When Do You Declare a Revitalization a Success? [Podcast]

As some point, successful revitalization turns into church growth when the turnaround is complete. Today Thom Rainer and Jonathan Howe discuss markers you may see along your revitalization path. Listen Now

Also See
A New Normal: A Church Revitalization Resource

Image: Faith Reformed Episcopal Church

Protecting Our Most Vulnerable From Sexual Abuse

The church—like the larger culture—is facing a time of reckoning when it comes to sexual abuse in its midst, and its inadequate response to it.

While the awareness may be new, the problem is not. Our common we-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it approach has failed to prevent heinous things from happening among us. In the 20 years I have been in ministry, I’ve seen situations ranging from college-student sexual assault to missionaries “counseling” vulnerable young women and then harassing or assaulting them, to sexual predators pretending to be Christians to gain access to children or young people.

And those are just the gravely serious ones—we could mention the prevalence of unwanted sexual advances, or disturbing sexual comments intended to degrade others in ministry, for example.

The resistance to confronting reality has led us to allow the standard of protection for vulnerable people in our church communities to be far too low. And it has held us back from caring for victims and pursuing justice when bad things happen.

Recent headlines sadly have highlighted that bad happens even among our most respected leaders and institutions.

We need to know how to deal with sexual harassment and abuse in the church with integrity. How do we protect our congregants, our staff and our organizations? How do we prevent sexual violations and crimes from happening, and if that prevention fails, what do we do? How do we care for people in the midst of that nightmare?

To answer these questions, we reached out to two seasoned leaders who have a reputation for tested wisdom in this area. Read More

Also See:
A Safe Place

Why the Gospel Teaches the Opposite of Religion

Believe it or not, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the Apostle Paul agree on one thing: Religion can turn you into a really bad person. Religion caters to the worst parts of us—pride, self-centeredness, condescension, self-righteousness, and bigotry—which is why religious people can be (in the words of our generation) the worst.

Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher, told a story about a man who dies and goes to hell. He doesn’t think he should be there, so he makes an appeal to the Apostle Peter, who is standing on the edge of hell.

Peter asks him, “Why do you think you don’t belong here?”

“Because I did so many good deeds in my life! One time I gave a carrot to a poor, hungry man.”

“OK,” Peter said. “Let’s see if that’s good enough to get you out of hell,” and he lowered a carrot over into hell by a fishing line.

The man took ahold of the carrot. Well, lots of other people in hell noticed what was happening and grabbed onto the line as well. The man was afraid the line was going to break, so he started kicking and punching other people, screaming, “That’s my carrot!”

This, Kierkegaard said, is a picture of religion. Read More

What Gospel-Shaped Worship Enables (Part 1)

Who is a worship service for?

I remember asking myself that question as a second-year seminary student. Clearly, the goal of worship is to glorify God, first and foremost. But which kinds of people are expected to be in a worship service?

Certainly, Christians are to gather for worship. But passages like 1 Corinthians 14, where Paul discusses how to welcome non-Christians or inquirers in our services, reminded me that those who don’t already identify as Christians will regularly attend and visit worship services, too.

But can a church effectively reach out to Christians and non-Christians in the same service?

Thanks to the help of some great resources and my experiences ministering in my church, I have come to see that the answer to that question is a resounding “yes!” — if the gospel shapes our worship. Read More

The Allure of the Dangerous, the Allure of the Deadly: The Need for a Second Alternative Province in North America—Part 3

By Robin G. Jordan

If the Anglican Church in North America is to take up the mantle of representing genuine Anglicanism in Canada, Mexico, and the United States and their overseas territories, it must genuinely embody what it claims to represent. It must fully embrace the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church—the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies.

This, I realize, is an impossible task for the ACNA’s present leadership. Too many of those who occupy positions of influence in the province are enamored with the poisonous plants growing in its garden. After all, they are the ones who planted them. They have already expressed the intent to encourage other provinces to grow them too.

In this regard these leaders are no different than the leaders of the Episcopal Church who at every opportunity seek to export their particular brand of Anglicanism, if it can be called Anglicanism, to other provinces.

If a number of Anglican provinces outside of North America were not raising poisonous plants of their own, I would be inclined to view the North American Anglican Church as a forcing bed or hotbed for harmful beliefs and practices. It produces more than its share of them.

In North America the poisonous plants have taken over not only the garden but the fields. They are like the darnel, or cockle, the farmer’s enemy sowed in his fields. They have been sown so thickly that they are choking what the wheat has been sown. Even if the darnel is separated from the wheat at harvest time, the wheat harvest would be a poor one.

In ancient times a farmer who fields became infested with darnel might be forced to burn his fields. Even if he was able to salvage a part of his wheat crop, he and his family would have little to eat to the next harvest. Faced with starvation, they might have to eat the “seed corn” and then sell the land. The farmer and his family might then be forced to work as day laborers or to sell themselves into slavery.

If an enemy deliberately sowed darnel in the farmer’s fields as in the parable of the wheat and the tares, the wealthy landowner who bought the land and then employed or bought the farmer and his family might be the very enemy who sowed darnel in the farmer’s fields. It was his design from the very beginning.

If you are not familiar with darnel, it is a very poisonous weed. It resembles wheat until it matures. It has deep roots. If you uproot it, you are likely to uproot any wheat growing near it. If it seeds earlier than the wheat and sows itself in the field, the farmer will be forced to contend with it more than one year in a row.

Darnel was a real problem for farmers until harvesting machinery was developed that could separate darnel seeds from wheat seeds.

While it is impossible to protect a wheat field entirely from darnel infestation, it is possible to protect a wheat field from an enemy deliberately sowing darnel in the field. A farmer can also take steps to make sure the wheat that he sows is relatively darnel-free.

This is one of the purposes of the Thirty-Nine Articles in the Anglican Church. It is to protect the Anglican Church from harmful beliefs and practices. To fulfill this purpose, the doctrine and principles embodied in the Articles must be enforced. It is not enough to require that clergy subscribe to the Articles as important as clerical subscription to the Articles is.

The farmer can also plant the wheat in fields in which have largely been free from darnel. This may entail plowing new fields and then planting them.

The ecclesiastical equivalent is to form a new province composed of networks of existing and new churches that are fully committed to biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism and are comparatively free from the harmful beliefs and practices that are being encouraged to take root and to bear fruit in the Anglican Church in North America.

What I hope is that Anglicans who are fully committed to remaining genuinely Anglican will give serious thought to forming such a province. They will not become so enthralled by the poisonous blossoms growing in the Anglican Church in North America that they will abandon the genuine Anglican Way for what may be the broad highway to perdition. It is also my hope that they do not come to regret holding back and doing nothing. They do not choose to let an opportunity to establish a genuine Anglican presence and witness in North America slip from their hands.

Also See:
The Allure of the Dangerous, the Allure of the Deadly: Harmful Beliefs and Practices in the Anglican Church—Part 1
The Allure of the Dangerous, the Allure of the Deadly: But What about Bishops?—Part 2

If you are not familiar with the flowers in the photos that I posted with my last three articles, the flowers in the first photo are oleander; the second photo, yellow aconite; and the third photo, monkshood, or blue aconite. All three plants are deadly poisonous. Pretty, aren't they? 

