Crafting a vision for Anglican church planting

In working on church planting in the past month, I was brought back to the earlier “vision” questions. Many church planters feel it is essential that their ecclesial hierarchy must articulate why church planting is essential to the overall diocese and national church. To summarize the reasons that I’ve heard, the planters both want to know that they are supported by their church — and also that no matter what the pressures, church planting will be treated as essential rather than (say) a luxury that gets cut when times are tough.

Articulating such a vision — particularly for Anglo-Catholics — was a major goal of the Forward in Faith North America church planting task force. Below is a summary of previous FiFNA and other Anglican arguments in favor of church planting.

Church Planting: Not Just for Evangelicals

First, in November 2015, Fr. Lawrence Bausch (President of FiFNA) posted a column entitled “Anglo-Catholics as Evangelistic Church Planters.” He listed five reasons why church planting is (or should be) important to Anglo-Catholics today:

1. While many existing clergy were hired to be “chaplains to the faithful,” the “Mission to the unchurched as largely overlooked.”
2. Because much of recent church planting has come from the Evangelical wing, a typical church plant is perceived as “as something most Anglo-Catholics would hardly recognize as church, most significantly in the use of language which defines worship as music, and where the actual celebration of the Eucharist becomes almost a sidebar to the music.”
3. Many Anglo-Catholics have an “understandable focus on simply preserving what we have. Many of our people are in parishes which perceive themselves to be ‘too small’ to consider Church Planting, and struggle to keep what they have.”

From this, Fr. Bausch concluded about the task force and its mission

This ministry in support of the spread of the Gospel and the growth of the Church is crucial not only for Anglo-Catholics, but for the broader Apostolic and Conciliar Church.

Committing to Spreading the Faith

The following February, task force president Fr. Chris Culpepper called for “Committing to Spreading the Faith”. After reciting the mysteries of the divine liturgy, Fr. Culpepper asked

Is not our charge, then, to make this experience available to everyone, everywhere, at all times? Yet, my experience of catholic-minded clergy in the Anglican tradition of my generation is that there is a strong gravitational pull exercise their priestly ministry where all of the accouterments in worship, and otherwise, already exist.… [O]n the rare occasion when I do find that individual who has contemplated church-planting, he lacks the confidence, support, and/or skill set necessary to achieve the task.

From this, he laid down a series of questions (as challenges) to Anglo-Catholics. Here are jsut a few: 

It seems, therefore, that we who call ourselves Anglo-Catholics, have some critical concerns to address. Can we clearly articulate who we are? Can we do that in a way that reaches this present generation? … Are we willing to make the sacrifices necessary for a start-up enterprise; that is, breaking out of our own comfort zone and even wandering in the desert for a season, doing without some of the things we’re used to having in worship, to win the right for future generations to experience the beauty of holiness in worship? 

As a sequel, in May 2016 Fr. Culpepper offered additional observations with “On Planting an Anglo-Catholic Parish.”  And in his July 2016 address to the annual FiFNA conference, he called on Anglo-Catholics to reach out and explain the faith to former Anglicans, other Christians and the unchurched.

Why We Plant

In October 2017, Fr. Lee Nelson (also a task force member) offered his own perspective on the reason for planting. In an essay entitled “Why we Plant: Churches Planting Churches,” he said:

In the United States, we live in the largest mission field in the Western Hemisphere. There are roughly 120 million unreached Americans. A lack of church planting, as much as cultural forces, has brought us to this point. Population has expanded, and the number of churches has remained relatively stable. It is our conviction at Christ Church that The Lord is calling us to be part of a movement of churches planting churches. It is our belief that as long as there are unchurched people in our city, there is a need for more churches, not less. We also know from the research that new churches make more disciples than older ones. Churches under three years old make three times the disciples as churches fifteen years old or older.

He called on faithful Anglicans to not only plant new churches, but also to plant churches that plant other churches.

Video Testimonials

In one of the final actions of the task force, Forward in Faith North America released three videos on the importance of church planting and Anglo-Catholic church planters:

1. In the first video, Fr. Culpepper was interviewed by Bp. Keith Ackerman (now assisting bishop in the Diocese of Ft. Worth).
2. In the second video, Fr. Culpepper talked about challenges and pitfalls of an Anglican church planter.
3. In the final video, Bp. Ackerman calls on parishes to both offer the timeless faith, while adapting themselves to the needs of their respective communities.

