ROCKSTAR PREACHERS DO NOT MEET THE NEEDS OF THE HOUR

Cranmer's Curate is a fan of the Oxford-based 9:38 ministry training network and hopes that our youth volunteer goes on its 'Only One Life' conference in November. This support remains despite the probably unhelpful quotation from Charles Spurgeon, which pops up every time cc tries to get on to the 9:38 website:

We want again Luthers, Calvins, Bunyans, Whitfields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foemen's ears. We have a dire need of such. Whence will they come to us?

Well, sunshine, could the finger be pointing at you?

Greatly gifted individuals have been and are a great gift to the Church. But what the cause of the Gospel needs in post-Christian Britain is not so much the stadium rockstars of the pulpit but the equivalent of your small-time pub act who is prepared to endure the rotten tomatoes for Christ in an ordinary parish over a long ministry - preachers who will keep plugging away at biblical teaching in the obscurity of ordinary communities.

That of course is true in any era of the Church but the cultural pressure now on our future preachers is the strong pull of postmodern primadonna-ism and the celebrity cult away from the unglamour of the regular parish.

Your curate has detected amongst some graduate ministry apprentices a tendency to think that parochial Church of England ministry is not quite 'cool' enough for an aspiring 21st century Whitfield. It's much cooler to hang out with a conference brochure dude who deploys the right demotic Top Gear turn of phrase to a congregation of university students and young urban professionals.

Spurgeon's summons, impacting on a postmodern university graduate mindset, may not be helping the cause of Christ's Kingdom in the Britain that has emerged since the 1960s.

WHAT WILL THE ANGLICAN CHURCH DO ABOUT PAGAN BAPTISMS?

The Anglican Church is set for a battle over baptismal rites that use gender-neutral and even female formulae. That is the startling prediction from the Bishop of Chester buried in a book review on p24 of this week's Church Times.

Towards the end of his review of a weighty-sounding academic tome by Everett Ferguson on the history, theology and liturgy of baptism in the first five centuries of the Christian Church, Dr Peter Forster writes:

'It is interesting to read of Athanasius's opposition to Arianism because it reduced baptism from being into the Father and the Son to being into the Creator and creation. Under feminist influence, we are seeing the emergence of baptismal formulae that replace that of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with either female or gender-neutral alternatives. Pope Benedict has recently decreed that such baptisms are invalid;'

- and then comes the bombshell - :

'and it is only a matter of time before this becomes a matter of sharp controversy in Anglicanism, and particularly between different provinces.'

When Cranmer's Curate was a cub reporter, the news editor would have told him to stick that in the intro.

The youth group should be grateful to Dr Forster for the prescient warning, though cc is inclined to be considerably less academically detached about this appalling development. Every Anglican who believes that Christianity is a revealed religion should be profoundly concerned about this.

Female and/or gender-neutral baptisms are quite simply pagan rites masquerading as Christian. Our Lord Jesus Christ in his Great Commission commanded the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church to 'make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28v19 - RSV).

No church is free to rewrite the Lord Christ's script, for he made explicit in his Great Commission that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him (Matthew 28v18).

The Pope is absolutely right to invalidate baptisms that take their cue from natural religion.

We need to pray that Anglicanism smells the coffee. But unfortunately bishops who ordain priestesses are already somewhat ham-strung for the fight.

REFORM MUST STAND FOR DOCTRINAL CLARITY IN NEW ANGLICAN COALITION

Although such an anachronism is impossible to verify this side of heaven, Cranmer's Curate is fully persuaded that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer would be a member of Reform if he were alive today. But would he be a member of the new Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans?