The Church Growth Gap: The Big Get Bigger While the Small Get Smaller

The US congregations most likely to grow are the 10 percent that already have more than 250 worshipers.

In many congregations in the United States, new faces in the pews have become rare.

A new study from Exponential by LifeWay Research found 6 in 10 Protestant churches are plateaued or declining in attendance and more than half saw fewer than 10 people become new Christians in the past 12 months.

“Growth is not absent from American churches,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “But rapid growth through conversions is uncommon.” Read More

Also See:
Major New Research on Declining, Plateaued, and Growing Churches from Exponential and LifeWay Research

Why Are People Less Interested in Attending Your Church?

I recently listed 10 areas in our church where we are not satisfied. Nothing is necessarily broken, but there is room for evaluation and improvement.

The law of diminishing astonishment is partially to blame for a few items on the list, like decreasing attendance patterns from regular attendees and lack of enthusiasm within the upper grades of some family ministry departments.

This law reflects the reality of how extraordinary today begins to feel ordinary over time.... Read More

Small Churches Are Stuck (But Not The Way You Think)

Churches on either end of the size spectrum are usually seen as fulfilling their calling. But those in the middle? Not so much.

If you are leading a healthy and effective house church, you may face some criticism for not getting bigger. But most people will start with the assumption that your size is appropriate for your calling.

If you are leading a healthy and effective big church, you may face some criticism for being too big. But most people will start with the assumption that your size is appropriate for your calling.

But if you are leading a healthy and effective small to midsize church, you are most likely facing a constant barrage of criticism for not getting bigger.

• External criticism and internal criticism.
• Intentional criticism and unintentional criticism.
• Criticism disguised as an attempt to help you get bigger and criticism that’s not disguised at all.

What you will receive very little of is the assumption that your size is appropriate for your calling.

Why are the micro-mini church and the megachurch generally considered to be at an ap ropriate size for their mission (as they should be), but the in-between sizes are considered inadequate at best, and a failure at worst? Read More

“Confusion” and “Failure”: Other Roman Catholic Blows Against Pope Francis

The turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church has reached a further disruption point. At the beginning of February, two independent but influential texts circulated widely that expressed strong criticism against Pope Francis. In Europe, the German Cardinal Gerhard Müller issued a Manifesto of Faith that raised serious concerns over the downplaying of Roman Catholic identity under the present-day pontificate and suggested corrections to it. In the USA, the acclaimed journal First Things posted an article by R.R. Reno whose devastating thesis is evident from its title: “A Failing Papacy”. Both attacks came from high-profile Roman Catholic sources and show that the “Annus Horribilis” (Terrible Year) of Rome is getting even worse. On both sides of the Atlantic, Pope Francis is under fire. Read More

The Training Ground of Sound Doctrine

For over a decade, I have been reviewing books that are of particular interest to Christians. While the vast majority of the titles I have reviewed are solid works founded on biblical principles, I am far better known for those occasional reviews of the very worst books in the Christian world. Sadly, these books that teach the worst are often the books that sell the best.

I do not relish writing such reviews. That’s partly because they meet plenty of backlash. But it’s mostly because I find writing them very sorrowful. It’s sorrowful to witness the church’s widespread theological ignorance exposed by these books’ popularity. Because Christians are not trained in sound doctrine, they wholeheartedly embrace error, often finding it more satisfying than God’s revealed truth.

There are many reasons that ignorance pervades today’s church. For decades, Christians have focused on felt needs rather than doctrinal truth. We have focused on immediately-applicable topical sermons rather than verse-by-verse exposition that unleashes the whole truth of God’s whole Word. We have ceased catechizing our children, building within them a solid, systematic foundation for their faith. We have emphasized Christianity as a relationship with God at the expense of Christianity as an established body of truth. In so many ways, we have focused on feelings rather than facts. We have attempted to make Christianity palatable by making it simplistic.

While the Christian faith is much more than facts, much more than doctrines, it can never be less. Christianity is dependent upon truths that are taught by God’s Word and received by God’s people. Every Christian is responsible to learn sound doctrine, to be trained in the truth in order to discern error. Here are three means God has provided for us to train ourselves in sound doctrine. Read More

9 Reasons Some Church Members Are Mean

To be honest, I’ve been blessed. In all the churches I’ve served as pastor or interim pastor, most of my members have been great people. Sometimes, though, a church member can be downright mean. Based on our Lawless Group interviews and surveys over the years, here are some of the reasons church members can be mean.... Read More

Every Age, Same Page: Discipling the Whole Church

Some churches seem to focus on a specific demographic believing it is the key to growing a church. For example, some churches focus on reaching the next generation with incredible programming, resources, and processes built around kids and students. Some churches put their emphasis on reaching the unchurched. All of the programming and resources in these churches lend themselves to those who haven’t attended yet. These are but a couple of examples of which you are probably familiar. While no church is perfect and I have observed numerous models work effectively (at least in growing attendance and decisions), the challenge is that if we aren’t careful, we will minimize disciplemaking for the groups that are not the emphasis. Regardless of the church’s approach, the mandate to make disciples remains. Every believer needs to be discipled and be making disciples, therefore, whatever process or model a specific church uses, disciplemaking must be at the heart.

A healthy church is a disciplemaking church. And the whole church needs to emphasize the Great Commission: make disciples. Programs, processes, events, and budgets ought to result in effective disciplemaking. As we strive to equip those we lead, we find that we can get caught up in ministry initiatives that either don’t matter for the mission or are ineffective at accomplishing the goal. Often, we find ourselves wishing we could change our current paradigm. “If only the people would commit to X,” we think, “then we could grow.

” On the other hand, the people attending the churches in which we serve are thinking, “If only I had more time in my busy schedule I could commit to disciple-making.” These issues are related: time and commitment. The only way to overcome these struggles is to address them directly. One way to address them directly is to ensure that the church is equipping everyone to be a disciple who makes disciples. We must be discipling the whole church. What does that look like? Read More

Also See
Discipleship May be Hard and Messy, But It’s Worth It

The Allure of the Dangerous, the Allure of the Deadly: But What about Bishops?—Part 2

By Robin G. Jordan

The Anglican Church has four primary sources of authority—Christ himself who is the head of his Church, the Bible in which God has revealed his will for Christ’s Church, the historic Anglican formularies which derive their authority from the Bible, and the body of Christ, clergy and laity together, who derive their authority from Christ.

“What about bishops?” some readers may be thinking. “Aren’t they a primary source of authority in the Anglican Church?” Bishops are members of the body of Christ. They are not a separate class to themselves. The New Testament does not recognize the existence of such a class. They are not as Catholic tradition maintains the successors to the apostles.

The only form of apostolic succession that the historic Anglican formularies recognize is a succession of doctrine. They do not recognize even tacitly apostolic succession as an uninterrupted succession of ordinations stretching back to the apostles.

