…When the charismatic movement began seriously to impact on the Church of England in the 1970s and 1980s, its evangelical leaders, particularly David Watson, were very clear that ‘words of knowledge’ needed to be checked against the Bible. If they contradicted the Bible, then they were not from God.

The spiritual and moral content of human dreams surely needs to be checked against the authority of Scripture otherwise appalling chaos could erupt on local churches. It is not inevitable that evangelical charismatic churches should leave themselves open to that.

That is why the pastors of the Lord Christ’s precious flock in such churches must clearly teach and exemplify the supreme authority of God’s Word written…
__________________

… ‘The courage the church needs today’, by research fellow Nick Tucker, which looks at the example of the confessing church in Germany under Hitler, is a golden goal, one might say. Here is a golden quote:

In Germany in the 30s, the distinction between God and the creation had become blurred and broken down. God was seen as a being who was developing along with the human culture. What the writers of the Barmen declaration recognised was that, in the end, this view fatally undermines the Christian faith. The church’s identity and message, as they understood it, came from God and could not be changed at will.

That is why confessing Anglicans must resist revisionist moves to airbrush sin and repentance out of the Baptism service.

Read it all

An historic church placed on the heritage ”˜at-risk’ register has been awarded a £250,000 lottery grant for repairs.

The Anglican Holy Trinity Church, in Woodlands Road, Darlington, recently celebrated its 175th anniversary, but dry rot in the roof has left it in danger of serious damage.

The Grade 2* church is classed as being in a ”˜very bad’ condition by the English Heritage Place of Worship At-Risk register.

Read it all.

The charismatic movement within the Church of England is a firmly established fixture. Several of the largest CoE churches are charismatic. The most well-known is Holy Trinity Brompton out of which the Alpha Course came and currently under the leadership of Nicky Gumbel. One of the newest theological colleges in London is St. Mellitus, which was formed by the bishop of London Richard Chartes, but also houses St. Paul’s Theological Centre from Holy Trinity Brompton. What is exciting about St. Mellitus is its combination of charismatic and Anglo-Catholic worship in a non-residential theological college. At St. Mellitus one will find highly liturgical services with incense and evangelical-charismatic services in which students raise hands and sing worship choruses. St. Mellitus tries to combine all the various emphases within Anglicanism rather than emphasizing one tradition over another. In a recent article for the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore suggested that St. Mellitus may be the way forward for the Church of England, no small praise.

In light of this recent history, Archbishop Justin Welby’s invitation to Chemin Neuf to be part of Lambeth Palace feels like a natural development, not an eruption. This move brings together Welby’s charismatic background, his interest in monastic spirituality and prayer, and his desire to foster ecumenical relations. Chemin Neuf is not only a Catholic Charismatic community, it has an ecumenical vocation and thus has many Protestant members, some of whom are part of the team at Lambeth. Thus it is a natural bridge between the charismatic, the Anglo-Catholic, and the ecumenical impulses within the CoE. In fact, as Graham Tomlin, the dean of St. Mellitus recently told me, one of the members of Chemin Neuf living at Lambeth is also a student at St. Mellitus.

If Pentecostalism is a form of Christian mysticism, then there is a natural affinity between it and Anglo-Catholicism, which has been the bearer of mysticism within the CoE. It also suggests that the Anglican charismatic movement could become a bridge between the Anglo-Catholic and evangelical sides of Anglicanism.

Read it all.

These recent entries about a proposed alternative baptism liturgy scrolled off the main page quite quickly, and perhaps many blog readers missed them. They deserve close attention in our opinion – the elves

The proposed baptism service is here:
Church of England””Alternative Baptism Materials

News and commentary:

(BBC) Church of England accused of ”˜dumbing down’ baptism service
Bishop Nazir Ali””Why the CofE must abandon this dumbed-down christening
The Bishop of Willesden in reponse””The experimental baptism rite – baptism lite
Church of England””Statement on proposal to Synod on baptism service wording

Might it be possible that a Happy New Year in the Church of England might see, as this Bishop sees, an honest recognition that the differences over sexuality and underlying doctrinal and philosophical systems are so great that we need to at least talk about separating? Could it be a good thing to walk apart, rather than perpetuating the fiction that we all really believe the same things? And in doing so, could this be done peacefully, with justice, fairness and mutual respect, recognizing that there are still many areas of common interest, such as good administration of buildings insurance and clergy pensions, care for the poor and vulnerable, and the need to preserve the proclamation of the Christian story in society even though we might interpret it differently?

