Installation at Holy Apostles in Elizabethtown

Sorry it's taken so long to post the video.

Installation of Fr. Chris Larimer from Fr. Chris Larimer on Vimeo.

This is my installation as rector of Holy Apostles Anglican Church in Elizabethtown, KY. The officiant was the Right Reverend John A. M. Guernsey, Bishop of the Diocese of the Holy Spirit (Anglican Church in North America).

Unfortunately, we ran out of memory just after the Gospel, so you missed out on his sermon. But you don't have to miss out on anything else! Worship with us at 10AM on the Public Square.

Learn more at http://holyapostlesky.org

Letter from Abp. Duncan

A PASTORAL LETTER ON STEWARDSHIP AND THE ANGLICAN CHURCH

TO ALL THE MEMBERS AND FRIENDS OF
THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church in North America boldly proclaim that "the people of God are the chief agents of the mission of the Church" and that "the fundamental agency of mission in the Province is the local congregation." Ours is a church whose focus is on converted individuals in multiplying congregations. Ours is a church also built on the tithes of the faithful: the household to the local congregation, the local congregation to the diocese, the diocese to the Province.

Tithing and Discipleship

God led us to build our Province on committed disciples, the local congregations and the tithe: all for the purpose of reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Holy Scriptures caused us to do things this way. We had (and have) a special stake in basing the whole of our life on the direction Scripture gives. While it is only one aspect of discipleship, imagine what God could do through us if all of us tithed! No congregation would any longer be "short," no diocese would lack for funds for new works, and the Province would rightly live within the tithes sent to it. We need to start challenging one another about this at the local level. God promises (Malachi 3: 8-10) to open the windows of heaven if we cease to "rob Him" and give Him our "full tithes."

If you are not already doing so, this would be a great year to take the leap. The tithe to your local congregation is the beginning point. If not yet tithing, even to move a percentage point a year over the next several years will make an amazing difference, both to the Church at every level, and most significantly to your own personal relationship with God.

Extra Mile Giving

Our Church, like Scripture itself, also teaches that the tithe is the beginning of our giving. Many of us give more than a tithe - Nara and I do so. It is all about thanksgiving to the Lord for what He has done. Some give to a point of sacrifice. They are among my heroes. Jesus and the apostolic Church most often teach either 50/50 or 100 per cent giving. Most of us who heard our friend Dr. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church speak to us at our Inaugural Assembly cannot forget the witness he and his wife make in giving away 90 percent of their income and just keeping 10 per cent. He is actually not alone in this practice that only a few can undertake, but most of us can stretch farther than we do. Pray and ask the Savior what He wants of you.

Our Provincial budget is based on the tithe of our dioceses, just as diocesan budgets are based on the tithes of their congregations. When all our local congregations get to right order, and all our dioceses get there too, we are convinced that the Province will well be able to live within these tithes for our annual operations. We have a distance to go before all our members are Biblical tithers. So at present we have a gap. For several years we know that we will have to ask some of our people and some of our congregations to "go the extra mile" beyond their tithe to help meet Provincial needs. This is not the long-term picture.

The Provincial Gap and Extra Mile Fund

The very good news is that we are almost half of the way to where we need to be to fund the base-line Provincial work. That is quite an accomplishment given the fact that the Province was only birthed 16 months ago! For now I need to ask for "extra-mile" giving to fill the gap.

At the August Executive Committee meeting an "Extra Mile Fund" was established to stand alongside "the Founders' Fund." Gifts to each - beyond your tithe to your own parish - will make it possible for our Province to be well launched in these "gap" years in which I will be serving you as first archbishop. Parishes that are able are also asked to consider gifts - beyond their diocesan tithe - to the Extra Mile or Founders' Funds.

Individuals and parishes are asked to consider a direct gift to the Province this year, and perhaps during several of the next years. We do not yet have all our households and congregations tithing, but as discipleship improves the need will diminish. This is the Archbishop's gap appeal. Individual and parish gifts directed for the ACNA of up to $10,000 will be credited to the Extra-Mile Fund. Gifts over $10,000 will be credited to the Founders' Fund. We need some $480,000 for this year's operation on top of the $900,000 already committed by dioceses, parishes and individuals. Please remember that the Province is providing both direct and subsidiary support to 20 Dioceses and more than 640 congregations in North America.

Help me, please, in these "gap" years to be your archbishop and do what the Provincial Council believes is essential. We started a year ago as a Province and have come a very great distance. For the long-haul, tithe and teach the tithe and the windows of heaven will be open for your parish, your diocese and our province, as well.

God bless you each and every one.

Faithfully in Christ,

Archbishop and Primate

[1] Canon I. 10, Section 1
[1] Constitution Article IV, point 1.
[1] Canon I. 9, Section 1 and Canon I. 10, Section 2, point 5.
[1] Typical are Lk 3:11; Lk 12:33-34; Acts 2:44-45; Acts 5:40-42; Lk 9:23-24.

