What does "Anglican" mean? This is a great, common, complicated question! First, let’s get this out of the way: It’s “ANGLican,” not “ANGELican.” We don’t worship angels! “Anglican” Means “English” Next, let’s go to Merriam-Webster. On its own, the word “Anglican” simply means “English”—“of or relating to England or the English nation.” When applied to a segment of the Christian [...]
Fasting is intuitively a bodily and a liturgical act. The Liturgical Year invites us to "days of discipline, denial, and special prayers" in Lent, Fridays outside of Christmastide and Eastertide, Rogation Days, and Ember Days (BCP, pg. 689). While intermittent fasting has recently been a diet fad, ordinarily fasting in our North American context is connected to the Church Year. [...]
I didn’t even remember the phone call. One evening when I was loafing around the house an Arabophone brother called me from a foreign country and had some questions about our small Arabophone fellowship, Kanisa. What did we believe? I answered: we had an evangelical orientation and confessed the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds. Did we belong to a particular denomination? [...]
Jesus teaches us how to pray by example and by explicit teaching. Embedded within the Sermon on the Mount written in the Gospel according to Matthew, there is an instruction from Jesus that seems to speak directly against repeating our prayers to God. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and [...]
Today is Easter Tuesday, the third day of Eastertide, which for Christians traditionally marks a period of fifty festal days. This past Sunday, Christians gathered across the country, dressed in their finest (or most comfy) and raised the roof with their hallelujahs. They likely greeted each other, through their digital screens, with shouts of “Christ is risen!”, to which others [...]
Now that the family is together every day and worship is virtual, families begin to wonder how to keep their children growing in the faith. Family devotions begin to seem more necessary. But how to begin? How to keep everyone’s attention? Maybe you’ve tried before, but things didn’t seem to work. You want family devotions to be a joyful family [...]
Are you at home for the Easter Vigil? We have created an webpage with a guided tour of the Great Vigil of Easter, BCP 2019, with music links for streaming. You can learn more about Holy Week and the Easter Vigil here. Visit the Great Vigil of Easter Page The liturgy normally assumes a church gathered, but this has been [...]
For the past three Sundays, we’ve joined Christians around the world in worshipping from our living rooms. As a mom of three children under five, it’s heartbreaking to see their disappointment at not being able to go to church. They miss church. Of course they miss it—so do I! On Palm Sunday, as we marched around the living room with [...]
Assist us mercifully with your grace, Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the meditation of those mighty acts by which you have promised us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. If you’ve ever had a [...]
O Lord our God, whose blessed Son gave his back to be whipped and did not hide his face from shame and spitting: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, [...]
Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the Cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with [...]
The Collect for Palm Sunday Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon himself our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also [...]
Earlier this week, the Evergreen Project hosted a panel of Rectors from Anglican churches in the US and Canada to talk about how they are navigating online worship and plans for this coming Holy Week & Easter. The webinar began with greetings from Archbishop Foley Beach who prayed for our Rectors and joined us for the entire presentation. He even [...]
This week, the Presbyterian theologian Carl Trueman reflected on what Christians ought to learn about ourselves and about the world from the COVID-19 pandemic. One thing, he says, seems obvious: “The levels of general panic indicate that few of us have been properly prepared for the reality of our own mortality.” Many Christians have reflected on the significance of the [...]
We recently received a question from a reader looking for "Good Friday liturgies that would work well for home worship," given the global COVID–19 pandemic. Greg Goebel pointed out that the 2019 BCP's Good Friday service could easily be adapted for use at home. If you're looking for liturgical materials for Holy Week and Easter, you should know that you [...]
Quite a few new priests have never officiated a funeral. We have had many requests for a simple overview, and we reached out to Fr. Lee Nelson for such a post. We also include a funeral planning guide that can be used to work with individuals and families in planning. This post assumes the ability to hold a public funeral [...]
What Day Is It? When a crisis hits, it’s easy to lose track of time. “What day is it today?” has been asked in our (virtual) office a lot this week. Our minds are all muddled, our senses are in overdrive, and our routines have been disrupted. This is why, even though I otherwise expected it, I was surprised when [...]
We are living through what is objectively the most widespread and devastating pandemic in living memory. As of March 19, most state and local authorities are banning meetings of more than 50 people, and President Trump has counseled, along with many public health officials, that people not gather in groups of 10 or more. John Inazu has recently written that [...]
The Anglican Church in North America's 2019 Book of Common Prayer is available for free online here. However, I've heard that people are looking for an easy-to-navigate bookmarked PDF. (Granted, an app or something like http://www.bcponline.org/ would be better! But for now a PDF must suffice.) Special thanks are due to Matthew Heflin, who took the time to go through [...]
Editor’s Note: You can listen to this Ash Wednesday Sermon on Restoration Anglican Church’s podcast. The life of Jesus is marked by healing. We marvel at the messiah as he travels through Galilee and Judea performing miracle after miracle, bringing wholeness and restoration to those who feel broken. Does the solemn reminder of mortality we receive at the outset of [...]
“The Psalms are the single best guide to the spiritual life currently in print.” – Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God “The Psalms are inexhaustible, and deserve to be read, said, sung, chanted, whispered, learned by heart, and even shouted from the rooftops. They express all the emotions we are ever likely to feel (including some we hope we may [...]
I belong to the generation that no one appears to understand: The Millennials. We have been referred to by the “e” word (entitled), and some spend thousands to purchase books and attend conferences in an attempt to understand this “everyone gets a trophy” generation. It’s pretty wild. We are the generation that grew up with the rise and transformation of [...]
Despite its focus on repentance, Lent is no exception to the gracious focus of all Scripture—Jesus Christ himself. Scripture is always about redemption. How should we read Scripture in Lent? Before we look at that question, we have to lift a few burdens. First, not all of us are expert Bible scholars, and that’s okay. As the Church Father Tertullian [...]
Learning to Love Lent The very first time I gave anything up for Lent, I did it with a desperate heart: not sure what I needed, not sure what I wanted, and not sure what the whole thing was about anyway. I was raising and homeschooling three growing children, teaching literature at my homeschool co-op, running 30+ miles a week, [...]
