Did not mean to skip the pod yesterday, of course, but my voice was super scratchy, and also I’m desperately trying to finish up a couple of projects so that I can have my life back. I’ve had such severe writer’s block that I’ve been mistaking my psychic pain for everyone being wrong about everything. On Saturday Matt finally exercised his authorit-eh and commanded me to not clean my house but to stay at my desk until I got something—anything—on paper. Progress, as they say, was finally made and now I’m tantalizingly close to being done. So anyway, three loads of laundry and a scrubbed kitchen later, I thought would sabotage myself yet a little while longer and write a quick blog post. It is Tuesday and it just wouldn’t be the same without a little something.
Two or three somethings actually. The first is that the ACNA is doing pretty well. It hasn’t re-ascended its 2018 heights, but there is a lot of reason to take heart. Jeff Walton breaks down the numbers:
Anglican congregations in the United States, Canada and Mexico are reporting a significant attendance increase of 17,228 persons following a widespread return to regular worship services post-COVID. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is also reporting modest growth in both membership and total number of churches in 2022. Overall Average Principal Service Attendance in 2022 was 75,583, up 30 percent from 58,255 in 2021. Membership increased 2,549 (up 2 percent from 122,450) in 2021 to 124,999 in 2022. Congregations grew by three to 977 total. Membership and attendance are among several metrics tracked year-over-year by ACNA. Baptisms were up 27 percent and confirmations up 25 percent from 2021-2022. Receptions from other liturgical denominations were down 8 percent, while reaffirmations were up 46 percent.
At Good Shepherd, we have crept up past our 2019 ASA, which is what we keep measuring all our works and hopes by. That was one of the many heartbreaking things about covid. So much of our trudging efforts to build a church on the sure foundation of the word of God had sputtered and lurched and felt like wandering through a dark and very little peopled wood. We would count up the people, Sunday by Sunday, and try to look for encouragement and find very little. But then between 2017 and 2019, it felt like something broke. The whole point of going to church began to make sense to the people who considered Good Shepherd their church. So that, of course, was an optimal time to teach the nation and the world that going to church is “non-essential.” Verily verily, no other lesson has been so thoroughly and deeply learned in my lifetime. Except maybe that “evangelicals” fractured said nation and turned out to be literally Hitler. So many lies, so little time.
The lesson I’ve been trying to teach myself, in the last three or however many years since the advent of covid into the world, is that one ought not give way to discouragement about how long it takes to build something and how little time it takes to tear it down. The trouble is that, being a sinner, it feels like it should be the other way—that building something should require neither sweat nor toil and that tearing it down would mean lots of hindrances and various brands of truth-telling.
I just listened to this excellent podcast. It’s a nice long conversation about how Christian universities in particular, though really any institution, can seem to be so strong and sure but then you blink and, like the flower of the field, it is suddenly gone, or at least grotesquely heterodox. The podcasters get into the nitty-gritty of how a board for a university is supposed to function, and what happens when the members of the board neglect the troublesome and painstaking task of ensuring the people inside the institution, the ones carrying out the mission, remain faithful to the purpose for which the institution exists. It seems so obvious—just make sure you hire Christians and spend the money correctly—but so many times in the last fifty or a hundred years everything has gone tragically sideways through neglect, fear, and good intentions.
I particularly liked how they got into the difficult choice between totally withdrawing from the world and compromising utterly. It seems like you shouldn’t have to do either of those things, but then, at the end of the day or the century, everyone made a choice one way or another, instead of exercising gumption or godly wisdom or bravery or intelligence. I don’t think anyone sets out to jettison all their principals when they wake up in the morning. Everyone wants to do good things and be a good person. But the need to be accepted by other people—usually such a good instinct, especially when you’re running away from a lion—far too often governs the decisions and actions of well-meaning people, even when they promise themselves it won’t be that way.
I just finished listening to the book of Jeremiah, and he strikes me as being a type of anti-evangelical, in the modern sense of the term “evangelical.” Obviously, in the classical meaning of the word, Jeremih did exactly what evangelicals promised themselves they would do—tell the truth, preach the gospel, bring the saving news of Jesus to all the world. Even when that poor prophet was lowered into the muddy pit he still continually told the truth and steadfastly did all that the Lord, his God, commanded, though it always broke his heart and made him a pariah. He endured all the shame and rejection of his people in a desolate, foreshadowing way that comes into heart-rending focus when you contemplate the cross.
The problem with American evangelicalism in the last twenty years is that it—as a movement, an expression of the Christian faith in this particular time, a set of theological priorities, or however you might want to describe it—gave the impression to itself of being Jeremiah, or maybe even Daniel. Many elite evangelical influencers believed themselves to be prophets, but not just any prophets, faithful ones who were speaking truth to power.
But looking out over the desolation of empty churches and disillusioned post-Christians, it is more like they were hunched, Jehoiakim-esque, over their fire pots, cutting strips off of the scroll and laboriously burning them in the fire. If they hadn’t set themselves to that peculiar work, they joined the ranks of the false prophets, the ones who continually cried “Peace, Peace” when God was not saying any such thing.
So anyway, I just bought Scott McKnight’s bright and shiny new book The Bible Is Not Enough on Kindle, and, for all our edification, I’ll be reviewing it here.
Have a nice day!
I've listened to that excellent podcast, too. Today it seems one has to be stubborn and downright mean to prevent the fakes and the cowards from slowly taking over one's church or Christian school or organization.
But how many Christian leaders want to be stubborn or mean? I know Matt and I have no problem being that way, but who else?