“Walking apart” is similar language used in the Windsor Report of 2004, in response to the global crisis of credal understanding following the consecration of Gene Robinson. Despite talk of unity being maintained through covenants and Instruments of Communion, there has been a “walking apart”; both globally, with many GAFCON-aligned Provinces unable to share fellowship with the Episcopal Church, and within Provinces, as we witnessed the formation of ACNA. In that case the separation has been bitter, with tragically wasteful legal action and unChristian bullying tactics. Could we do things in a better way here, while recognizing the irreconcileable differences?

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Anglican Communion to pray and advocate for an end to the intense fighting which has overtaken large regions of South Sudan in recent days.

Over 500 people are feared dead in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, where fighting first broke out. The violence has since spread, particularly affecting Jonglei, Unity and Upper Nile States.

Archbishop Justin wrote to Anglican primates and moderators… [yesterday] at the request of Archbishop Daniel Deng Yak, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan.

Read it all.

Priests and vicars have been subjected to hundreds of attacks over the past five years as they face assaults in their own churches and harassment from stalkers, research has shown.

Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that in the past five years more than 200 incidents of violence against religious leaders have been recorded by 25 police forces across the UK. Low-level assault was the most common form of violence reported, but a number of clergy have been beaten, stalked by violent individuals or bitten by dogs and even humans.

Read it all (subscription required).

‘God seized me by the scruff of the neck, slammed me against the nearest wall and shook me until my teeth rattled. I thought: ‘Okay, what does God actually require of me?’ ‘

–From an article in the Independent in 1993 (worth rereading in its entirety); also quoted by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon.

A Church of England spokesman said that the baptism service used would be decided by the priest, in consultation with the family.

He said the new wording was the third revision of the baptism service in 30 years.

He said the current service had been in use since Easter 1998 and the wording had been amended by general synod in 2000 and in 2005.

Read it all.

Since at least the 1970s there has been a fashion in the Church of England to minimise depth and mystery in its worship because of the alleged need to make its services ”˜accessible’.

The new alternative service for baptism, which has been sent for trial, continues this trend. Instead of explaining what baptism means and what the various parts of the service signify, its solution is to do away with key elements of the service altogether!

From ancient times, the structure of the service has included the renunciation of sin, the world and the devil and the turning to Christ as Lord and Saviour.

Read it all from the Mail on Sunday.

On the alternative so-called baptismal rite – the salient questions are:

1. Why is it so semi-Pelagian when it claims to be about grace? “Will you help them?” It’s wet… and not in the water sense!

2. Where is the sense of their own pilgrimage which was expressed in “walk with them in the way of Christ?”

3. Where is the truth that we are rebels against God expressed?

4. Where is repentance from sin?

Read it all.

Read it all.

The Baptism service currently used by the Church of England has been in use since Easter 1998. The wording of the service was amended by General Synod in 2000 and again in 2005.
In 2011 a group of clergy from the Diocese of Liverpool brought forward a motion to the General Synod of the Church of England requesting materials to supplement the Baptism service “in culturally appropriate and accessible language.” Specifically the motion requested new additional materials which would not replace or revise the current Baptsim service but would be available for use as alternatives to three parts of the service.

Read it all.

Nearly 300 of us gathered yesterday (Saturday 4th January) at St John’s Church, Somersham on the Cambridgeshire fen-edge to give thanks for the life of the Revd John Galbraith Graham MBE, better known world-wide as “Araucaria”, the premier crossword-setter in the English language. John had asked me to look after the service, and I am most grateful to everyone who lent a hand in arranging, speaking, making music, providing refreshments, and everything else that helped make it a very special occasion. A number of people asked for the text of my homily, so I now reproduce it here.

I’ve always enjoyed crosswords, as many of you here today do, and like so many others I’ve turned to Araucaria to put a smile on my face, though (tell it not in Gath, or at least in Libertarian company such as this) I also wrestle the Listener to the ground each week in what is probably a futile attempt to prove that my little grey cells are in still in functioning order.

So imagine the extra wide smile on my face when I discovered five years ago that the said Araucaria was no other than the Revd John Galbraith Graham whose name was hiding innocently and without fanfare in the list of retired clergy of my new diocese, and who was despite his advancing years making a valuable contribution to the ministry here in Somersham.

Read it all.

Nearly thirty years ago when I ventured to publish a small book discussing the Thirty-Nine Articles, having found the existing literature, as I was so brash as to say, “disagreeable,” it was considered a rather self-destructive thing to do. Slowly the Articles had become decentred from the life of the Church of England, which of all the Anglican churches was most likely to have a stake in them, and even clerical subscription could be done on terms that hardly required the subscriber to read them. It seemed to have become established that this document attracted no more than an occasional feisty pamphlet from the disenchanted fringes, beyond which it was left to the historians to get excited about.