Fresh from his sabbatical, Reform chairman Rod Thomas is both honest and positive about his movement's role in the new coalition. Here is an extract from his latest newsletter for the edification of the youth group:

How will the newly-launched Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA) help us in the work of the gospel? At one level not at all. It is up to us and those with whom we share ministry in our congregations to evangelise locally, to pray for friends and neighbours, to think creatively about how to impact our communities, to open up the Bible to others and to show God's love by the way we live. But at another level its influence could be substantial. It provides a means of support between partners in the gospel so that faithful Anglicans who are struggling to hold firm, whether it be in Scotland, Canada, or the USA, can know they have prayerful companions over here. It can articulate the mission of the church in clear terms. It may be able to help with problems of episcopal oversight - particularly if the Church of England has difficulties accommodating new church plants. Most importantly, it presents the Jerusalem Declaration to the Church of England - as to others in the British Isles - as a renewing reminder of the gospel to which we adhere.

A renewing movement
The launch of the FCA is a significant milestone. Reform's stated aim is to promote the gospel through reforming the Church of England; the launch of the FCA - supported by Reform - is an important step towards this. FCA's aim is not to become an organisation or to set up a separate denomination but to be a renewing movement in the Church, helping people to stay faithful to a biblically orthodox faith and playing our part in the wider Anglican Community in support of those who are standing firm. The attendance at the launch (1600) exceeded the expectations of those planning the event and provided a fitting answer to those who argue that we are a marginal group. The presence of several diocesan bishops was also an important indication of support. There were some terrific addresses: Reform Council members Paul Perkin, Vaughan Roberts and Wallace Benn all spoke as did others who are well known as friends and leaders such as Archbishop Peter Jensen. Do try to get hold of the talks (some of which can be downloaded from the Anglican Mainstream website) if you missed them.

Reform's role
Like the Church of England, the FCA is broad in its membership and this was reflected in the range of different speakers at the event. To some this was puzzling because they were uncertain about how far speakers shared the same doctrinal convictions. It is important to remember therefore that the basis of our fellowship is a shared commitment to 'The Jerusalem Declaration' - which expresses our understanding of the gospel of Christ and our commitment to Scriptural authority. There may be some who are sympathetic to our concerns but cannot in all conscience be committed to our doctrinal position; in those cases we may simply be co-belligerents. However, where there is agreement there is genuine fellowship even if our traditions and styles are quite different.

Given the broad nature of FCA's membership, Reform's participation is crucial. We need to speak and act with doctrinal clarity and in love. We also need to maintain our effort to attract people into the membership of Reform so that we can help each other to act faithfully - as iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17).

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND NEEDS THE VICAR’S WIFE MORE THAN EVER

The parlous state of the Church of the nation makes the traditional vicar’s wife role more not less necessary.

Elderly parish churches with scarcely any children in the regular congregation do not need a vicar’s wife sporting a t-shirt at her husband’s licensing: ‘I don’t make scones.’

A wife willing to do such traditional feminine things is essential if that church is going to start attracting children and therefore families.

Cranmer’s Curate was forcibly reminded of this at his church’s Sunday Club fun day today. On Christmas Day in 1999 there were no children in the parish church. Now by God’s grace the number of children in the regular congregation is in double figures.

The momentum that creates was clearly felt at the fun day with our regulars as well as fringe and new-comers being taught the Lord Jesus Christ in a child-friendly environment.

No bon-bons for any youth group member who guesses whom the Lord God has used to bring about this turnaround.

But she is an unsung heroine in the modern Church of England.

Dioceses are increasingly appointing deans of women’s ministry, but what has happened to the clergy wives’ group? It is now called clergy partners and has a profile about as low as an under 65 in too many Anglican churches.

A church culture that celebrates shoulder-paded feminism does not value this traditional role, which is now so essential for mission in an ageing denomination that is numerically and financially melting down.

But thankfully the Man who came not to be served but to serve does value her ministry.

CHRIST HAD COMPASSION SO HE TAUGHT THE WORD

This sermon was preached by Cranmer's Curate at Evening Prayer in the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, on Sunday July 19th 2009 AD:

If you went to Oughtibridge Parish Church when it was built in the 1840s or indeed to any Victorian church, how long do you think the sermon would have been? Ten minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes? I very much doubt you would have got less than a hour in those days and in fact that is what congregations would have expected. When Oughtibridge Parish Church was built, congregations valued biblical preaching. If I or Geoff (Hanson – Reader Emeritus) preached for less than 45 minutes, people would have been more than upset. They would have been scandalised.

