[Johnny] Kurcina began Christ Church Vienna late last year and continues to be amazed with its success. Services are in the Louise Archer Elementary School cafeteria, where parishioners sit in plastic chairs and the walls are adorned with lunch menus.
“Holding services in a school cafeteria does hold some challenges,” Kurcina said. “We are not allowed to use wine for communion so we use grape juice, and our candles look real but the flame is really a small flickering light bulb because we are not allowed to use real flame candles on school grounds.”
Despite the obstacles, the church continues to draw new parishioners.
A small point, but if wine is forbidden (which, after school hours, seems odd), why not communicate in one kind only? Doesn’t “matter” matter as much as “form” and “intent”?
None of which is to say that this faith community is not to be commended for their zeal in other areas.
This is pretty remarkable, and shows – at least in the case of The Falls Church – how ECUSA’s war against it is, in a real sense, in vain. TFC has spawned numerous offshoots across the region. And there are 250 people, already, in this plant alone! Compare that to the typical Episcopal congregation of 50 or 60 tottering souls.
Typical leftist commentary by the Post:
The church is an offshoot of the Anglican half of the Falls Church
The number of congregants who left The Falls Church to become the Potemkin faux church is far, far smaller than half.
Not sure what “tottering” means, particularly as it applies to souls, No. 2,but the Episcopalians with whom I have worshipped seem (as much as one can tell from the outside looking in) to have rather robust souls. Of course, I can’t really judge, but neither can you.
No. 3, I have worshipped at the Falls Church for more than two decades and, while I know most or all of the families who remained with or came into the church after the majority disaffiliated, the Potemkins are not among them. The Church has been, ironically to some extent, much strengthened by the experience of forced exile and is anything but “faux” (if I am to take by that term that you are using it in the literal French meaning). It is the Church it has been since the mid-18th Century. It has had its rough spots (the immediate post-Revolution period was dicey, and the War Between the States was absolutely disastrous), but it just keeps on going. God be praised.
RE: “It is the Church it has been since the mid-18th Century.”
Nope — it’s faux Falls Church — the parish led by John Yates is the Church is has been since the mid-18th Century.
RE: “the typical Episcopal congregation of 50 or 60 tottering souls. . . . ”
Yes, the age of the average TEC congregant is certainly getting on up there.
And Phil? Everybody on this thread understood just what you were saying too. ; > )
Well, I always thought a soul could be in relatively good shape, regardless of the age of the body in which it temporarily resides. Perhaps I am misinformed.