Why I am Anglican - Part One

My spiritual journey within the Christian faith over these brief 48 years have taken me on a path that would cause Marco Polo to chafe with envy. This path has, woven into its course, four of the seven Roman sacraments, a second baptism by “total immersion”, a total remonstrance of anything Roman, a decade behind a pentecostal pulpit, flirtation with the Calvary Chapel movement, and a brief exile within the Souther Baptist Convention. The sojourn took what might seem to onlookers as a sudden lurch left as on Easter 2005, I was found in St. Augustine-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Stafford Virginia. It was on that fateful morning that through tear-streamed eyes, I declared “I am home!”

Allow me to present some brief biographical information in order to lay down a foundation for this discussion.

The first ten years of my spiritual formation was solidly Roman Catholic. I received the sacrament of Baptism in the summer of 1962. There are many early memories of learning or reciting the prayers taught by all faithful Catholic parents. This responsibility lay on my mother’s shoulders as she represented the Catholic component to the family. My father was a cradle presbyterian was confirmed Anglican some years prior to my birth. At this young age, I knew nothing of Anglicanism and simply assumed that mommy took the children to mass and daddy was somewhere else on Sunday morning. It wouldn’t be until 1973/74 that I had my first cognitive exposure to the Anglican faith.

Though as early as 1980 I had identified myself as Episcopal, this was a nominal ascent at best. All of this would change as in the spring of 1981, I had a “conversion experience” with the Assembly of God church in Dover, Delaware. In these circles, I became exposed to some “church fathers” the likes of Jack Chick, Keith Green, Kenneth Copeland and the like. Chick, a benighted KJV-only apparent Independent Fundamental Baptist, had recently begun a series of screeds against the Roman Faith through his association with the con-man Alberto Rivera. Impressionable and ungrounded, I took his writings as gospel and violently repudiated my Roman Heritage, going as far as plastering windshields with Chick’s fish wrap. I can say, with some embarrassment, that after sinking roots in scripture and some garden-variety maturity, I can claim a counter-repudiation of Chick and his ilk. I do pray that the scales fall from his eyes.

Some years would pass and there would be a maturing in the Christian faith, along with real fruits of both repentance and the Spirit. While being a part of a Church of God (Cleveland, TN) church, I began to sense that the Almighty had placed a vocational calling on me. After a period of both personal and congregational discernment, Robin and I were set forth for the preparation for service. Following ministerial licensing in 1991, I served in what would be considerate curate and evangelistic venues for the next 12 years.

2001 was momentous year for many, but it also represented the beginnings of a theological crisis in my like. I want to stress that this wasn’t a crisis of faith; I was settled on what is constituent in historic, orthodox Christianity. No, rather, I began to see the faith statements, teachings and practical commitments of my church in the clear light of scripture. One by one, the shibboleths of the pentecostal churches began to melt in the face of Holy Scripture. Many of these were born out of bad hermeneutics or just cut from whole cloth. It became eventually clear that one licensed minister, without some extreme anointing or unction, could do nothing to lead that church out of error. I could no longer stand in her pulpits before her members, and feign acceptance of those things I knew to be patently wrong. Stepping away from my license and position, we went into exile in a Souther Baptist, then a Calvary Chapel. Retrospectively, these were so spiritually unsatisfying that they could be seen as “Church Lite” and a cult of personality respectively.

In the midst of this exile, the hand of the Almighty was at work. A man and his family had moved to the area, transplanted from the Charlotte area, and were quietly planting a mission under the auspice of the Diocese of Virginia. I didn’t know the man, but several times each week, I passed a billboard shilling for a church that billed itself as both “Episcopal and Evangelical”. Every pass of this sign caused a quickening within my spirit, and a healthy dose of conflict. Conflict? By this time (late 2004-early 2005), the Episcopal church well in its flat spin towards the earth. It had ordained a man who was clearly unqualified to serve as Bishop for a plethora of reasons. I couldn’t reconcile how or why the Almighty was drawing me towards on troubled church after being delivered from another. Happily, the Lord’s goad trumps clay feet; a series of events occurred that propelled us straight to Augustine-in-the-Fields.

At the end a 43 year journey, I knew that I was home and I knew definitively that I was Anglican. Today, I can type these words as a Vocational Deacon within a church and a faith that is mine.

In the following essays, I will attempt to express why I embraced this faith & why I pray for an Anglican resurgence in the US and in the World.

The Mighty Hand of God

My heart is heavy tonight. Though the event happened far and away, I can't get the horror of Jos Nigeria out of my head. The thought of the base, cowardly infidels slaughtering women and children followers of the way fills me with a roiling rage. There is a part of me that would pray that the Almighty would cause fire to fall from on high and consume these jihadists. Yet, I hear the voice of the Master saying "Andy, you know not what you ask for."

I'm also saddened by the fact that a young man is being remanded into custody and is starring down the barrel of a multi-year prison term in a Commonwealth that abolished parole. Though it was a "fair cop" and the young man has owned up to the offense, he will still step into an institution that either serves as a grad school for criminals, or a press that crushes men hoping to work out their debt to society.

In these sad scenes, the old Deacon (and the gentle readers) need to be reminded that regardless of the situation, the Grace of the Almighty is sufficient. The Grace, Mercy and Peace extended from on high is more than enough to daub the tears of Jos's survivors, and the family of that young man.

My prayers are lifted up for both circumstances; Intercessory prayers for family and survivors, and imprecatory prayers against those who struck the apple of the Lord's eye in Jos.

Prayers for Nigeria

Nicked from Google News...

