This video reminds us that, though it is about preperation, Advent is less about repentance and more about hopeful expectation.

Many also believe that Advent is primarily about the past but it’s actually about 3 ‘comings’.  Christ came to us in the past in His incarnation.  He asks us to be ready for him to come to us daily through different means of grace.  And there is a third coming that is the focus of attention during the first week of Advent.

During this first week of advent we remember that Christ will come to us gloriously in his final return.  The reminder of this final return should guide the way we live our lives daily.  The end should reach back into our present experience.  The goal shapes the path.

This final return is what the lectionary readings turn our attention to during week 1 of Advent.  This final return should be met with hopeful expectation  not with dread.  Here is a nice way of considering the future return of Jesus Christ: “Advent concerns the future of the Risen One, who will judge wickedness and prevail over every evil.  Advent is the celebration of the promise that Christ will bring an end to all that is contrary to the ways of God.” 

Use this week to consider ways that you can shape your life around the expectation of a future coming of Christ.

Not from the readings for the feast day but from other passages that speak of James the brother of Jesus, it seems clear that this brother was not a devout follower during the earthly ministry of Jesus.  In fact, there are two specific statements in the Gospels which invite us to think this way.  In the Gospel of Mark, just after Jesus has named the 12 it says that Jesus was being smothered by a crowd.  The crowd was so big that Jesus couldn’t even eat.  It’s in this context that we get an apparent perspective on Jesus family, we read;

“…when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind”.

In John’s Gospel in chapter 7, after Jesus has given the ‘hard’ teaching on the bread of life in chapter 6, we are brought to a conversation between Jesus and his brothers;

“Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand.  So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing.  For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”  For not even his brothers believed in him.”

Yet a very different picture emerges in the book of Acts.  We see James the brother of Jesus, arise as the leader of the church in Jerusalem.  We see James as the first Bishop of the church in Jerusalem.  We see James ending the first council that was debating the issue of circumcision of Gentiles by categorically stating that gentiles do not need to be circumcised.  Then we see James commissioning a letter to go out to all the churches dictating the mandate of the Council in Jerusalem of which he is the head.  James is one of the 3 pillars that Paul visits when he goes to Jerusalem to receive approval for the Gospel he is preaching among the gentiles.

This positive picture of James the Righteous continues in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, according to Eusebius; “he was universally regarded as the most righteous of men because of the heights of philosophy and religion which he scaled in his life.”  Hegesippus echoes this praise in his biographical sketch of James;

 “…this one was holy from his birth; he drank no wine or intoxicating liquor and ate not animal food; no razor came near his head; he did not smear himself with oil, and took no baths.  He alone was permitted to enter the Holy Place, for his garments were not of wool but of linen.  He used to enter the Sanctuary alone, and was often found on his knees beseeching forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s from his continually bending them in worship of God and beseeching forgiveness for the people.” 

His righteousness was so great that even the Jews acknowledged it.  This righteousness led to his martyrdom.  The Jews asked James to explain what is meant by the phrase ‘the door of Jesus’.  James proclaimed Jesus as the Christ and it awarded him a Martyr’s death.  He was thrown from the Parapet of the temple for his statements about Jesus, but that fall did not kill him…it was the clubs.  He was clubbed to death after being thrown from the temple wall.

These two contradicting pictures of James beg the question; how can someone who walked with Jesus and saw his works and heard his teaching seem to change so dramatically?  Short answer, we aren’t reading the Gospel account right.

James doesn’t change AS MUCH as we would like to think.  Unfortunately, this picture of bitter brother turned passionate follower doesn’t hold up under close examination.  Recent scholarship examining the Historical James paints a different picture of these Gospel accounts.  James and other members of Jesus’ family were most likely followers from the beginning.  For instance it’s very possible that the passage in Mark is speaking of the disciples who have just been named earlier and not Jesus’ family members.  This would fit the ‘discipleship failure’ theme that runs through Mark’s gospel.  If this is the case then something else is happening here.  The disciples, not Jesus family, go to grab Jesus because they hear that the crowd is saying that he is out of his mind.  They think they are protecting Jesus, but like usual, they don’t understand who Jesus really is.   This passage that seems to indict James as an unbeliever now focuses our attention on the 12 and not on James.