Oh, but I’m here to love people. I haven’t got time to prepare 45-minute sermons. I’m too busy with my pastoral visiting and community work and sitting on church and village committees etc. You know, I’m a loving priest. That’s why I get asked to
take people’s funerals.

One of the verses our Victorian Evangelical forebears, quick as a flash, would have quoted at me or indeed anyone who said that kind of thing would be in our Anglican Lectionary reading for today - Mark 6v34 - and he or she would have quoted it in the Authorised King James Version of course: ‘And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.’

How can you call yourself a loving, compassionate priest or minister if you won’t teach the people the Word of God?

And they would be absolutely right. When Jesus teaches me, he is loving me. He is instructing my ignorant, sin-darkened mind with God’s saving truth so that I can know God and live rightly in God’s world. When Jesus sends a preacher to teach me, he is loving me because I need biblical instruction. Without it, I’m like a sheep without a shepherd: lost, vulnerable, easy prey for all sorts of wolves - destructive ideologies and ways of thinking both religious and secular that are swirling around in a sinful, depraved world.

The context of this passage in Mark 6 is in fact Jesus Christ just having sent preachers to the people of Israel. Christ’s apostles have just returned from a preaching tour around the towns and villages of Galilee – they’ve been preaching the Kingdom of God and commanding men and women to repent, to change their way of thinking by submitting to the one true Lord and God. The apostles are tired out, so Jesus takes them away by boat for a quite retreat to recharge their batteries. They’ve scarcely had time to eat because they’ve been teaching so many people. Upon returning to the shore of the Sea of Galilee with his disciples, Jesus finds a great crowd awaiting him whose true spiritual state he clearly perceives. They are like sheep without a shepherd and so he has compassion on them and teaches them many things about the Kingdom of God.

That phrase ‘sheep without a shepherd’ is an Old Testament echo from Ezekiel chapter 34 in which the Lord God promises to shepherd his scattered people:

‘I will feed them with good pasture and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep and I myself will make them lie down, says the Lord God Almighty. I will seek the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured and I will strengthen the weak and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice (Ezekiel 34v14-16 - ESV).

Now, here is the Lord God Almighty in the person of his Son Jesus Christ doing just that - feeding scattered sheep on the rich pasture of his Word, driving away the sin-induced ignorance in their minds and teaching them how they can get right with God and start living rightly in his eternal Kingdom.

God’s scattered people, vulnerable, lost in sin and ignorance, need a shepherd to feed them on the rich pasture of his Word and that shepherd is Jesus, the Son of God, the divine Messiah.

He was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.

So preaching is an act of love. A loving vicar or minister will teach the Bible to the people because the Word of God applied to our minds by God’s Holy Spirit is his loving means of setting us straight, putting us right in our thinking so that we can live rightly in God’s Kingdom.

Modern church people undervalue biblical preaching for three principal reasons: arrogance, arrogance, and arrogance.

We think we’re too smart for the Word of God; we think we’re think too good for the Word of God; we think we’re too busy for the Word of God.

Such arrogance is the poisonous fruit of three fundamental and serious spiritual and moral mistakes we make. Firstly, we underestimate the effect of our sin in darkening our minds and in making us ignorant of the ways of God.

Secondly, we underestimate the effect of our sin in weakening our wills and disrupting our moral compass.

Thirdly, we underestimate the central place God’s Word deserves to have in our priorities, our diaries, in the way we spend our time.

The last thing we need is to be left to stew in such hell-deserving ignorance and arrogance.

So, no wedge between preaching to people and loving them. Just the opposite; to teach people the Word of God is to love them and the crying need of the modern Church is for more biblical preachers, those who will feed us with the rich pasture of God’s Word.

He was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things.

GOOD LOCAL CHURCHES SHOULD NOT BE FORSAKEN BECAUSE OF TEC EVIL

The devastating consequences of The Episcopal Church's wickedness at its General Convention is already impacting on good Anglican local churches in the United States.

