Open Baptism and Evangelism

Following on from my last post, and tying in with some recent comments from the Church of England, I thought it would be worth saying something about the relationship between baptism and evangelism.

In some parts of the Anglican world, there is an 'open' baptism policy. That is, some church leaders are committed to the idea that the rite of baptism ought to be available to anyone who's interested in it, without qualification. For some, this is not just a passive position, but one that's quite actively and publicly promoted. The most notable recent advancement of the open baptism policy came from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who has given his thoughts as they've been prompted by today's baptism of Prince George. You can watch him on it here.

I think there are a couple of great things going on behind this policy. The first is that those who are pushing it understand that connecting over a baptism provides a great opportunity for talking about Jesus. No doubt this is what ++Justin is trying to do with his video for the royal baptism. And that's fantastic. The second thing in the open baptism policy is the desire to show that anyone can become a member of Jesus' church. By saying all can come for baptism, there's a good chance to reinforce that there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female when it comes to salvation. Anyone and everyone can become a member of the body of Christ. That is also an excellent thing to say. But good as it is to communicate these two things, the open baptism policy misses many other, most critical, things. It misses belief, faith, repentance, submission, commitment - it basically misses out on the idea that people actually need to lose their life to Jesus in order to gain it eternally through him. The open baptism policy says that just an interest in Jesus, or a generally positive disposition towards him, or the church, is enough.

To be fair, I'm sure that not all open baptisers want it to end there. Some may be universalists and think that all will be saved in the end and so don't see why baptism shouldn't be administered quite freely. But I suspect others don't think that at all - and I doubt that any of them are praying for a church full of nominal Christians. I imagine that for some, what they're really hoping is that the baptisee's positive experience of the church will make them want to keep coming back, and as they do, that they will become more and more convinced of the claims of Christ. Again, this is a very commendable intention, but the open baptism approach really means that baptism is being used as an evangelistic strategy, as a winsome missional tactic, not as the symbolic marker of the people of God.

The baptism-as-evangelism approach is very mixed up and just doesn't reflect the Bible's purpose for baptism in mission. In the New Testament, it seems quite clear that baptism is not part of an evangelistic strategy, but it's what is appropriate to mark someone's conversion to faith in Jesus. The idealised process would seem to be something like: A person becomes interested in Jesus > Christian believers tell them about Jesus > by God's grace they accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour > we mark their conversion by baptising them to symbolise their being washed clean of their sins and their rising to new life. Given this, if you baptise an inquirer who hasn't yet accepted Jesus, it's hard to understand what anyone thinks is going on. You might be communicating universalism. You might be communicating that Jesus is satisfied with a little bit of interest. You might be communicating that the church really is 'lovely', but that it doesn't have any firm convictions about what it means to be the set aside people of God. You might be communicating that the church will change its beliefs to cater for the preferences of punters that it desperately wants to become new members...

The real challenge in all this actually has to do with how we connect with, welcome, love and give real time to people who are inquiring. I think these things are what many open baptisers are wanting to do, and they are most excellent things to want to do. Surely though, we can do them without compromising the sacraments.

The Chink in the Credobaptist Armour

Mark Driscoll is the founding pastor and preacher of the huge and still growing Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is famously strong willed, strong minded and strong worded, and he consequently tends to polarise a lot of believers - which is a bit of a shame because even if we're not convinced of everything he says (which I'm not), we should all still be able to appreciate his incredible gifts in church leadership and preaching, and his undivided passion for Jesus (which I do). Anyway, I don't want to get into any of that now, but I do want to think about baptism in light of something Driscoll posted online yesterday.

Driscoll is a committed credobaptist. He believes that infants should not be baptised, because baptism is the sign that's meant to accompany an individual's conscious profession of faith, something that infants are unable to make. Like many credobaptists, he tends to picture paedobaptists - those of us who will baptise babies - as being a superstitious and 'religious' bunch who trust in the rituals of church institutions for their salvation, instead of in Jesus Christ alone.

Now in preaching on the commandment against murder, Driscoll has taken a fresh look into some of the hard cases concerning the fate of the dead. In particular, he's asked the tough question of what happens to babies when they die. I found his post on this to be pastoral, biblical, balanced, and even genuinely touching. You can read it here. But what was also interesting about it was that he acknowledged the possibility that babies who die are redeemed members of the elect and that they therefore go to heaven. Driscoll rallies a number of theologians and Bible texts to support this view, and I think there are even more that could be added. It seems then that credo- and paedobaptists alike agree that infants can be saved. But then what does that mean for infant baptism? That is, if some infants can or may be saved, why should we withhold baptism from them.

I think at one level, this really drives us back to what we think baptism is all about. If we agree that baptism symbolises something rather than does something, then we need to ask exactly what it is that we think it symbolises. It seems to me that for credobaptists, it symbolises not just our salvation, but our choice or our profession and that is why the symbol is closely synchronised with the timing of that choice or profession. To some extent, they believe its emphasis is on our response to God. For paedobaptists, however, when babies are baptised, it represents God's covenant or election. That is, the emphasis is on his initiative. These are quite different views of baptism. Not completely at odds with each other, but with the focus in different places.