But something did happen to James, he was converted.  It just wasn’t a conversion from unbelief to belief, but it was a conversion that penetrated deeply into the life of James.  And the source of that conversion?

“…he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…and then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

The resurrected Christ empowered James’ ascetical life; it empowered his bold proclamation of Christ as the messiah.  This story may be less dramatic than the traumatic conversion of Paul but it may be more like our own.

He is risen!  Do you believe it!  Do you taste it!  Can you feel it in your bones!  He is Risen!  Have you experienced the Risen Christ.   Experience the risen Christ.  Let the reality of the resurrected life of Christ convert you again and again!   Christ HAS died, Christ IS risen, Christ WILL come again!  Don’t live a life that proclaims Christ has died….PERIOD.  In Paul’s words, this is not the Gospel “which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved.”  Experience the resurrected Christ and watch all the tastes of this world become dull and plain.  Come to our Lord now, Taste and see that the Lord is good and let the reality of his resurrection convert you again and again.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.  From where does my help come?  My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.  - Psalm 121:1-2

So let us run: run!  For we shall go to the Lord’s house.  Let us run, for we shall arrive there, there where we shall not grow weary.  Let us run to the Lord’s house, let our soul be swept into rejoicing by those who say these words to us.  For they who speak to us have seen that country before us and cry from a distant age to their descendants, ‘We will go to the Lord’s house: Walk!  run!’  The apostles have seen it, and say to us, ‘Run! walk! follow! We will go to the Lord’s house!’  And what does each of us reply?  Let me rejoice in those who said to me, ‘We will go to the Lord’s house.’  Let me rejoice in the Prophets!  Let me rejoice in the Apostles!  For they all said to us, ‘We will go to the Lord’s house.’”

-  Augustine, “Exposition on Ps. 121″

The Following is a paragraph from our new student handbook:

 …community permeates every feature of our life at Nashotah House.  We worship as a community, we study as a community, we work as a community and we share meals as a community.  This is certainly not to the exclusion of our each developing a personal maturity, a personal piety or maintaining a private life, all of which are vital to our health and happiness.  The disciplines of living in a community spur us each to grow personally.  But our personal growth depends in large part upon our forgetting ourselves, renouncing our own lives and taking up our places as members of a body.

In this paragraph we are clearly reminded of the reality that our personal faith is influenced by and also influences the community that we dwell in.  At Nashotah House we work out our faith with fear and trembling in the midst of others. Not only do the decisions we make as individuals impact our personal formation but they also help or hinder the formation of those around us.  Our behavior is not our own and in an environment like Nashotah House small changes have large implications.

In Colossians 3:1-11 Paul speaks with force about how we should live in light of our baptism; “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”  But he also warns of the danger of getting too comfortable with the old Adam; “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you”.    In these verses we are distinctly reminded of the already/not yet tension of this life here on earth. As we walk with confidence in light of our baptism we are at the same time being asked to repent and pushing back ways of life that can destroy us as well as the communities we inhabit.

As we approach a new year of living together in community we must remember that it is not enough to just show up and hope that we will somehow be magically shaped into the image of our Creator and that this community of worship will be the place we envision if we are not seeking the Kingdom above while turning away the kingdom below. 

We are commanded to seek and to set our minds upon the things above.  We are commanded to orient our minds and our wills to the things above.  We are commanded to order our love towards the place where Christ is seated. But this is not wishful thinking; this is a wholehearted pursuit of the realm where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  If we hope Nashotah House to be a place that forms us into leaders in the Anglican world, our aim must be true.  We are to orient our minds and wills to the place where we already live.  We are not being commanded to work in order to earn heaven; we are being commanded to live into the reality that is already ours in Christ Jesus.  We are not here to prove ourselves; we are here to grow into the reality that is already ours.  Yet, in order to do that we are commanded to put to death the vestiges of a life we lived before we died with Christ.

Part of orienting ourselves to the things above means ‘putting to death’ and ‘laying aside’ behaviors that orient our life towards things below.  We must not forget that we are ‘not yet’ fully present with Christ, and because of this we are commanded to put to death those traits for which the ‘wrath of God is coming’.   It is these habits and practices from our old life that can destroy our community if we allow them to.

