Introduction Few preachers in the Patristic Church are as admired and enduring as John Chrysostom.[1] Born in A.D. 349, John developed a love for the written word that his mentor, Diodore, heavily influenced. In response to the rising trend of allegorical interpretation, Diodore and his apprentice emphasized that the Bible should be taken in its…
Compline: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Compline as Night Prayer Many of us are accustomed to saying a quick prayer before bed. The church has a formal tradition of doing this called Compline, the final of four prayer times collectively called the Daily Office in the Book of Common Prayer. Unlike the two principal offices, Morning and Evening Prayer, Compline (as…
Full Circle with Anglican Compass: The Editor’s Story
Becoming the editor of Anglican Compass was a full-circle experience. It’s possible that I wouldn’t be an Anglican without Anglican Compass, much less have been ordained a priest in this tradition. I spent my first 34 years in Southern Baptist churches, after all. Only God could have orchestrated the journey that led me to the…
Evening Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Evening Prayer can be a great way to transition from the busy rhythms of work or school into a more restful, reflective last chapter of the day. Multiple authors have explained the value of such prayer for finding God, emotional stability, and even verse memorization. Like all our offices of daily prayer, it can be…
Grief in the Psalms
How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? Psalm 13:1 Psalm 13 captures the heavy heart of Lent in this somber passage. Alone with his grief, the Psalmist cries out for God to see him. Similarly, Psalm 22 begins, “My God, My God, why have…
Emotional Stability in the Daily Office
Stability is required in any relationship. This is no less true for our Divine relationship than it is for our human ones. Just as marriages fail if fueled only by emotional highs, so Christians who live their lives seeking ecstatic experiences soon burn out. As a teenager and young man, I was seeking these Divine…
Explaining Our New Prayer Book
When the first Book of Common Prayer was released on Pentecost in the year 1549, it was such a shock to the liturgical and theological intuitions of some portions of the Church in England that riots and rebellions broke out over the matter. Especially in Norfolk and in Devon, and most memorably in the city…
The Way of the Cross: An Invitation to Holy Week
Holy Week is the high mark of the church’s liturgical year. In it, we celebrate Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem, from his arrival on Palm Sunday to his death on Good Friday. Then, we celebrate his resurrection on Easter Sunday, with all the momentous events in between. There are many ways to commemorate the week,…
An Introduction to The Daily Office Podcast
Finding time for prayer can be really difficult. I’m an Anglican priest (which means I pray for a living, right?), and I know that as well as anybody. It feels like, as our culture of work takes over our lives more and more, we have to fight tooth and nail to spend time with the…
How to Pray the Collect Way: Let’s Go Deeper than Grocery List Prayers
You pray more often than you realize Prayer is far more common than we realize, that is, if we take the meditations of the Book of Psalms as a guide. There we encounter the Bible’s own prayerbook but what we discover often are meanderings and ponderings of the one praying. We might call these prayers…
AWANA Burnout? How the Daily Office Helped Me Love Scripture Memorization Again
What do Pioneers, Native Americans, a strange stick figure called Sparkie, Little bear Cubs, and Scripture memorization have in common? AWANA!—at least if you grew up in some churches in the early to late 90s. AWANA indelibly shaped my experience of church and early Christian formation. Every Wednesday night, I would get walloped by dodgeballs,…
