felix hominum

St Tim's Open House & Fun Fair

We had a great time participating in the Laurier community league celebrations last Saturday, and this weekend it is St Tim's turn to host something for our neighbours.  So come out his weekend to the Fun Fair at 8420 - 145 St, just across from Laurier Park.

St Tim's Anglican Church is hosting a neighbourhood fun fair and open house on Saturday, September 19.  The events run from 3:30 to 7:15 pm.  Here are a few of the things happening:

• 3:30-4:00 pm - all ages games in the park
• 4:00-6:00 pm - giant Inflatable jumping zone
• 4:00-5:00 pm - petting zoo for kids & grown ups
• 4:00-6:00 pm - pub zone & East Coast music
• 4:30-6:00 pm - free subs & refreshments - dinner's on us
• 6:15-7:15 pm - variety musical cafe at the Courtyard

Everyone from the neighbourhood & beyond is welcome to attend.

clergy camp...

For the past couple of days I've been busy with the local annual clergy conference, known affectionately as "clergy camp".  Our speaker this year is John Franke, who has thus far proven to be an engaging speaker.  His area is missional theology.  He comes from a Reformed/Presbyterian tradition (of which he is still very much a part, and considers Barth to be a favourite read), but he has also extended his interest into the whole area of the emerging church.

One of the ideas which he has re-emphasized is that missional theology is Trinitarian.  That is, the triune God is 'missional' in nature.  It is interesting that in this day and age at least some of Christian mission would prefer to move God as Trinity into a bit of a far corner, or at least off center stage.   The  focus tends to be either on mission as acts of goodness (nothing wrong with charity) or on understanding a certain aspect of Jesus' ministry (again, there is nothing wrong with the cross and resurrection). 

Perhaps our age has been so keen on interfaith relations and certain forms of relativism that the church has been either embarassed by the Trinity, or simply been at a loss as to how to present the Christian vision of God to the world.

is church "brand" a dead end road?

Fascinating article from Episcopal Life online, looking at the decline of the mainline "brand"

Not all the churches examined by the Pew survey are declining, of course. Most of us would not wish to belong to, or even visit, the kinds of churches that are growing; we dismiss them as evangelical, conservative, right-wing, even backwards.

But a little humility on our part might make it possible to see that it is possible they are better at answering the needs of seekers who otherwise might dare to enter our doors.

Yes, they spend less time talking about issues of the temporal world, issues of justice and equality – issues important to us. But they devote more time to talking about things we seem to be much less interested in, at least to those thirsty newcomers – sin and forgiveness, how to engage the Bible at a deeper level, how to raise a Christian family, how to find joy (joy!) in Christian faith.

Can any of us seriously wonder why someone just beginning a journey of faith would find that a more welcoming place?

Is the ship sinking? Is it still seaworthy? Here's a more difficult and more pressing question: Is it time to move on from the age of ocean liners? Are we more devoted to our institutions, to our way of being church, than to our gospel?

The gospel is the message. The church is only the medium. There is a deep, eternal truth to that message that will find a way to be communicated. If our medium can't adapt to carry that message, then it will be passed by – no matter how many ships we build.

Talk amongst yourselves...

the Barnabas Initiative

It's a project in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, focusing on new ministry initiatives.  There is a website up and running (in its infant stages) where Thomas Brauer has begun to post a few items.  Head over and have a look.

The Anglican Church as the monastery of this age

I've had this thought tumbling around for some time.  It's still tumbling.

Once upon a time a culture collapsed.  I, like many who have a fondness for dates, would suggest the deposition of the last Western Roman Emperor (476) as a nice symbolic event.  The responses to this collapse were varied;  one response was the rise of communal monastic life.  Within several decades of each other, Benedict could form his monastic community, and Boethius could use the figure of Lady Philosophy to drive home an essentially Christian message.  In chalkboard level history, one was forming a community in order to survive the shift in culture, while the other was freed to look around and take from the culture something which could be of service to the faith. 