The REC’s Call to Arms

The Reformed Episcopal Church is a high church (largely 1928 prayer book) grouping of dioceses within the ACNA. Its church planters (and planted churches) have drawn  of course a jurisdiction within the ACNA, but the REC church plants (and planters) have drawn upon both REC and ACNA church planting resources

In 2017, in his address to the REC’s triennial General Council, Presiding Bishop Ray Sutton called on his churches to support what was termed the REC-100 church planting initiative. As Bp. Sutton later said:

God the Holy Spirit is the living missionary God dwelling in us by faith in Jesus Christ. We have a compulsion to testify and spread the gospel. We may not always obey the Lord’s prompting to spread the good news, but it’s there. And it’s time for it to be reawakened and fulfilled among all Western Anglicans who have lost their sense of the reality of the living missionary God in them.

Postscript: A Word from the ACNA

I’ve previously noted that the ACNA’s church planting initiatives are oriented towards planting evangelical churches.  Still, the Always Forward organization is the largest Anglican church planting organization in North America, and the primary resource available to most of the ACNA.

The head of Always Forward, Fr. Dan Alger, earlier this year published his first book, Word & Sacrament: Ancient Traditions for Modern Church Planting. It summarizes the perspective of both Always Forward and his own personal experience.

The first section of the book is entitled “Why should we plant?” Its placement and length (47 pages out of less than 300 pages) testifies to the importance that Fr. Alger places on this topic. In the opening chapter, he writes

It is an unfortunate truth that many within Anglican circles do not understand the purpose or the practice of church planting, or why it is essential to continue to plant churches. Our emphasis on the ancient sometimes lulls us into celebrating the depth of our roots while forgetting about the new green leaves that are required for continual life and reproduction. 

…

Church planting should not be foreign to Anglicans. This gospel work should not be left up to our faithful brothers and sisters in mission-minded, non-denominational, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, or Baptist traditions. We have a lot to offer this work. With its high view of the church and its missional roots, church planting should be natural to the Anglican church. When properly engaged, the relationship of Anglicanism and church planting is symbiotic, as Anglicanism brings depth to church planting and church planting brings life to Anglicanism. We should strive to live out what is built into our heritage.

In Chapter 2, he offers answers to 6 common objections to church planting

1. Church Planters Compromise Their Anglican Identity
2. Planting is Only for Low-Church Evangelicals
3. We Need to Focus on Strengthening the Churches We Already Have Before Starting New Ones
4. We Have Enough Churches Already
5. There is Already a Church in That Area
6. We Should Only Plant When Convenient, Fully Funded and Risk-Free

Continuing Forward

Among North American Anglicans (outside TEC), what is missing is the Continuing church. In 2019, the Continuing Forward task force was formed to promote renewal and church planting, but the group has not yet issued a specific vision for church planting (nor have the leaders of its three constituent provinces). If (when) such a vision is issued, it will be updated here.

Anglican Church Planting During Covidtide

The past 18 months have been difficult for American churches. The difficulties have been come from actual health threats due to Covid-19, but also due to associated government restrictions on society, the economy and particularly churches.

At the same time, as with other entrepreneurial endeavors, a time of disruption and uncertainty provides opportunities for new entrants. Here I highlight the success of Anglican church plants that remember that their mission is to be the church.

In the North American Anglican, I reported on four (traditional liturgy) Anglican churches planted in four states during Covidtide. Two were de novo church plants, one was a mother-daughter spinoff, and one was a replant (with a new jurisdiction, priest and worship space). Due to the format limitations of TNAA, the 7,000 word article (entitled “Church Planting in Covidtide: Moral Courage and Sacramental Witness”) was split into two parts. A reader suggested that it would be helpful to have a brief roadmap to these two postings.

The four churches highlighted were

• Christ the King (Marietta, Georgia) a parachute plant sponsored by the REC 100 ministry of the Reformed Episcopal Church.
• St. Mark the Evangelist (Waxahachie, Texas) a REC replant after the priest of an earlier Anglican church retired during Covidtide.
• St. Thomas Anglican (Fullerton, California) in the Anglican Catholic Church (one of the major Continuing Anglican jurisdictions): a spinoff of a healthy ACC parish 30 minutes away.
• Trinity Anglican (Connersville, Indiana) also planted in the ACC, reopening an historic sanctuary abandoned by the Episcopal Church after more than 150 years.