Now we see appearing, more or less simultaneously, two treatments of this key 16th-century doctrinal document by former theological educators who have held responsibility for articulating the faith within their churches. They are very different from each other in many respects, but both pretty long. One is of U.S. provenance; the author, the Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers, is a retired bishop of the Anglican Mission in North America. The other is English and by Martin Davie, a layman who has served for the past decade as theological secretary to the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and Faith and Order Commission.

Read it all.

In other words in that Bethlehem stable, not only are people visiting Jesus, but God is visiting us. He no longer just speaks through the prophets. Now he steps onto the stage himself, and not just to visit, but to redeem.
An ancient nativity play has the child Jesus standing in the middle of the stage with an angel approaching him from either side. One angel offers him a gorgeous bouquet of roses, the other a crown of thorns. For a moment the child hesitates. He fingers the petals of the roses, enjoys their fragrance, and then with a tiny sigh, he takes the crown of thorns.

Read it all.

In bringing to the General Synod a private member’s motion recommending a relaxation of canon law as it pertains to clergy vestments, the Vicar of St Thomas’s, Oakwood, in north London, the Revd Christopher Hobbs, is aware that “it might be better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Bishops never make a fuss about it, but potentially they could; so it would be better if the law was changed, in my mind, to reflect reality rather than just have it there on the books,” he said last week. Although it may come as news to members of some congregations, who may be more accustomed to seeing their priest in a V-neck sweater than a surplice, canon law prescribes particular choices for the correct vesture of a minister.

Read it all.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said the church would not find new worshippers “accidentally” and so had to set a clear target of filling more pews if it was to tackle the decline in church-going in Britain.

In comments that hinted at the language of corporate expansion, the former oil executive challenged his priests to turn the tide and draw new worshippers to the Anglican faith.

“The reality is that where you have a good vicar, you will find growing churches,” he said.

Read it all.

At the end of December 1772, an Anglican priest in the poor parish of Olney worked by candlelight on his New Year’s Day sermon. He would preach on the text of 1 Chronicles 17, verses 16 and 17.

That passage was Davimod’s response to God after Nathan informed him that his descendants would be enthroned forever as kings of Israel. David, the once-poor shepherd boy, the man who had repented of adultery and murder, responded to the news by saying, “Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my family, that you have brought me thus far?”

That pastor was John Newton, and those words struck a deep chord in his heart.

Read it all.

I know it’s the New Year, and I don’t want to sound like scrooge, but I never make New Year resolutions, I’m just hopeless at them. It’s not that they aren’t a very good thing, it’s just that I know I’m not going to keep them, and I have this vague sense that there’s no point in doing them.

Except there’s one I want to think about this year. I want to suggest this year that each of us makes a resolution to try and change the world a bit where we are.

Nelson Mandela said that dealing with poverty is not an act of charity, it’s an act of justice. He said every generation has the chance to be a great generation, and we can be that great generation.

Read it all and the full message text is there.

“The reality is that where you have a good vicar, you will find growing churches” @ABCJustin http://ow.ly/savN5 02:35:07 Disappointed.

Disappointed. As am I. Because although it is bad logic the assumption is that where you have a church that isn’t growing you have a bad Vicar.

And of course growth is a rather slippery term. My involvement in Fresh Expressions has seen a number of projects grow fast, and then contract as circumstances change. Such periods often mark spiritual growth and individuals embracing discipleship, but the bottom line shows shrinkage.

Read it all.

The divine strategy is different. God so loved the world that he was generous. When he communicated he did so in person. He came not as a celestial CEO with a shower of inter-galactic memos but as a child. Jesus Christ is the human face of God. He embodies God’s plan for the spiritual evolution of the human race.

A baby seems to be no threat and can melt and disarm the toughest herder and the most politique wise man. For some of course a baby is a provocation which excites and releases their inner destructiveness and cruelty. The birth of Jesus was rapidly followed by the massacre of the innocents because Herod may have understood better than anyone the real threat posed by this particular child.

The birth of Jesus Christ is part of God’s plan to draw us into his generous self-giving, a way in which the more we give ourselves away the more we discover our true selves; the more we are equipped to build together a civilisation of love and a little taste of Heaven here on Earth. Government which enforces obedience to regulation in this world of ours is a necessity. Jesus Christ not only points the way to the future, but in solidarity with him we are opened up to the Holy Spirit who is at work bringing God’s plan for the spiritual evolution of the world and its people to completion.

Read it all.

