watch TV when he heard the telltale ping of his cellphone from across the room.
He hopped out of bed, retrieved an email, fired up his laptop, and went to work responding.
It was past 9:30 p.m.
“It’s like an addiction,” Adams said. “I’m so driven by the customer service component of what our office is supposed to provide that I want them to have an immediate response.
“I am a digital media boundary failure,” he added, with a laugh.
His experience isn’t unique, and it raises questions for leaders of Christian institutions: Is it possible to serve the church’s mission and still give your mind, body and soul a much-needed break from the seemingly unending flow of information?
Can you be an effective, responsive leader without being plugged in all the time?
And when you are plugged in, are there strategies for managing the wave of information coming at you so you can avoid drowning in it?
The answer is “yes” to all three, say those who study the impact of information overload and the practice of managing it all.
“You can either do what you’re educated and trained to do, or you can be a universal receptionist, but you can’t do both,” said Joanne Cantor, the outreach director at the Center for Communication Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Conquer CyberOverload.”
“The idea is you should be available to those who absolutely need to reach you without being available to everyone in the world who may want to reach you,” she said. To read more, click here.
Guard your workers against these traps.Ah, the day has finally come. Your team of volunteers once sat before you fresh and eager, leaning forward to hear about your new outreach campaign. You launched into the vision, sketched diagrams on the whiteboard, spoke in word pictures, and sparked a fire of enthusiasm. Excitement spread throughout the congregation.
However, four months later at a team meeting, something has changed. The energy is gone. Fewer people show up. Several arrive late. They don't speak much. You hear complaints over trivial stuff. A few arguments break out.
What happened between the first meeting and this one?
The heart of a volunteer has an uncanny way of turning from passion to ambivalence. Let's look at how to treat three early symptoms before they have a chance to douse people's zeal. To read more, click here.