Part I introduces the challenges of Anglican church planting, discusses the REC and its REC 100 initiative, and then presents the case studies of Christ the King and St. Mark’s. Part II discusses the evangelism efforts of the Continuing church (including Continuing Forward) and the stories of St. Thomas and Trinity Anglican.

The latter article then concludes by summarizing what can be learned from these four case studies:

1. The importance of the relational model of evangelism, sometimes called the “Celtic” model.
2. The need to create a spiritually healthy church, and that healthy churches can only come from other healthy churches.
3. Learning (where possible) from previous church planting research, including the central role of an authentic and capable church planter and avoiding obvious mistakes.
4. The perhaps obvious (but still overlooked) idea that sacramental churches must be sacramental (i.e. that much more is lost with a purely virtual format).

A key question — perhaps the key question — for 21st century church planting is how to create relationships with new members. The article hints at some of the answers: it appears there is no substitute for a tireless presence in the community for the explicit purpose of creating new conversations and new relationships. Interestingly, three of these four parishes create a presence using “Theology on Tap,” invented 40 years ago to support a Catholic young adult ministry.

Of course, there have been other traditional Anglican church plants. The Forward in Faith church planting task force (which met from 2015-2019) was led by the founding vicar of Christ the Redeemer Ft. Worth and included the founding vicar of Christ Church Waco; both are traditional theology churches in the Diocese of Ft. Worth that (unlike the above four parishes) use the modern (2019 ACNA) liturgy. While Always Forward supports the broad range of churches in the ACNA, the focus of this blog remains examining Anglo-Catholic church planting.

Picture: header from The North American Anglican articles.

The heart of an Anglican church planter

Fr. Chris Culpepper gave his personal testimony last month of how and why church planting is doing God’s work in 21st century America. He spoke at the 28th annual assembly of Forward in Faith North America; his 42-minute talk on July 21 was recorded by Anglican TV and is now available to watch on their Facebook page.

Fr. Culpepper is the head of the FiFNA church planting task force, and the most experienced planter in the Diocese of Ft. Worth. He first quoted Proverbs 29:18: “where there is no vision, the people perish,” and then summarized his thesis: “I think church planting … is at its core bringing the Kingdom of God to a place where it does not now exist.”

“A Desk and a Phone”

He highlighted two phases of his journey towards planting churches. The first phase came in a series of jobs that he described as “a desk and a phone.” The latter story began as a young adult (as a lapsed Episcopalian) leading a UT Austin fraternity, and then a job in real estate sales. He returned to the Church at his home church — St. Andrew’s (Ft. Worth) — as youth minister for five years.

From this, he concluded “It became pretty obvious to me that church planting was where my heart really was,” attending church planting conferences and workshops before attending Nashotah House from 2002-2005.

From meeting other church planters, he drew two conclusions. His first was that “They possess one innate quality about them and it’s a certain dissatisfaction with the status quo and a desire to do something about it.”

The second is that church planters are driven by the Great Commission: “we want to see that taken to every pocket and every nook and every cranny and every territory where the kingdom of God is not — because we have a burning passion for the salvation of souls.”

“Giving Birth”

Fr. Chris Culpepper at the FiFNA Assembly
Photo from Anglican.TV

The second phase of his journey he termed “giving birth”, because it’s one thing to have a vision to plant churches, but another thing to put it on the ground.

Upon his ordination, Fr. Culpepper started as the curate at a TEC parish, until that congregation decided to stay in TEC while almost all of the Diocese of Ft. Worth left to join ACNA. He decided to leave that church and turn his attention to church planting, and was fortunate to find financial support from his bishop (and some former parishioners).

In 2008 he began to assemble a group in Ft. Worth, and by early 2009 they were meeting monthly; in the fall of 2009 Christ the Redeemer Ft Worth began meeting weekly. Fr. Culpepper credited both coaching and other resources for his successful efforts to transition from an assistant priest to head of a new church plant.

