CURATE'S STUDY LEAVE

After more than 15 years of public ministry, Cranmer's Curate is off for three weeks' study leave.

His programme, approved by his training incumbent (the Bishop of Sheffield), includes a research project in Blackburn, Lancashire, on a very positive ministry collaboration between three evangelical parishes. The town includes a large Muslim population which poses particular challenges and opportunities for gospel ministry.

Your curate also plans to spend some days at Cranmer Hall, Durham, doing some theological study and attending lectures.

Youth group prayers that this is a profitable time in Christ's service would be appreciated.

Your curate leaves the youth group with the BCP Collect for the Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity:

Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A piece by cc about the ministry of Iwerne Minster - Reaching the Institutionalized - appeared in October's New Directions.

DARK FORCE BEHIND PERSECUTION OF MARK LAWRENCE

This first appeared on US-based orthodox Anglican news service VirtueOnline:

No confessional reader of the New Testament could be in any doubt about the nature of the force behind TEC's persecution of the Bishop of South Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence.

A Bible-believing, Gospel-proclaiming bishop seeks to lead a TEC diocese forward in spiritual renewal and evangelism. Progress is made; churches are turned around; effective clergy are deployed. The light of Jesus Christ is shining as his saving Word of truth goes out through an episcopal diocese.

Who acts to disrupt this? Not the national or state government hamstringing the ministry of churches through the imposition of political correctness or even an anti-Christian pressure group in South Carolina but the diocese’s own denomination – the TEC National Church.

Make no mistake - TEC’s officious legal move to depose Mark Lawrence is destabilising of an effective ministry. Local churches in the diocese of South Carolina enter a period of uncertainty as to what will happen to their properties if they do what they should do – support their bishop. Othodox clergy face demoralisation with the prospect of losing their patron and having him replaced with a revisionist placeperson.

God willing, TEC would lose in a legal battle over the properties if South Carolina churches stand firm for Mark Lawrence. But with the 'abandonment' investigation launched and lawyers involved the destabilisation process is underway.

Dr Tom Wright in his John for Everyone commentary identifies the real adversaries in the Gospel drama of the conflict between the forces of light and darkness. Commenting on John 12v44-50, he writes (John for Everyone, Part 2, SPCK, 2002, p39):

Of course, there is still to come the moment when Jesus and Pilate look each other in the face; but Pilate isn’t the real villain. He’s the villain’s cat’s-paw. Even Caesar in Rome isn’t the real villain. The real villain is the darkness itself, the darkness that John has not yet named. The darkness will soon gather itself into a heap and take possession of one of Jesus’ own friends. Once ‘the Satan’ has entered Judas (13:27), we are not surprised when he goes out into the night (13:30).

This is not the first time in history the institutional church has done Satan’s work and it won’t be the last until the Lord of the light returns. But in trying to stifle the light of the Christ’s truth in South Carolina the TEC National Church is certainly pursuing the dark cause of its master.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE BILL WOULD CRUISE THROUGH COMMONS

If a bill to legalise same-sex marriage were announced in the 2013 Queen's Speech, it would cruise through the House of Commons with a comfortable majority.

An alliance of Cameronite Conservatives, Labour MPs and the Liberal Democrats would see the bill home with, Cranmer’s Curate estimates, at least 500 out of 650 MPs in favour.

The main opposition would come from the Cornerstone group of around 40 Conservative MPs. Cornerstone, which includes some real characters in the best tradition of independent-minded British Conservativism such as Edward Leigh, Adam Holloway, Nadine Dorries and Philip Davies, declares that it stands for:

the Monarchy; traditional marriage; family and community duties; proper pride in our nation’s distinctive qualities; quality of life over soulless utility; social responsibility over personal selfishness; social justice as civic duty, not state dependency; compassion for those in need; reducing government waste; lower taxation and deregulation; our ancient liberties against politically correct censorship and a commitment to our democratically elected parliament.

So its MPs can be relied on to stage a valiant action against this abomination.

But numerically they cannot succeed. Your curate estimates an additional 40 Conservative MPs out of the parliamentary party of 305 would join them on a free vote. On a whipped vote, cc believes they would be lucky to get half that. The remaining opposition would come from the Democratic Unionists (8 MPs) and some Roman Catholic Labour members.

The permissive society has done its work well on the minds of the new generation of Conservative MPs.

With such a large majority in favour in the House of Commons, it would be vain to hope that the bill would be thrown out by the Lords.

One would sincerely hope that Her Majesty the Queen as Supreme Governor of the Church of England and herself a regular Communicant would in conscience refuse to give the bill the Royal Assent. But that would be very unlikely.

The next horror would be that the Sexual Orientation Regulations would be extended to cover marriage ceremonies in churches. That would mean churches being sued for refusing to take same-sex marriages. They would be seen as sinning not just against the politically-correct deity of equality, but also against the ethos of 'commitment' the Big Society requires.

Under such circumstances, churches that stopped officially registering marriages and offered ceremonies for their members after a civil marriage would still find themselves under pressure from the State.

So, may the living Christ give us courage, resolution, and the willingness to suffer loss in the cause of his Kingdom and righteousness in the difficult days ahead.

BACK TO CHURCH SUNDAY IN CONSUMER SOCIETY

This by Cranmer's Curate appeared in this week's Church of England Newspaper:

Back to Church Sunday on September 25th was well worth running but it uncovered some hard truths about parish evangelism in a consumer society.

To our parish church in a relatively prosperous commuter village just outside Sheffield I estimate that around 40 people were invited by a congregation of just below that number on a normal Sunday. Those invited included marriage couples, baptism and thanksgiving families and some people our church is in touch with through funeral ministry.