I propose that there were two unthinkables at work here.  The first is that it would have been unthinkable to Christians only 400 years prior that a community cut off from the world would have been a desirable goal for the church.  The second is that it would have been unthinkable for Christians only 400 years prior to suggest that the figure of Lady Philosophy could play the role of handmaid to the faith.

All of this overly simplistic analysis is merely to say this:  the Anglican Church of Canada as we know it is, I submit, mostly like the monastic community of old, even while it struggles to engage the culture in which it finds itself.  This is not in and of itself a bad thing.  The monastic tradition has been (in either solitary or communal form) a vibrant part of Christian tradition from earliest times.  When the culture shifts, there is a certain comfort in knowing that certain things are being preserved;  that treasures are being safely stored; that at least some of the "things that were" are still preserved in ritual and in particular places.  Yet it was never a simple task to join the community.  In some traditions, the would-be novice had to stand at the door and knock for some days (in order to test his perseverance, we are told).  The community was a "solid" place, to which those who were destined were called.  And once inside, the novice found himself subject of a particular way of doing things, under an hierarchical structure which sought to bring order to a society in which chaos had come to be the norm.  The monastery had walls, it had order.  It was, in many ways, a self contained community.  Perhaps too many of our parish churches have become Benedictine in their construction and outlook:  we are a safe haven against the changes and chances of this fleeting world.  Those who would become members must essentially become novices, and then find their place within the established order.

All of this at some juncture has to do with being a monastic or a missional kind of community, or at least being able to combine the best of both.  When I have that figured out, I'll sell you the book and become a celebrity.

3rd Annual Vital Church Planting Conference

I went to this last year & found it excellent:

Vital Church Planting 2009

We would like to invite you to the Third Annual Conference on Anglican Church Planting. It will take place at St. Paul’s Bloor Street in Toronto, from Tuesday February 17 until Thursday 19, 2009.

This conference will seek to build on the foundations laid by the previous two conferences. In 2007, over sixty attended from all over the country, including four or five bishops; in 2008, over eighty, including six bishops, attended. We expect over 100 this year.

In 2008, the speaker from the UK, George Lings, spoke a lot about Fresh Expressions, the creative grassroots church planting movement over there. Then, in May, Bishop Graham Cray of Maidstone UK was in Ontario, and again told stories of the diversity and vitality of fresh expressions of church. There was also a Fresh Expressions self-select session at Lambeth, and maybe you were able to attend and learn for yourself what this is all about.

In light of this, it seemed right to invite other leaders and practitioners of Fresh Expressions to come as our plenary speakers. They are:

The Rev. Paul Bayes is the National Mission and Evangelism Adviser to the Archbishops' Council. Paul has extensive experience of parish life, evangelism, church planting and developing different forms of new congregations. The National Mission and Evangelism Adviser has two main roles: to help equip the Church of England in the work of evangelism and to advise and assist in the missionary development of both parish congregations and fresh expressions of Church.

The Rev. Canon Phil Potter is Director of Pioneer Ministry for the Diocese of Liverpool. Phil has been a leading figure developing Cell Church nationally, and the church he led for twenty years has developed several exciting pioneer projects, including the very successful Kings Table café. He is author of two books, "The Challenge of Cell Church" and "The Challenge of Change--Shaping Change and Changing the Shape of Church."

One addition we are making to the program this year is a "track" of three workshop slots especially for bishops and other diocesan officers, to address the particular issues that face diocesan leaders in moving towards church planting and other fresh expressions of church.

We would like to invite you personally to attend the conference. Book your registration before January 16th and save, full details may be found on the conference website: www.vitalchurchplanting.com. If you have any questions please contact Jennipher by phone at (905)833-8327 or by email at ysimcoe[at]toronto.anglican.ca.

We look forward to seeing you in February!
 
Warmest greetings, in Christ,
 
The Vital Church Planting Conference Team

sermon notes Epiphany 2, 2009; John 1:43-51

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me."