Before CTR was fully launched, a group from Waco asked Bp. Iker to plant a church there. So Fr. Culpepper made the three hour round-trip monthly (later biweekly) to meet with the Anglican faithful. As part of the effort, some trips to Waco became a family road trip with his wife and their two pre-teen children.

Today the Diocese of Ft. Worth has two healthy church plants. Christ the Redeemer has an average Sunday attendance of 120 and a budget of half a million dollars. In Waco, he grew the mission to 75 people meeting biweekly; in 2014, Christ Church Waco called Fr. Lee Nelson to be their first full-time vicar, and they began weekly Sunday worship in the Fall of 2015.

As Fr. Culpepper said, “this is what God has managed to accomplish by his grace. … when we continue to make people the priority, through prayer God makes the provision possible.”

Planting for the 21st Century

He called church planters and other clergy and laity to recognize the new reality of reaching the unchurched. Even in Texas, “long gone [are the times] that we can paint our doors red and hope people will fall into them.” He noted that none of the youth that he ministered at St. Andrews were attending Christ the Redeemer (7 miles away).

Nor can Anglo-Catholics assume that faithful Christians from other congregations will “find their way to Canterbury Trail.” Instead, it’s up to the Anglican churches to fight to be noticed by those who need to learn about the historic catholic faith. And when they get noticed, to have a message about the substance of that faith that will win in the marketplace of churches.”

At the same time, limited resources can help with spiritual formation. Even the most Anglo-Catholic of church plants has to gradually phase in key liturgical elements (such as acolyte robes) as funds permit. At the same time, the introduction of new elements provides an opportunity for teaching the congregation. ”It’s like picking up these incredible things that had been hidden in the dirt, and dusting them off and making them new again. People have this incredible fresh perspective on things that happen when you plant churches,” he said.

Going Forward

The goal of the FiFNA task force is to augment the resources that are out there. Anglo-Catholic church planters can’t afford to re-invent the wheel, but instead must learn from what has been done before. That notably includes the ACNA’s Always Forward, and its own efforts to compile and disseminate best practice.

He noted that his own efforts were supported by a non-denominational church planting coach who had planted five churches of his own, and coached more than 100 others. While “every church has its context, [there] are abiding principles that are the same.”

Adapting Church Planting to Anglo-Catholicism

By J. West

For much of the past 2000 years, the main way the church grew was to plant new churches in previously non-Christian areas. For example, every California 4th grader learns that St. Junipero Serra in 1769 started the process of planting 21 missions up the California coast. Most kids are asked by their schools and parents to visit some or (in our case) all of those missions.

Two hundred years later, the issue is creating missions to currently (or nominally) Christian territories. Beginning in the 1970s, a few Christian pastors in this country took the evangelical (small “e”) command seriously, and began to launch new churches within North America. This is the process that became known as “church planting,” and a considerable amount has since been written about the process.

Evangelical Protestant Church Planting Resources

In terms of both activity and writing, most of the activity of the past 30 years has been by the Evangelical branches of Protestantism. The most active denominations seem to be Baptist, other Reformed, and non-denominational churches.

One of the first books on church planting was the Church Planting Workbook, the first of many books co-authored by Bob Logan. It was then cited by Charles Ridley, the Fuller Seminary psychology professor who in 1988 published How to Select Church Planters. Ridley provided the first research-based system of what we now call “assessment” of potential church planters, including a recommended questionnaire and interview process for assessing candidates

In the succeeding decades, dozens of books, consultancies and training seminars have been offered to help improve the success rate of church planters. As with the earliest efforts, these bring the belief that training (and to some degree the 20th century principles of Taylorist scientific management) improve the success rate of church planters as it would for any other vocation. Among the most prolific authors have been Logan and Ed Stetzer, who writes about church planting for Christianity Today.

In 2009, Stetzer published a 17-page bibliography of church planting books on Christianity Today; Google offers more than a dozen other such bibliographies. Browsing Amazon for popular books published since 2009, the most interesting was Stetzer & Im (2016), the second edition of Stetzer’s earlier Planting Missional Churches.

