I’ve discovered, not least because of a recent conversation with some colleagues in Seattle, that those of us in C4S0 have a challenge in front of us. It is this: how do we draw on and explain the best of the Anglican tradition on behalf of the pursuit of Jesus and his Kingdom? How do we employ those elements for spiritual and missional formation, while avoiding the trap of “Anglicanism”?
Anglican history, theology and practice are a treasure chest of means for Christian formation. As we endeavor to employ these means it is good to remember that the best and most productive innovation is always rooted in history…but not in an unthinking or slavish way. Rather, we reach into the historic treasure chest to, switching metaphors; find what Peter Drucker has called islands of health and strength, areas of continuity from which, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, we can innovate for the sake of the present mission field. In so doing we will be precisely aligned with the spirit and wisdom of Thomas Cranmer who says in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer that ministry should be …according to the various exigencies of the times and occasions…
As we do this we want to make sure to follow the wise counsel of F.D. Maurice, the 19th century Anglican leader, who has said: “We want to make sure we are not giving people the church, when what they are looking for is the living God ”…we want people believing in God, not just assenting to doctrine…”[1]
But the challenge remains, and is put well by Anglican scholar Paul Avis “There is an acknowledgment that the faith of the church, as the Church of England has received it, needs to be expressed afresh in each generation.”[2]
And further, guiding us to what I think is the precise manner in which to use the Anglican treasure chest in pursuit of spiritual and missional formation: we should not fret about the identity of Anglicanism: pursue integrity (what I would call alignment with the purpose of God for the church) and identity will take care of itself.[3]
[1] The Spirit of Anglicanism, 81.
[2] The Identity of Anglicanism, 53, 67.
[3] The identity of Anglicanism, 31.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Hi Tod
Thanks for this post. I am 27 years old and employed as Worship Director in an Anglican church in Durban, South Africa.
In my experience the Anglican church in South Africa is often in great danger of giving people the church and not the presence of GOD. As you have rightly said, the treasure chest of heritage at our disposal is rich and could be so meaningful!
I often think of my role as a worship leader as creating fresh wine skins to host the Presence of God. In a similar sense, perhaps from my undergrad studies in Architecture, i think of it as creating fresh & relevant spaces to encounter GOD in my own life and in our corporate gatherings.
In Architecture, your designs are only as good as your ‘visual library’ from which you draw inspiration and ideas. if that is true, then creating these ’spaces’ in an Anglican context could be so exciting if we can creatively and sincerely draw on our rich ‘visual library’ to create new wine skins for hosting His Presence.
Thanks for your posts and discussions. It helps to know that there are others out there…
July 27th, 2009 at 6:13 am
Todd–great post. I’m a church historian, by vocation (teaching at Trinity School for Ministry–Anglican), so your words on retrieving the Great Tradition of Anglicanism are much appreciated.
I like the way Kevin Vanhoozer speaks about improvization (from his Drama of Doctrine text). Anglicanism gives us a script, but when we perform the drama in our context, it will necessarily be in the local vernacular. Cranmer was passionate about this… yet he was profoundly indebted to the early Fathers and to the catholicity of historic faith and practice. What I think enabled him to find the right course between order and charism, or catholicity and contextualization was an unrelenting determination to restore an ecology of “lively faith” to the Church.
Being an evangelical, I get quite excited about the improvisation bit, but as I experience the deep church and formation of Anglicanism, I find myself as drawn to the coherence and consistency of the Anglican approach to spiritual formation for discipleship. There is such an intricate wisdom here, worked out over a vast stretch of time, concerning the relationship between belief and practice, or between believing-belonging-behaving. I’m a little less quick to improvise before first receiving this wisdom in humility and submission.
So how do we receive and pass on this tradition “to follow Jesus for the sake of others”? Bringing the historical perspective into our present frame of mind certainly can fire the imagination.
July 28th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Hey Everyone–
Listen to Phil–he has forgotten more about this topic than I will ever know!
BTW: I am hypothesizing that we pass on the tradition best by demonstrating that it “works”. I don’t mean that in an overly pragmatic way. I mean only to say that the tradition must be actually helping us to make followers of Jesus who live for God and others. If, as the sociologists of religion suggest, millions of seekers are spiritually hungry, let’s see if the Anglican tradition is a transforming meal.