JOS, Nigeria — UN chief Ban Ki-moon and Washington led calls for restraint on Monday after the slaughter of more than 500 Christians in Nigeria, as survivors told how the killers chopped down their victims.
Funerals took place for victims of the three-hour orgy of violence on Sunday in three Christian villages close to the northern city of Jos, blamed on members of the mainly Muslim Fulani ethnic group. Continued

Nigeria is often seen as a battleground of sorts for the seeming permanent impasse between conservative and liberal Anglicans is the US and Canada. The Church of Nigeria, has a strong beachead through the presence of majority Nigerian parishes and CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America).

While we westerners are busy defending or tossing brickbats at the Archbishop and his church, the saints within Nigeria are finding themselves in ever growing danger from jihadist infidels in the interior and northeastern corners of the nation. Eyewitness accounts from Sunday's slaughter of mostly women and children (Religion of Peace?... Bollocks!!) give clear testimony of the to the fact this is slaughter was the work (and fruit) if islam.

Western Anglicans, we need to speak in one voice here and loudly condemn this orgy of base cowardice.

I am, by logical extension, a Nigerian Deacon. These are my brothers and sisters, and yours too.

Mike Oldfield on a Bitter Wednesday Evening

Snow, Snow Snow...

Here's a great meditation from the keyboard of Father Toby Larson in the midst of all the White Stuff:

“The LORD sends his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He spreads the snow like wool”
(Psalm 147:15-16)

“Snow like wool,” indeed, a blizzard of fleece! Shoveling, down time, family time, serving neighbors, good smells from the kitchen that might not have otherwise happened, and a whole lot of looking out the window to see who is there and doing what. God delights in reminding us that our times are not in our own hands, they are in his. He can change anything in a moment's notice, or without any notice at all, even give us the sense of looking into the "storehouses of his snow" (Job 38:22).

May I suggest we read and talk about Psalm 19 in the light of Jesus Christ. God is wonderfully generous in his self-disclosure. He has not revealed himself in a chintzy way, but in the grandness of nature, in his Word, by his Spirit, in great events in redemptive history, in institutions he ordained to make known his purposes and his nature, and in our own makeup as we share his image (imago Dei). Psalm 19 shows three of these thoroughfares of divine self-disclosure.

The first is nature, at least one part of it enjoyed by each of us. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour fourth speech; night after night they display knowledge” (19:1-2). We can hear God in the silence of a snow storm. Any shadow of deep-seated philosophical commitment to the notion of random, purposeless, mindless, accidental, “steady-state” origination of things disappears under the light of God’s gracious disclosure. The patent conclusion for us is of a supremely intelligent God capable of spectacularly wonderful design. The evidence is here; the clouds and skies and the celestial host “pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” May we enjoy nature, as given by God, as part of his indescribably glorious revelation.

The second is “the law of the LORD.” Perfect, trustworthy, right, righteous, radiant, reviving the soul, pure, sure, making wise the simple, giving joy to the heart, enduring forever, more precious than gold, sweeter than honey, warning, promising great reward (19:7-11). From time to time God calls us to be quiet but may we never silence what he has revealed. Powerful minds tried to, and have wasted their lives working to undermine the credibility of what God has said. New epistemologies lesson God’s words to make them appear as no more revelatory than the root documents of any other religion. Still worse, Christians who bemoan a missed Super Bowl catch can themselves fail to watch carefully and take hold of the Word of God that he has graciously placed right into our hands. May we cling to God’s Word as his indescribably glorious revelation.
The third is conscience. "Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression" (19:12-13). A well-functioning, Christ-informed conscience also bears pure witness to God's self-disclosure. And even as my family moved this week, 20 some pillows still a jumble, we remind ourselves of the mostly true saying that the "the softest pillow is a clean conscience."

The fourth is, and it goes without saying, but must be said, that in these last days, God has spoken to us, "by his Son, Jesus Christ, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe" (Heb. 1:2)!

My dear new friends of Celebration Church, and longtime friends of Celebration, God’s design in nature has changed our weekly rhythm yet again, but let us respond with the psalmist together (in unison though separate): “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer” (19:14).

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,

Locked into a Pattern?

Its truly amazing, and to the chagrin of former Vice President Gore, Suburbia Majora is in the grip of yet another Nor'easter. Unofficially, it looks like 18-20" fell on our side of the glacier, as its finally beginning to stop. Mercifully, there have been no power outages, only a few flickers. I don't suppose Padre Mickey is having to deal with this stuff.

The nearly six weeks of gym-ratting has brought a payoff concerning the snow. Though its still a monster effort to clear the foot-plus of snow off the driveway and walk, it would be unthinkable to undertake the job without the gained cardio stamina from sweatin' on the machines.

There are a great set of readings in Sunday's Lectionary, that seem to speak to the LORD's empowerment of his kids. I'll be ruminating on these in a subsequent post.

Rich Mullins on a Monday Evening

Music for the Ride Home

Nothing takes the burr off the edge of the day like anything by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

Mission Accomplished

Well, we're back on the road and tooling around the DC beltway and heading back to Suburbia Majora. The computers in Delaware are up and fully operational. I'm tempted to throw out some old Air Force acronyms like "RFO" (reason for outage) at this point, but I'll not do it. The home network was out of service as a result of a misappropriated network cable. Succinctly, if there's no cable between the cable modem and the wireless G router, there'll be no bits a' flowing. Simple fix; drag yerself down to the store, procure a cat-5 cable, then span the chasm between cable modem and wireless router. Mission accomplished.

In all, it was a great day in the "Diamond State"