Books are an essential and inexpensive resource for learning concepts and principles; however, humans learn by doing, and each planting context (unlike arithmetic problems or chemistry experiments) is different. Thus novice church planters — must like novice priests and other apprentices — need to be trained, mentored and coached by those who have done it before. At the same time, there is a heavy overlap between the experts who train, mentor, coach and write books for church planters.

The head of the FiFNA task force, Fr. Chris Culpepper (who launched two church plants in Texas) benefitted from training by Jim Griffith, author of Ten Most Common Mistakes Made by Church New Starts (which I would recommend as an excellent starting point for any church planter.) Griffith has planted five of his own churches, trained Methodist and AMiA planters, and ran a planting workshop for the ACNA-affiliated Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth. Griffith offers a series of workshops at his Dallas HQ and other locations (largely across the Southwest).

Another name is Logan, who Stetzer describes as follows

Few realize that before his keen insights and organizational acumen, church planters did not go through assessment, boot camps, and coaching networks. Why did Bob do these things? Because he cares about church planting and church planters. … Bob Logan is the most significant church planting leader in the last 50 years and every church planter needs to be aware of his writings and his toolkit.

Settler in particular recommends the Church Planter’s Toolkit as “the most widely known resource in North American church planting today.”

My former rector (now leading church planting for C4SO in Northern California) benefitted from monthly coaching by Logan. With his introduction, I was fortunate to meet the (LA-based) Logan last year, and was struck by the unusual mix of deep wisdom and utter humility that he brings to church planting.

Adapting for the Anglo-Catholic Context

Whether for church planting, liturgy, preaching or teaching, every Anglo-Catholic priest has had to adapt other Protestant resources to fit the Anglo-Catholic perspective on the Christian faith. The reasons for these changes include

• Liturgical worship (for Anglo-Catholics above all others) constrains certain choices of worship, style or infrastructure.
• Biblical. Unlike Mainline Protestants — and like many but not all Evangelical church plants — Biblical authenticity fidelity limits the cultural adaptation of the historic faith
• Catholic. Our interpretation of the Bible and the transmitted faith is shaped by the traditions of the undivided church from the first millennium.

One key difference for Anglo-Catholic (if not all Anglican) church planters is that there is a limit as to how much the medium drives the message.  While any church can benefit from modern marketing techniques (have a good website, think about how newcomers comprehend your service), I believe that leaders of young Anglo-Catholic parishes must remember that such technique must be subordinate to belief.

Not evangelical church planting examples of “success” are good role models. In his 2006 book, Stetzer admitted that his initial efforts were not really about Christianity:

When I planted Calvary Christian Church at the age of twenty-one, I must confess that the church was more about me than it was missional and spiritual. When I planted Millcreek Community Church and its daughter churches, we were more attractional than incarnational and not particularly theological or ecclesiological. (Planting Missional Churches, p. 4)

One can assume that there are other church planters who share this problem, but are less candid (or self-aware). For any church planter, there is the risk of focusing strictly on organizational success measures (like attendance and income).

Leveraging Anglican Church Planting Resources

Over the last few years, American Anglicans have been developing church planting resources. Anglican 1000 became Always Forward, and now each ACNA diocese is designating a canon for church planting.

The ACNA is also working with Titus Institute for Church Planting to provide consulting and training to Anglican parishes. Meanwhile, the ACNA bishop for Southern California (Bp. Keith Andrews of Diocese of Western Anglicans) has also recommended a CoE book — Mission-Shaped Church — which emphasizes the importance of domestic missionary activity.

However, there are two limitations of these materials. First, although Always Forward promises that it will “help plant gospel-centered, sacramental, missional churches throughout North America,” its view of such churches appears to be entirely Evangelical in its orientation. For example, its nine leaders all represent the Evangelical (or Charismatic) perspective within Anglicanism. For example, a recent blog post on diagnosing church health asks “How will you maintain passionate liturgical worship?”

Second, most of the church planting in the ACNA since its creation in 2006 has been re-planting disaffected Episcopalians into non-TEC pots. While this has been important for the success of the ACNA — and provided essential spiritual homes for Christians who could no longer abide the theological drift of the TEC — such replanting did not produce a net increase in the Body of Christ.