The Thirty-Nine Articles recognize three marks of the visible church of Christ—a congregation of believing Christians, the preaching of the pure Word of God, and the proper administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper according to Christ’s command in those matters that are essential for their administration. The Articles make no mention of bishops except in Article XXXVI in which they recognize the validity of the consecration or ordination of clergy in accordance with the ordinal of Edward the Sixth. It is a real stretch to infer from Article XXXVI that Articles recognize bishops as a mark of the visible church. The Articles do not support such a conclusion. The Holy Scriptures do not prescribe any particular form of church polity and the Articles reflect their position.

What authority bishops exercise is that of a particular office and ministry in the body of Christ. They derive this authority from Christ through the body of Christ. The body of Christ does not derive its authority from Christ through them—a fanciful notion of the Catholic Church, which has no real basis in Scripture.

Bishops are divinely appointed in so far as any member of the body of Christ executing an office and ministry in that body is divinely appointed. They have no special appointment that sets them apart from other members of Christ’s body. The Catholic Church may teach such a fanciful notion but like so many of these notions, it is not supported by Scripture.

The historic Anglican formularies recognize three such offices and ministries—that of deacon, presbyter, and bishop, the antecedents of which existed in New Testament times. However, the office and ministry of elder-overseer did not become separated into the offices and ministries of presbyter and bishop until late in New Testament times. The functions of bishops today are quite different from the functions of bishops in New Testament times and represent an evolution of the office and ministry of bishop over the ensuing centuries.

The office and ministry of bishop has evolved from the senior minister of a community church to the senior minister of a cluster of churches in the same community to the senior minister of a cluster of churches not just in the same community but also in outlying communities. In today’s world a bishop may be a senior minister of a network of churches that are scattered across an entire region. This network may also include churches outside that region.

Bishops have lived in poverty as did the bishops of the Celtic Church in the first nine centuries of Christianity. They have owned vast tracts of land and armies of serfs and lived in palaces as did the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. They have walked on foot. They have ridden in carriages, escorted by running footmen. They have labored with their own hand like our Lord and the apostle Paul. They lived off the sweat of others.

Some bishops have taken to heart our Lord’s teaching that those among his disciples who would be great must be the servant of all. Others have lorded over their fellow Christians as if they were rulers of the Gentiles.

Some bishops have proven themselves men of erudition. Others have shown little interest in knowledge and learning.

If any lesson can be drawn from their lives, it is that bishops, like other men, have their strengths and weaknesses. They are no different from the rest of us.

Bishops are no guarantee that an Anglican province will remain faithful to the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies. Their role as guardians of the faith is overrated.  Bishops are leading the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States away from the biblical Christianity and historic Anglicanism. They are also leading the Anglican Church in North America away from the genuine Anglican Way.

As the Thirty-Nine Articles warn us, in our own nature we are predisposed to evil. This infection within our nature persists even within those who regenerate. The Articles further caution us that not all men are ruled by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. We are naïve indeed if we suppose—charitable as it may be—that every man who professes himself a Christian is so ruled. The Articles also draw to our attention that “in the visible church the evil is always mingled with the good and sometimes evil people possess the highest rank.”

Evil takes a variety of forms. It may not always be evident to the eye. A minister may publicly lead an unblemished life yet entertain evil thoughts and desires in his heart.

The sexual abuse scandals that have swept the Catholic and Anglican Churches and which are now sweeping the Southern Baptist Convention attest to the truth of the Thirty-Nine Articles’ warnings. The Catholic Church has a problem not only with clergy sexually abusing children but also clergy sexually abusing nuns and fathering children out of wedlock.

Bishops can be drawn to harmful beliefs and practices as much as any other member of Christ’s body. They can succumb to their attractiveness and allow them to grow and flourish. Just as one gardener may encourage other gardeners to raise poisonous plants for their gorgeous blooms and give their fellow gardeners seeds and young plants, bishops can do the equivalent with harmful beliefs and practices.

Bishops may recognize the harmfulness of the beliefs and practices whose propagation they are encouraging but may persist in what they are doing out of defiance of those who have drawn attention to the harm that they are doing. Bishops are as human as everyone else: they may react defiantly to any form of criticism. They may allow their feelings to cloud their judgment.

Bishops who uphold the teaching of the Bible and the doctrine and principles embodied in the historic Anglican formularies do the Anglican Church a great service. Bishops who abandon the genuine Anglican Way and lead their flock down another path do their flock great harm.

To Reach Unsaved Christians, First Help Them Get Lost

People who claim Christianity but lack gospel awareness present a unique evangelistic challenge.

If there is such a thing as missional insecurity, I have felt it. It’s that feeling you had in college when your friends spent spring break serving in a Haitian orphanage while you drove to the beach. My most vivid experience of this insecurity came while moving out of my seminary apartment. I was loading up to make the drive back to my hometown of Tallahassee, where I would begin local church pastoral ministry. I was excited to be heading home until I saw my neighbor from our seminary apartment complex, Matt. He was moving to Northern California to join the staff of a local church. Great, I thought. There’s Matt packing up his family and entire life to move to one of the most secularized regions in America, and I am going back home, where I will live ten miles from the Georgia state line and less than an hour from Alabama. He’s going on mission. I’m headed to the Bible Belt.

I felt like I was taking the easy road and Matt was taking the courageous one, leading his family to an area where preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ would be just barely harder than finding a Republican. I was heading to the Land of the Monogrammed.

I said, “I really admire what you’re doing and will pray for you as you head to an area with such an important Great Commission need.”

Matt’s reply was not what I was expecting.

“Whatever,” he said. “The Bible Belt is the most difficult place in America to pastor a local church.”

I was stunned. He must have sensed my confusion because he explained further. As he did, I had a serious epiphany. I believe the Lord knew what I needed to hear in that moment, and it changed my perspective forever on my role as a pastor in the part of the country where I live and minister. “In California,” Matt said, “there is rarely confusion. Either you’re a Christian or you’re not. In the Bible Belt, many people think they’re Christians but have no concept of the severity of sin, necessity of repentance, message of grace, or the overall message of the gospel. They think they’re just fine with God and God is fine with them because they aren’t atheists and have been to church before as a kid. It’s almost like you have to help them get lost so they can actually be saved. They believe in God but do not believe their sin has done anything to separate them from him or to need the Jesus they claim to believe in.” Read More

In Leading Christians to Christ, Rob Smith addressed  a similar problem in the Episcopal Church almost 30 years ago. People were converting to the ambiance of the Episcopal Church but not converting to Christ and his Gospel. Since the ambiance of the Anglican Church in North America is not much different from that of the Episcopal Church, I suspect that the Anglican Church in North America may be experiencing the same problem. 

Calvinism and Church Planting Are Old Friends

Calvinism fills our bookshelves. Many of us pastors know the importance of connecting the doctrines of grace to our preaching, counseling, and disciplining. But the reach of these doctrines must go beyond the confines of our studies.