P.S.

If you wish to be part of the Extra Mile Fund there are two ways to make a contribution:



You can send a check payable to:
Anglican Church in North America
800 Maplewood Ave.
P.O. Box 447
Ambridge, PA 15003

Please note in Memo section: "Extra Mile Fund"

Or contribute online at : http://anglicanchurch.net/?/main/donate

Foley Beach and Robert Grosseteste

I'm in Atlanta for the consecration of Dr. Foley Beach to the holy episcopate. It's an exciting day for me because this is also the Feast of St. Robert Grosseteste. Grosseteste was an Oxford scholar and pastor before he was appointed bishop of Lincoln. After his episcopal consecration, he surprised his diocese by actually taking the lead in caring for the priests and parishioners under his care. He visited the rural deaneries (way out in the country) and taught the clergy at diocesan synods. Instead of simply making decrees from his episcopal seat and hoping they would be carried out, he visited parishes and told the clergy why certain decisions were made. He refused to admit men to livings (pastoral appointments with a certain income) if he knew they would be sub-letting their cure (paying a poor curate to perform their pastoral duties). That form of abuse was rampant in the medieval church, but Grosseteste even refused to admit a nephew of the pope to a living when he saw that the man was unfit.

Auspiciously, today the Anglican Church is again being given a bishop who is a faithful pastor, a stalwart defender of the faith, a capable teacher, and a true pastor to pastors in raising Foley Beach to the Sacred Order of Bishops. He is surrounded by people who can testify to his commitment to see people's lives changed for the sake of the Gospel. He maintains a full teaching / speaking role even while serving as rector of a growing church. And he has discipled so many young men in their role as presbyters in the Church of God. I couldn't be happier to be here. I couldn't be happier to be part of this movement.

Let all faithful Anglicans thank God for the example of Robert Grosseteste, and his spiritual heir, Foley Beach.

Holy God, our greatest treasure, you blessed Hugh and Robert, Bishops of Lincoln, with wise and cheerful boldness for the proclamation of your Word to rich and poor alike: Grant that all who minister in your Name may serve with diligence, discipline and humility, fearing nothing but the loss of you and drawing all to you through Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you in the communion of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Confessional Anglicanism is our Future

Some people allege that the Anglican Church in North America is hopelessly theologically muddled, a mere 20-year reset button on TEc, and an overly-diverse group that will fly apart as soon as the common threat of pansexualism is absent.

Archbishop Duncan says PHOOEY on that...we're in this together to confess Christ together, and our vision is still the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement.

A New Prayer Book

I have a feeling that some of the AC-NA folks are going to be really upset no matter what form the prayer book revision takes. Let's hope it's received better than the BCP was received in Scotland!

Marburg redux? LCMS & ACNA explore relations

While it's no Colloquy of Marburg, an exciting turn of events is happening within the LCMS. In the context of exploring "altar and pulpit" fellowship with other confessional Lutheran bodies, the synod also explored similar overtures toward the Anglican Church in North America. I imagine that this will take some time, and be very carefully pursued given that some in ACNA ordain women (LCMS does not) and some in ACNA have a bare receptionist position on the Lord's Table (most don't) and then the Anglo-Catholics could make a big deal about the episcopate. So plenty to resolve...but I'm happy to see the stirrings toward evangelical unity. My sincere desire is that instead of seeking union with Rome, our communion moves steadily toward those who embraced reformed (i.e. Biblical) catholicism, then extend outward toward the children of the Reformation within the Latin Rite.

CofE General Synod Affirms ACNA

from ACNA:

Today, the General Synod, the national assembly of the Church of England, meeting in London February 8-12, affirmed the Anglican Church in North America’s desire “to remain within the Anglican family.”

The Most Rev. Robert Duncan, archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, thanked Mrs. Lorna Ashworth of Chichester for bringing the church to the attention of the General Synod. “We are very grateful to Mrs. Ashworth and the scores of other friends in the Synod of the Church of England for all they did to give us this opportunity to tell our story to the mother church of the Anglican Communion. It is very encouraging that the synod recognizes and affirms our desire to remain within the Anglican family.” said Archbishop Duncan.

A private member’s motion, put forward by Mrs. Ashworth, and subsequently amended by the Synod, states that “this synod…recognize and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family.” The motion passed by a resounding 309 – 69 margin (with seven abstentions).

The motion was amended by the Right Reverend Michael Hill, the Bishop of Bristol. His purpose, in his own words, was “(1) to encourage those who are part of the Anglican Church in North America; (2) to commend the process of recognition afforded by the Instruments of the Anglican Communion; and (3) to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to report progress back to Synod in a year’s time.”

