Anglicans discussion
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Hello from MrsDarcy
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Elizabeth
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Jul 21, 2009 10:44AM
Thank you to Karen for the kind welcome. I've been a Christian since I was 12 and first took myself off to church. I had only ever been taken to church as a child for things like weddings and had minimal input from my parents. I used to wish I had been brought up by Christian parents but now I'm almost glad I wasn't, as it meant I found and grew my faith independently. I first went to a URC church, which I liked, then with a friend to a Pentecostal church/Christian Fellowship. I stayed there for a few years but didn't really grow much there. Once I reached adulthood I realised the Anglican Church was "my" church. But since meeting my Baptist husband I've been going to his church with him. He's suggested I should return to the parish church though, as he thinks I'd be happier. I like hymns, not choruses, contemplative prayer and the Book of Common Prayer.
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Hi MrsDarcy,So glad to have you in our group. Thanks for sharing your story, so we can know more about you. Skylar and I have been wanting to do a group summer read. We are hoping to hear from others soon and pick something to read as a group.
I attend an Anglican Church with the Anglican Church in North America in Pittsburgh PA. I have been an Anglican for 16 years. I came to know Christ when I was a teenager, attended the Roman Catholic church with my family until college, then worshiped at a non denominational church for many years. My hubby & I Spent 4&1/2 years with Youth With a Mission serving as missionaries working with local churches in Grenada, WI. That was the place where I first visited an Anglican church. When we returned to the states we decided to try an Anglican church and totally fell in love with the beautiful liturgical worship.
I hope you and your husband can find a way to worship together. Maybe you'll find an Anglican church with hymns and praise choruses.
Hi Karen, I like the preaching very much - there was an excellent talk on forgiveness recently. It's the music that I find SO disappointing. I was at a spa for a day last weekend with a few women friends, talking about this and one of them asked me, "Why do you find the music disappointing?" I said "Imagine looking forward to a wonderful day at a spa - the jacuzzi, the whirlpool, the steam room, the sauna etc = and you arrive and find a few buckets of water and a man with a hose!" That's why my husband thinks I should return to the Anglican church. Sadly, he doesn't understand Anglican worship at all - he thinks because we "read it from a book", that means we're not really sincere. I would say that book was meticulously researched, planned and created by a wonderful man who died for his faith (Archbishop Cranmer, burned to death by Mary). It uses the most beautiful, evocative language and simply cannot be improved. I would also say that, having attended a Pentecostal/Christian Fellowship, I know that charismatics are just as capable of repeating the same words every week and just as capable of insincerity. Although I am not suggesting that they are! By the way, I've just come across a book called Christian Prayer for Dummies. I will try to find this book and read it, as I've always simply "bent God's ear". I like to pray when I am alone, and I simply pour out what I'm thinking. Another book I've come across is called Authority to Heal - I found it in our church "library" and thought it seemed interesting. I'll let you know what I think when I've read it.
Hi MrsDarcy,Thanks for sharing your thoughts - I've been reading them with interest. Both my husband and I are Anglican priests in our late 30s, having grown up in the Baptist Church and made the switch to Anglicanism only 10 years ago. Our entire families remain Baptist, and some of them are not very gracious about where we are now, so I feel and hear where you're coming from.
I have a small suggestion that might be beneficial for both you and your husband. Have you read "Beyond Smells and Bells" by Mark Galli? He's a solidly evangelical Christianity Today guy, so Baptists understand him well. And yet he also is an Anglican, who loves the liturgy. This short little book explains it in a way that helps both free church types and Anglicans to understand the liturgical churches better.
Anyway, it's worth a try...my Baptist dad really loves the book, and it's helped him to appreciate Anglicanism a lot more.Beyond Smells and Bells The Power of Christian Liturgy
Thanks, Julie, I will look out for it. I sneaked a bit of liturgy into our wedding service! We were given several sheets from which we were able to put together our marriage service, although I love the BCP Marriage Service and would just have had that if I could. At the very end when the Minister gave the blessing and dismissal, I edited it slightly so that it said "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord". It's funny the things that bother different people, isn't it? I have a friend who can't get past priests wearing robes - he wants them to wear suits like non-conformists. Luckily our Baptist church is very warm and accepting. I actually started going there every week because they were much more reverent than the congregation in our parish church, which seemed to see nothing wrong with chatting away all through the service, including the elevation of the host and the silence during communion. I would be trying to pray and focus on the cross, and just behind me would be two ladies gossiping away about some acquaintance. The hubbub was unbelievable. That just doesn't happen in the Baptist church here.Anyway, I'll start hunting for Beyond Smells and Bells.
love
Liz x
Hi Julie,Welcome to the Anglican Group! Please make yourself comfortable in this group to share about your faith, your love of good Christian books and your love for Anglicanism. That book "Beyond Smells and Bells: The Power of the Christian Liturgy" sounds great. I too will have to look for that.