Now that Jesus has been baptized, he seems all set to engage in his public ministry.  It is essential to Jesus’ ministry that he begins not with preaching to the crowds, but my calling an individual.  While we often are tempted to think of ministry in terms of groups, numbers, and crowds, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry is the call to an individual.  Then there is the first request:  follow me.  What that means I’m still working out.  Certainly it is at least a combination of action and belief, of practice and theory.  To follow means to walk a certain way.  Philip will have lots of opportunity to live out his vocation in community, and in relationship to others, but at the very beginning it is a specific and personal call from Jesus.  The call from Jesus does not remain a “private” event in Philip’s life.  Instead, in response to the personal call from Jesus, Philip finds himself proclaiming this Jesus to others:

Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.  Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth."  Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see."

While thinking about the atheist bus campaign in Britain (and soon, we hope, coming to Canada), I can’t help but think that Philip’s invitation to Nathanael is a bit of a model response.  Nathanael is skeptical, and Philip simply offers an open invitation:  “Come and see.”  This kind of invitation differs from Jesus’ direct call to Philip.  And I think there is perhaps a lesson there:  the way in which Christ called me is not necessarily the way in which He will ask me to invite someone else into the kingdom.  Philip, it seems, responded to a direct “command” if you will;  while Nathanael responded to an open-ended invitation.

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!"  Nathanael asked him, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you."  Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"

This seems to me the heart of Nathanael's experience:  he realizes that he is "known" by Jesus.

Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these."  And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

lunch is calling... will pick it up later

3rd Annual Vital Church Planting Conference

click here for the website

speaker profile: Nick Brotherwood

Nick will be speaking at our local Diocese of Edmonton synod in the next couple of days.  So who is Nick?  Well, I assume that there will be a bit of an intro to Nick at the synod itself, but I also thought you might like to know a bit about him before hand.  Here's a bit of bio from Wycliffe:

Some highlights of Nick’s CV:

• In 2003, he and his wife Sue led a team which planted a new church—Emerge—focusing on 18-25 year olds in downtown Montreal. Nick will continue to pastor this congregation half-time.

• He has been Bishop’s Missioner to Young Adults in the Diocese of Montreal from 2003 until the present.

• In 2006, he was made a canon of Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal.

• Since 1996, he has been an Alpha Resource Advisor for Quebec.

• From 1989 till 2002, he was on the staff of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, Westmount QC, where he served first as Assistant, then as Associate and finally as Priest in Charge. For a part of this time, he was also a chaplain at McGill University.

In the 1970’s, he was a professional rock drummer—a skill he has never lost.
Nick is married to Sue, and they have six children and two grandchildren at the last count.

Nick’s long-term commitment to congregational health and evangelism, his wide experience of the church and its ministries, and his passion for Fresh Expressions make him an ideal candidate for this position.

Fresh Expressions presently has three levels of training: Vision Days (a single day experience), Mission Shaped Intro (a 6-week course) and Mission Shaped Ministry (a one-year program). Nick has already led one Vision Day, and this Fall will be leading a second one, plus a Mission Shaped Intro course in Quebec.

Watch the website for forthcoming information on other Vision Days and Mission Shaped Intro courses in different parts of Canada. (We anticipate that Mission Shaped Ministry will take longer to prepare and will be available in a year or 18 months.)

I had a chance to hear Nick last winter at a church planting conference in Toronto, as he shared a bit about the community he was involved with in Montreal:  Emerge. 

the state of evangelism in the Anglican Church can be explained by this:

can mostly be surmised by this: the Liturgy of the Notices

Funny, and all too true in so many ways.
via Bosco Peters, the naked liturgist.

Fresh Expressions...

One of the things I expect we will be hearing about at our upcoming synod here in Edmonton is "Fresh Expressions".  Don't be scared.  It won't bite.  It's a bit of a new way of envisioning what church could look like.  You can learn more at the Fresh Expressions website.

Resources for evangelism: Wycliffe Institute

Wycliffe College's Institute for Evangelism has a number of online resources.  There are print and video resources, booklets, lectures - a variety of things on a wide variety of topics.