We are commanded to put to death ‘sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness’.  These vices represent disordered love that has elevated the physical to a place of ultimate importance.  We practice a ruthless greed when we want what we can’t or don’t have.  Physical pleasure becomes the aim of our lives and we will stop at nothing to satisfy the way of the Old Adam.  These behaviors, these habits and practices that we foster are ultimately self-centered.  They seek to satisfy our most basic physical desires at the expense of others. When we allow habits and practices that aim at satisfying these disordered loves we destroy community and we isolate ourselves.  This isolation leads to the disintegration of a life together.

We are commanded to ‘Push aside anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk…do not lie to one another’.  In an effort to elevate ourselves we work to push others down and we do so with our speech. Though these behaviors, at times, may deemed appropriate, the outbursts of anger when our way is thwarted, or the persistent quality of anger that is always just below the surface, or the slanderous and malicious comments aimed at others, or the obscene talk that gets a laugh from one but makes another uncomfortable these habits and practices are community destroyers.  They take away an environment that allows for vulnerability and they create a defensive culture, a cynical culture, and a skeptical culture.  These habits of speaking destroy a safe place and create a hostile community.

We are also reminded that nothing can destroy a community faster than a divisive spirit; ‘Here there is not greek and jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all, and in all.’  These names constitute small groups, and when we define ourselves by these small groups we have no choice but to exclude some from our community.  We create these categories to create boundaries which make it easier to determine who is in and who is out.  If we are in Christ, there is neither TEC nor ACNA.  If we are in Christ, there is neither protestant nor Catholic. If we are in Christ, there is neither Calvinist nor Arminian.  If we are In Christ there is neither Anglo-Catholic nor Evangelical. If we have been raised with Christ, then He is all, and He is in all…that label is enough.

This idea of having faith in the future by planting seeds of something that will take time to mature and will help keep the environment from eroding is really powerful!  This idea combined with a passage from scripture that I have been meditating on are really sticking with me.  The passage is found in Jeremiah 1:4-10 (Jeremiah’s call).  Here are the last two verses from that passage:

Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.

Do you want to know the vision that God is growing in me?

God is calling me to this Riverwest neighborhood.  He is calling me to be a mouthpiece of His Justice, His Mercy, His Righteousness, His Reconciliation.  He is calling me to be part of something that uproots the desires that are destroying the neighborhoods of our city.  He is calling me to build and plant a desire for Jesus and His kingdom in their place.  This is the work of an old man planting a young tree. 

Riverwest needs the People of God to be builders and planters.  He needs people who have hope for the Riverwest neighborhood.  God needs people who can imagine a Riverwest renewed, restored, and recreated.  Is God calling you to join in this type of work?  These are the type of people I am praying to join me.

Jesus made a comment in the Sermon on the Mount that supports this ecological relationship between the Christian and the environment:

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

Jesus makes a declaration, “you are the salt of the earth”.   He declares this to be so.  Christians are salt…period.  Not Christians should be salt but they are salt.  Salt has a preserving effect on meats.  It keeps it from becoming poisonous quickly.  It delays the rot.  Christians effect their environment.  Christians preserve their environment.  Without Christians in the environment, things would go bad quicker!

It’s also important to notice that though there is no command for the disciple to be salt there is a caution.  There is against the possibility of losing the ‘saltiness’.   The environment has an effect on the Christian too.    If Christians are not “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) they could lose that saltiness!

An ecology of Human Development believes that there is a dynamic relationship between a human’s development (which includes Spiritual Development) and the environment.  Imagine concentric circles moving outwards from the individual at the center.  In the circle closest to the person is the family, the church, the school, the friends.  The circle once removed may contain the neighborhood, and the circle outside that may contain the city, so on and so forth.  There is a dynamic happening in all those circles, an ecology.  The individual is growing and changing and so is the environment.  The circle that is closest to the individual has the most influence on the development of the person, with each additional circle  that sits further from the center having less and less an influence on the individual.  So my family will greatly impact the development of my children and vice versa, as will my church community.  The city government is going to have significantly less influence on my family and my child but it will have more influence on the development of our neighborhood which will have a greater impact on my family.  There is an ecology of our environments, a dynamic give and take with greater and lesser levels of influence.  We have the potential to be salt but we also need to be cautious that we don’t lose our saltiness.