Calvinism is meant for more than theological headiness; it’s meant for mission.

Perhaps you affirm that statement, even with enthusiasm. But have you considered how Calvinism—the real thing, not the caricatures or counterfeits—can empower and sustain church planting? Read More

An Ashless Ash Wednesday for Anglicans

In the sixteenth century the English Reformers abolished the imposition of ashes on the heads of parishioners on Ash Wednesday due to the superstitious beliefs that had become associated with the practice. The practice was too closely tied the Medieval doctrines of attrition, auricular confession, contrition, priestly absolution, and penance.

The imposition of ashes was not reintroduced into the Church of England and her daughter churches until the nineteenth century and then by the Ritualists. It was one of the errors in doctrine, practice, and ritual that the Romeward Movement revived to make the Anglican Church more like the Roman Catholic Church in the hopes that they would help to affect a reunion between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.

The 1979 Book of Common Prayer popularized the practice in the Episcopal Church in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

The following articles on Ashes, Ash Wednesday, Fasting, and Lent are taken from A Protestant Dictionary, which was published under the auspices of the Protestant Reformation Society in 1904, and was compiled for Evangelicals in the Church of England and the Church of Ireland. Read More

Also See:
If No Ashes, Then What…?

What Is Lent and How Should I Observe It?

I walked through my first Lent in 2004. I had been raised and later ministered in a church that didn’t observe Lent. This was all new to me.

On Ash Wednesday, I entered a darkened worship space. The Rector (Senior Pastor) was seated up front. He was wearing all black. Everyone was silently praying. We stayed like that for what seemed like an hour (it was actually only about five minutes). The pastor stood up and announced that Lent had begun. He announced that the church was calling us to the annual season of repentance. He reminded us that repentance is only possible because of God’s grace.

Then, after our prayers and Scripture readings, we lined up to receive the imposition of ashes. I watched as the pastor first knelt to receive the ashes himself, symbolizing the universal need for repentance. One by one each of us in the congregation knelt, receiving dark ashes pressed onto each forehead in the shape of a cross. Read More

Also See:
Ash Wednesday Will Help You Prepare for Easter

The Key to Choosing Songs for Your Congregation

There are few responsibilities that a worship leader should take more seriously than choosing songs for his or her congregation to sing. In the words of the theologian Gordon Fee, “show me a church’s songs and I’ll show you their theology.” With centuries of older songs, and an ever-increasing library of new songs from which we can choose, how is a worship leader supposed to prioritize what to put on their congregation’s lips?

I have found it helpful to think in thirds. Visualize each of these thirds as a slice of one whole pie. The size of each slice will change depending on your own context, culture, and even particular service and/or venue. But a healthy repertoire, with the goal of shaping your congregation’s sung theology in a balanced way, will typically draw from these three thirds. Read More

Also See:
Songs for an Ash Wednesday Service

The Allure of the Dangerous, the Allure of the Deadly: Harmful Beliefs and Practices in the Anglican Church—Part 1

By Robin G. Jordan

While I never acquired my grandparents and mother’s knack for gardening, I love vegetable and flower gardens. I worked in our vegetable garden, learned the basics of making compost, and planted strawberry plants in our strawberry patch. But I never developed the passion for gardening that they evidenced.

My grandfather grew carnations and roses; my grandmother, geraniums; and my mother tulips and flowering cacti. While they passed onto me their love of flowers, they did not pass onto me their passion for growing them.

I was content to photograph wildflowers. These days I am content to gaze at them for several minutes at a time, drinking in their beauty whether they are black-eyed Susans, tiny bluets, dandelions, daffodils, field violets, goldenrod, hedge roses, roadside lilies, or yarrow. One of the reasons that I moved to western Kentucky was that I fell in love with the Cherokee roses.

One thing that I did learn is that whether they are wild or garden-variety, some of the plants with the most beautiful flowers are also the most dangerous. You do not try to pull giant hogweed up with your bare hands or absent-mindedly pluck an oleander leaf and chew on it.

The harmful beliefs and practices that one finds in the Anglican Church are often like these plants. They are very attractive and very dangerous at the same time. Because they are attractive, we are prone to let them grow and flourish. We naively assumed that since they are so attractive they must be harmless.

We also may know that they are harmful and that makes them even more attractive. We are poking our finger in the eye of the old fogies who think that they know everything. We will show them a thing or two!

Whatever our attitude we are doing ourselves and our fellow Anglicans great harm when we permit these beliefs and practices to spread through negligence or design.

We also live in a culture that tolerates all kinds of aberrant thinking and behavior and discourages interference in what it views as a form of self-expression. Just as we are encouraged to keep our religious views to ourselves outside the church, we are also encouraged to do so inside the church.

Wherever we find people who are bound by these self-imposed restrictions, we are also going to find people who do not feel bound by such restrictions and who will take advantage of the reluctance of those who do. We are seeing that happen in the Anglican Church in North America.

How many of my readers feel discomfort when I describe the beliefs and practices of others as pernicious? They themselves may not subscribe to such beliefs and practices but they may think to themselves, “Couldn’t he be a shade less dogmatic?” “Couldn’t he be a shade more tolerant?”

The truth is that we cannot escape the values of our relativistic, post-modern, post-Christian culture. They influence our thinking whether we like it or not. We have come to believe that everybody’s opinion has worth and should be respected and no one opinion is any more right than another.

But this sort of thinking does not serve us well when the identity of our ecclesiastical tradition and more importantly the message of the gospel are at stake. In some areas a variety of disparate opinions is permissible, even desirable, but not in these two areas.

Anglican identity and the gospel’s message are tied together. If we change one, we change the other.

Among the purposes of the Thirty-Nine Articles is to act as the Anglican Church’s “theological identity card” and “to safeguard the truth of the gospel, for the good of souls, the welfare of the church itself, and the glory of God” (see J. I Packer’s The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, p. 67).

When we allow harmful beliefs and practices to grow and flourish in an Anglican province, beliefs and practices that eat away at the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church—the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies, we are jeopardizing not only our identity but also the gospel’s message.

Monday's Catch: 'A Question of Character' and More

A Question Of Character: Getting Unstuck Is Not The Church’s Biggest Problem

It’s getting harder to blame small or stuck congregations for what’s wrong with the church. Read More

I Believe in [a Relevant] Church

I have to admit that I have a degree of sympathy for those in my generation who think the church is irrelevant. That's because, if I'm allowed a moment of criticism, the American "church" has trivialized itself into insignificance. Read More

Is Your Church Ready for Generation Z? [Video]

Is the church ready for Generation Z? Maina Mwaura sat down with some members of the generation and many don’t believe the church is prepared. Watch Now

Is It Sinful to Observe (or Not To Observe) Lent?