Of course the screaming hole in the paedobaptist argument is that it's impossible to know if God has or hasn't elected a baby. But what even Driscoll has said is that we must make proper room for the very real possibility that he has. And so again the question: If baptism doesn't do anything towards salvation, why withhold it from babies who may well be elect? Aside from coupling baptism with choice or profession, one of the strongest practical answers that credobaptists give to this is that infant baptism breeds nominalism. It makes people, families, denominations and even nations believe that they are all safe and Christian because they were baptised as babies, and this no doubt an incredibly dangerous thing. There is real wisdom in calling for only mature people to be baptised after they have freely professed their faith because that forces them to make a clear choice for Jesus and prevents nominals from thinking they're in the same boat. This perspective is so good that I nearly want to go for it. But then, I just don't believe baptism is so strongly anchored to choice or profession. I do believe it's also a sign of God's covenant and election. As such, I think baptism is appropriate for the babies of believers, who I think ought to be considered as though they are in the covenant family of God more than they are considered to be out of it.

One story and two practical, principled points might bring my position home.

The story is of a baby I baptised a number of years ago who was quite seriously mentally disabled. The parents were - and still are - passionate believers and actively involved in the life and mission of the church. They raise their children in line with their clear faith in Jesus. Now, I think it's a real possibility that this child may never be able to articulate that faith in Jesus and so I wonder if a credobaptist would ever allow them to be baptised or if they would instead say that the child could live their life within the fold of the church, but never be marked by its identifying symbol. I know this is an extreme case, but thinking about it helps us to clarify our beliefs about infant baptism.

The two practical and principled points.

First is that I don't think we should baptise the babies of unbelievers. That would be like giving communion to unbelievers. It seems to me that the church should be wide open to all people and should love all people and witness to all people, but it should still make the distinction between those who are in the family of faith and those who aren't, and it seems to me that the sacraments mark the lines in the sand. (For the same reason, I don't think unbelievers should be encouraged to take communion.) If churches were strict with this baptism policy - and given what the Book of Common Prayer says, Anglican churches should be - then I think the paedobaptist position becomes a lot more credible. If we're sloppy with this policy, paedobaptism - and baptism in general - becomes somewhat empty even of its own claims and breeds that unhealthy nominalism.

Secondly, I would more properly describe myself as a paedo- and credobaptist. That is, I have been blessed to be in churches where there has been an active mission to unbelieving adults and where some of those adults have come to faith. When this has happened, we've then had them publicly and joyfully profess their trust in Jesus as we've baptised them! These are actually some of my most precious memories of church. And here's the rub - I actually think this is what we see in New Testament. Credobaptists will often say that the only baptisms we see in the New Testament are of new converts, but that's precisely the point! They are converts. They were unbelievers who were outside the people of God and who were evangelised and converted by God's grace, so of course they should have been baptised at that point - that was the first time they knew the Lord. Theirs is quite a different experience to that of children raised in believing families. And of course the New Testament focusses on these conversion stories because it's a mission manifesto. While the Old Testament deals a lot with the internal life of the people of God, the New Testament shifts the focus onto the mission to unbelievers. This is why there is no place in the New Testament where we clearly see children of believers getting baptised. And for anyone who wants to run that fact as an argument against paedobaptism, the response is that neither do we find in the New Testament any examples of children of believers being held back from baptism so that they can save it for the time of their mature profession. This seems to be what credobaptists think should happen with the children of believers, but the Bible does not show that at all. Not once. In fact, the pattern of the Old Testament is that people who are born into the family of God must be regarded as 'in' until such time as they choose not to be. That's not to say they're saved by family or race, but they are to be counted 'in' by covenant grace.

This has been a long post and while I've been pleased to make the paedobaptist case, I do want to say as clearly as possible that I'm not anti-credobaptist. I know that denominations have split over this one, but for me, so long as there is common understanding that Jesus, and not the ritual, is the Saviour, then we can share good fellowship.

____


Just after posting this, I saw a tweet from the Church of England pointing to this page. There is some wriggle room in what it says, but in light of what I've written above, I have to say that I'm not comfortable with what its message seems to be. At very best, it's unhelpfully ambiguous.

** This post has been edited - nothing substantial, just a bit of tidying up.

An Obvious Implication

After a conversation with a friend about all things Anglican the other day (well, some things Anglican), I made a connection that I hadn't made before - despite the fact that it's pretty obvious. So, forgive me if this something that everyone else realised ages ago... sometimes I'm a bit slow...

I realised that if an Anglican diocese chooses to ordain women into teaching and oversight and roles, then they can never again have bishops who are conservative on this issue (notwithstanding a synod- or province-level about face on the issue).

That is, as Anglicans worldwide battle over the question of whether the biblical prohibitions on women leading men in churches are culturally or circumstantially specific on the one hand, or universal on the other, they're actually deciding who they will allow into church leadership roles in more than one way. If a diocese comes down on the egalitarian side of the debate and chooses to welcome women into the priesthood, then they're also saying that they will no longer welcome any bishops who won't ordain women to that office.

Again, it's all kinda obvious, but I do wonder if every diocese that's gone down this path has consciously realised that in doing so they've ruled out many otherwise eligible candidates for future episcopal roles. I suppose that a gracious egalitarian archbishop who was genuinely committed to including and representing the breadth of views in their diocese could appoint a conservative suffragan / coadjutor bishop and give them a special dispensation to abstain from the ordinations of women to the priesthood. But really...

Anyways, as a conservative myself (though hopefully not a redneck conservative!), I've often felt that the fear-mongering among fellow conservatives on this issue has been a bit overplayed. But this simple connection has made me realise that the squeeze is on us perhaps a little more than I'd previously thought. At the moment, the egalitarian dioceses that I know best are still willing to ordain and welcome the ministry of people who are conservative on this issue, but now I guess it's those conservatives who will have a glass ceiling over their heads! Again, perhaps it's only my slowness that thinks the ceiling has the transparency of glass. At any rate, that's quite a turnaround.