I don’t want to take my family’s well being for granted but I don’t believe that keeping them out of one specific environment is going to be the factor that does that.  In fact, if I want my children to develop well I need to be mostly concerned with the way that I am nurturing my family, my church relationships, and my children’s friends.  I need to be about the business of positively influencing my family more than I need to worry about keeping all the bad out, because the bad can’t be kept out entirely!  Beyond that, I need to trust that my ‘holiness in progress’ family will be salt to a decaying world.

The little boy next door, whose parents drink all the time and fail to care and nurture him, can be positively effected by the presence of my family in his life.  Will it effect my children to see that yes, will it be a totally negative impact…I don’t believe so.    Even with the idiosyncrasies, failures and faults that my wife and I bring to our family, we believe that our children will be nurtured in the faith.  Though the environment around our family will have influence in the development of my children, my family will have more!

When Romans were dying of the plague, the Christians ran into the city and not away from it.  Our cities are dying, our cities need strong Christian families present.

Lord Jesus strengthen the resolve of Christian families to create spaces that push back the decline of our cities!

What do you think?  What would be a good logo for Christ Redeemer Anglican Church in the Riverwest Community of Milwaukee?

For reasons that I cannot recall, Teri began sharing stories of her time working as a nurse during 3rd shift (over the night shift).  She told the true story of a young man who was brought in by ambulance and checked onto her floor.  When the drivers brought him in, she could tell that they were fried and she quickly realized why.  The man on the stretcher refused to directly answer any questions.  He would only speak if the person spoke to a stuffed bear that he was holding.  She could tell the ambulance drivers were frustrated and pretty unwilling to speak to the bear.  Teri, on the other hand, being a puppeteer felt very comfortable entering into this arrangement of speaking to a stuffed animal!  She began to direct her questions to the bear and continued to do it throughout the night.  Eventually, after many interactions with the bear, the man calmed down and said to Teri, through the bear, that Teri had been very kind to ‘john’ and now ‘john’ would like to talk to Teri.

Teri recounted another interaction with a young man in great pain who had experienced massive deterioration in his heart.  It had made him very sick and he was on a lot of medication for pain.  Due to the pain medication he was experiencing drug induced hallucinations.  When these hallucinations would happen, Teri would hear the man getting worked up. She soon realized what was happening and she would calmly talk to the man about his hallucinations.  She asked him to tell her when he would be having them and then she would laugh with him and let him know that what he was seeing was just a hallucination.  Eventually he was released from the hospital.  The same gentleman returned to the hospital a while later and he began asking for Teri.  Teri was not available but he talked to the nurse about that stay in the hospital with Teri.  That particular time had been a very low point in the man’s life and he was contemplating suicide.  Teri’s willingness to talk to him about his hallucinations and help decifer the real from the fictitious was the first time he felt ‘normal’ and it helped him work through that low point in his life.

How often do we feel the need to ‘correct’ someone’s wrong behavior or attitude so that we can feel comfortable with them.  We experience existential discord when we encounter someone whose view of the world is different than ours and we resolve the discord by either telling them that we disagree with the way they live or we try to force them to come closer to where we are.  I’m sure Teri feels this discord but she doesn’t respond in the way I just described.

Teri was self-forgetting and willing to enter into a world that was not her own in order to care for an individual.  She was willing to suspend her reality and acquire the reality of the person she was caring for.  By doing this, the people Teri cared for felt deeply loved, they felt safe, and they experienced intimacy and trust.  But this self-forgetfulness was the beginning step of movement.  Teri’s willingness to indulge the ‘craziness’ of the people invited the people to move with Teri to a more healthy place.  This is incarnation in it’s full beauty.

Teri modeled incarnation for me and I can only continue to pray that I would be willing to die to myself in order to enter into the world of the other person that I am called to care for.  I believe there is a powerful presence of God’s Spirit when we allow this self-denial to happen.

I am so blessed to have Teri in my life and I thank God for her great love and her ability to see the beauty in all things and willingness to ‘empty herself’ in order to enter another’s world.