This is the time of year when I receive a lot of questions about Lent. Is it sinful to observe Lent? Is it sinful not to? Is there spiritual benefit in observing it? Or could there even be an element of spiritual danger? I am going to offer a few comments of my own, then direct you to some contemporary writers who have been helpful to me. Read More

This is a thoughtful article which is why I am posting it. But I do have several problems with Tim Challies’ conclusions. The first problem is his characterization of Anglicanism as “high church,” the second is his juxtaposition of Anglicanism alongside Roman Catholicism, the third is his omission of Lutheranism—a Protestant tradition that observes Lent, and the fourth is his exclusion of the Anglican Church from the Reformed Churches. The English Reformers identified with the Continental Reformed Churches. The Continental Reformers like Heinrich Bullinger regarded the Church of England as a Reformed Church. Phillip Schiff classifies the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion as a Reformed confession of faith.

While the reformed Church of England retained the traditional Church Calendar, its primary use was catechetical. Its retention was consistent with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s philosophy of retaining the old where it may be well-used.

In the 1662 Prayer Book, as in its predecessors the 1552, 1559, and 1604 Prayer Books, the first day of Lent is marked by the Commination, a service which includes the reading of imprecations—the pronouncement of God’s anger and judgment against sinners. The Gospel readings appointed for the Sundays in Lent in the Prayer Book focus on the events in the life and ministry of our Lord leading up to his suffering and death on the cross at Calvary.

Based upon the 1552 Prayer Book (whose Communion Service gives liturgical expression to the New Testament doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ) and his writings Cranmer may be regarded as a leading sixteenth century Reformed theologian in his own right.

Challies’ own Reformed Baptist tradition is an offshoot of the Anglican tradition diverging from that Reformed tradition on the issue of infant baptism and adopting the position of the Puritans on other issues. Puritanism was a school of thought within Anglicanism. Its adherents only split into two different schools of thought at the Restoration—the Churchmen inside the Church of England and the Non-Conformists outside the Church of England. The chief difference between these two groups was that the first group accepted the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and retained their livings. The second group did not accept the Prayer Book and were ejected from their livings. While Puritanism is sometimes associated with Presbyterianism, its adherents also included Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

In the nineteenth century the Ritualist movement reintroduced into the Church of England the imposition of ashes, fasting, and other practices associated with the observance of Lent in the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of England’s Evangelical wing fiercely opposed the reintroduction of these practices. A Protestant Dictionary published in 1904 contains a number of articles written by Evangelical scholars and theologians. The article on Lent notes that our Lord did not encourage his disciples to fast. It also notes that John Cassian, a monk and theologian who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, wrote that the primitive Church did not observe Lent. Rather its observance was a later development.

Be Gentle So That God May Grant Repentance

Paul writes to Timothy, encouraging him and explaining how Timothy ought to defend his flock against false teachers (2 Tim 2:14–19). Two particularly troublesome men, Hymenaeus and Philetus, had wrongly claimed that the resurrection already happened (2 Tim 2:18).

His advice to Timothy, however, is somewhat counter-cultural for us today. Paul tells Timothy to pursue virtue, gentleness, and patience so that God may grant Timothy’s opponents repentance. Read More

Cut Off Your Hand—How Far Will You Go to Save Your Soul?

Losing a sense of God’s holiness is the first warning sign of entering a spiritually dangerous place. Read More

Harmful Doctrine and Practices in the Anglican Church: Further Thoughts

By Robin G. Jordan

When I write an article, I reread the article over and over again after I have posted it, checking for mistakes that I missed when I proofread it. I may alter the wording of a phrase, sentence, or paragraph and even add a new section. When you read one of my articles, you might want to read it again in a few days. I may have rewritten a part of the article. Even if I have not, it will not hurt to reread the article since you may notice things that you did not notice the first time you read it.

I also read my articles for new article ideas that they may suggest. In my last article I used the phrase, “pernicious doctrine and practices.” I only touched briefly on what I meant when I offered one test of such doctrine and practices—they eat away at the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church, which are the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies.

The harmful effects of pernicious doctrine and practices may be gradual or subtle. They may appear to be insignificant at first but becomes more serious as they builds upon themselves until they reach the point of producing great harm. They may move beyond this point and become disastrous.

An example of how the harmful effects of pernicious doctrine and practices can snowball is the movement to fully include lesbian, bisexual, gay, transsexual, and queer (LBGTQ) people in the life and ministry of the church. It had a relatively small beginning. The more it succeeded, the larger it grew. It now has become the primary focus of the Episcopal Church.

Among its harmful effects are that it has undermined the biblical doctrine of marriage and human sexuality; stimulated distrust of the Bible, its inspiration, and its perspicuity; and eroded its authority. As well as maintaining that homosexuality is not a sin, it teaches that human beings are innately good; God loves everybody so much that God gives eternal life to everybody; and the realization of how much God loves us is a life-transforming experience which leads us to love our fellow human beings as God loves them. In doing so, it has relegated Christ to the role of a religious visionary who was persecuted and killed for his teachings. It has made Christians the target of misguided hostility and criticism. It has also made the task of spreading the gospel and making disciples more difficulty.

The harmful effects of pernicious doctrine and practices are not always apparent as those in the foregoing example. Yet they may be just as insidious in their operation or even more so.

The doctrine of the “Real Presence” has been enjoying a revival in the Anglican Church since the nineteenth century Tractarian movement. In its medieval form it maintains that Christ is substantively present in the consecrated elements: They have become his body and his blood even though they retain the appearance of bread and wine.

This belief is predicted upon a particular interpretation of Scripture, which gives more weight to how the Roman Catholic Church  has traditionally interpreted a text than to the careful exegesis of the text, using Scripture and reason to interpret Scripture.

Among the results of interpreting Scripture in this fashion is that the body of Church tradition by which Scripture is interpreted and the Roman Catholic Church as the interpreter of this body of Church tradition come to be regarded as more authoritative than Scripture itself.

With Christians who subscribe to this body of Church tradition and the Roman Catholic Church’s interpretation of this body of Church tradition they carry weight for two reasons. The Roman Catholic Church claims great antiquity for the body of Church tradition and its own interpretation of this body of Church tradition. The Roman Catholic Church also claims divine inspiration for the same.

As we have just seen, one of the harmful effects of the medieval doctrine of the “Real Presence” is that it eats away at the position of the Holy Scriptures as the Anglican Church’s plenary authority in matters of faith and practice.

This, however, is not its only harmful effect. When considered in the context of the medieval Catholic Church’s sacramental system, it negates the New Testament doctrine of salvation by grace through faith.

The medieval doctrine of the “Real Presence” and its modern-day variants are based upon a flawed interpretation of Scripture. It may be the way the Roman Catholic Church has traditionally interpreted certain passages of Scripture but a flawed interpretation of Scripture hardened into tradition is still a flawed interpretation of Scripture. Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers drew attention to the problematic nature of how the Roman Catholic Church has interpreted these passages as have successive generations of Anglican divines to this day.

This particular interpretation of Scripture focuses upon the first part of what Jesus said in instituting the Lord’s Supper when he gave the bread and the cup to the disciples.”This is my body...” “This is my blood…” It ignores the second part of what he said. “Do this in remembrance of me…” And what he said afterwards--how he would drink no more wine until he drank it fresh with his disciples in his Father’s Kingdom. It assumes that Jesus is speaking literally when it is clear from these words, he is speaking figuratively. It takes Jesus’ words out of context and reads its own meaning into them. This is a common mistake that people make in interpreting Scripture. But then it enshrines this mistake in tradition.