Oh well, I guess we can at least relax happy in the knowledge that gospel ministry is about service and not about titles and power and institutional advancement. I'm pretty sure that Jesus isn't going to line us up by our worldly ranks on the last day!

Lest we Forget

It was 460 years ago today (19th July, 1553) that Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen of England.

Now, over the past generation, the scholarship had made it quite clear that any one-sided, purely Protestant view of English history is inadequate. We can no longer buy the line that everything Edward did was great, everything Mary did was pure evil, and everything Elizabeth did was kinda mixed but ok overall. Nonetheless, it remains true that the burnings which took place during 'Bloody Mary's' reign were a real low point in the history of England and its Church. However much they may have secured some re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, they certainly served to put a lot of people off too. And, when coupled with the fact that Mary had no children, they probably ensured that England would never again be Catholic.

The first martyr under Mary was John Rogers who had produced the first authorised English Bible, Matthew's Bible. Among the others were, of course, Ridley, Latimer and Cranmer. She also exhumed Bucer and Fagius and had their corpses burned for their heresies right here in Cambridge. It was all pretty awful.

Mary died after having only ruled for five and a half years and, almost unbelievably, Cardinal Pole, who replaced Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury, died on the same day too. This cleared the way for Elizabeth and Matthew Parker to begin the work of settlement and restoration of much of the Protestantism of Edward and Cranmer. Mary and Elizabeth are now both buried in the same tomb, built by James I, in Westminster Abbey.

Happy 450th Birthday 39 Articles

Last year we celebrated 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, but yesterday marked another significant milestone for the Anglican Church.

While the confirmation of Justin Welby as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury was important and well covered by the press, no one seems to have noticed that it was the 450th anniversary of the bishops' subscription to their newly amended version of Cranmer's doctrinal articles. That is, it was 450 years since they approved the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

There were a few minor tweaks in the years that followed: Article 20 was given a new opening sentence, Article 29 was dropped for around eight years before being re-included in 1571, at which time a couple of extra books were also added to the list of the Apocrypha in Article 6 and all the titles and numbers were standardised... But - what we have now was essentially finalised 450 years and one day ago.

I should have posted this yesterday, but despite the fact that I've been working closely on the history of the Articles for the past few weeks, it didn't click until just now! I guess we could re-mark the occasion in 2021 which will be 450 years since the 1571 Convocation re-subscribed to the very final version. Meantime, praise God for four and a half centuries of solid Anglican doctrine!

Church Visit - St Edward King and Martyr

Last week a few of us visited the Cambridge church where Hugh Latimer held the pulpit - and sometimes shared it with Cranmer. The attendant there was even good enough to allow us to step up and get the feel of it for a moment.

One thing that was interesting was the attendant's strong Protestant beliefs. Despite the fact that I had heard that this church now sat some way away from the convictions of the Reformation, the attendant was actually grieving even the fact that the stained glass had been replaced in the 1800s as it shifted the focus from the preaching of the Bible and onto the ornamentation of the building. He wanted nothing but the unmodified gospel to be communicated in this building.

May Latimer's brave legacy long continue here.

BCP Talk

This year marks the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. On Reformation day - 28th October - I gave a short, popular-level talk at St James' Old Cathedral on the enduring value of the BCP and some of the issues that Anglicans are facing as we continue to use it.

A full transcript of the talk is on line here.

Risen Anglicans

One of my interests is the degree to which the Anglican Church presents a biblical balance of the doctrines of atonement and eschatology, or, of Jesus' cross and his resurrection. Generally speaking, it seems that evangelical Anglican churches are far more focussed on atonement and consequently, it's not unusual for them to marginalise eschatology.

(The main exception to this is when they're offering an apologetic for the resurrection; most evangelical Anglicans are absolutely insistent about the fact that Jesus really rose from the dead. But this vigour in arguing for the fact of Jesus' resurrection is rarely matched by a depth of explanation about what Jesus' resurrection means. So, on Good Friday, you might well go into an evangelical Anglican church and hear all about how Jesus died on the cross for our sins - fantastic - but then when you go back on Easter Day, you might not hear so much about why he rose, apart from that being a necessary vindication of his cross.)

Anyhoo, on the weekend, I was at an evangelical Anglican church for a wedding (which was great!) and instead of having a cross in their chancel, they had this this.

I have no idea about who put those words there or when or what the flavour of the church was at the time, but this focus on Jesus' resurrection and ascension is great! Being evangelical, I presume the church gets a good dose of atonement theology in the preaching. I would love to know how much the words on the wall represent the members' self-understanding as the risen people of God. That is, after all, one of the most profound things that they are as Christian believers.

(Seasonally relevant liturgical note: Anglicans often use advent to focus on the parousia as well as the incarnation as the first coming points to the second.)

Our 'Inclusive' Church

Lots of people these days talk about the Anglican Church being 'inclusive'. The term sounds very nice, but it's actually unhelpfully imprecise. Clearly Anglicans - like any group - are not fundamentally inclusive of anything and everything; that would be a nonsense. No mainline denomination or organisation will want to proclaim that it is proudly inclusive of people who are indifferent about sexual abuse, who are racist, who are exploitative, etc, etc. There are always boundaries and even when some would want to loosen up some official positions, implicit lines remain - or new ones are drawn.