One little article entitled "Fresh Understanding – Research for Good News Sharing" highlights the importance of understanding the context of where your ministry is.  In others words, how much do we know (and I mean really know) about the areas where we see our ministry taking place?  There are some basic things we can do:  online demographics are usually available from government websites;  a habit of getting out of the office and into the neighbourhoods on a regular basis will give you a sense of who lives there, where they gather, and what the needs (and successes) are in the neighbourhood.  A while ago I downloaded information from the City of Edmonton census on the makeup of the neighbourhoods around St Timothy's.  Are we aware of who lives in our neighbourhoods? How might that information inform or change the way we approach ministry? Outreach? Evangelism?  Remember that the plural of anecdote is not data.

While that is a fairly formal approach, I believe that there is also need for the informal approach:  get to know your neighbourhood, hang out, participate, and develop relationships with those outside your doors.  A lot has been written and spoken in recent years using phrases like 'mission vs maintenance';  'attractional vs missional', etc, etc, etc.  Here is a simple thought, completely untested and quite likely untrue:  church communities have to go through the process of becoming attractional before they can become missional.  Now what do I mean by that, for those who don't follow the latest jargon explosion in church circles?  I mean this: the first step in being willing to reach the unchurched in one's community is recognizing that this may mean willingness to become more attractional to those outside the church.  Behind this thinking is the notion that if we do a few things here and there, or offer certain kinds of ministries and programs, people outside will be attracted to the church and they will come in.  Despite criticisms of this approach, I think it is a very good start, if done with the right attitude.  I think it signals a recognition that the church does in fact exist for the benefit of those who are not currently members; it is the beginning of the recognition that their is a clear call in Christianity to reach those who are outside.  Of course, one can also become 'attractional' merely to have more bodies to pay the bills, but let's set our sights a bit higher...

Once a church becomes attractional in the best sense, it is then ready to realize that there are those who will never step inside the doors, no matter how 'attractive' the church may become.  It is then that the church can decide to become missional - to move outside the current form of church to reach people where they are, instead of inviting them to come to where the church is.

Yeah, well, there you have it.

what I learned last monday evening

Between 6:30 and 7:45 pm, to be precise.  About evangelism.  From the Boy Scouts.

It was my first evening as a Beaver Leader.  You know, Boy Scouts for 5-7 year olds.  The elder felix male turned 5 over the summer and was interested in joining Beavers.  Last year I took him to the annual banquet we have at St Tim's for the Scout groups we host, and he got kind of interested.  So this fall he and I joined up.

Now what I learned was this:  there are 54 parents who think that an hour on a Monday evening with some kind of activity for a 5-7 year old can be a good thing.  And not only that, almost all the parents stayed and hung around for the entire event, with several of them offering "hands on" help with the activities.  Many others took the opportunity to chat and socialize.  Quite a few had some smaller kids in tow.

So this group meets in our church.  And I have got to say that for the most part, we don't interact with them very much.  I mean, they come on Monday and we come on Sunday.  But if there was ever an opportunity for a local Anglican congregation to meet and connect with a group of young families, this has got to be it.  It is as if God sometimes simply says "Duh, here they are".  I think our church has a golden opportunity to connect with these families.  And I mean connect in the best sense.

So as is my routine, as I was biking home, several thoughts began to swirl around...  Here we have a whole slew of young families, all of whom are supposed to be "too busy" to spare an hour or so for church, and yet they are more than willing to spare and hour or so for this group, and they are willing to help make this group work.  So I think the myth that this demographic is "too busy" can be dispelled.  They obviously wanted their kids here, and they valued the time spent, and they valued the opportunity to meet and converse with other parents.

Neighbourhoods are full of such opportunities for Christians to get involved and get connected with people.  Maybe we, as a church, need to get out a bit more.  I just met 27 families from our neighbourhood in one evening...

on closing buildings and planting churches

I discovered an interesting statistic a few days ago, one which I had never run across before.  The Anglican Church in the West Indies has more members than the whole of the Anglican Church of Canada.  About 770, 000 in the West Indies, and about 650, 000 in Canada.  Now I'm not sure why this should surprise me, but it did.  Not in a bad way, mind you.  Just in a "hmmm" sort of way.

