Tag Archives: Anglican

Saint Aristobulus: First Bishop of Britain

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Aristobulus

In the first century, only a few years after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, a certain man who had been living in Palestine began traveling around the Mediterranean preaching about Jesus Christ to the pagan Gentiles. I’m not talking about St. Paul, although he did travel with St. Paul. He also traveled with and assisted St. Andrew on his journeys, and is even numbered among the 70 (72) disciples sent out by Jesus in Luke 10. He knew St. Paul probably through the apostle Barnabas, his brother. And it was while traveling with Paul and Barnabas that the apostle Paul ordained him as a bishop and sent him further West than Paul could then go. This man, a brown skinned, Jewish Cypriot, hailing from Palestine, traveled more than 2,000 miles Westward toward Spain, and then northward into Britannia. Continue reading →

Two Hymns For Lent

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Sackville College, East Grinstead - where J.M. Neale lived and did most of his writing.

Sackville College, East Grinstead – where John Mason Neale lived and did most of his writing.

The Church year is centered around Jesus and the redemptive story of his life, death, and resurrection. The Scriptures read in the Liturgy, the various prayers, and also the songs and hymns that are sung all correspond to the seasons of the year, and the seasons themselves correspond to events or periods in the life of Jesus. The season of Lent takes the Church with Jesus both into the desert where he fasted for forty days and also on his last journey to Jerusalem (and ultimately to the cross and his glorious resurrection). Several themes and lessons of the Lenten season are emphasized in the Liturgy, but two of the most prominent are repentance and spiritual struggle. Continue reading →

According To The Whole – Part 4: The Next Step

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In this series, According To The Whole, a major theme has been the unity of Christians, the theme of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 “that they may all be one.” If you’ve followed it from Part 1, you’ll recall that my jump-off point was a critique of that hazy, undefined trend among Western Christians called non-denominationalism and how it fails to unify anyone. I introduced the term catholic as a second-century (maybe first-century) description of the universally unified Church, which simply means “according to the whole” ( kata (according to) + holos (the whole) ). That term does not exclusively mean “Roman Catholic,” and that’s not how it’s used here. Continue reading →

According To The Whole – Part 3: A Change In Orientation

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In Part 1 of this series I looked at the relatively recent phenomenon of churches who claim no particular creed and hold no allegiance to a particular denomination. They are known as “non-denominational” churches, and their preaching, worship, and even organizational structure are all unbound by any traditional parameters. I noted that even many of the churches within mainline denominations are loosening their external denominational identities in favor of appearing more non-denominational. The great apologetic of the non-denom church is: We’re just christians1. And that’s a powerful apologetic to thousands of Christians in the U.S. and elsewhere who grew up in the sleepy old denominations of their grandparents – denominations that were segregated from the others because of mysterious, ancestral disagreements about faith and practice. Continue reading →

New Church?

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advent-banner
I’m a part of a new church plant. Church of the Advent will be an Anglican congregation meeting and working within the city of Atlanta. Though the official “plant” date for the church will be later this year, I and the two other fellas’ who will humbly serve as pastors for the church kicked off our first prayer service last night, along with a small number that had gathered to worship with us. This was the first of what will be the Advent’s Thursday night vespers service, a service for the purpose of praying for Atlanta, for the future of the church’s mission, and for each other as people sharing that mission. Continue reading →

Confirmation

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confirmation
This past Sunday I was confirmed in the Anglican Church during a service at Holy Cross Anglican in Loganville, Ga. Not only was it the first time I had ever been a part of receiving any kind of blessing in the Anglican Church, it was the first time I had ever even seen a Baptism/Confirmation service. My knowledge of the (Anglican) Communion is proportionately much more academic than experiential at this point. I expect that to change, or at least to even out. As of now, what I’ve come to learn both by my own study and from what others have shared with me about this Tradition has driven me to place myself within its wisdom and among its people. That’s why I was confirmed. Continue reading →