July 29th, 2009 at 3:28 am
Todd got me to thinking about one of the most pragmatic definitions of ‘tradition’ that I’ve ever come across– it is “the incorporation of the individual into a community, the community of Jesus Christ extensive in time and space” (that comes from Murray Rae). And I would add, from Cranmer’s homily on the Holy Scriptures, that this incorporation happens through a set of enduring practices which have “the power to convert” so that we can be “transformed into that thing which [we] readeth” in Scripture. These perspectives take ‘tradition’ down out of the clouds and put it to work on the daily potter’s wheel of disciple-making.
This sounds a lot like Todd’s point. The difference is that the focus, at least initially, is on making a “community” not just individuals “of Jesus Christ.” Is Todd thinking that the final ‘proof’ is more individualistic than communal? Probably both/and is what you’re thinking (as evidenced from your book, anyway). The Church is, according to the apostle Paul, a more effective apologetic of the Gospel than isolated Christian individuals.
What every tradition needs now and then is a good house-cleaning… or, at least, the occasional “dusting off.” Some of its venerable practices may need to be subjected to Todd’s question– is this or that practice making a community of Jesus followers? This doesn’t necessarily lead to debunking the tradition (though Americans and evangelicals, in particular, love to do that)… instead, it may mean recovering the original charism of the practice and “transposing” it or “improvizing” it to the new situation/culture/etc. That seems to be closer to the mind of the early Church.
July 29th, 2009 at 3:51 am
Phil catches me in a weakness that has been pointed out to me in the past: I am sometimes guilty of being overly individualistic. It is a Freudian slip of sorts: I know in my theological head that Phil is right, but my Western/American/Cartesian heart sometimes speaks before my head can stop it. Just as Jesus said–out of the overflow of our hearts our mouths speak!
But I agree with Phil. As missionary/bishop/scholar/ Lesslie Newbigin has said: “the best hermeneutic (explanation) of the Gospel in our times is a community of people who live as if they actually believe the Gospel is true”.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:18 am
That’s one of my favorite Newbigin quotes, by the way! I struggle, along with Todd, in the rewiring needed to recover the premodern and biblical/apostolic primacy of the Church. Simon Chan has been working hard on this issue, and starts with an “ontological” argument (emphasizing what the Church was created to BE). His perspective is important and helpful, but I’ve also turned to Craig Van Gelder, who reverses the sort of individualistic and pragmatic logic that many of us are steeped in.
“The church is. The church does what it is. The church organizes what it does.”
I like that because it shows the proper way to relate FUNCTION (even the more individualistic understanding of that function) to IDENTITY/BEING (ontology).
What does this mean? Van Gelder continues: “The nature of the church is based on God’s presence through the Spirit. The ministry of the church flows out of the church’s nature. The organization of the church is designed to support the ministry of the church. Keeping these three aspects in the right sequence is important when considering the development of a missiological ecclesiology.”
Not only do we see this abundantly in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians, but it is quite pronounced in the early Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch is especially important, I think (alas, I don’t have a quote handy).
So, I guess I’m wondering if it is helpful to anyone if we first ask what the Church IS before we ask what the Church DOES?
I tell students that this question relates to the TWO great commissions by Jesus. Of course we all know the one in Matthew 28–and that is often used to define the Church in functional terms (e.g., it is supposed to make disciples). But what about the other great commission in John 17:17-21, esp. “that they may all be one, Just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me.” This defines the Church in terms of its unity in the very Triune nature of God. It has a more ontological flavor. But both commissions share a Trinitarian understanding, and an evangelistic/missional vision–”that the world may believe.”
It is interesting to note that the early Church tended to focus primarily on the John 17 vision of the Church more than the Matthew 28 vision. (I have an historical explanation for that, by the way.) Each has something crucial to offer, but throughout history we have tended to wobble back and forth between them. We humans prefer polar or disjunctive thinking. But in moments of recovery and renewal, one tends to see both ecclesiological models at work–that may be due to the way the Holy Spirit heals or transcends the schisms or categorical divides that creep in.
I think Todd is really helpful in reminding us that these unhelpful patterns of thought reflect the story or stories we pick-up in the world more than the Story we find in the Word. So, we need to keep re-telling the old, old Story, don’t we!?!?
January 22nd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Todd, It’s exciting to see the Spirit moving you into deeper, and yet, “higher” places. I love reading your blogs. It is the propensity of the church (the whole church) to look to traditions and programs to keep it alive. And when that fails, we tend to want to change things so the newer generations will be attracted and come.
More and more lately, I’ve been wondering exactly when the gospel quit being good enough. It seems to me that if we can just stop this automatic momentum we think we have going and let the absolute power of the gospel do what it does best, people then can be drawn into “the living God” they have been looking for. (Referring to the quote from “The Spirit of Anglecanism, p81)