A brief guided tour across the Anglican Church of Canada shows us at least a few signs of declining membership.  I recall at the last General Synod that among our various bits of paper there was a graph charting the declining membership of the ACoC over the past few decades.  But we never got around to discussing that particular graph or coming up with a plan of action to address it.  Here is a sample of what that graph looks like at the local level:

Shrinking attendance at Island churches is forcing the Anglican Church of Canada to close one Victoria parish and merge eight others in an effort to shore up the diocese's finances.

St. Alban's Church will be shuttered in the next one to three years as part of an Island-wide restructuring confirmed at the Diocese of B.C. leaders' conference in Metchosin at the weekend.
Bishop James Cowan of the Diocese of B.C. came out of the conference, called a synod, saying Anglicans can no longer count on maintaining the status quo to keep up their membership.

"There aren't denominational loyalties," Cowan said. "You can't simply sit there and wait for people to come to you, which is one of the things that we're finally catching on to."

The closure of St. Alban's and the merging of other parishes was a result of the churches operating at a deficit and concerns the parishes were not showing a healthy degree of congregational activity, ministry and community outreach.

In Victoria, All Saints in View Royal will merge with the Church of Advent in Colwood, and in View Royal St. Columba with St. Martin in the Fields. St. Mary will also join St. Stephen in Saanichton. St. David-by-the-Sea in Cordova Bay will also merge, but a partner parish has not been named.  All Saints in Crofton will merge with St. Michael & All Angels in Chemainus, and in Nanaimo St. James will merge with St. Paul.

full article from the Province

This is only one article in the public sphere which addresses something which many of us have known about for some time:  the Anglican Church of Canada is shrinking.  There are probably numerous other conversations had in private which will be moving in the same direction:  local parishes are failing to make new disciples, and some of these parishes will either be merging or closing their doors.  We can give reasons, some quite speciifc and reasonable, for some of these actions.  We can ignore this declining trend and pretend that it isn't happening.  We can throw up our hands and say that we've done everything we can.  We can sypmathize with someone whose parish might be facing these decisions (and secretly breathe a sigh of relief that it's not our parish).  Or we can return to a very basic part of the Christian life:  intentional evangelism.  A few days ago I posted a link to some resources on evangelism from Wycliffe College's Institute of Evangelism.  And for the next little while I want to use some of the space on this blog to look at various things that are happening which might help some of us Anglicans to recapture the sense of joy that comes with fulfilling our mandate of intentional evangelism.  I think this will take shape in at least three ways:  helping individuals to exercise the gift of evangelism;  helping parishes exercise the gift of evangelism; and helping parishes envision new ways of being a Christian community in a post-Christendom age.

resources for evangelism

at Wycliffe College's Institute for Evangelism

I'll highlight a few things which might be of help to us locals here in Edmonton over the next little while.  It might be useful to look at a few of these things before our next Synod...

Bishop Greg Kerr-Wilson: mission notes from the Crosstalk Conference

Bishop Moon Hing of West Malaysia provided a plenary presentation on the situation for the Church in the officially Muslim setting of their country. It would take some telling to go through the list of policies and laws of the government there which are major challenges.

Some brief examples include that everyone is officially listed by religion with the government,and if for whatever reason someone declares, or signs a form indicating, that they are Muslim, they can never reverse it. If a non-Muslim marries a Muslim, they are automatically registered as Muslim themselves - and any and all children are automatically considered Muslim. If an already married man becomes a Muslim, then upon his death all his assests are seized by the government - as they can only be inherited by another Muslim. Only if his wife declares herself Muslim can she receive his assests - and then all her children are automatically considered Muslim - whether they have any such belief or not - and all the above rules automatically apply to them.

Of particular concern in the context of mission for Malaysian Christians however, is that it is illegal to speak to Muslims directly about Christian faith. If a Muslim becomes a Christian and is found out, they can be executed or, usually, jailed. If a Muslim is caught entering a church, it is also illegal, and if the Church is deemed to have known that the person was a Muslim and allowed their attendance, then the church is shut down by the authorities.

read it all at Bishop Greg's blog

Missional SynchroBlog

What is Missional?