Orthodox TEC minister Timothy Fountain, rector of the Good Shepherd, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, reports on Northern Plains Anglicans that he has already 'lost a good Vestry member. At my request, he will be detailing his decision in a letter to be shared with the Vestry and sent on to the Diocese'.

Tim Fountain has also 'lost at least three young families and a bunch of kids. A couple of these losses are families that were the first fruits of members taking the risk of evangelism - this is going to hurt morale very badly here. One of them said, "I just can't see myself inviting other people, knowing what the denomination is really doing. So how can I stay?" '

Because you should. The spiritually suicidal folly of the TEC General Convention is no reason to abandon a local church where Christ's Gospel is being preached and the Bible taught.

Anglican doctrine defines the the visible Church of Christ as a 'congregation of faithful men (people) where the pure Word of God is preached and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same' (Article 19).

The TEC General Convention can vote that the moon is made of Mozarella or that David Virtue is a Changing Attitude activist in disguise or that Cranmer's Curate is not a balding middle-aged English vicar with a cheesy dress sense.

That does not alter reality.

It is the local church that counts and so if your local church is one in which the pure of Word of God is being preached and the Sacraments duly administered, then stick with it.

If a corrupt denominational leadership tries to drag your orthodox local church down with it, then stay and contend for the sake of the body of Christ. If that means you have to leave your building and meet somewhere else, then so be it. If you truly believe Anglican biblical doctrine that what is integral to a local church is its ministry of Word and Sacrament, not the type of venue it meets in or indeed its denominational label, then why forsake a biblically faithful minister of Word and Sacrament and his family?

It is to be hoped that any stray sheep from the Good Shepherd or indeed any orthodox local church in TEC who turn up at other churches will be urged by their leadership not to abandon the ministry of Word and Sacrament that nurtured them. After all, our Lord Jesus Christ said of those He called to minister in His name: 'He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me' (Matthew 10v40 - RSV).

Certainly, any church planters who are subtly or otherwise looking to take refugees from orthodox TEC churches should seriously search their consciences.

Whose kingdom do you think you are building?

INCLUSIVE CHURCH SHELEMOTH-STYLE

This Shelemoth and his brothers were in charge of all the treasuries of the dedicated gifts that David the king and the heads of the fathers' houses and the officers of the thousands and the hundreds and the commanders of the army had dedicated. From spoil won in battles they dedicated gifts for the maintenance of the house of the Lord (1 Chronicles 26v26-27 - ESV).

Lady reporter: 'Hi, I'm Jezebel Jones from the Inclusive Church Gazette. I mean really, Shelemoth, using stuff won in battles to pay for your temple. That's the wrong kind of inclusion, Shel!

In our terms, it would be like one of those Evangelical males from Oak Hill going into a nice Liberal Catholic church and changing its ethos in line with his narrow, bigoted theology. Why can't you guys get in touch with your feminine side?

And what's so special about the worship in your temple anyway?

Of course, your brand of churchmanship is allowed a space in the big tent, but you should be celebrating the rich diversity of spiritualities and orientations in an inclusive church. Shouldn't you!'

Shelemoth: 'No. I worship the one true Lord and God, the maker of heaven and earth, and I honour his Christ.'

PARISH CHURCHES STILL VITAL TO REACH NATION FOR CHRIST

This article by Cranmer's Curate first appeared in the Oughtibridge parish magazine, The Bridge:

The new bishop of Sheffield Dr Steven Croft is committed to the growth of local churches both numerically and in the quality of their Christian discipleship.

Before he took up his new appointment, Bishop Steven was the national leader of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Fresh Expressions of Church initiative in the Church of England.

What are fresh expressions of church? At the risk of over-simplification, they are new initiatives launched by established churches to reach unchurched people in their parish whom they are finding it difficult to reach through their main Sunday services.

At the grass-roots, these fresh expressions can take the form of mid-week services aimed for example at mothers with toddlers or a congregation meeting in a non-ecclesiastical venue, such as a cafe or nightclub or pub, aiming at younger people in their professional or interest-group networks. The mother church, which would have the necessary financial and personnel resources, would oversee these new congregations.