To refresh your memory, in the last post I talked specifically about why I landed as an Anglican.  There are a number of factors but the ones that I mentioned were the following, Anglicanism is:

• Evangelical: Anglicanism embraces my Evangelical piety and nurture
• Catholic: Anglicanism is comfortable with all the traditions of the Christian Church as long as they are catholic.  Meaning as long as the tradition fits with scripture and is orthodox in its teaching.  So there is room to embrace all the adjectives (Eastern, Roman, Evangelical, Pietist, Reformed, etc…).
• About Worship:  Anglicanism is not a theology but a form of spiritual practice.

You can read the whole thing here.

Today I want to write more specifically about why we are serving with AMiA and not some other Anglican body.  This is an important distinction because there are other orthodox Anglican groups that meet here in the United States.  One recently formed group that is in partnership with AMiA is ACNA (Anglican Church in North America).  ACNA was formed by churches that have left or have been asked to leave The Episcopal Church because of their disagreements with the direction the church in North America was moving.  Sarah and I didn’t feel that this was the right place for us to do ministry together. There are a number of reasons for this but instead of talking about why not ACNA, I am talking about why AMiA.  The second letter in the acronym was important in our reasoning, the M stands for ‘mission’.

AMiA is a ‘Mission’ to North America
AMiA speaks of itself as an Anglican Church Planting Mission.  AMiA is about conversion growth.  The movement was started by Bishops in southeast Asia and Africa.  They recognized the declining presence of Christians in the United States and felt called to begin a mission to the United States.  This mission work is done primarily by planting churches.  One of the ‘Anglican Mission Values’ states; “We focus on evangelism and discipling through church planting.” Other mission values include the belief that all in the church are on mission and it is the role of the priest to ‘equip the saints for the work of the ministry’.  Of the 13 value statements, 4 directly refer to mission and at least one other assumes mission.   I believe this DNA and clear direction keeps churches accountable and constantly challenges local churches to be moving out into the world.  These statements complement the way of life that my family tries to live.  As a family, we believe in  missional living.

Missional vs. Attractional Living
This is a bit of buzz word so let me define what I mean by missional.  Missional has to do with direction.  Missional stands in contrast to Attractional.  Missional is an approach to ministry and to church.  Attractional ministry is a ministry that asks people to ‘come and see’, a missional ministry is a ministry believes that it is the role of the church to ‘go and tell’.  The great commission is a ‘missional’ mandate and not an ‘attractional’ one.  It reads:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

The opening phrase of the commandment is a participle and should be read ‘as you go’.  It’s an assumed thing that the disciples will be moving.  They are moving out into the world and as they do they are primarily ‘making disciples’ by baptizing and teaching.  God has called his church to be a missional church that goes and tells and not an attractional church that asks people to come and see.

Implications of Attractional vs. Missional Church
An attractional model of church subtly implies that culture is more powerful than God.  If people are in the world too long then it will over power the Gospel and they could potentially walk away from God.  The attractional church is a picture of a man calling out from atop a large wall, to a people who are in danger as long as they stay outside the wall, asking them to enter into the safe confines of the church away from culture.  Whereas the missional church sees itself as a special envoy entering the territory of the enemy in order to rescue those who are held hostage.

These two approaches also communicate differing views on holiness.  An illustration of the two views of holiness can be seen in the Gospel account of Jesus’ and the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8:41-48).  In Leviticus (Lev. 15), we know that a woman with bleeding is considered unclean and must stay outside of the camp until she can purify herself and return to the camp.  This is because the woman who is unclean will make people who touch her unclean.  Her unclean-ness was transmitted to others and took away their cleanness hence the separation.  Yet in the Gospel, the woman with the issue of blood touches Jesus and she is healed.  The Holiness of God and the Purity of God was not contaminated by this unclean woman, but rather the woman was cleansed by the holiness and purity of God. The attractional church implicitly teaches that the world is too unclean and we need to separate from it, a missional church says that it is the body of Christ and it is confident that unclean people who come into contact with the Living Church will be cleansed and restored.