The discussion at Synod presented an important opportunity for members of the Anglican Church in North America, joined by many friends in the United Kingdom, to share the vision and mission of the church with fellow Anglicans. “We are deeply thankful that we were given the opportunity to tell the Synod about our church, and our vision for reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. This chance to speak directly to our Anglican family was very rewarding. We look forward to working with the friends we made and reaching out to others in the years ahead,” said Bishop Donald Harvey, who, with Mrs. Cynthia Brust, Dr. Michael Howell, and the Rev. Dr. Tory Baucum, represented the Anglican Church in North America in preparation for the Synod vote.

Big news from Sydney

Over at the Parish Blog!

Diversity & Tolerance

Originally posted at the parish blog:

If you immediately condemn anyone who doesn’t quite believe the same as you do as forsaken by Christ’s Spirit, and consider anyone to be the enemy of truth who holds something false to be true, who, pray tell, can you still consider a brother? I for one have never met two people who believed exactly the same thing. This holds true in theology as well.

- Martin Bucer

To my friends who insist that AC-NA will spin apart because of evangelical and catholic and charismatic Anglicans coming together, I say: PHOOEY. How much more classically Anglican can you get than Martin Bucer, a man who started out as a Dominican priest and worked tirelessly to bringing conciliation among the leading lights of the Lutheran, Genevan/Swiss, & English Reformations?

On the new ACNA's Party Divisions

CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters features a senior devil called Screwtape writing to his nephew, a junior devil named Wormwood, giving him advice on how to entrap a human called “the Patient.” In my reading I noticed again this passage (from letter XVI) as relevant today as 67 years ago when first published:

I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it. I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better. And it isn’t the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say “mass” and those who say “holy communion” when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five minutes.

And all the purely indifferent things-candles and clothes and what not-are an admirable ground for our activities. We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials-namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples.

You would think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the “low” churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his “high” brother should be moved to irreverence, and the “high” one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his “low” brother into idolatry. And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility,

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

If you've never read The Screwtape Letters, I highly advise it. There are reading guides aplenty, and a Sunday School discussion group would be excellent. This book will give you excellent insight into the ways the EVIL ONE uses our religious impulses against us, even in the true religion of Christianity.

The mainline denominations flagged and failed under the weight of making party distinctions the sine qua non of ordination - while ignoring whether the candidate for ordination was actually a Christian. Dogmas like the physical resurrection of the Christ, the Triune Godhead, and original sin could be thrown under the bus so long as you held to something sounding like a distinctive of your denomination.

So the Anglicans let in all sorts of poppycock in the name of the Oxford Movement (which also re-introduced plenty of fine practices). Just harp on the tactile succession of bishops and the place of the church as steering society, and you're in! You don't have to actually believe the faith of the apostles...just get in line and touch somebody who touched somebody who touched somebody that might have believed the witness of the Apostles and carried on that deposit. You'll be qualified to teach with apostolic authority (even if you teach contrary to their doctrine) and you may get to touch some special people yourself (when you aren't lapsing into alcohol abuse). Do enough of this, and you get to be the presiding bishop-ess and teach people about a new divinity known as mother jesus!

The Reformed allowed universalism to creep into their midst through an appropriation of God's sovereignty in the salvation of humanity. As long as you held that it was God who made the decision, you could attribute to him whatever decision you wished - ignoring Jesus' warning that not many will enter into eternal felicity or trod that narrow road. And of course the desire for a highly-educated clergy meant that often times the pastor could outwit the congregation into thinking that Church has been wrong about all sorts of things...as long as s/he footnoted enough and threw enough jargon at them. You may even get to start changing language about God, once you've skewed the whole concept of language in your favor.

Lutherans turned their confessionally robust Christ into a zeitgeist infused prophet by virtue of the kenotic theory. Once Christ is no longer Lord, you needn't reverence or obey him...that's "law" and not grace. And so you end up knowing God through a defanged Jesus, and suddenly God is no longer the Most Holy, Undivided, and Consubstantial Trinity, but a being of your own making...maybe even a Goddess! The resultant antinomianism speaks for itself.

Are we noticing a pattern that all of these wrong turns, mis-steps (which is another translation of the Greek word the New Testament uses for TRESPASSES and TRANSGRESSIONS) lead to the same place? Abandoning God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ for some strange goddess! Has the church - the new Israel - still not learned the lessons about dancing around the asherah (Ashtaroth / Astarte) poles?

All this is to say that if we are to serve Christ faithfully, and not simply seek to be bound to a party-line, then we must recover the fullness of the Catholic Orthodox Faith that has been shared by all Christians - especially as seen in the Apostles, Niceno-Constanipolitan, and Athanasian Creeds.

Mismatched Anglicans

There are people who harbor significant doubts that the Catholics, Charismatics, and Calvinists that comprise the new Anglican Church in North America can make this thing work. I have to agree with them....we can't.



Mismatched as we are, we won't be able to make it work.

Jesus, on the other hand, just might...

Assuming we're all willing to 'bend the knee' to him as king. (pun intended)