Fresh expressions would also encompass new ‘stand-alone’ churches led by a minister taking a group from a larger mother church – a new church plant in another parish.

Essentially, the idea behind fresh expressions is that more and more people in contemporary British society are living in networks rather than being rooted in local communities. That is unquestionably true – people inhabit communities that transcend their localities and need to be reached for Christ in their networks.

But it is also vitally important to emphasise that many people in our society are still rooted in local communities and parish churches are ideally placed to reach them.

One of the great privileges and opportunities of parish ministry is the ability to visit people in their homes. Because of increasingly flexible working patterns, I will often find a wide range of people at home during the day and can make contact with them in Christ’s name.

Furthermore, a parish church is a visible Christian presence in a community. A group of people meeting in a secular venue and commuting in from outside does not have the visibility in a local community that a parish church has.

The other factor very much in favour of parish churches is the age range. Younger people can hugely benefit from the experience and Christian maturity of older people. The age range in our regular congregation spans from 88 to a few weeks’ old.

Both types of churches – established and new – need to ensure that their growth is based on solid biblical foundations. There is no merit in ‘cutting the price so more will buy’ by trimming the message and leaving out the counter-cultural doctrines of God’s wrath on sin, Christ’s sacrificial death in our place and the need for repentance.

Growth is inevitably slower in parish churches than in network or peer group churches but by God’s grace they can grow.

May that be true of us here at the Parish Church of the Ascension as Christ builds His church through His Word proclaimed in the power of His life-giving Holy Spirit.

THE DARK SIDE OF MEGA-CHURCH MINISTRY

Regularly preaching to a congregation of several hundred may be some ministers’ idea of a professional dream come true but in the current cultural and moral climate such a pulpit is a dangerous place to occupy.

Cranmer's Curate offers two connected reasons why:

• The celebrity culture: even if the preacher does his best to counteract it, post-Christian Britain is swept up in it. The outward visible sign of success for a preacher is the fact that he is regularly preaching to a full building, with many of his congregation young. These young people inculcated in post-modernism are particularly mentally ill-equipped to get the preacher in a right perspective. It is to be feared that some occupying pulpits in Anglican Evangelical flagships are already lapping up the adulation more than is good for them, for those they are called to serve, and most importantly for the glory of the living Christ.

• Sexual chaos: it has engulfed Western society. Mega-church disasters in the United States already tell the sorry tale of the link between inflated egos and sexual immorality among preachers. The reality has to be faced that even and perhaps especially in these days of feminism women can get sexually aroused by a male authority figure. A male preaching to a large congregation fits that bill, however unprepossessing he may be in a normal context. As former Rolling Stones bassist Mr Bill Wyman once observed, normally she wouldn’t take a second look at me at the bar, but after I’ve been on stage....It is to be greatly feared that some mega-church ministers are already getting unduly flattered by such female attention. It cannot be too long before we see a sexual scandal involving a big name preacher in an Anglican Evangelical flagship in the United Kingdom.

Of course, ‘mega-church’ is a relative term. There would be few mega-churches in Britain on the American scale and certainly none in the Church of England. But in UK Christianity, an adult attendance of, say, more than 1000 on a normal Sunday surely makes the term applicable.

Some mega-church ministers would be advised not to stay in such a setting for too long but to make a deliberate move to a smaller congregation after, say, a seven-year stint. A smaller setting is not a temptation-free zone – nowhere is in this dark world – but the combination of empty spaces and a heavy reliance on volunteerism provides much less fuel for the ego.

Such a move in the world’s eyes would be seen as demotion, but for a man who knows his limitations it could be the right move for the soul.

THE DANGER OF LEARNING DIVINITY FROM CHILDREN

Cranmer's Curate has noticed that amongst clerics of a liberal disposition the pronouncements of children on matters of divinity are attaining an oracular status.

A cleric who has departed from the orthodox Christian understanding of the divine infallibility and plenary inspiration of Holy Scripture will regale a congregation about how he found a child drawing a picture. 'Who's it of?' he asks. Quick as a flash, we're told, the child replies: 'Of God.'