In the event, one member of the church family had a friend to bring. There were five people whom I had invited, two of them to hear their Banns of marriage, and a few fringe people turned up. So our experience with Back to Church Sunday illustrates what hard work evangelism is in a materialistic community where making money and spending it is the main raison d'etre.

Despite the apparent low return on effort expended, there is no question that the event was spiritually beneficial. Those who came found the church friendly and welcoming and the guest speaker's sermon on Jesus' parable of the lost son was excellent.

One of the visitors told me that he was very struck by something the speaker said about the trustworthiness of the Bible. Thank you very much to St Ebbe's Oxford for providing such an outstanding young man to preach the gospel.

And the build-up to Back to Church Sunday was very worthwhile and a great opportunity to highlight evangelism.

But our Back to Church Sunday made me realise why fundraising is an activity to which small churches will turn as a substitute activity for evangelism. A fundraiser where things are on sale is much more in tune with a consumer society than getting the gospel out and makes fewer demands on both the inviters and the invited.

You can generally pack a room with a church or Mothers’ Union fund raiser in our parish, but in terms of value for Christ's Kingdom there is no comparison between an invitation Sunday at which his gospel of eternal salvation is being proclaimed and a charge-for-entry table top sale.

STALIN BIOGRAPHER'S CALL TO CONSCIENCE

In the wake of the action by police officers in intimidating a Christian for displaying the text of the Bible in his Blackpool cafe, the final two paragraphs of Dmitri Volkogonov's biography of Stalin are worth quoting in full.

Colonel General Volkogonov's father was executed under Stalin and he spent his boyhood in exile with his mother in Siberia. He published his masterly biography of the seminarian turned mass killer in 1989 shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union:

In this book I frequently refer to conscience. People like Stalin regard conscience as a chimera. One cannot speak of the conscience of a dictator: he simply did not have one. The people who did his dirty deeds for him, however, knew full well what they were doing. In such people conscience had 'gone cold'. In consequence, the people allowed their own consciences to be driven into a reservation, thus giving the grand inquisitor the opportunity to carry on with his dark deeds.

The Soviet people have not entirely lost their belief in high ideals. They have shown themselves to be capable of repentance, rebirth and renewal, and this has had much to do with the liberation of their consciences from the shackles of shameful unfreedom. They have freed themselves, certainly, but it is too soon to beat the drum. In Russian and Soviet history there have been many brave attempts at making a new start, but too many of them ended with the defeat of the reformers. Perhaps it is premature now to say that the process of renewal is irreversible. Stalinism is after all not yet dead politically. Crises and their solutions have not only a progressive, but also a conservative logic. One can only pray that one's worst fears will not turn out to be prophetic. But our history gives one pause (Stalin, Triumph and Tragedy, trans. Harold Shukman 1991, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, pp580-581).

Cranmer's Curate offers two reflections in the light of this: 1). It is worth noting that a man who grew up in a society where the true God had been banished and supplanted by a murderous dictator is minded to pray for his country.

2). The human conscience without the personal spiritual regeneration that only the Jesus Christ of the Bible can bestow is notoriously fragile.

That is why the drive by the forces of political correctness to suppress the Bible fills one with such foreboding for Britain.

REVISIONIST BISHOP OF DONCASTER WOULD DAMAGE GROWTH

To the Archbishop of York, The Most Reverend Dr John Sentamu:

Your Grace,

I am writing as a parochial incumbent in Sheffield Diocese to express the hope that the next Bishop of Doncaster to be consecrated will clearly and unequivocally uphold Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10.

The reason for focussing specifically on that Resolution is that a refusal to affirm it as the biblically faithful statement that it is involves a hermeneutical approach to the Bible that is fundamentally anti-Anglican.

Article 20 of the Church of England's 39 Articles of Religion declares that 'it is not lawful for the Church to ordain anything that is contrary to God’s Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another’.

Revisionists who deny the enduring validity of New Testament teaching on faith and morals on the basis of claims that such texts are trumped by others about Christian liberty are treating Holy Scripture in precisely the way Article 20 forbids.

There is another reason in our context why the consecration of a bishop with a revisionist approach to Holy Scripture would be so very damaging.

In a diocese where the majority of parishes are net-receiving in terms of parish share and have fewer than 65 adults on a normal Sunday, our Diocesan Bishop Dr Steven Croft has been rightly promoting the Diocesan Strategy for Growth. Indeed this week in our deanery there is a meeting for PCC members with Bishop Steven entitled ‘Growing the Body of Christ’.

In the Anglican tradition, the Bible is absolutely central and essential to the growth of the Body of Christ. That conviction is reflected in the fact that in our Ordinal (whose biblical faithfulness is affirmed by Canon A5) the Bishop being consecrated is handed a Bible by the Archbishop and exhorted: "Give heed unto reading, exhortation and doctrine. Think upon the things contained in this Book. Be diligent in them, that the increase coming thereby may manifest itself to all men."

A bishop who took the revisionist approach to the Bible involved in the rejection of Lambeth 1.10 would not be contributing to the spiritual 'increase' that our Ordinal asserts will flow forth from faithful adherence to God's Word written. In fact, he would be a false teacher and so it would be incumbent upon Christian people to respond to his ministry in the way that the New Testament commands in relation to false teachers (see Romans 16v17-20; Galatians 1v6-9; 2 John v8-11).

I therefore respectfully appeal to you to consecrate a suffragan bishop of Doncaster with a Confessing Anglican approach to the Bible as opposed to a revisionist one.

With all Christian good wishes,

Julian Mann
The Parish Church of the Ascension
Oughtibridge
www.oughtibridgechurch.org.uk