Church Planting Seminars Part One

~ Reporting to you live from Trinity School for Ministry ~

The following are my notes from the 1:00PM session with speaker the Rev. Canon Ron McCrary dated 6/17/10.   The topic was  Anglican Riches for a New Day.   Sadly due to work obligations I missed the morning sessions which included an address by Archbishop Robert Duncan.  If I hear any details of his address I’ll pass them along.

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What we have to offer dovetails with what the world yearns for.  There is something about the Anglican way that speaks deeply to our culture.  Our worship is more than just four songs and a sermon.

There is convergence between [Archbishop Robert] Duncan’s call to plant 1000 churches and the unique charism & riches we have as Anglicans.  What God has called us to do He has already gifted us to do.  We have riches that are hidden in plain sight – just like Jesus was hidden in plain sight.

Not even prayer can make it the year 1957 again.   We need eyes to see afresh the things that are familiar.

Humanity apart from God is ruined.  We have been rescued from our lostness and are being restored into the image of Christ.  The treasure is that God Himself comes among us to bring a new species of humanity on the earth.  Prayer book and vestments etc are just the riches.

The deepest needs of people in North America, many of which go unspoken, include the need for…

• Belonging – people are isolated, lonely, and alienated in a culture where nobody knows your name.  Anglicans are incarnational, and we invite people into community.  We see the church in the light of relationship, like marriage, the only two institutions instituted by God.
• Trust – the need to be able to trust someone or something, to find another person trustworthy, to be safe being vulnerable.  This is difficult if not impossible in a world of deeply wounded people – people wounded by divorce and unfaithfulness and greed and advertising that never delivers what it promises.  Anglicans have riches of historicity – we did not just go into business yesterday.  We are tried and true.  Even our polity has accountability built into it.
• Stability and order – not to the point of limiting freedom, but to counterbalance the constant change we’re all subjected to.  We live in a very chaotic time; the world we have known is being deconstructed; we see the collapse of civilized order (terrorists); there is more than enough hatred to destroy the known world.  The Book of Common Prayer in itself is full of order and structure:  observe the church calendar and the lectionary.  At its root the Anglican way is an ordered way of life for both individuals and community.
• Direction – people are lost, disoriented, living at the speed of light rather than the speed of life.  It’s no mistake the most popular TV series in recent history has been LOST.  Anglicans have direction – from the desert fathers to CS Lewis – that slows us down and digs deep.

We are organized around worshiping God (not just worship).  Four songs alone will never be worship.  We seek to be “a community of loving persons with God at its center.”  This is offensive to humanity – ‘I want to be the center’.  Our focus is on word and sacrament, gathered around God as our sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.  It is more important that a sermon blesses God than that it blesses you or me.

We have three great things:

• A great challenge.  People are yearning for what we have.  But they have no clue what Anglicanism is.  “Anglican – what’s that?”  It’s tough to explain in a nutshell in an emotionally relevant way.  We are aliens in this country.  The Baptists and Methodists churched America.  They have ‘brand recognition’.  Episcopalians are known down at the local bar as “the queer people”, and the word ‘Anglican’ is totally unfamiliar.
• A second challenge. – Keeping in mind that the riches are not the treasure.  Don’t trade God for ecclesiology and vestments.
• A great opportunity – To plant Anglicanism in North America.  The last time this opportunity existed was in the 1600s.  This is hugely historic.  You only get to build the foundation once.

Audience comment: this must not be a church of Bishops but of personal faith
Answer: we must learn to be no longer chaplains to the ruling class but must develop a “folk Anglicanism” – it will be a powerhouse.