A Sad Wedding Story...

A few years ago I took a wedding service for a couple that all went without major issue and seemed to be pretty much the sort of thing that the bride and groom were wanting. However, behind the scenes, a very sad thing happened and the reason for it was Anglicanism gone wrong.

The wedding wasn't in the church where I worked, but at a chapel. The chapel had supplied a 'verger' (helper) for me who was someone going through their training for ordination in the Anglican Church.

As we were setting up the chapel, the verger noticed that the linen on the communion table was the wrong colour. That is, the chapel had different sets of linen to use during the different seasons of the church year and at the time, the linen on the table was not the right colour for the season. This really troubled the verger because they knew it was wrong (I have to admit that I didn't realise!) but they also didn't know where the correct linen was stored and so couldn't set it right. After hearing about all this, I assured them that it would be ok to have the wedding with the wrong coloured linen this time and that the wedding party certainly wouldn't be concerned about it. And so the wedding went ahead and there really weren't any obvious adverse affects of having the wrong tablecloth on the table.

During the service, I preached a sermon from Genesis chapter 2 on the problem of loneliness and God's solution of marriage. It was a brief, simple exposition of a few verses of the chapter with, frankly, nothing particularly novel in it. However, after the service, the verger approached me somewhat choked up and asked if they could have a copy of my sermon text. I was surprised as I didn't really think it was anything special and happily handed over my notes. But as I did so, I asked why they wanted them. The response was simply that they had never heard a sermon like that before.

Hence my sadness.

Here was a person who was being trained to serve in the Anglican Church and who had so far learned that they should get stressed about the colour of the fabric decorating the church building, but hadn't ever heard a straightforward Bible talk. I felt sorry for them and very disappointed that the type of training they were receiving could pass as any sort of proper formation for ordained Anglican ministry. Like all churches, the Anglican Church does have some ceremonial trappings and that's ok. But when they become more important in the minds of its pastors than the plain teaching of the Scriptures, we have a problem.