So, if someone says that the Anglican Church is an 'inclusive' church, what they probably mean is that it doesn't draw boundaries in places where some other churches do, or even in places where it has done in the past. I think a simple, clarifying question to ask someone who makes such a statement is, 'Inclusive of what?'

An interesting test-case comes around the question of ordaining women to the priesthood, or consecrating women to the episcopate. This is a huge issue in the Anglican Church at the moment. There are conservative members who feel that the traditional and historic position of the church captures the plain teaching of the Bible and therefore, they are uncomfortable seeing women enter into every level of church leadership. And then there are those who feel that the Church's reluctance to ordain and consecrate women is really just part of its outdated cultural baggage and that the key passages in the Bible can be quite reasonably interpreted in such ways as to remove all impediments to women serving in any position in the church. In fact, some go further and say that in today's culture, the gospel demands equal opportunity for women in the church's orders of ministry. My point right now is not to argue for one position or the other, but rather to ask what it means for a church to be inclusive when there are different views on this issue.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Designate, Bp Justin Welby, holds a progressive view on the issue itself and thinks that women should be able to serve in any capacity in the church. However, he is also of the view that members who think differently to him shouldn't be marginalised. He has spoken of his great respect for those people who hold a more conservative position and he has acknowledged and encouraged their faithful and fruitful ministries. In short, Welby's idea of Anglican inclusiveness is that all ought to be equally included irrespective of their convictions at this particular controversial point. His view is not "we are an inclusive church, therefore if you don't apply that inclusivity to the question of women in ministry, you're not welcome".

This is similar to the official view current in Melbourne and in the rest of Australia. Most Australian dioceses have approved the consecration of female bishops, but the bishops have also agreed to a protocol for alternative oversight for those who can't in good conscience accept the episcopal ministry of a woman. Now, many people complain about the workability of this protocol and wonder if policies coming from it could ever be practically implemented, but the very fact that such a protocol exists makes an important statement to both conservatives and the church as a whole. It says that even if your views are not mainstream, the church does not want to eject you but would rather find ways to accommodate you and your ministry.

Of course, the real test for this 'inclusive' approach comes when we try to decide for which doctrines we will allow differences of opinion and for which ones we won't. If we fully include members with different views around the ordination and consecration of women, what about things like homosexual practice, infant baptism, vestments, the infallibility of Scripture, eschatology, soul sleep, the uniqueness of Christ, justification by faith alone, liturgical practice, the nature of the sacraments... Some might look at a quick list like that and have a strong and immediate view on some of the doctrines. Perhaps justification by faith is absolutely not-negotiable and soul sleep is a matter of indifference. But what are the criteria? Who applies them? And who decides what the criteria are and who applies them?

We can be an inclusive church and there is something good and even necessary about that. But if we're going to stand for anything at all - and if we're going to stand together for anything at all - there's also a whole other level of complexity that we cannot avoid.

Ten Reasons to be Anglican

Over a decade ago, when I was debating whether or not to sign myself up for the Anglican Church, I was presented with some pretty crummy reasons in favour. Among the least inspiring was the suggestion that the Anglican Church was just the 'best boat to fish from'. That is, while there's not really a whole lot that comes to mind in favour of it, it's probably better than the alternatives. Another equally bland attraction was that the Anglican Church had good job security. Whereas baptist congregations can sack their ministers at the drop of a hat, you're safer in the Anglican system, so the argument went. Well, I joined up anyway...

In recent times, I've been encouraged to think about some non-Anglican jobs and this has given me fresh pause to think about why I really want to stay an Anglican. Is there anything more positive that makes me - and might make others - want to be a flag-flying, card-carrying, unashamed Anglican follower of Jesus?

Of course, I know that at one level, this is a marginal issue. On the last day, Jesus isn't going to line up everyone by denomination. Far less is he going to embrace any denominational construct for its own sake. (Although I suspect that there may be denominational sins for which members of denominations will be held to account.) At another level though, it's a practical reality for lots of people who are thinking about church life. And it's certainly an essential question for anyone who wants to consider, and be considered for, church leadership.

So then, here are ten things that I think Anglican Church has got going for it and that make me really want to invest in it. Maybe others will think of more.

1. Solid theological foundation. Starting with the basics, the authoritative, foundational documents of the church are deep, clear and helpfully nuanced. The position on key points of doctrine are not only well defined, but also even artfully embodied into the well-balanced liturgies. The focus is squarely on Jesus Christ and his gospel as revealed through the historic Scriptures.

2. Breadth in secondary matters. The flip side of the first point is that Anglicans are permissive on non-core matters. There are many different traditions and styles within the Anglican Church and that's completely fine. With the essentials pinned down, there's plenty of freedom for different expressions of the faith and even for different views on some doctrinal questions. (For those who think that the liturgies are too inflexible, my own experience is that wooden services are more often the result of services leaders who don't embrace all the freedoms that the liturgies give them and then put proper time and effort into planning their services well.)

3. High value on scholarship. Anglicans are thinkers (sometimes to a fault) and have never been satisfied with Sunday-school theology (except in our Sunday schools!) Anglicans have always been deeply engaged with matters of philosophy, history, ethics, science and any other area of human exploration and there's no sign that this is going to end in a hurry.