I think it is time to make a bigger effort to reclaim the term, a term which describe what happens when you and I replace the “come to us” invitations with a “go to them” life. A life where “the way of Jesus” informs and radically transforms our existence to one wholly focused on sacrificially living for him and others and where we adopt a missionary stance in relation to our culture. It speaks of the very nature of the Jesus follower.

To help reclaim it, I propose a synchronized blog for Monday, June 23rd on the topic, “What is Missional?”

There are any number of ways one could blog on this topic. You could illustrate what the term means, describe what it is not and how it is wrongly used, define the term, explore its misuses, explore its theological foundations, or you name it.

from the Blind Beggar via the Weary Pilgrim, who has a list of bloggers participating.

ps - Malcolm's post on the topic (which he refers to in the comments) can be found here.

Church of England postpones talk of evangelizing Muslims

But now the Church has put off the debate on recruiting Muslims until next February at the earliest and will discuss the promotion of churches as tourist attractions instead.

from the Telegraph

A Call to Pray for Mission in the Diocese of Edmonton

A Call to Pray for Mission in the Diocese

The Church Planting Mission Development Working Group of Executive Council invites you to a day of prayer. The day of prayer will take place on Saturday June 14th from 10:00-2:00pm at St. Mary’s Anglican Church 11203-68 St. Please bring a bag lunch, refreshments will be provided. For further information, call the synod office at 439-7344.

A few folks who have a heart for church planting and mission have been getting together.  It would be great if others could join together for prayer on this day.  Spend some time praying and listening for God's direction regarding mission for the diocese of Edmonton.

some food for thought on local mission...

One of my favourite reads is the Weary Pilgrim.  Ron often has very interesting things to say.  I was reminded of a recent post of his this afternoon, after a local get together of some Anglicans who are interested in mission. Just a bit of a discussion starter, that's all:

Get rid of your building...move back into your neighborhoods where you live, meet in peoples houses (and no I'm not talking house church ). Meet around a meal, invite the neighbors. Talk about issues in the neighborhood/ community. Talk about life, community, work...weave common threads into the conversation. Talk about the Kingdom, Jesus his redemptive imagination of a new creation. Invite, eat and talk...something very mysterious and communal happens in the midst of food and conversation.

Now if you've spread your church out into the surrounding community and neighborhood like salt and yeast, you're wondering how to keep it all together. Years ago that might have been an issue, but in the world of high speed technology it's not. Find someone who has some techno savvy, a people person, a connector, who can be your community network person. (this might be your only paid staff person, it would be money well spent ).

Maybe once a month, rent a hall, get together as a larger community...share stories about what the smaller groups are doing. Have an agape meal, a huge potluck.

Get rid of your paid pastor... (There, that should be good for allot of hate mail), but honestly in this day and age do we need to pay someone to teach. I've been in the church for almost 30 years, and really I've heard nothing new...it's mostly recycled, and like doing another lap on the track. There is great teaching that can be accessed on the Internet, allot of colleges and seminaries have downloads, pod casts. Again this is something your network guy could set up. And hey, lets release people to use there spiritual gifts. Release people to teach, do pastoral visits, healing ministries...

Make Mission your Mission...Now that you have eliminated most of your expenses build the Kingdom. Make mission a core value, make it apart of the DNA of your community. Mission should not be a ministry, it needs to be relocated into the heart of the community. Think local and global. Make it the responsibility of the smaller groups in the neighborhood/ community to react to any needs they see in there locality. Look at global projects the larger community can invest in.

Happy Easter: Pope baptizes Muslim-born man at Eastertide

EGYPTIAN-born Magdi Allam, one of Italy’s most famous and controversial journalists and commentators who renounced Islam and converted to Roman Catholicism was baptized at the weekend by Pope Benedict XVI in a sermon watched by thousands around the globe including his native Egypt.