I can bring it so neare; but onely the worthy hearer, and the worthy receiver, can call this Lord this Jesus, this Christ, Immanuel God with us; onely that virgin soule, devirginated in the blood of Adam but restored in the blood of the Lambe hath this Ecce, this testimony, this assurance, that God is with him; they that have this Ecce, this testimony, in a rectified conscience, are Godfathers to this child Jesus and may call him Immanuel God with us for as no man can deceive God, so God can deceive no man; God cannot live in the darke himself neither can he leave those who are his in the darke: If he be with thee he will make thee see that he is with thee and never goe out of thy sight, till he have brought thee, where thou canst never goe out of his.

–John Donne (1572-1631), Preached at St. Pauls, upon Christmas Day, in the Evening, 1624

I’ve had cause to reflect since that anything in life that has true beauty, and all in life that has true meaning, is vulnerable.
Vulnerable to rejection, abuse and distortion. Or disaster. Because risk, fragility and vulnerability are, it seems, in the very nature of life.
And yet the paradox is that vulnerable, fragile love can be awesomely powerful and transformative.
The only power on earth that can transform an enemy into friend, said Martin Luther King, is love.
Nelson Mandela understood that truth too ”“ and by that truth he transformed South Africa.
The Christmas story, of course, tells us the extraordinary truth about the redemptive power of fragile love.
The shepherds and the three wise men are told that Immanuel ”“ God with us ”“ is to be found among the squalor and smell of a stable, in an inconsequential country on the troublesome edge of a vast empire.

Read it all.

The new Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Glenn Davies, has raised the issue of image and the ‘selfie’ phenomenon in his first Christmas message as Archbishop….

Oxford Dictionaries declared ‘selfie’ word of the year, saying its use had increased by 17,000 percent in the last 12 months.

The Archbishop compared the social trend with the fact that Christmas celebrates the Son of God coming to earth.

“At Christmas time we should remember that there is an ultimate self-image, the image of God, which far outweighs the supercilious picture of a face filling our screen” he said. “We are all stamped with the image of God and it is this image that makes us precious in his sight.”

Read it all.

Speaking exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES at his Abeokuta residence on Wednesday morning, shortly before he headed out to church for Christmas service, the retired primate of the Anglican Church said the gunmen pounced on him and his driver as he was leaving this foundation’s office along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway.

He said the four-men gang blocked his car, and pulled him and his driver out at gun point. One of the bandits then took over the steering wheel while another member pinned down the cleric and his driver at the back.

Two other gang members followed behind in a Toyota Primera car they brought for the operation.

Read it all.

We so often hear of the peace to be found through Jesus. Jesus is the Prince of Peace. This is a wonderful thing in our world where we so often hear of conflict. The peace Jesus offers is of God ”“ it is a peace beyond our understanding. It is a peace of body, mind and spirit. It is a peace that we can hold on to even during troubled times. It is a peace that comes when we become aware of the presence of God in our lives….

Such peace and joy invariably come at a cost. It is not that suffering brings peace and joy; but suffering can lead to a depth of relationship with God, whom we turn to in time of trouble. After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples. The gospel according to John tells us, “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with doors locked ”¦.. , Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.” (John 20: 19 and 20)

Jesus’ greeting of peace is associated with him showing them his wounds. Peace invariably comes at a great cost. Despite the appalling cruelty he had experienced, Jesus was able to forgive his torturers and executioners. Indeed, he was able to plead with God for their forgiveness. Such forgiveness is exceptional. True forgiveness does not come easily, and does not even recall past wrongs ”“ however awful these may be. I firmly believe it comes only as a gift from God. This in turn allows the peace and joy only God can give.

Read it all.

Read it all and there is more there.

We recognize that the recommendations of the Pilling Report are primarily for reflection and discussion by the Church of England’s House of Bishops.

Nonetheless, under the authority of holy scripture and tradition of the church, we affirm that sexual activity can only properly take place within the context of holy matrimony between a man and woman.

We affirm that any other type of sexual relationship is sinful regardless of context or degree of fidelity, and that the church cannot bless any type of sexual relationship outside of holy matrimony between a man and woman.

We affirm Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference as the standard for Christian sexual behavior.

Read it all

Anglican vicars could soon be allowed to cast off their traditional robes and wear casual clothes at “café-style” communion services.

In February the General Synod will debate a motion that calls for a change to the rule requiring clergy to wear formal vestments at services.

About a quarter of the Anglican church’s governing body backed the proposal, under which vicars would be able to wear ordinary clothes if their bishop and church council agreed. The author of the motion, the Reverend Christopher Hobbs, admitted this could mean clergy could wear shell suits, but insisted he was “not a trendy vicar” and that robes would continue to be worn.

Read it all.