Anglican Church League
Address given by the Rev. Phillip Jensen
Rector of St. Matthias Centennial Park, and Chaplain to the University of New South Wales
Sydney Synod Dinner 26th October 2001
It is a privilege to speak on the platform of the Anglican Church League.
“The ACL is an association” whose aim is “to maintain the reformed, protestant and evangelical character of the Anglican Church.
This character is based on Scripture and is expressed in the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion.”
These are sentiments with which I concur completely. The Anglican Church is by its formularies and constitution by the BCP and Thirty-nine articles “reformed protestant and evangelical”. It is incumbent upon us who are true Anglicans and Evangelicals to do all we can to maintain the reformed protestant and evangelical character of the Anglican Church.
To this end I hope you will work with us and continue to vote in accordance with the recommendations of our Council and not to split the evangelical vote.
My topic is An Evangelical Agenda, and the ‘agenda’ I wish to speak of is ‘evangelical church planting’.
My views are not necessarily those of the League. They are more a challenge to the League from a faithful member of the League.
By ‘church planting’ I am not talking of the legislation we passed last year about recognising churches. That legislation was about recognising churches that had already been planted or helping us to recognise non-parochial churches. The churches that legislation was concerned with were evangelistic in purpose to reach minority groups, ethnic groups, special interest groups and the like. It was to make it easier for new congregations to be established and recognised in our diocese without the burden of starting with the property concerns. It was to clarify our definition of church as being about attendance rather than property ownership, or parochial boundaries. However it is important to note that the recognised churches were explicitly and specifically identified as not having a theological distinctive.
Church planting is an evangelical agenda because every evidence we have is that new churches, grow faster, reach new people and outsiders more effectively. More people in a community are reached by an increase in the number of churches rather than by having larger churches. Growing the large mega churches may have certain benefits but will not reach more people in the community. More people will be reached by having more churches - especially new first generation church plants.
However it is not even church planting in this sense that I wish to speak tonight. Rather I want to challenge the League to tackle the issue of church planting in other people’s parishes and dioceses for theological reasons as an Evangelical Agenda.
Remember I am not speaking on behalf of the League. These are not the views of the League or its office bearers - though obviously I wish they were their views.
Let me tell you why am I raising this issue as an Evangelical Agenda.
Recently I spoke with a fine evangelical minister from another diocese. He had served more than five years as a curate. He believed the BCP and the 39 Articles. He was a well educated articulate interesting man, personable, humble warm. His life is conformed to the gospel - there are no questions over his personal morality or his psychological health and well-being. Yet he cannot gain a call to the ministry as a rector in the Anglican Church - A church which is desperately short of able ministers of the gospel. A church which is unable to reach the community with the gospel. A church which is racked by heresy and immorality.
He is not an isolated case. His experience comes at the point of finding his first charge. Others I know could not find a job as a curate. Still others could not pass the selection process of the dioceses, to even be accepted as candidates for ordination. There is a place for being careful about whom our Bishops lay their hands on in ordination, care that is exercised here in Sydney as well, but I am not talking about that care - I am talking about its abuse. - where gospel hearted preachers are being excluded on irrelevant grounds, or worse still, because they are gospel hearted! It is not that anyone is saying he is not suitable or he is banned. He has not got the Moore College stigma upon him, whereby bishops will say he is unacceptable to us because he comes from Sydney. This man does not come from Sydney, and has never been to Moore College.
His exclusion comes from the abuse of the parish and diocesan system.
Dividing the world into parishes and dioceses is a useful strategy for reaching the world with the gospel and making sure that every person has somebody responsible for them and has a ministry of the gospel readily available to them. It also challenges us to accept and fellowship with all sorts and conditions of men not just the ones we like or can get on with but whoever lives in our neighbourhood - Jew, Gentile, Barbarian, Greek, free or slave. It is also a good strategy in rural areas, in village and outer suburban lifestyle though it has always been fairly meaningless in inner city and urban dwelling.
However the Bible does not mandate that the world must be divided into parishes and dioceses or that there can be only one church in each city or suburb. More importantly, the system is only defensible as a demarcation of responsibility - never of rights and privileges. The English system of parochial livings for the younger sons of the wealthy was an appalling example of the abuse of the parish system.