A deputy editor at the Milan newspaper, Corriere della Sera, he has built his career crusading against what he calls the “inherent” violence in Islam and championing Israel’s existence. He has been honoured for encouraging tolerance between cultures, but his baptism angered some in the Muslim world with his high-profile conversion in an Easter vigil service led by Pope Benedict at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

story here

Church planting for Anglicans in the 21st Century - simple version

While I am still distilling the notes and conversations from the recent Vital Church Planting conference, I thought I would offer a Coles' Notes version of some things to consider:

• People don't just go to church anymore.
• We don't rule a vast empire anymore.
• We don't need to make more churches like the ones which are declining.
• We need to reach the unchurched.  That is, not try to reach those nominal Anglicans who will only come at Christmas or Easter, but those people who are not yet Christian.

One of the things which may frighten and confound Anglicans is the need to face the fact that our branch of the church is in steep decline in the western world.  Apart from the wonderful graph presented at General Synod which showed steady decline over the past several decades, in our own Diocese we have seen a 10% drop in attendance in the last 4 years.  Now there may be fruitful time spent on analyzing why this is so.  But such analysis, in the long run, will eventually boil down to this:  we are either afraid of, or confused by, "Evangelism". 

The first line of defense against evangelism is to offer a caricature.  "I don't want to shove something down someone else's throat", or  "I don't want to be pushy."  We point to what we think of as poor examples of evangelism, and then we claim that since this is what evangelism is, we should not do it.  It is a caricature - it is not an excuse to shy away from the real thing.  What does this mean for church planting?  We have tended to assume that if we simply get a building and start offering weekly Eucharist, people will come out of the woodwork because there must be a certain number of Anglicans in any given area.  Surely another Eucharist will draw them out, the church will grow, and soon there will be 200 children in the Sunday School like there were in 1956.  The reason such churches grew in the 1950s was that waves of British immigrants arrived on our shores and filled the nearest Anglican parish. 

We didn't make new disciples, we just did large scale sheep stealing from the UK.

Vital Church Planting

A conference in Toronto at the end of February.  Here's the site.

Two of us will be heading out from Edmonton. We expect folks I know in T.O. to give us the usual Upper Canadian hospitality.  We'll be staying at Wycliffe College (an alma mater mei) for a few days during the conference.

Do Anglicans plant churches?

Anglican Journal Letters: who is responsible for new church members?

From the letters to the editor of the latest Anglican Journal

Dear editor,

As rector of a small parish mostly full of wonderful senior citizens, I was recently horrified to hear a younger clergy person say that he regularly asks his seniors what they are doing to replace themselves! How is that their problem? Why blame the people who are there for the people who are not there?  Most senior Anglicans are not aggressive sales people, and might feel quite embarrassed to be pressured into such a task.

The seniors in my parish are open-minded, intelligent and conscientious about fitness, charity and inclusiveness, among other things. They are interested in the world and its people, and they love God’s creation. They are mostly very accepting, for instance of blessing gays and lesbians (though they are less certain about gay marriage). In our tourist town, we regularly welcome visitors from around the world, and these senior Anglicans are ambassadors of goodwill as they eagerly listen to who people are and wish them well on their journeys, expressing pleasure at their visit, and enthusiasm for them as interesting individuals.

I could hardly think of a worse approach to such a group than to pressure them to replace themselves! They work so hard and are so generous in order to keep the place going. How is it now their job to make sure there are others coming up to replace them? On top of the obvious cruelty of such a stance, there is also the forced focus on their demise that such an approach implies. Hopefully my colleague’s approach to our precious Anglican seniors is not widespread.

This letter raises a number of significant issues.  I want us to think about just a few of the  questions raised.  This is not so much directed at the letter as sparked by it.  Who is 'responsible' for bringing in new members?  Or to put it another way, do you ever retire from the great commission? 

One of the marvelous charts we didn't have a chance to address at the last General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada dealt with the steady decline of church membership.  It was a graphically beautiful and simple piece of art - just a black-diamond ski-hill covering 40 years of descent.  There was not a blip during the so-called "Decade of Evangelism" (anyone remember that?). At the recent synod of Montreal, the bishop made special mention of the dismal statistics of his diocese over the past number of years.