4. Well-recognised church. While this isn't everything and mustn't be overly relied upon, it does mean something important to lots of people. Some who encounter church either for the first time or at a significant junction in their life, feel a lot more comfortable hearing "We're Anglicans" than "We made up our own church".

5. Longstanding community connections. Following on from the last point, there are still many parts of the world where Anglican parish churches have significant relational networks that spread through their suburbs and even into other organisations. Add to this the existing reach and impact of the extra-parochial agencies that serve so many in our communities (eg. Anglicare, Brotherhood of St Lawrence, etc) and it's clear that there are lots of ways that Anglicans already have considerable and important social connections.

6. Worldwide fellowship. The connections aren't just local either. The Communion is worldwide (around 80 million people globally) which not only means that there's a good fellowship of Anglicans in lots of places you can visit, but also that Anglican Churches are highly multicultural. In Melbourne, Chinese and Sudanese make up two of the largest sub-groupings within the Anglican Church.

7. Participatory decision-making structures. Although the Archbishop of Canterbury is the worldwide figurehead, his role isn't like the pope's in the Roman Catholic Church. Anglicans are 'episcopally led and synodically governed' which means that the local bishops are charged with setting direction and with hiring and firing clergy to achieve it (see this post on the role of bishops), but the lay people have their voices heard and their questions answered and can hold various offices in their parish and diocese.

8. Focussing on opportunities. Most Anglican dioceses around the world are in agreement that there is great need to keep pioneering new ways of doing church and of ministering to more and more people. The Church of England's Mission-Shaped Church report lays out a very positive agenda for the church and most of the Communion have grasped this sort of thinking and are eager to find ways to make new things happen.

9. Lots of resources. Primarily people and buildings. Now, buildings aren't everything and it's very dangerous to think that just having the keys to some real estate is going to build the Kingdom. But, having a meeting place on the main street of pretty much every town (at least here in Australia) and then also living space for a minster to go with it is a fantastically useful thing.

10. Administrative support. A centralised system for managing banking, payrolls, insurance, superannuation, professional standards and so on is priceless and saves each parish church from having to comply in all of these areas on its own.


As I've been writing, more things have been springing to mind, but I'll leave it there for now.

Anglicanism is far from perfect and it certainly has its fair share of problems, both large and small. But it seems to me that while anyone can easily point out negative things, it would be a great shame to either use those things to characterise the Anglican Church or to sink all of our energies into dealing with them. It's very good to keep remembering some of the reasons that the Anglican Church is a particularly great and faith-filled part of Jesus' church with a huge amount of potential. I'm staying.

Church visits - St James x2

It was great to be part of the morning services at St James' Pakenham on the Sunday before last. (It would have been great to have been able to stick around for their evening service too as there were a number of people being confirmed and received - basically, standing up to say they want to follow Jesus and have chosen this church to do that.) I was really encouraged by the bravery and boldness of the congregations I visited. People there told me that some years ago, they had been meeting in a nice old stone church building, however, when they faced the (excellent) problem of being too full, they agreed to say goodbye to their spiritual home and move to a new, bigger facility. This sort of thing can be quite a big deal for lots of people. While the new building is really great, it no doubt has a strikingly different aesthetic to the last one.

To be honest, in my conversations it sounded like it had been a bit of a hard slog getting resettled. But still, the overall mood was positive and future facing. There was real enthusiasm around the new minister and his wife who are a great couple that I think could do a lot to positively shape the church. So again, good on this church for taking a step into something new and looking forward to what God might do next.

It turns out that there's actually a good number of well-led Anglican churches out in that part of Melbourne now - Berwick, Pearcedale-Langwarren, Officer, others... ? If the congregations in those have the same boldness as the Pakenham mob, this could be a really exciting part of the Diocese to watch in the years ahead.

Yesterday I went to another St James' - Melbourne's old cathedral. This has a somewhat different story: their building was slated for demolition years and years ago (early 1900s??) but ended up being preserved and, after having been relocated to a new site brick-by-brick, these days has a newly growing congregation. Here, unlike Pakenham, the old aesthetic has been retained for a group of people who like a more traditional style of church. But like Pakenham, the recent growth has again been, under God's providence, largely due to the young minister who's been really well-matched to the congregation. I'm reminded again of the importance of putting square pegs in square holes.

Now, where's another St James' I can check out?

Coat of arms hung in the sanctuary at St James' Old Cathedral.

It's the diocesan arms impaled with arms that seem to have some

connection to the English monarchy. Anyone?

Archbishop of Canterbury Stepping Down

The BBC is reporting that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, will step down from his position in December. He is only 61 and isn't retiring but moving on to an academic post at Cambridge. So, one question is, Why now?

But perhaps the bigger one is, Who next?

Given the current issues within the Anglican Communion, the appointment of the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury will be very significant. The Communion's fabric has already begun to tear - will the next appointment slow that down or speed it up? And what does the Anglican world want anyway?

Lots of thoughts to think and things to watch over the months ahead...

Future Leaders - Appreciation and Issues

This semester I'm helping out at Ridley Melbourne by meeting weekly with a group of Anglican ordinands. To kick our group off, I asked them three questions. Here they are with the group's responses -

1. Why are you putting yourself forward for Anglican service?

• The 39 Articles make a good confession.
• The episcopal and parochial structure of the Anglican Church provides a good mix of support and autonomy.
• It's a good ministry platform - there's investment in leaders and church-planting opportunities.
• Its unique mission opportunity - the parish system covers the world.
• A personal history in the Anglican Church.
• It accommodates different personal styles of ministry.
• It has solid foundations.
• It accommodates some breadth.
• There is theological balance and tolerance.
• Great cross-cultural potential.
• Commitment to global fellowship and service.
• Strong stream of scholarship and solid theologians.
• Equivalence of ordination.
• Liturgy - its order and comprehensiveness.
• Training and succession planning.
• Its beauty - in theology and structure.
• Concern for social justice.