This particular interpretation of Scripture includes a reading of the “I am the Bread of Life” discourse in the Gospel of John, which, like the preceding reading of Jesus’ words by which he instituted the Lord’s Supper, is based upon Church tradition rather than sound exegesis.

John’s Gospel contains a series of “I am” discourses, all of which use figurative language and points to who Jesus is and what our response to him should be. The “I am the Bread of Life” discourse follows Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand, which occurs well before the institution of the Lord’s Supper in the Synoptic Gospels. This particular interpretation of  "I am the Bread of Life" discourse focuses upon Jesus’ reference to eating his flesh and blood, in the Greek, gnawing him, then swallowing him down and digesting him—taking him completely in. It understands them literally, not figuratively, as if Jesus has suddenly and abruptly shifted gear from speaking figuratively earlier in the discourse to literally. It takes these references out of context, not just out of the context of the discourse itself and what precedes and follows the discourse but also the context of the entire gospel. Like the preceding reading of the words that Jesus used to institute the Lord’s Supper, it is flawed but has become enshrined in tradition.

This particular interpretation of Scripture also includes a reading of Paul’s reference to the bread and the cup of the Lord’s Supper as a sharing or joint participation in Christ’s Body and Blood. This reading, like the preceding two readings is also based upon Church tradition. It assumes that Paul is speaking literally. However, if Jesus was speaking figuratively when he referred to the bread and the cup as his body and blood as appears to have been the case from the context of the institutional narrative and Paul understood him to be speaking figuratively, Paul himself could not have been speaking literally. This is what Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformers and succeeding generations of Anglican divines have concluded was the case.

Later on in the letter Paul tells that church at Corinth that in eating the bread and drinking the cup, its members are proclaiming the Lord’s death until comes again. This points to an entirely different reading of Paul’s earlier words from that of the Roman Catholic Church's reading of the passage. The late John Stott concluded that Paul was referring to the benefits of Christ’s death on the cross—what he secured for us with his broken body and shed blood. The way Anglicans have historically understood how we receive these benefits is through faith.

The modern-day variants of the medieval doctrine of the “Real Presence” rely on the same three readings of Scripture. They dance around the issue of the nature of the substance of the bread and wine after its consecration. Some maintain that it is Jesus’ “glorified body” and others a union of bread and wine and his body and blood, like the mingling of fire and iron in a red-hot iron, Martin Luther’s description of the “Real Presence.” But all insist that Christ is present under the form of bread and wine and through this medium God’s sanctifying grace is imparted to the communicant.

The concept of sanctifying grace is a Roman Catholic one. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that there are two kinds of grace—actual and sanctifying. Actual grace is transient. It nudges us toward receiving sanctifying grace through the sacraments. Sanctifying grace is cumulative. It makes our souls holy. It gives our souls spiritual life. Indeed it is spiritual life. If a soul does not accumulate enough sanctifying grace in this life, the soul cannot enter heaven and enjoy eternal life.

In C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, in The Voyage of the Dawn Tread, Lucy meets “a star at rest”—a star so old that it no longer dances the great dance in the heavens but has come down to earth. Every morning a bird brings the star a fire-berry from the sun and places it on his lips. The fire-berry burns away his age until he is as young as the day before he was born. He then may return to the heavens and once more join in the great dance.

In Roman Catholic sacramental system each time we receive a sacrament, particularly the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, it is like receiving a fire-berry from the sun—a little bit of holiness that makes us more and more holy until we are holy enough to enter heaven.

Needless to say this view of grace is not found in the Bible or the historic Anglican formularies. It is purely speculative. It does not fit with what the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies do teach. “We are accounted righteous before God solely on the account of the merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through faith and not account of our own good works or what we deserve” Article XI. We do not earn our way to heaven through the accumulation of sanctifying grace.

As well as eating away at the Bible’s position as the Anglican Church’s plenary authority in matters of faith and practice, the doctrine of the “Real Presence” also eats away at the position of the historic Anglican formularies as the Anglican Church’s authoritative standard of faith and practice next to the Bible. This is evident from the three preceding readings of Scripture which not only do not agree with what the Scriptures really teach but also what these formularies teach, based upon the teaching of Scripture. It is also evident from the Roman Catholic doctrine of sanctifying grace that rides piggyback on the doctrine of the “Real Presence” into the Anglican Church wherever that doctrine has been revived.

What do the historic Anglican formularies teach in regards to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper? I am citing from Church Society’s modern English translation of the Thirty-Nine Articles. “The sacraments instituted by Christ are not only badges or tokens of the profession of Christians but are also sure witnesses and effectual signs of God's grace and good will towards us. Through them he works invisibly within us, both bringing to life and also strengthening and confirming our faith in him….” Article XXV. As “effectual signs” they accomplish God’s purpose for them. Their end-product is faith.

Article XXVIII goes on to tell us:

The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the mutual love that Christians ought to have among themselves. Rather, it is a sacrament of our redemption through Christ's death. To those who rightly, worthily and with faith receive it, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and similarly the cup of blessing is a partaking of the blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation (the change of the substance of the bread and wine) in the Supper of the Lord cannot be proved from holy Scripture, but is repugnant to the plain teaching of Scripture. It overthrows the nature of a sacrament and has given rise to many superstitions.

The body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the Supper only in a heavenly and spiritual manner. The means by which the body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper is faith.

The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not instituted by Christ to be reserved, carried about, lifted up or worshipped.

As can be seen from Article XXVIII, the Thirty-Nine Articles emphasize the importance of receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper “rightly, worthily, and with faith.” The Articles do not countenance the belief that Christ is substantively present in the consecrated elements in any way. This would include the mingling of the substance of Christ's body and blood with the substance of the consecrated elements as the Lutheran Churches teach. While the Articles do not specifically reject this idea, it is inconsistent with the principles laid out in the Articles.

The manner in which we feed upon Christ in the Lord’s Supper is heavenly and spiritual. It is a supernatural transaction between us and Christ and is not tied to the consecrated elements. The means is faith. Our spiritual feeding upon Christ is not confined to the Lord’s Supper but is something that we do every time we drawn near to Christ in faith and turn to him as our source of spiritual nourishment and sustenance.

Article XXIX further tells us.

The wicked who partake of the Lord's supper do not eat the body of Christ. The wicked and those who lack a living faith, although they physically and visibly 'press with their teeth' (as St Augustine says) the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, nevertheless are in no way partakers of Christ. Rather, by eating and drinking the sign or sacrament of so great a thing, they bring condemnation upon themselves.

Those are unrepentant or lacking in a vital faith receive no benefit from the Lord’s Supper. Indeed they offend God in taking lightly the remembrance of his Son’s death on the cross for our sins that he instituted in the Lord’s Supper.

