For many years, I attended a church that called itself a "Bible church." I really loved it and am thankful for everything I received there. But many years later I started to reflect on what exactly that name means. What does it mean to claim that your church is biblical, a "Bible church"? First of all, it (at least implicitly) [...]
Editor's note: Here at Anglican Pastor, we feature content from low church to high church, as long as it's written with both clarity and charity. Even if you would never consider an "ad orientem" Holy Communion in your own church, I invite you to read about how and why Fr. Ben Jefferies has made the switch in his parish. It comes [...]
For the last two years, I’ve been teaching Scripture, theology, and ethics at a small Christian high school that shares space with a local church. It took me a year and a half to realize that, on one of my classroom walls, half-hidden behind a filing cabinet and obscured beneath a coat of paint, was a Bible verse, written in [...]
NOTE: If you're looking for a Collect for Father's Day, consider this one, written by Fr. Bryan Owen at Creedal Christian: O Lord our God, creator of heaven and earth, through your Son Jesus Christ you have revealed yourself as a heavenly Father to all of your children. Bless, we pray, all earthly fathers. Strengthen them to nurture, protect, and [...]
The sixth Sunday of Eastertide, known as Rogation Sunday, is a day that Anglican pastors should get dirt on their vestments. This is not only encouraged, it’s expected. The psalmist said ‘all flesh is like grass,’ so it’s good that the people of God walk along grass in worship and praise a few times a year. Rogation Days are a [...]
For the first two years of my life at college, I slept in late on Sundays. There was a hole in my heart I couldn’t seem to fill by partying on Friday and Saturday night, but Sunday service wasn’t the answer. The local church was just a place for people to come and be fake together. As a college student [...]
One of the earliest guides for pastors, the Book of Titus, tells a church leader to address drinking problems in the church, to instruct people "not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine" (Titus 2:3). The need hasn't changed much. The National Institutes of Health estimate that 17.6 million people—about one in every 12 adults—abuse alcohol or are alcohol [...]
The following quote is from Stanley Hauerwas’ book Resident Aliens. It has hung in my office for years and I find myself reading on many occasions. As a college chaplain, I am often thinking about how to talk to my students about church; what it is, what it isn’t, why they need to be a part of it, and how [...]
In Anglican circles we all too often find ourselves dealing with the issue (sin) of gossip—spreading rumors and reports about others without first confirming the facts. Recently, Archbishop Foley Beach addressed this issue on the ANCA website in an article titled, “A Christian Code of Ethics for Using Social Media.” He states: Most of us have done it!! We have [...]
Mother's Day sermons, at least in certain circles, can be a bit controversial. After all, Mother's Day is not a liturgical holiday, an official part of the Church calendar. So, should you preach Mother's Day sermons? In a word, yes. This year (2020), let me say it even more strongly, “You’d better!” (For all of our Anglican Compas content on preaching, go [...]
Motherhood is one of the most fundamental human roles, given by God and knit into our DNA. Hallmark’s calendar doesn’t dictate our preaching, but this particular holiday seems worth some attention. Some Mother's Day Sermon tips are listed below and can be developed into whole sermons; others are just words of advice. Use this list to re-imagine how you could approach [...]
The horrific fire at Notre-Dame de Paris on Monday has captured many of us. Nearly every tourist who has been to France has visited it. Nearly everyone who has an image of Paris has Notre Dame at the center. Seemingly floating on the Île de la Cité, it actually is at the heart, sectioned off and yet pulsing through the [...]
It was a sunny day in Glasgow and the preacher was speaking to thousands of people in one of the large parks of the city. I had attended with a number of friends from a Christian campus ministry in Edinburgh where I was working on my PhD in Divinity (focus, World Christianity. Shameless plug: buy the book.) The preacher in [...]
I work with college students and so, like it or not, I have to deal with social media. Over the years, I have resisted being saturated in the world of the ghost, the gram, the book, and the bird, but my tech-savvy students keep dragging me back into virtual spaces I find nearly impossible to keep up with. I wish [...]
The pub nearest me has festooned itself with green, orange, and white bunting. My doctor’s waiting room is plastered with cardboard shamrocks that say LUCKY. McDonald’s has brought back (for a limited time) its Shamrock Shake. Yes, my friends, it’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, and since this year [2019] that falls on a Sunday, we might consider, “Should we preach [...]
I'm busy planning out my personalized Lent. I need to decide what to give up. I need to decide what to give away. I need to pick books to read and do things that are tailored to my own personal, spiritual needs. Lent arrives soon. Am I ready? There are so many choices to make. Or are there? A Traditional [...]
“We’ve never been here before.” This is a sentiment I encounter frequently in other priests in the Anglican Church in North America. As churches throughout America shut their doors, culture perpetually changes, politics fray, tensions rise, and faith declines, I share the feeling. This current moment in the religious landscape of the secular West is taking us to a new [...]
The Church needs to see more Christians faithfully walking out lifetime singleness for the sake of the kingdom (AKA "celibacy"). That witness helps the Church grasp the hope of the gospel and begin living into the reality of the kingdom today. No witness to this hope is more moving than that of Christ himself. Jesus and Paul teach that singleness [...]
In the early 2000’s, about four years into my ministry as an Anglican Priest, I started to seriously doubt my leadership capacities and probably came close to slipping into depression. I had been working in a series of financially struggling parishes with small congregations. Although I’d been given pretty good formation as a “minister of word and sacrament,” I hadn’t [...]
Ever since the Mayflower set sail from England, the idea of escaping a corrupt world to build a godly society has been an ever-present strain in American religion. That impulse has led to more than a few schisms since the days of the Puritans, creating the multi-denominational, patchwork America that we know today. Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option: A Strategy [...]
You have heard of the supposed War on Christmas. But the real war is not about whether retailers use the word Christmas during December or not. In fact, it is not even the Christmas season until Christmas day anyway. The real war is happening in many American churches. It's not a war on Christmas, its a war on Advent, and [...]
In the conservative Christian movement, we hear and talk a lot about liberal or progressive heresies. But those heresies are the low-hanging fruit of theology. That is, it's easy to point out that universalism, denying Christ's divinity, re-writing sexual ethics to conform with popular whim, or turning the Bible into a secondary historic curiosity with no authority are heresies. Those [...]