2. What questions do you have for / about the Anglican Church?

• How do I participate in synod?
• What are the not-negotiables?
• How are bishops made?
• How are councils / committees / etc constituted?
• How does church planting / repotting work?
• What direction is the Anglican Church heading?
• What's the story with GAFCON, TEC, ACNA, etc?
• What is canon law?
• How does the Province of Australia work?
• What do Anglicans believe about 'reserved sacrament'?
• Will a woman get the same opportunities as a man to serve? What arrangements are in place for maternity leave, etc?

3. What concerns do you have about the Anglican Church?

• The confrontational nature of synod.
• Disagreement over the basics.
• Lack of discipline.
• Some limits on the possibilities for working in different cultural contexts.
• Bureaucracy.
• The need to submit to bishops.
• Dry traditionalism.
• Ineffectiveness of remote, top-down leadership.
• Capacity to manage resources.
• It's a boys' club.

I was encouraged by the great list of positive reasons for wanting to serve as an Anglican and by the honesty around the questions and issues raised.

The plan is to see how much of 2. and 3. we can nut through in our time together.

A Well-Reformed Church

The thoroughness of the official reforms to the Church of England under Edward is impressive. Christopher Haigh - a revisionist historian who's not himself a fan of Protestantism and therefore has nothing much to gain by pointing all this out - says:

The Homilies taught justification by faith; the Injunctions forbade images; the Chantries Act denied the efficacy of prayers for the dead; the 1549 Prayer Book put the mass into ambiguous English; the 1550 Ordinal turned a sacramental priesthood into a preaching ministry, and for emphasis the altars were taken down; in 1552 the Church was given a Protestant liturgy, and in 1553 a Protestant theology – as Edward lay dying, the old vestments and service equipment were being confiscated from parish churches.

Sure, there's more to the story; Elizabeth's program was somewhat different to Edward's and lots has happened since the Tudors. But let's be clear, we still have essentially the same Prayer Book, the same Ordinal and the same Articles - we're very much the product of the Edwardian reforms.

Praise God for his Reformed Anglican Church!

Who Does What 4 - Parish Councils / Vestries

So, this one has been some time coming because it's harder to be clear about the role of a parish council or vestry than it is to be clear about clerical roles. I'm also not sure how much commonality there is between dioceses on the roles they assign to vestries so my reflections here are primarily based on the situation in Melbourne. (And I'm still not sure that I've got majorly insightful things to say... )

The Anglican Church has a strong history of lay leadership. In addition to the three orders of clergy, the Church includes lay leadership at a number of levels. Here in Melbourne, for example, the diocesan synod (~parliament) has more lay than clerical members. And each parish church has a council, or vestry, of lay people who are involved in its oversight.

While some local churches view their vestry as the board of governance, this isn't really right. Unlike boards in the corporate world, the vestry has no power to hire or fire the vicar / rector, who is the CEO equivalent, and the vicar actually has the power to appoint some members of the vestry. Also, the vestry has no real authority to direct the vicar / rector in terms of the ministry activities of the church.

The stated purpose of a vestry is to "consult together on matters of general concern and importance to the parish". Therefore, they are best understood as an advisory group for the vicar.

Such a group can be invaluable if they have all been screened on the basis of their Christian maturity and commitment to the parish church before taking up their roles. They can provide the vicar with lots of valuable insights from a range of perspectives. At the most basic level, just drawing on the exposure, experience and wisdom of a group of trusted congregation members will give the vicar a fuller picture of their church than if they just relied on their own.

But just as with other positions in the church, problems are likely to arise if a vestry assumes roles that they shouldn't. If, for example, they treat the vicar like their employee or want to have the final say in ministry decisions, then they've misunderstood their job. This isn't to say they have no recourse if they really believe their vicar is making a mistake - they can always approach their bishop if necessary. But like all roles in church, the clearer a vestry is about what they're meant to do, the more likely they are to be able to offer the most fruitful service.

Functional vs Ontological

Picking up on a question in an earlier post, here are a couple of thoughts on what exactly Anglican ordination is.

Basically, the views fall between two extremes. At the one end is the idea that ordination is purely functional such that getting ordained is a bit like getting, say, your pilot's licence. You need one to fly but it's no more than a mark of recognition that you've proven yourself able to fly, that you choose to be an active pilot and that the authorities are happy to accept you. There's no way in the world that just issuing a licence gives you your flying skills and there's no reason to hold a licence once your active flying career is over.

At the other extreme is the idea that when you're ordained, God affects an ontological change in the very nature of who you are. You become a different kind of person at the point of ordination. This is why when you stop working as a deacon, priest or bishop, you're still recognised as one in title and why some retired ministers still wear their clerical garb. They see themselves as part of a distinct and enduring group of believers even once they no longer have any official roles in the church.

I sit much closer to the first view than the second, however, I think the extreme position does go too far. The reality is that even if there's not an immediate supernatural transformation, there's certainly at least a social transformation that takes place when a person is ordained. There are appropriate whole-of-life expectations for ministers such that they cannot ever switch off from their role in the same way that a pilot can when they're not flying. And even once they've retired from a position, a failure to live up to their ordination vows can have significant impact on those that the clergy have previously ministered to in a way that a pilot's post-flight behaviour doesn't affect their previous passengers.

