Drell’s Descants

This article makes me want to leave ECUSA and become one of the Anglicans Missing in America, as my mother in law jokes - I could take the flak, for we are not citizens of this world; our citizenship is in heaven. But, oh to belong to a church that was really like this - it describes a dream I’ve had, but never experienced except at Cursillo and a few rare Eucharists here and there, and heard of in a few churches here and there (like Christ Church, Plano):

While I attended Kevin’s ordination last night, I was struck by how unfamiliar and yet comfortable I was in the service. Coming from a Baptist and Assemblies of God background, my church liturgy style is much less formal, less symbolic, and involves a lot less reading and responding. However, the AMiA is a fully Evangelical church, and, get this, it’s Charismatic. When fellow ministers laid hands on the ordination candidates, I clearly heard a few prayers in tongues come over the loudspeaker. There were a couple Vineyard songs thrown in the mix, and the worship team felt as familiar to me as anything I’ve seen in our A/G churches. I was nervous about communion, because I wasn’t sure if it would be “closed,†like Catholic communion often is, but it was made clear that those of us who were not Anglican should feel free to join in communion if we followed Christ as Savior and Lord, and we were provided non-alcoholic grape juice if we preferred not to drink the wine.

As the AMiA FAQ page says, no church is admitted into the the Mission if it’s not fully missional—meaning, it must be fully committed to evangelism and reaching the lost, not merely grabbing believers from other churches. Indeed, the stats on the site indicate that at least 60% of the congregants are new believers.

Wow. (Wow indeed. Considering the plummet inside ECUSA, it is obvious that Anglicanism can grow if it but has the Gospel. It then turns out one of the ordinands is leaving the Assemblies of God, and this dialogue ensues:)

Noting that the Assemblies of God and Methodism share a lot of theology in common, he remarked that we accept scripture, we accept experience (a major bulwark of Pentecostal theology), we accept reason—with less suspicion now than we used to—but we are weak on tradition. Jack has come to believe that this is something we are missing in the A/G, and we would do well to learn from the deep well-spring of church history.

I tend to agree. Turn on TBN and you’ll see the evidence of a Pentecostal/Charismatic faith that is not rooted in tradition: it’s easily influenced and swayed by every “new thing†that comes along. Admittedly, TBN is not an Assemblies of God entity, but who in the A/G hasn’t noted the winds of “new doctrines†that sweep along from time to time?

In truth, we do have our own traditions. And we do have our own liturgy—though it is not recognized as such. But couldn’t our traditions be enriched by the larger church world rather than rejecting it all outright as dead faith? I don’t know. What would such a church look like?

It might look a lot like an AMiA church.

This would be such a home for me. Read the whole thing by Rich Tatum, the BlogRodent.