But the Parochial system, at its best, has an important presupposition that has long been lost and ignored. It assumes uniformity. A uniformity of theology and of gospel, of ministry and of church life. Restricting our ministries to one side of a road or a river or some other such artificial barrier and boundary can only make sense when we have confidence that the people on the other side of the boundary are being offered the same gospel.
When, however, the gospel is being denied to people on the other side of the railway tracks our obligation as evangelicals to all people will not allow us to remain silent.
But who determines whether the gospel is being preached across the boundary? Who determines it and on what basis is is determined? It has to be more than we do not like the minister, or we find his manner off-putting, or his personal relationships defective, or his leadership style stifling. There have to be some objective criteria of acceptable ministry that can be applied to explain why a particular ministry is acceptable or unacceptable.
That is what the BCP and the 39 Articles are about. If that ministry that is being exercised - the truths of the Articles being taught (however effectively or ineffectively) then there is no good theological reason for somebody else to venture into that parish or diocese. If however the Articles or the BCP are being denied then there is an obligation on Christians to provide an alternative ministry for the people of that parish or diocese.
But, of course, in a post modern world no one denies the Articles or BCP - we just reinterpret it. You do not even have to wait for the post modern world, for reinterpreting was the very nature of the Tracts of Newman and the Tractarians. I must confess to little lack of sympathy for traditional Anglo Catholics in their resentment of revisionist liberal bishops like Jack Spong when their whole movement was built on exactly the same kind or revisionism in the 19th century that they complain of happening to them in the twentieth. They taught the liberals catholics how to transform a denomination, away from its theological basis - they should not be surprised that their own grandchildren have done it to them.
I know that they now want us to work together with them and at certain points we have more in common with each other than either of us have with the liberals - but yet we do not share the same theology and our attempts to build some united future are doomed by irreconcilable differences.
If no-one is denying but just revising, if everyone is right and true Anglicanism is the acceptance of a seemingly infinite plurality of views. - then it is never right to preach the gospel in another parish or diocese. That of course is the ultimate triumph of Liberalism
However there is another way to test the waters. There is the question of who is acceptable as your rector and in your pulpit?
Holding different views is never much of a long term barrier to gospel preaching. Differing views are not a problem until they are incarnated into actions. But once incarnated they create a barrier to gospel preachers.
What do I mean by views that are incarnated? By incarnated I mean a view which is expressed in some physical action.
Infant baptism is a view that is incarnated. If you will not baptism an infant you cannot be a rector for Anglicanism requires you to baptise babies. Therefore if the Anglican Church refuses to ordain and licence a gospel preacher because of his views on infant baptism it should not complain or be surprised if he chooses to preach the gospel outside Anglicanism in somebody elses’ parish or diocese. We have made the decision that this is an important distinctive those who disagree will have to find another fellowship in which to minister.
However, over time, the Anglican distinctives - the BCP and 39 Articles - have been bypassed by a whole range of other incarnated markers. The Tractarians were particularly effective in incarnating their message. So they reintroduced into the Anglican forms of church life - sacerdotal markers (chasubles, perpetual lights, reservation of the sacraments, crucifixes, genuflections, mass language, the Agnes Dei, etc.). These then became the essential boundary markers of a parish or diocese. No one could minister there unless he was willing to wear these robes to conduct the service in this fashion etc. There were created therefore - “no go zones” - churches which would not accept an evangelical minister because he would not act in this tractarian fashion, and churches that would not accept tractarians because they would act in a tractarian fashion.
This was the destruction of the parish system.Independent Anglican churches were planted, people left Anglicanism to go where they could hear the gospel, others travelled across parish boundaries. But for many people, especially in remote areas - or in dioceses which were controlled by one persuasion there was no alternative but to leave or conform.
Most wanted to go the easy way of not to high or too low - just middle of the way. But still ministers were chosen by their willingness to adopt the practice of the current churchgoing congregations which had possession of the buildings, rather than by their faithfulness to their ordination vows to minister to the all parishioners in accordance with the BCP and the 39 Articles. So even in Sydney, where tractarian innovations were declared illegal, there were still the no go areas - where to minister in this parish you had to be willing to wear a stole or face in certain directions during parts of the liturgy, etc.