Like many arguments by extreme, while positions can be clarified by looking at the end-points, the reality can also be distorted by the terms of the analysis. Recognising this, it's also good to clarify the various ways that people use their language on this topic too, because while there are some significantly different views, there are also some that we might assume are more to one extreme than they really are. For comparison, consider the fact that ex-presidents of the US are still referred to as 'President'. This honourary use of the title in no way reflects anyone's beliefs about the reality - the US only has one president at a time - and given that so much is clear, the use of the title doesn't risk transmitting a dangerously distorted understanding of the Constitution. I suspect that some who attribute clerical titles to people who are no longer working for the church have a similar perspective on it.

It is worth noting that even when a retired minister does still carry their title, that doesn't automatically mean they can continue to perform specific ministerial duties. All clergy need a licence from their bishop or archbishop to be active in clerical ministry. So, while they still might be able to wear the collar, they cannot do things like perform weddings, preside at holy communion or ordain lay people (in the case of retired bishops) apart from a current licence. Any ontological change that occurred at ordination still needs permission to be functionally active.

Who Does What 3 - Deacons

Unlike bishops and priests, there are no specific tasks for deacons, although they are often thought of as having ministries that focus on serving the poor and marginalised or those at the fringe of the church. In the Anglican world, deacons can't do the 'ABC' of absolution, blessing and communion and therefore can't be appointed as parish vicars / rectors. While this could be seen as a limitation, it's better thought of as a freedom to stay focussed on other front-line ministries.

The go-to New Testament passages on deacons show us that they were first formally appointed to take on the work of food distribution so that the apostles could focus their energies on word ministries and prayer (Acts 6:1-6). And even though their task was very practical, it was imperative that those chosen had Spirit-shaped character (Acts 6:3, cf. 1 Timothy 3:8-13). But of course, as the story unfolds in Acts, we find that at least two of the deacons become powerful testifiers to the gospel of Jesus (Acts 7-8, 21:8), so there ends up being some significant overlap of their work and the apostles'. This is comparable to the overlap between the work of Anglican deacons and priests.

As I keep thinking about the diaconate, my question is, Why don't Anglicans ordain more people who work in churches as deacons? Here in Melbourne, we have many non-ordained church workers who are licensed by the Archbishop as 'Authorised Lay Ministers'. Why not make them deacons?

Reasons might include that some Anglicans believe that a person needs to be 'called' to ordained ministry and that when they are ordained, they are 'ontologically' changed. Therefore, ordination is more than just functional and more than just a practical recognition of the work someone does in a church. I'm not sure that I find this a particularly convincing argument. On the one hand, there's not much solid biblical evidence for it and on the other, it would seem strange to have lower expectations of an Authorised Lay Minister than a deacon if they were doing the same job.

Recruitment and training have become practical distinctions. That is, while the vicar of a local church can employ anyone they see fit, a deacon needs to have been through a diocese's program of formation. Perhaps this means that a deacon's suitability to their role is more broadly recognised than a lay minister's.

In the Diocese of Melbourne, there are very few distinctive deacons (as opposed to 'transitional' deacons who are moving towards becoming priests). By comparison, Sydney Diocese, with its more functional view of ministry, has been proactively reviving its diaconate over the past few years and so has a few more. Interestingly, these dioceses also have different stances on the ordination of women to the priesthood and this may affect their relative numbers of deacons. Melbourne accepts female priests and Sydney doesn't so in Sydney, all ordained women are deacons.

This leads to another good point to make when thinking about deacons which is that all clergy are deacons. That is to say that when a deacon is ordained priest, they don't stop being a deacon. I think this is great because it reminds the clergy that no matter how high up the organisational chart they might climb, they must always remain servants of others. Right in line with Jesus' teaching in Mark 10:35-45.

Who Does What 2 - Priests

Lots of Christians don't really like using the term 'priest' for church leaders anymore. This is because of the Old Testament connotations where the priesthood can appear largely ritualistic, the fact that the New Testament talks about the 'priesthood of all believers' (cf. 1 Peter 2:9 - although I am aware that the common interpretation of the phrase 'royal priesthood' is far from universally accepted) and just because of the current connotations of the word 'priest' - we tend to think of an old man who is either exceedingly soft and cuddly or else quite rigid and grumpy. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney has even begun using the non-translation 'presbyter' instead of 'priest' which is fine at one level, although if the aim was to avoid confusion, I'm not sure it's achieved all that much.

In the Anglican Church, ordained 'priests' are those people given authority to preach and administer the sacraments and whose general duties include leading and pastorally caring for a local church. I say 'general' duties, because there are actually lots of other ways that priests can be deployed. For example, they can be assistants to the head priest in a parish (the vicar or rector), chaplains in a wide range of contexts or workers in parachurch organisations. But even when a priest isn't a vicar / rector, it's still expected that they have all the qualifications and have met all the requirements for that 'standard' priestly role. This goes back in part to the idea of equivalence of ordination throughout the worldwide Anglican Communion.

