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Rector's Message

A Not-So-New Dawn

Dear Friends,
The recent dis-invite of the Rev. Franklin Graham from the National Day of Prayer service has come and gone without a great deal of attention. As a single issue most Americans weren’t really affected in their daily lives by the decision and have probably moved on to more pertinent issues like car bombings, immigration laws, and oil spills. But the unprecedented “dis” of one of the most prominent evangelical Christian names on the planet signals a new attitude in our country that shouldn’t be surprising but one for which we need to be prepared.

America has never been a theocracy, thank God (one never knows what form of “theo” those in power would espouse), but it’s safe to say that Christianity has enjoyed a long season of protection in this country for the simple reason that most Americans and the government that represents them have been sympathetic towards the Christian faith, as they have been toward a number of peaceful religions worshiping in our land. The Graham incident, however, should wake us up to the fact that there’s a new attitude emerging that might not be so sympathetic towards authentic Christianity.

Yes, some will say that’s an alarmist statement but as former Episcopalians we should be the least surprised that such a takeover could happen. I remember twenty years ago (that’s the 90’s) when delegates would return from the General Convention of TEC shocked at the abandonment of the historic Christian faith and the hostility towards those who spoke up for it. No one then would have ever believed that twenty years later that attitude would be in power confiscating property and suing Christian believers. God forbid that that same anti-Christian attitude be armed with governmental power.

This resistance to authentic Christianity is certainly not new. In the book of Acts we read how Paul and Barnabas went to Lystra to preach the gospel and while they were there God healed a crippled man. The people were so excited that they literally treated Paul and Barnabas like gods. They brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates to make sacrifices to them. Even when Paul tried to set the record straight and call the people to “turn from these worthless things to the living God,” they still didn’t get it and continued to sacrifice to them. It seems that as long as the people thought Christianity met their needs and fit into their belief system, they embraced it, and maybe if Paul had been able to hang around and teach them the truth, they may have become true believers. But soon a group of non-believing Jews came along and turned the crowd against Paul and they tried to stone him to death.

There’s a lot that can be learned from this passage but the bottom line is this: We as Christian believers need to know what the Christian message is and be able to present it accurately. Our message is not moralism (anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc.), nor is it cultural relativism (anything goes, God loves you anyway). Christianity is a specific message about a God who has acted through His son, Jesus, to forgive the sins of people. There’s no national identity associated with this message and no guarantee of cultural approval. It is what it is and has a life of it’s own that doesn’t conform to the whims of men. And although it is the greatest news for some, setting them free from the bondage of sin, it can also bring out the worst in others, causing resistance and oppression. What we need to do is know the message and be prepared to share it with everyone we can. By God’s grace, enough people will believe it so that peace and freedom might exist wherever Christians gather. But even if that doesn’t happen, we continue to preach it because it’s true, and the sin-sick soul can be saved by nothing else. May we be done with lesser things.

Blessings,
joseph

 

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Refocusing
by Kathy Walzer

As one who has been near-sighted all her life, I was taken by surprise by yet another unwelcome affect of aging. Besides, the degradation of my close vision, which I had been warned to expect, I have also found that as my eyes get older, they do not refocus as quickly when I shift my view from close to far, or from far to close. I found this out, of course, in the particularly inconvenient moment of reading a lesson in church from the lecturn some years back. I looked up at the congregation for a second or two as I was reading, and when I looked back down at my Bible, the page was all fuzzy. Fortunately, I knew the passage well enough to continue (after a slight pause at the initial panic) until my eyes were able to refocus once more.

The Anglican Church in North America is not quite a year old, as I write this, and yet, young as it is, it has a refocusing issue of its own. For so long, we have been in a pattern of “church” as part of The Episcopal Church, which we grew up in and have taken for granted all of our lives. And since 2003, much of our focus, whether we meant to or not, was on our efforts, first at reform and then at realignment apart from TEC. When ACNA was inaugurated last year, our dear archbishop, at his investiture, gave us the challenge to refocus on mission and to plant 1,000 new congregations in North America in the next 5 years. This is not an easy task. All churches in the West are having to face up to the fact, that the way of being a church that worked under “Christendom” (when almost everyone in Europe and North America was nominally Christian and went to Church on Sunday), needs to be reexamined and at the very least, tweaked. Similarly, the way of doing mission that worked for the last 250 years, sending from Europe and North America to the ends of the earth to make disciples, also needs to reexamined as we find that America and Europe have not done so well making disciples of its own church members and their children.
There are some hopeful signs that ACNA and our own Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh will be able to meet the challenges that Archbishop Bob has put before us.

Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge reports a large influx of young students who expect to be unpaid church planters when they graduate working as part of a ministry team to rebuild the Church. Trinity is holding a Roundtable on Church Planting in June (that is not too late for you to attend if you have an interest).
Pittsburgh Anglican Missions (initially started by Bishop Henry Scriven) has begun to act on a local level to connect people and to enable short term mission opportunities, especially for people in smaller congregations.

The clergy of district 2 (of which Our Saviour is a part) began last year to meet to discuss how our parishes can best work together to reach northern Allegheny and southern Butler county with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The next step is to involve lay people in these meetings. (n.b. Fr. Paul Cooper who already has some church planting experience has been leading these discussions.)

The ACNA is already 106 parishes larger than when it began and growing all the time. Grace Church of Mt. Washington is one church that took Bishop Duncan up on his challenge (upon his re-election as Bishop of Pittsburgh) to “go out into the deep and put down your nets for a catch.” They have adopted an unreached people group in Turkey and have started to work with Anglican Frontier Missions to help bring the gospel to the Zaza people. Grace Church’s rector has also raised the question, wouldn’t it be nice if every congregation in the diocese could adopt an unreached people group?

Renewed emphases is being placed on Biblical literacy in our congregations and catechesis (instruction in the Christian faith) of both children and adults. There seems to also be a growing discussion of what the gospel is and a movement to bring it back to center of what the Church is about.

We have a long way to go to recover the momentum in our culture that the Church once had. But, as Archbishop Duncan reminds us, “He who called us is faithful and He will do it.”