Friday morning I woke up buzzing. This is “not normal” for me at the end of the working week. I was buzzing about the Anglican Church. This, in part by my own fault, is for me, not merely “not normal”, it is a something I had missed for quite some time. A member of Archbishop’s Council and General Synod summed-up how I have been feeling in her recent resignation statement,
“…as a corporate body [the Church of England has] become unable to articulate the reality of sin, repentance and forgiveness- without this message we do not teach a true gospel and people do not get saved”.
That is not the sort of stuff to make you wake-up buzzing about the Church on a Friday.
But this Friday was the morning after the night before - the night of the first Anglican Mission in England ordinations.
For those of us who have longed for an Anglicanism where, as Paul Simon would say “You can call me Al”- BiblicAL, HistoricAL, GlobAL, EpiscopAL and MorAL and who have been “unchurched” by capitulation to an agenda of “good disagreement” and plural truth, it was all there. A new Anglican home.
Biblical throughout- not least in the preaching of the Reverend Rico Tice as he presented King Jesus in all authority, over all nations, in all truth and for all time.
Historical- rooted in the 1662 liturgy with the same charge that has been given to ordinands for centuries.
Global- with prayers and greetings from four GAFCON Primates and in the presence of four representatives of the Anglican Church of North America.
Episcopal- led by Bishop Andy Lines four bishops ordained the men and did so alongside a phalanx of “other presbyters” with bishops of at least three other Anglican churches in attendance.
Moral- we were warned that the Lord will not go with any church in mission that does not strive for purity.
As we had been reminded in prayer on the Thursday evening Christians live with the sure and certain hope of going home to glory. It is a home where people of every tribe and language and people and nation gather around the throne of the lamb who was slain and proclaim his glory in truth. Thursday evening was a foretaste of that eternal home. That is why I was buzzing come Friday.
I didn’t notice him at first - he was sitting on his own at the underground station, slightly hunched over and absorbed in his thoughts.
“It’s a home he said, isn’t it? It’s a home”.
One of the best known conservative evangelicals in England was sat on an East End tube platform talking about the hope of home because he too had been at the AMiE ordinations.