One thing that I find really disappointing is that many priests give only a small amount of energy to their bread-and-butter work of preaching, presiding and pastoring. It would be easy to just highlight the five minute sermonettes that are offered in some liberal parishes or the infrequency of (and sometimes near-irreverent attitude towards) communion in some evangelical parishes, but the problem goes beyond these. So many parish priests these days find themselves so tied up in governance, management and administration tasks that time for sermon preparation and pastoral meetings seems to just get squeezed out. In many cases, this is genuinely grieved as priests long to get free of their ever-growing list of additional duties and to get on with the work they entered the priesthood to do. But there are others who I fear have forgotten their first charge and embraced an altogether different model of priestly leadership that isn't centred on pulpit and parishioners.

So what to do? The first thing is just to recognise the different roles that different members of the church are meant to fulfil and then to ensure that each person is focussing on the right thing. John Stott addressed exactly this issue in his chapter 'Ministry: The Twelve and the Seven' in one of his final books, 'The Living Church' (which is very worthwhile reading).

After this, priests then just need to employ the disciplines necessary for them to prioritise the priorities. A great example for me is a priest I know who simply set a firm time-limit on how much administration he would do during the week. Once the time was up, it was up and if some things didn't get done, they didn't get done. He had made a decision that he wasn't going to let management tasks impinge on the time that he committed to preparing sermons. He was an Anglican priest practically committed to doing the work of a priest.

Who Does What 1 - Bishops

Spinning off from the earlier posts on competence, I thought it would be worth putting up a couple of posts considering how the Anglican Church understands the roles of different people within it. No doubt, this will be far from exhaustive and there will be lots of alternative perspectives out there, but let's see how we go...

So, bishops.

The Anglican Church believes the Bible teaches that there are three layers of church leadership: bishops, priests and deacons (= episkopoi, presbyteroi, diakonoi in the original Greek of the New Testament). This is disputed by some who think that that episkopoi and presbyteroi are two words for people in the same roles.

Bishops then sit at the top of the hierarchy of ordained people and have oversight of the parish churches and clergy of a given region called a diocese, which itself has a central diocesan church - the cathedral. Large dioceses can have several bishops although the archbishop is the one who holds final authority while the others are his assistant (or, depending on the particular diocese, coadjutor or suffragan) bishops.

Bishops' functions are mostly ceremonial and administrative. Although some take on the 'pastor of pastors' role, many clergy now have mentors who are not part of the formal structure of the church. And because bishops don't have direct congregational oversight or hold a regular pulpit, I've heard it suggested (by someone who I think holds more to the idea of a two-fold order of leadership) that Anglican bishops should really be re-designated as deacons.

Getting beyond structures and definitions however, the most important parts of a bishop's role are the making, hiring and firing of clergy and the upholding of doctrinal standards. In the Anglican Church, a lay person cannot be made a deacon, nor a deacon a priest, apart from a bishop's ordination. Three bishops are required to consecrate a priest as a bishop. No clergyperson can have an active Anglican ministry in a diocese without being granted a licence by its bishop or archbishop. So, while the average punter may not ever receive much teaching or pastoral care from their diocesan bishop (they could actually probably go along happily for quite a long time without ever seeing them or even knowing their name!), nonetheless, their bishop has an enormously large impact on the local church through the clergy that they licence to serve there.

Biblically, we might say that Titus is an example of someone with this bishop's role of appointing leaders for a region and guarding doctrine. He was instructed by Paul to "appoint leaders in every town" (Titus 1:5) and to choose people who would, among other things, "be able to both preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it" (Titus 1:9). Unlike most Anglican bishops though, we see as we read through Paul's letter that Titus also seems to have had an active pastoral ministry of his own.

Via Media not Latitudinarianism (fancy words, critical distinction)

The Anglican Church is famously the 'via media', or 'middle way', church. This idea has been taken by some with enthusiasm, and by others with disappointment, to mean that Anglicanism is fundamentally flexible and does not hold any immovable doctrine. But that would be to confuse the via media with latitudinarianism. The two are quite different. Anglicans adhere to the former, but not the latter.

Negatively, the Anglican via media means the Church is neither Roman Catholic, nor separatist Puritan. Positively, it means the Anglican Church combines an Episcopal structure with Protestant theology. Practically, therefore, the via media doesn't mean that the church is anything at all like broadly permissive latitudinarianism.

The via media is usually read to have been normalised for the Church of England under Elizabeth I. This was a time when theological uniformity, not diversity, was the goal of the national church (granted that this was driven by political necessity as much as theological conviction). Doctrinal boundaries were clearly set and while there was room for some debate on secondary matters, divergent positions on core articles of faith were not accepted. Authority structures were clear and dissent or rebellion was actively opposed. Far from being flexible, the historical Anglican via media held quite a rigid line between alternative views.

It's easy to cast this in harsh-sounding terms as I've done here, but there's also something greatly wise and mature about a non-rubbery middle way. Perhaps considering the concept from the perspective of Aristotle's philosophy is helpful. Aristotle championed a via media for virtues, seeing the error of defining polarising binary systems. For example, instead of taking the ideas of cowardice and bravery as opposites, in Aristotle's thinking, cowardice and foolhardiness are set as opposite extremes and bravery is reframed as the virtuous middle way between the two. Notice that in this system, the via media doesn't embrace the extremes, but charts a strong, clear course between them.

Although the concepts don't completely overlap, there is a parallel with the Anglican via media as originally conceived. The doctrinal errors of Rome were rejected as were the overreactions of potentially anarchic separatists. It was a wise and brave middle way, not at all the establishment of a broad and non-commital church.

It's a great heritage for modern Anglicans to give thanks for and to embrace.