AMiA is a movement concerned about the advancement of God’s Kingdom in the world through mission.  It’s DNA is marked by concern for the lost.  I believe that a church on Mission is what is needed in a community like Riverwest.  We are excited to be part of The Anglican Mission in the Americas and hope to be a Beacon for Christ in Riverwest.

“O God of all the nations of the earth: Remember the
multitudes who have been created in thine image but have
not known the redeeming work of our Savior Jesus Christ;
and grant that, by the prayers and labors of thy holy Church,
they may be brought to know and worship thee as thou hast
been revealed in thy Son; who liveth and reigneth with thee
and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

AMiA stands for ‘Anglican Mission in the Americas’.  It’s affectionately called theAM by members of the movement and its leadership.  This post is primarily a reflection on the word Anglican.  In this post I really want to address the question, why Anglican?

Let me start by saying that I do not think that Anglicanism is the only ‘true church’;  God is doing amazing ministry through all kinds of groups around the world.  That said, after a lot of wandering from group to group, Anglicanism brought together many of the pieces of my spiritual journey and provided a framework that allowed all the pieces to work in harmony instead of discord.

Evangelical
As an Anglican I can embrace my Protestant nurture.  My personal faith in Jesus Christ came alive in college through the work of an Evangelical Free Church and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.  I learned how to study the Bible as a Protestant.  I learned what discipleship was as Protestant.  I learned what fellowship could look like as a Protestant.  My faith is alive because of my Evangelical heritage.  I love my Evangelical upbringing.  I embrace it and thank God for it everyday.  As an Anglican I can be proud of this upbringing.  I can embrace a spirituality that finds strength in the ministry of the Word.

Catholic
As an Anglican I can embrace by Roman Catholic upbringing.  I was baptized, confirmed, and married in the Roman Catholic Church.  Growing up, when someone asked me what ‘religion’ I was, I responded by saying I was a Catholic.  As an Evangelical I felt that I needed to distance myself from my upbringing, but Anglicanism welcomes my Roman Catholic journey and transforms it.  As an Anglican I can be proud to say that I am catholic, but I am an Anglican catholic not a Roman one.

By catholic, I mean ‘kata holos’, according to the whole.  As an Anglican, I can affirm the creedal statement ‘I believe in the holy catholic church’.  I can confidently embrace anything that is part of the whole.   I’m not limited by any descriptor except catholic.  It may be part of the eastern tradition, it may be part of the evangelical tradition, it may be found in the mystical stream, or it may be part of the roman tradition.  It may have any number of adjectives and that is okay as long as it is a part of the whole orthodox (catholic) tradition of the Christian Church.  As long as it’s catholic, it is Anglican.

Centered on Worship
As an Anglican, worship directs my Christian journey.  You can’t find one Anglican Theology, but you can find an Anglican Spirituality.  One of the maxims of the Anglican church is  ‘Lex Orandi, lex credendi’ (translatable as “the law of prayer is the law of belief”).  In Anglicanism, faith is not deduced to only propositions.  Instead the propositions are given life through prayer.  I learn what I believe through what I pray.  As I pray and encounter the living God my beliefs are changed and my prayers change with it.  Life is not separated into different categories but integrated and shaped by prayer.

Freedom with Fences
As an Anglican I have freedom with fences (as my bishop would say).  Anglicanism strives for what Jesus prays in the high priestly prayer, unity.  Within Anglicanism I can find Anglo-Catholics who have a very high view of the church, the priesthood, and the sacraments and I can also find Anglicans who aren’t sure about bishops, they don’t like weekly Eucharist, and they prefer to be called pastors not priests.   In many ways Anglicanism is like Evangelicalism.  Anglican is a large umbrella that covers many different flavors of faith.  There are a vast amount of differences within Anglicanism but at the end of the day they are all still Anglican.  Unity is a driving concern for Anglicans and in an ever fragmenting world, I desire something more unified.

Of course the musings above are incomplete and will continue to develop and change as I journey on the Canterbury trail but I hope they give a good snapshot of why I am Anglican today and why I desire to plant an Anglican Mission Church.

Almighty Father, whose blessed Son before his passion prayed
for his disciples that they might be one, as you and he are one:
Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and
obedience to you, may be united in one body by the one Spirit,
that the world may believe in him whom you have sent, your
Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in
the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.