The cleric will then tell us in hushed revelatory tones that the picture was of an ordinary bloke in jeans and a t-shirt.

In case any member of the youth group is inclined to argue that God Incarnate when He was on earth might have looked fairly ordinary, your curate would reply that He is certainly not ordinary now in His transcendent, heavenly glory. Read the first chapter of Revelation for a description of the awesome majesty of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ, soon to return to judge the living and the dead.

He is a universe away from our image of a regular guy dropping his kids off at the day nursery.

Children should certainly not be listened to when they spout rubbish about the Almighty Triune God, any more than adults should be listened to when they peddle erroneous, sub-biblical views. 'Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men,' says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 14v20 (AV). 'In Understanding Be Men' is of course the title of a rightly celebrated 1936 doctrinal work by the then Principal of Moore College in Sydney, Archdeacon T.C. Hammond.

As with cc when he is wrong about God, children should be told the truth and properly instructed in God's Word.

WANT THE REAL CHURCH PICTURE? ASK THE INSURER

Cranmer's Curate would not have thought that a visit from the gentleman from Ecclesiastical Insurance would prove so very enlightening about the state of the Church of the nation.

After we had covered the necessary practical business regarding the state of our lightning conductor etc, cc gained a coalface view denied most bishops who, when they visit local churches, tend to attend rent-a-crowd services. It is also a view denied us parochial clergy whose horizon is necessarily limited.

The gentleman from Ecclesiastical is responsible for liasing with churches in three dioceses in the north of England. He told me he reckons at least half of the churches he covers will have closed in 10 to 15 years' time. The reason for this is simply that they are overwhelmingly elderly. The demographic timebomb is ticking away and it's getting close to midnight.

The Methodists by contrast tend to have younger congregations, he says, so he is more hopeful for the future of their congregations. 'It is surprising to see how much younger the Methodist church are. The Anglicans seem to have much more elderly congregations,' he told cc.

Of course, diocesan statistics tell the same sorry tale, but coming from a person who visits a range of churches and deals with them on the level of their practical day-to-day running this had a ring of authority.

Your curate is grateful to God for the insurer's candidness - he believes his ministry for Christ and that of other frontline clergy can only be enhanced by having to face up to the unsentimental reality: by God's grace we have got to grow younger.

CALL TO CLERGY - GET READY TO GO TO JAIL

If the House of Lords agrees to the removal of the freedom of speech protection in homophobic hate speech legislation tomorrow, we are likely to see the following consequences:

• A co-ordinated complaints campaign by gay rights activists who will be carefully monitoring media and internet statements by orthodox Christians

• A concerted political, media and legal campaign to ensure that any statement that criticises homosexual practice is treated as homophobic

• Orchestrated complaints against Evangelical groups simply for doing evangelism in certain localities on the basis that they are identified with a moral stance against homosexual practice whether or not they mention homosexuality in their literature

• Intense pressure on the police from diversity and equality enforcers rigorously to follow up complaints of homophobia, thus distracting already over-stretched officers from tackling the crimes that really are a threat to the public.

For any ordained minister in the Church of the nation, vows publicly made in the sight of the living God entail standing up for the Bible’s teaching on heterosexual marriage and clearly stating the immorality and destructiveness of sexual activity outside of that God-created institution. In a sex-crazed society, this is more not less necessary.

In dependence upon God’s grace in Christ, Cranmer’s Curate together with all ordained ministers at whatever level must be spiritually, psychologically and emotionally prepared to go to jail for being true to these vows. Spouses and families must realise that this goes with the territory of ordained ministry.

Your curate would add that, because of the gravity of the ideological sin of homophobia in the eyes of the politically-correct establishment in the United Kingdom, it is highly likely that conditions for prisoners convicted of homophobic hate speech crimes will be significantly worse than those for other prisoners. So your curate is not expecting the full gamut of digital channels and a mini-bar.

He might not even get a Gideon’s Bible.