The Communion Service of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer establishes three requirements for receiving the Lord’s Supper—repentance from sin and resolution to lead a new life, a living faith, and love and goodwill toward one’s fellow human beings. The Declaration on Kneeling which is incorporated into the rubrics at the end of the service denies that Christ is substantively present in the consecrated elements, maintaining that the bread and wine retain their natural substance and that Christ’s natural body is in heaven and cannot be at one time in more places than one.

The Prayer Book Catechism teaches that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was ordained for the continual remembrance of Christ’s death and the benefits we receive from it. It teaches that the body and blood of Christ are truly taken and received only in a heavenly and spiritual manner, by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper. The benefits that we receive from sharing the Lord’s Supper are that we are strengthened and refreshed in our souls by Christ’s body and blood as our bodies are by the bread and wine. It further teaches that those who come to the Lord’s Supper must examine themselves to see whether they truly repent of their sins and have resolved to lead a new life. They must have a living faith in God's mercy through Christ with a thankful remembrance of his death. They must also have love for their fellow human beings.

John Overall adapted this section of the Prayer Book Catechism from Alexander Nowell’s Larger Catechism during the reign of James I, at which time it was incorporated in the Prayer Book. Nowell’s Larger Catechism was a reformed catechism that was commissioned by Convocation in the reign of Elizabeth I. However we understand the Prayer Book Catechism must not only respect its original meaning but also the doctrinal standards of the Thirty-Nine Articles. As J. I. Packer points to our attention in The Thirty-Nine Articles: Their Place and Use Today, these standards are meant for the interpretation of the Prayer Book. We are not free to interpret the Prayer Book any way that we wish, as did the Tractarians in the nineteenth century.

The 1926 Irish Prayer Book adds to this section of the Prayer Catechism that the means by which the body and blood are taken and received is faith. This addition was made for the sake of clarification and is consistent with the doctrinal standards of the Thirty-Nine Articles. For the same reason the 1956 Free Church of England Prayer Book adds “spiritually received in Lord’s Supper” after the words, “The strengthen and refreshing of our souls by the Body and the Blood of Christ….” The addition is also consistent with the same doctrinal standards.

The rubrics of the Order for the Communion of the Sick affirm that those who truly repent of their sins and who firmly believe that Christ died on the cross for their sins and shed his blood for their redemption, remembering that the benefit that they have received as a result of what Christ did and giving heart-felt thanks for these benefits, spiritually feed upon Christ to their own profit without receiving the consecrated elements.

The incompatibility of medieval doctrine of the “Real Presence” and its modern-day variants and the various doctrines that piggyback on this doctrine with the teaching of the Holy Scriptures and the doctrine and principles embodied in the historic Anglican formularies should be self-evident at this point. Where these doctrines have gained a foothold in the Anglican Church they have caused extensive damage to the Anglican Church’s doctrinal foundation. For this reason they cannot be placed in the category of “innocuous doctrine and practices,” doctrine and practices that are harmless. Those who have embraced these doctrines have thrown open the door for a flood of harmful doctrine and practices into the Anglican Church.

Such doctrines can cause great harm in other ways. During the last 50 odd years a growing number of Anglican churches have been admitting infants and young children to the Lord’s Table. A number of arguments have been put forward in support of the practice. We baptize infants and children. No one fully understands the nature of a sacrament. Natural faith can develop into a saving faith. And so on. But the most harmful of these arguments is the one that even infants and young children who have no living faith may receive some kind of benefit from their receipt of the sacrament. Scripture and the historic Anglican formularies do not support the Lutheran view that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper confers faith. Article XXIX rejects this view. The admission of infants and young children to the Lord’s Table is often tied to a variant of the doctrine of the “Real Presence.” While it may not be articulated, the implication is that infants and young children can begin accumulating a store of sanctifying grace at a tender age and repentance and faith is not required for them to do so. Among the other implications is that faith is not necessary for their salvation. As long as they accumulate more and more sanctifying grace, they will enter heaven.

The doctrine of the “Real Presence” and the practice of infant communion are not always tied together. Infant communion, however, is an example of how a seemly innocuous practice can actually turn into a harmful one. In attempting to solve what some perceived as a problem—the exclusion of infants and young children from the Lord’s Table, we have created a problem, which may cause more trouble than the supposed problem that it was intended to solve.

The liberal wing of the Anglican Church does not have a monopoly on introducing pernicious doctrine and practices into the Anglican Church. As we have seen, Catholic Revivalists have introduced their share of harmful doctrine and practices too

The GAFCON Theological Resource Group in  The Way, The Truth and the Life and the Life Theological Resources for a Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future concurs with this assessment. The group identifies two major contributors to the erosion of Anglican Church’s doctrinal foundation, which, as I previously noted, are the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies. They are the liberal movement and the Catholic Revivalist movement.

An unfortunate tendency is focus upon what the liberals are doing while ignoring what the Catholic Revivalist wing is up to. In the Anglican Church in North America, however, it is not the liberal wing that is creating problems. It is the Catholic Revivalists.

Saturday Lagniappe: New Identity for United Methodists and More

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It Takes One Rotten Apple

Windfalls

By Robin G. Jordan

If anything can be learned from the history of the Anglican Church is that when a province gets on the wrong track, Anglicans who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism can do very little to return the province to the genuine Anglican Way. At best they can fight a holding action to contain the spread of whatever pernicious doctrine and practices have caused the province to get on the wrong track and to keep them from gaining any more ground.

Even then they may find themselves so outwitted and overwhelmed by the proponents of such doctrine and practices that the most they can do is establish is a few strongholds from which they may hope to recapture lost territory.

As what happened in the nineteenth century in the Church of England and more recently in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church the tide of public opinion may turn against them. They may find themselves fighting an unpopular battle.

A painful reality that they must face is that as long as human heart is corruptible, it will be corrupted.

They may eventually be forced to abandon the field as conservative Evangelicals were forced to do in the nineteenth century Episcopal Church.

As the proverb, “the rotten apple injures its neighbor,” warns us, pernicious beliefs and practices can quickly spread from one province to another, as well as from one church to another and from one diocese to another.

When I was a boy in England, I lived for a time in rural Suffolk. Rosecott where I lived in Iccleshall St. Andrew had an apple orchard. The years my family lived at Rosecott we harvested the apples and stored them in a cool, dry place for the winter months. We carefully picked over the apples before storing them and stored the “keepers,” those that had no broken skin or bruises. We made sure the apples did not touch each other as we wrapped the apples in newspaper and nestled them between layers of clean, dry straw.

If an apple was touching another apple and became rotten, the mold would spread to the other apple. One rotten apple was bad enough but two or more could spoil our entire winter’s supply of apples. No apple tarts. No apple fritters. Rotten apples are only good for one thing—making compost—organic fertilizer for the kitchen garden.

How do you know if doctrine and practices are pernicious? One test is whether they eat away at the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church—the Holy Scriptures and the historic Anglican formularies like mold eats away at the substance of an apple. Sound doctrine and practices preserve and strengthen this foundation. They do not weaken and destroy it.