Within the ACNA, Anglo-Catholic church planting is largely confined to those Anglo-Catholic dioceses: the Diocese of Fort Worth, the Missionary Diocese of All Saints, and the dioceses of the Reformed Episcopal Church. Meanwhile, after decades of post-ECUSA maintenance mode, the Continuing Anglican churches are independently developing their own church planting approaches.

Going Forward

Supplementing what is missing from existing Protestant and Anglican resources has been a major goal of this task force.

To some degree, the books and manuals can be adapted by Anglo-Catholics, just as early Anglicans adapted materials by Baptists and Methodists. However, what we feel is missing is providing advice from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, in the form of mentoring and coaching.

The task force has identified potential resources for such advising, and looks forward to working with Anglo-Catholic church planters at any stage in their planting process.

References

Archbishop’s Council on Mission and Public Affairs. Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions in a Changing Context. 2nd ed., Church House Publishing, 2009.

Griffith, James. The 10 Most Common Mistakes Made by Church New Starts. Chalice Press, 2008.

Logan, Robert E. and Jeff Rast. Church Planting Workbook. Fuller Institute for Evangelism and Church Growth (1985).

Logan, Robert E. and Steven L. Ogne. Church Planter's Toolkit. Pasadena, CA: ChurchSmart Resources, 1995.

Ridley, Charles R. How to Select Church Planters: A Self-Study Manual for Recruiting, Screening, Interviewing and Evaluating Qualified Church Planters, Fuller Seminary, 1988.

Stetzer, Ed. Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply. B&H Publishing Group, 2006.

Stetzer, Ed and Daniel Im. Planting Missional Churches: Your Guide to Starting Churches that Multiply. 2nd ed., B&H Publishing Group, 2016.

See also Ed Stetzer’s (Christianity Today) 2009 bibliography of church planting books.

On Planting an Anglo-Catholic Parish

By Father Chris Culpepper

Of late, I have been asked by at least three different people, all of whom are friends and colleagues, who run in different circles, to write an article addressing why I am planting an anglo-catholic parish. To this point, I have resisted answering the call(s) because of my own internal perception of how this article will be received: arrogant by some, and deficient by others. So, perhaps ironically, this is why I have now put the proverbial pen to paper and make this offering with all humility.

But, before I go any further, it seems appropriate to offer a little of my background and experience. I grew up at St. Andrew’s parish in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Most are aware of Fort Worth by reputation as an anglo-catholic diocese, and those who are familiar with the inner-workings of the diocese know that St. Andrew’s is the 1928 Prayer Book, 39 Articles, Morning Prayer, Evangelical, “low-church” congregation, though I have grown a certain distaste for that last phrase, given that (at least among Evangelical parishes) St. Andrew’s has anything but a low view of the Church.

And, not only did I grow up at St. Andrew’s, but I also served on staff there for five years as its youth minister, learning to appreciate and respect the Anglican Communion as a whole, naturally with a bent toward Cranmer, Jewel, Luther, and Calvin, given the ethos of the parish, even though the latter two were not Anglicans. It was during my time on staff that my interest piqued in church-planting. With my first career being in retail leasing and development, planting seemed a natural fit for my skill set, so I regularly found myself attending church-planting workshops, when and where available.

However, from there I went to Nashotah House where, as I had hoped I would, given the trajectory I was already on toward the early Church I “grew through” the Reformation, soaking in the rest of the Church’s history, as it were. There, I drank from the waters of Aquinas and Augustine, understood Hooker in a new light, and gained a deeper and abiding appreciation for the Oxford Movement. What is more, I also developed an appreciation for the Conciliar Church, and in particular, the Undivided Church of the first 1,000 years including, of course, the Ecumenical Councils. It was through this journey that I found the deepest place of theological integrity one can find – the belief and practice of the Undivided Church, which is commonly called catholic Christianity. This occurred from the years 2002 – 2005. Upon graduating, I was priested on Holy Cross Day of 2005.

Fast forward from there to 2008, when the unfortunate, if logical, result of TEC abandoning the catholic faith and practice, precipitated in large part by the centuries-long, still on-going internal and un-reconciled divide between anglo-catholics and evangelicals, ironically yielded a kairos moment, at least for me. What to do? Rome, which remains in theological error due to its magisterium acting in an un-catholic manner concerning the establishment of its doctrine, was and is not an option. Orthodoxy, of course, is an option. Protestantism cannot be an option. Curiously, I found that I could maintain orthodoxy – and catholicity - within the Anglican Communion, quite frankly, because no one has yet to tell me I can’t, which remains an ironic impetus for planting within the Anglican Communion.