At the front of our minds needs to be our Lord Jesus Christ’s command to anyone who would come after Him: ‘let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me’ (Mark 8v34 - RSV).

The Collect for last Sunday (Trinity 4) is so very appropriate:

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that with you as our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not our hold on things eternal; grant this, heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

THE FCA IS FOR THE LOCAL CHURCH – THAT’S WHY IT’S NEEDED

This article by Cranmer's Curate has appeared on the US-based orthodox Anglican news service VirtueOnline:

Open evangelicals are attacking the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, to be launched in the UK on Monday, because they see it as a threat to their cherished inside strategy.

The line being promoted by Fulcrum and its new episcopal spokesman, Dr Graham Kings, is basically this: stick with the institution - even indaba if you have to - because if we pull out the revisionists win. Use the institutional instruments that are there – even if the tectonic plates take a long time to shift – because that is the only way that orthodoxy can prevail in good order both in the Church of England and in the wider Anglican Communion.

The inside strategy is not wholly wrong – a good evangelical bishop can do a tremendous amount of good for the gospel. The evangelical bishop of Chester from 1982 to 1996, Michael Baughen, was a very effective force for biblical orthodoxy in his diocese. He appointed some effective evangelical clergy and supported them when the flak flew.

It is in fact the case that conservative and charismatic evangelicals have been pursuing an effective inside strategy since the National Evangelical Anglican Congress at Nottingham in 1977 issued its clarion call for engagement with the structures. Against growing cultural and ecclesiastical pressures they have upheld the classic evangelical understanding of the supremacy of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible, penal substitution and personal moral transformation; they have continued to do evangelism for Christ in their parishes, launching effective nurture courses such as Alpha and Christianity Explored; and their churches by God’s grace have grown in contrast to the plummeting attendances in the rest of the denomination. They have also been planting new congregations.

But by and large they have not pursued the inside strategy of seeking promotion within the institution. It is the open evangelicals who have ascended the pole of ecclesiastical preferment.

Therefore, it is hardly surprising to find open evangelicals feeling loyalty to the institution that has promoted them and expressing that loyalty by attacking the FCA, which appears to be a threat to its good order.

But what the detractors are signally failing to acknowledge is how keen FCA-supporting churches are to continue to pursue their inside strategy of transforming the national Church from within by effective ministry at the grass-roots.

And what the detractors also fail to recognise is the capacity of revisionist liberalism, deeply entrenched within the institution, to undermine the evangelical foundations that have been so painstakingly laid by godly ministers pursuing the right inside strategy for the local church.

It is the FCA’s right evaluation of the corrosive threat of revisionist liberalism to local churches that is and must continue to be its motivation for collective action.

The forces of revisionist decadence must not by God's grace be allowed to take the good churches down with them.

WHO IS REALLY ‘ON THE EDGE’?

‘We’re on the edge’, claims the church planter who has been given 50 enthusiastic Christians from an established Anglican Evangelical church in an affluent area for a new congregation meeting in a pub or school down the road.

By which he seems to be suggesting that because he has moved outside the formal structures of the Church of England he has done a brave and swashbuckling thing worthy of Bruce Willis in his prime.

Really?

Surely an Anglican Evangelical minister going into an inner city and taking on a small and elderly established Anglican church, whose last minister was very likely liberal catholic, is the one truly ‘on the edge’.

One pew of enthusiastic, praying, financially-committed younger Christians joining the church could significantly help with the work of transforming it for Christ and making it into an oasis of new life in that community. The reality is that Evangelical Christianity, expressing itself in gospel proclamation and social action, is the only hope for the spiritual, moral and social transformation of Britain’s inner cities.

One pew of committed Christians joining the church would enable the minister immediately to establish a central prayer meeting, which would be the spiritual springboard for significant guerrilla action for Christ against the forces of darkness behind enemy lines.

But that pew of people is too busy being ‘on the edge’. In a yuppie church plant in an affluent part of town, which is probably further from where they live than the inner city parish, they’re listening to a well-executed expository sermon from a feted church planter.

The passage being brilliantly expounded: Romans 12v9-21.