Incorporating pernicious doctrine and practices into its formularies as the Anglican Church in North America is doing may be compared to storing apples between layers of damp, moldy straw. The entire winter’s supply of apples is going to rot. The mold will spread from the straw to the apples.

Some apples may prove more resistant to the mold than others but sooner or later they will rot. Even wrapping the apples in newspaper will not protect them from the mold.

Anglicans who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism have their job cut out for them in the Anglican Church in North America. You can remove a single apple when it shows signs of spoilage. But if your winter’s supply of apples has been stored in damp, moldy straw, you have lost everything. You have little choice but turn the apples into plant food.

During the post-war years my grandparents and my mother lived frugally. The rationing and food shortages of the war were still fresh in their minds. We raised our own chickens and geese for eggs; kept a cow for milk, cream, butter, and cheese; grew vegetables in our kitchen garden; and made jam from the fruit of the plum trees in front of the cottage. My older brother and I gathered hazel nuts from the hedgerows and edible mushrooms from the fields.

Finding one rotten apple in our winter’s store of apples was disheartening enough. But imagine pulling back a layer of straw and discovering row after row of oozing, half-decomposed apples bristling with black, grey, and white mold.

You may be able to salvage a few apples but you will not be able store them again. You will have to use them right away. If you have been dreaming of all the things that you can make with apples, you may have to wait to next fall’s apple harvest.

Anglican who are faithful to the Holy Scriptures and historic Anglicanism and who have been dreaming of establishing a genuine Anglican presence and witness in North America have little hope of realizing that dream in the Anglican Church in North America. Hopefully they will come to that realization before the rot that is consuming the province consumes them. Even the hardiest, thick-skinned apple becomes infested with mold when it is surrounded by rotting apples and the straw is damp and moldy.

Some readers may bridle at my choice of words. But “rot” can refer to any kind of deterioration, any kind of decline in standards. In the Anglican Church in a number of provinces tradition or experience is given greater weight and accorded higher esteem than the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies. These provinces have shown no sign of improvement but have gotten progressively worse.

In the Anglican Church in North America the proponents of the Catholic Revivalist movement, having come out from under the shadow of liberalism in the Episcopal Church, have taken steps to establish hegemony for themselves in that province, which they once enjoyed in the Episcopal Church, and to move the province in the direction in which they were unsuccessful in moving the Episcopal Church. The direction in which they are seeking to move the ACNA is away from the historic Anglican formularies and the Bible from which these formularies derive their authority.

The two, however, are tied together. Severe a province’s connection to the historic Anglican formularies and you severe its connection to the Bible.

When something rots, it becomes unsound or weak. When the fabric of a house becomes rotten due to neglect or poor workmanship and materials, the house cannot withstand the onslaught of wind and rain. It will begin to fall apart. Rats, mice, beetles, and other small creatures will take up residence in the house and make their own contribution to its deteriorating condition. Eventually the house will collapse.

The same thing can happen to a province when the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies are no longer treated as the province’s standard of doctrine and practice. It can also happen to a province like the Anglican Church in North America, which never fully accepted them as its standard of doctrine and practice in the first place.

The history of the Anglican Church shows that where this standard is no longer enforced or never implemented, all kinds of pernicious doctrine and practices will flourish.

Look at what happened to the Episcopal Church. In 1801 its General Convention adopted a revised version of the Thirty-Nine Articles at the insistence of the province’s bishops but did not require clergy subscription to these Articles. In 1925 its General Convention voted to remove the same Articles from its Prayer Book. In 1979 its General Convention relegated them to the historical documents section of the new Prayer Book.

In the years between these General Conventions the Episcopal Church lost its Evangelical wing. The Anglo-Catholic and Broad Church wings became the dominant wings of the church. At the time of its 1979 General Convention the Episcopal Church was well on its way to embracing gay ordination and same-sex marriage.

A province may not collapse right away. However, like a tumbledown house, it will grow increasingly unsafe.

The history of the Anglican Church also shows that where breakaway churches have become relaxed in enforcing this standard, they have also been beset by the same ills that have beset provinces which for one reason or another relaxed their enforcement of this standard. Two examples are the Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church.

In recognition of this danger the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (Church of England in South Africa) has incorporated a unique provision into its constitution. Under this provision all clergy and lay church leaders must, in the presence of two witnesses, sign a declaration of loyalty which includes recognizing the Thirty-Nine Articles as the authoritative standards of faith and doctrine for that church and agreeing to resign from whatever position they are occupying within thirty days of a demand for their resignation from the appropriate authority if at any time after they have signed this declaration they no longer hold the doctrines contained in the Articles.

This provision conveys to those who seek a position of leadership in REACH South Africa that the church is serious about upholding the Articles as “containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.” REACH South Africa incorporated this provision into its constitution several decades before the Jerusalem Declaration.

Just as you must regularly check for spoilage the apples that you have stored for the winter, a jurisdiction must be diligent in enforcing the standard of the Bible and the historic Anglican formularies—if its bishops and other clergy and its congregations are to remain faithful to the doctrinal foundation of the Anglican Church. Otherwise, it may, like so many Anglican provinces and breakaway churches, founder on the rocks of liberalism or the shoals of unreformed Catholicism.

What Tolkien Did So Well, What We Do So Poorly

Hobbiton...where the story began

One of the great strengths of Tolkien’s work is its grounding in history. One of the great weaknesses of the contemporary church is its detachment from its own history. Few of today’s Christians have a clear sense of how the church came to be. They know of Acts and Reformation and Billy Graham, but the rest is a blur. They do not know their forebears, the ones who faithfully proclaimed and finally handed down the faith. They have no grounding in history—their own history.

This is not universally true, of course. I have been among some who cling tightly to their history—Reformed Presbyterians who love the Covenanters, Anglicans who esteem Cranmer and many of his contemporaries, Dutch Reformed believers who honor the men who framed their confessions. (I even went to one of their schools, Guido de Brès High School in Hamilton.) But for many others, they are completely unmoored from the past.

There are many reasons we ought to teach believers their history. History gives us purpose. History gives us hope. History gives us theological grounding. But as much as anything, history reminds us that we live in the shadow of those who have come before and that those who follow will, in turn, look back to us. Read More

Tips From Non-Christians on Sharing Your Faith

While Christians say they want to exude confidence in their conversations with people from other faiths, non-Christians don’t have the same hopes for their talks with Christians.

A Barna study on evangelism found practicing Christians go into faith conversations with different expectations than do non-Christians and lapsed Christians (those who identify as Christians, but haven’t attended church within the past month).

Practicing Christians are most likely to list qualities like being confident in sharing their own perspective (58 percent), exhibiting a vibrant faith of their own (57 percent), and helping others have a spiritual experience of God for themselves (53 percent).

Yet all those attributes are further down the list for non-Christians and lapsed Christians.

Among adults who are not practicing Christians, the most desired trait of a faith conversation partner is someone who listens without judgment. Read More