So, for the last 8 years of my life, I have been invested in planting anglo-catholic parishes. First, and still, I am planting Christ the Redeemer Anglican Church in Fort Worth, where I serve as rector. Along the way, I was given the delightful task of also planting Christ Church, Waco, where I spent the first five years as its vicar, before yielding the congregation into the capable hands of Fr. Lee Nelson, who currently serves as its vicar.

Therefore, I suppose, on to the why: why am I doing this? Specifically, why am I planting anglo-catholic parishes? Given what I have said, I suppose the short answer is that to do otherwise would be unfaithful. But, unfaithful to what, is the critical question: to my own opinion of myself, to my bishop, or to the Faith? The answer must ultimately be to the Faith.

It plagues me, and I think that is a good word for it, that we speak of anglo-catholicism as though it is a “stream” or a “strand” of theology. This implies that catholicity is deficient, or somehow incomplete, which it cannot be by definition. And, it implies that there are other equally valid streams of theology that, though they contain irreconcilable differences and even deficiencies, we are free to pick and choose from among them. Catholicity, as we know, means of the whole. Or, said another way that I have come to enjoy – here comes everyone! And, that is what I want my planting exercise to be, participating in what has been believed at all times, in all places, by all, to paraphrase Vincent. Even Abraham Lincoln understood our Lord’s words which tell us that a house divided against itself cannot stand. It is catholic Christianity that gives the Evangelical life its full conversional force. And, it is catholic Christianity that makes the fullness of the gifts and charisms of the Holy Spirit expressed, while also keeping it grounded in the fullness of Truth. Those who understand anglo-catholicism as “smells and bells” have simply missed the mark. While I appreciate and employ many of the rituals that accompany catholic theology, rituals cannot be confused with theology. Rather, ritual is but a faithful expression of catholic theology. In the end, it is theology that matters.

Said another way, clearly what we Anglicans have been doing – remaining doctrinally-divided over a set of Articles that has still not yet been submitted to the whole of the Church to prove their catholicity (or lack thereof) - has not worked, as the sweep of Anglican history, with its present, tragic downfall, plainly shows us. Neither will repeating the past by doubling-down on it get us any further. Therefore, I simply want to be counted among those who preached and practiced the Christian Faith with the highest degree of integrity, and the only place I can see the existence of that Faith is in what the Scriptures say, and what the Undivided Church says the Scriptures say. How can we say we believe and trust Holy Scripture but not the teaching of the undivided Catholic Church that gave us the canon of Scripture? This, in short, is my substantial motivation for planting, for it is within catholic Christianity that we have been saved, are being saved, and will be saved.

So, I ask myself, how could I do anything else? Could I be faithful and do anything else? In other words, my deepest hope is that the Anglican Communion will prepare itself for full communion with both Orthodoxy and Rome, which requires catholic-minded clergy preparing catholic-minded Christians properly formed in catholic parishes. Is not this what our Lord intercedes for us, the unity of His Church? Perhaps, it just so happens, that I am among those who has been given the opportunity to help the Anglican Communion have a fresh start, so to speak, as it undertakes the necessary internal reforms to correct its errors. Perhaps, even as I pray for my brother clergy who are working diligently within existing congregations for their welfare and renewal, I am simply among those who have been called to plant, to pioneer, to make a new place for people to hear catholic Christianity in a fresh way, that one day, we might truly be able to say as united Christians contending as one Body, with Christ himself as our Head, against the world, the flesh, and the devil, “Here comes everyone!”

And, in the end, as a sort of postlude, two things will happen, which give me great concern as a priest. First, I will leave parish life some day. God forbid that there would be any slack or lack because people were more given to my personality than the Faith. Therefore, it is my duty to practice and preach catholic Christianity. Secondly, one day I must give an account to Jesus for the work that I have done. What will I say? Somehow, I take comfort knowing that the Faith I dispensed to my flock will be judged as being part of the whole, rather than being somehow apart from the whole. This, I believe, is the essence of catholic Christianity. This, I believe, is the comfort of the Undivided Church. This, then, is where I take my stand as a priest and the reason I have given my ministry to the planting of catholic parishes in the Anglican Communion. May Christ grant us all the wit and the will to work for the fullness of the Faith and the unity of His Church.