In one sense I have no difficulty with a ‘congregation’ conducting their church life in their own chosen fashion - but these are not ‘congregations’ these are ‘parishes’, with the responsibility for the ministry of the gospel to all who live within their boundaries. When congregations hold the door key to the ministry of the gospel for the whole parish - and yet refuse a gospel minister because he will not conform to their particular pattern of ministry they are no longer functioning as the parish church.
When that pattern of ministry is not in accordance with the formularies - but are in addition to the formularies or worse are a denial of the formularies - then that congregation forfeits its place as the parish church.
The minister who is refused the pulpit because he believes and ministers in accordance with the formularies is, in my view, quite entitled to preach the gospel there and plant a new church there - and I would even suggest to the ACL - be recognised by other Anglicans as a genuine Anglican.
Today, the boundary markers have moved again. No longer is it just what the minister will wear or what he will add or subtract from the prayer book. In some sense that is past fixing we have already allowed division into our diocese and between dioceses that will not be altered.
But new boundary markers are being used to exclude evangelical ministers from occupying pulpits, both inside and outside our diocese.
Archbishop Robinson rightly protested at the General Synod, that allowing the ordination of women to the priesthood would impair our communion. People did not take him seriously or understand his language. What does it mean to impair communion? Well friends we now have it - people who are priests in one diocese who across the road in another diocese are deacons. People who constitutionally and legally are not able to become rectors in one diocese but who are rectors in another diocese.
But there are other less constitutional impairments to our communion. There is the Alpha Course - my friend has been rejected by several parishes because he does not approve of the Alpha Course. There is the issue of women preaching - he has been refused several parishes because he has reservations about women preaching. There is the charismatic movement - he has been turned away from other parishes because they want someone who is open to charismatic renewal. And of course, he has been turned away from parishes that want an open stance on the homosexuality issue.
You may approve or disapprove of any or all of these emphases in ministry, and disagree totally with my friend. That is not the point I am discussing here. You may be a pro homosexual pro women ordination pro charismatic Alpha course user. For the sake of this talk I have no disagreement with you. However none of these views are incumbent on a Anglican minister and if they are a prerequisite to be the rector of your church - then your church is not functioning as a parish church of the Anglican Church of Australia - even if you have possession of the parish church building. And, if you refuse a minister on any of these grounds, don’t complain if he choses to plant a church in your parish or diocese.
Evangelicals are committed to making the gospel known to every one. Whenever people have taken this evangelistic commitment seriously, it has meant preaching in and out of season - where people want us and where they do not want us. Wesley and Whitefield in their day crossed parish boundaries even declaring the whole world as a parish. There is nothing new or strange in evangelicals being forced by their concern for the lost to ignore the constraints of men and institutions to preach the Saviour. There is nothing new or strange in being persecuted reviled and disliked for doing it either. What is new and strange is evangelicals ever accepting no-go zones for gospel ministry.
We must not accept exclusion from Anglican pulpits. If we are not acceptable because of what we believe then we need to go anyway. Similarly, if we refuse people because of what they believe we should expect them to come and plant a church anyway. If people do not want us planting churches in their patch then invite us into their pulpits and let us minister in the parishes or in their dioceses.
It is a fairly simple rule of thumb - once you reject someone for theological reasons (not just because there is someone you deem better - but because you theologically disagree with them) then you must accept the reality that they may plant a church in your area.
Here is “An Evangelical Agenda” that I want the ACL to consider -
For too long we have been excluded from Anglican pulpits. In too many dioceses we are now excluded from Anglican pulpits. Within our own diocese there is an increasing number of non-Anglican boundary markers -which can be used against evangelicals.
If this way of excluding evangelical ministry gospel ministry, genuinely Anglican reformed protestant ministry, from Anglican parish ministry continues, will the ACL support the growing evangelical independent church planting movement, will you recognise the Anglican ministers who have been forced outside the denomination, will you work to recognise these churches as part of the Anglican family?
Phillip Jensen is the Rector of St. Matthias, Centennial Park, in Sydney, and Chaplain to the University of New South Wales.
He is also an Emeritus Vice-President of the Anglican Church League.
Document added Monday, 29 October 2001.
URL of this document - http://www.acl.asn.au/pdj_dinner2001.html