So who is 'responsible' for those who are not in church? First the language needs to be changed to something, well, something more "gospelesque".  To suggest that members need to 'replace themselves' is, as the writer of the letter points out, the wrong approach.  It hints that the purpose of the church is to perpetuate itself as an institution, rather than joyfully help others into a reconciling relationship with God through Christ, and to live out a life in the Spirit.

I do, however, want to talk about the deeper angle of the writer's question:  "How is it now their job to make sure there are others coming up to replace them?"  It is never our job merely to replace ourselves (that criticism is correct), but it has always been our job to make disciples of those who are not yet disciples.  I would suggest that it is part of every Christian's call to witness to Gospel to those who are unaware of Christ.  One never retires from the Great Commission, just as one never retires from the Great Commandment.

One of the catch-22 moments of church life comes when we realize that we are working hard to keep the place going. This is very tricky, but I think we need to look at such a situation carefully.  I'm simply trying to work out some of the issues that are involved for many churches in this position.  If we focus our efforts on making new disciples, won't that answer the question?  In the long run, a church which does not have an emphasis on evangelism will of course find itself working hard (and harder) to keep the place going.  On a purely practical level, a membership which does not actively seek to make new disciples will find itself with dwindling human resources, and will at a certain point find itself unable to even simply "keep the place going".  However, a church which seeks to make new disciples will be able to share the same tasks of ministry over a greater number of people - that church can keep going and even do more.  10 hands can do this much to feed the poor,  20 hands can do that much.

So whose job is it?  And even phrasing it as a 'job' says something about our attitude toward the task.  I'll stop now for minute...

Jim and Casper Go to Church - book review

An atheist and a Christian do a road trip around Evangelical Church-land in America.  They take along their laptops and decide to record the experience.  The result is "Jim and Casper Go to Church", a short and easy read which is a bit of a religious travelogue through a smattering of Christian churches.  Jim, of Off The Map, wants to know, really know, what an atheist thinks when he or she walks into a church service.

They start out big, with a visit to Rick Warren's Saddleback, which is on the corner of Purpose Drive ("yes, those are the actual street names", p.1) and Saddleback Drive.  On the west coast they visit the Dream Center, and then the current incarnation of Mosaic, where they have a brief (and seemingly unproductive) chat with Erwin McManus.  In Chicago they go from classic Presbyterian to inner urban - from "King James" to "w'sup, Coach".

i didn't find that there were many surprises in this book.  On the one hand, a sophisticated and educated atheist goes to a variety of Christian expressions, and finds the various faults which they embody.  Fair enough.  There are enough specific "techniques" which the various branches of the vine use on a regular basis.  My favorite ritual is described like this:

...I waited for the moment we had come to expect at the close of every church .  We call it the "breaking-voice phenomenon."  For some reason, the pastor ends the service sounding as if he's about to cry.  Christians are largely inured to this.  It's so common that we either endure it or enjoy it because it's the tribal signal that services are almost done. (55)

So is it just a church-bashing exercise? As St Paul says, by no means!  What Jim Henderson wants to communicate is a two-fold proposal.  First, Christians are largely unaware of how their "services" look to the outsider who is unchurched.  It's the sort of principle that, I believe, you either get or don't get.  Second, Jim tries to reshape our vocabulary.  Rather than seeing Casper as "lost", the reader is encouraged to see him first as a person, not as a project.  Jim uses language like "a person whom God misses".  Rather like the Father "missing" the prodigal son, rather than focusing on the son as "lost".  What we need to do, says Jim, is to "defend the space" of friendship and discussion and listening to the unchurched, rather than focus on the "place" of worship.

The heart of the book is not the critique of various churches and worship styles, but rather the modeling of a conversation between a Christian and an atheist.  The book can raise a number of questions:

• do we think our "church services" are helpful to the unchurched?
• should they be?  or should evangelism take place primarily in another "space"?
• what is the experience of the outsider walking into our church?
• do we even connect at all, personally, with people outside a Christian circle?

Overall, I'd give it a 6-7 out of 10 simply as a book to read, but closer to an 8 as a tool for starting a conversation within my own church about "us and them".

Next up is a return to Budziszewski...