Fr. Culpepper is the president of the FiFNA’s Church Planting Task Force.

Reprinted from Christopher Culpepper, “On Planting an Anglo-Catholic Parish,” Forward in Christ, 8, 3 (May 2016), pp. 23-24.

Anglo-Catholics as Evangelistic Church Planters

By Canon Lawrence D. Bausch
Special to VIRTUEONLINE
www.virtueonline.org
November 5, 2015

Anglo-Catholics are grateful for the significant role we have played in Anglican history, especially in reminding Anglicans that our church is an organic portion of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that was established by God's action in the first century. In previous centuries, we have participated mightily in missionary work, church planting and serving those in need, all centered on the glorification of Christ and His presence and action in the Sacraments. We have contributed to enriching our worship, restored the Religious Life to our church, reintroduced Retreats, Sacramental Confession and Spiritual Direction, and the riches of the personal prayer life from all ages of Christian history. We, as members of Forward in Faith North America (FIFNA) rejoice that we have a share in this wonderful heritage. However, we in North America are facing challenges to our continued participation in the fulness of this inheritance, and I would like to address one of these here: Church Planting.

Whether our FIFNA members are in TEC, ACNA, or one of the various continuing Anglican jurisdictions, we all face obstacles which can blind us to a vision of ministry which includes the importance of church planting. This situation is brought about by several reasons, three of which we will consider here. First, those of us who came into church life or ordained ministry a generation or more ago were largely brought into a church in which priests were primarily seen as chaplains to the faithful, whose job was to lead the faithful in worship, teach, and care for those in need. (Think of Fr. Tim in the delightful "Mitford" books, especially the early ones.) Church Planting was largely something determined by Dioceses, as "missions" became less often the work of local parishes. Mission to the unchurched was largely overlooked.

Second, those Anglicans who have been intentional in Church Planting over the last generation or more have most often been from the evangelical/charismatic elements of the church. Indeed, a "model church plant" has come to be perceived in many quarters as something most Anglo-Catholics would hardly recognize as church, most significantly in the use of language which defines worship as music, and where the actual celebration of the Eucharist becomes almost a sidebar to the music (and possibly the preaching). This distortion has led some to simply write off church planting, believing that it only serves to undermine what we believe and practice.

A third factor to consider is the understandable focus on simply preserving what we have. Many of our people are in parishes which perceive themselves to be "too small" to consider Church Planting, and struggle to keep what they have. Some serve in TEC dioceses in which they are permitted to teach and worship in their own tradition, but are essentially limited to their parish. (This number includes some who have been told by bishops that when their rector leaves or retires, things will change.)

In spite of these obstacles, the Gospel is clear that all Christians are called to be evangelistic, including support for Church Planting. Jesus has come out of love for all people, and we are His Body sent to reveal Him (Luke 2:29-32; 24:45-47, etc.). How then can Anglo-Catholics become good evangelists and support Church Planting? My first action upon my election to President of FIFNA was to appoint Fr. Chris Culpepper as Advisor to the President for Church Planting. He has started two congregations in the Diocese of Fort Worth, as well as advising other church planters in the Diocese and in the REC. He has recently formed a task force which will disseminate best practices in Anglo-Catholic Church Planting and provide individual coaching for leaders of future FIFNA congregations; more information is at the task force website at http://bit.ly/FIFNAcp. This ministry in support of the spread of the Gospel and the growth of the Church is crucial not only for Anglo-Catholics, but for the broader Apostolic and Conciliar Church.

One final note: It is a great joy to be able to report that the recent Church Planting leaders appointed for the ACNA by Archbishop Foley Beach, The Rev. Canon Dan Alger and The Rev Alan Hawkins, are incorporating two elements to the basic characteristics of Anglican church plants which FIFNA can heartily endorse: First, church plants need to be connected with the larger church; and second, they need to be sacramentally based. We are delighted that they share these concerns.

The Rev. Canon Lawrence D. Bausch is President, Forward in Faith North America