Blessings,
Karen L
I've been meaning to read "Evangelical is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrmanet."
Skylar, I haven't heard about that book, but it sounds interesting...if you do read it, let us all know what you think. :-)
Oh, me too!! Do tell. That book sounds good. I may add that to my mountain of "to read" books- lol!
Hi group! I have re-emerged: from my whirlwind trip to and from-and then back to Indonesia (this time to live for a while.) Interesting discussion:without sounding too much like a Stepford Wife, I am stuck on Anglicism--some my my time in evangelicalism was spent on either worshipping the scriptures or nitpicking over preferences. I'd love to see more discipleship in it though.We sought out an Anglican church for our time here.
Hi Charity! I have missed this group. So glad you re-emerged. I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on Anglicanism and the good books that you read. Can we know what you are doing in Indonesia? I bet something exciting :)
"I have a friend who can't get past priests wearing robes - he wants them to wear suits like non-conformists...our Baptist church is very warm and accepting"I know this post was about three years ago...but I guess I'm just catching up. LOL. Interesting thing...I went to a Southern Baptist Church in college that was really quite liturgical, and my husband-later-to-be, then nondenominational, called it "the most high church Baptist church I've ever seen.") The pastors wore robes, the church kept the church calendar, and we semi-regularly recited the Apostle's Creed. I suppose that was fertile ground for my later drift to liturgy, or an early hint that that was something I needed.
I had a nominal Christian upbringing, got baptized in the Episcopal church and went to Sunday school there as a young child, stopped going (because my parents did) also as a young child, and then never thought much about religion for years. I had to read four books of the Bible the summer before my senior year of (public) high school for AP English 12, and I was overthrown. Read the rest of the Bible that summer and started going to the same Episcopal church where I went to Sunday school as a wee child, but without being moved. I went becuase I didn't know where else to go. No one ever spoke to me, and the sermons were...about nothing much it seemed. My dad showed up one snowy day because he followed me to church fearing I'd got caught in the snow, sat through the service, and said, "I didn't get anything out of that, but I'll go to church with you if you go to a Baptist church." So I did for the rest of my senior year of high school, with him, and then I sought out a Baptist church in college, where I got baptized...again...thinking my first baptism didn't count, because I understood nothing of confirmation.
After that, my husband and I went to the Church of Christ for almost four years, then tried the EPC, then the ELCA, and finally we both got confirmed in the Anglican church. In a way I came full circle back to where I started as a child...Anglican...though not the Episcopalian variety this time around. I feel like I've found home...what I was so long flaling around for...a via media between Protestantism and Catholicism...the best of both worlds. I love it.
Hi Skylar & anyone else out there. Skylar,glad you posted your thoughts on MrsDarcy's thoughts. I wonder if Mrs D is still on goodreads. Sometimes a conversation will get really interesting and then just stop...I think people who don't like the "priest's robes," or liturgical stuff, just don't know the reason for these visuals. It is so important that we have teaching on these rich elements of our faith so that no one is left confused wondering why we worship the way we do. I love the liturgical seasons and change of colors in the church, just as much as I love the change of seasons in a climate.
For those who see this and wonder what we are talking about, here is a simple wikipedia explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgic...
On a separate but related topic, one of the few books I read daily is "The Business of Heaven" by Lewis (daily readings). August 10th's entry addresses the advantages of "A Fixed Form of Service" "Ex tempore public prayer has this difficulty: we don't know whether we can mentally join in it until we've heard it--it might be phoney or heretical. We are therefore called upon to carry on a _critical_ and _devotional_ activity at the same moment: two things hardly compatible....the rigid form sets us _free_."Of course, there is more to be said on this, but I think Lewis is right on in this.
Charity,I love your quote of Lewis, " the rigid form sets us _free_." So true! Love Lewis!
Sometimes, when I am feeling blue or spiritually blah, and I enter into the liturgy, praying the collects and such, literally going through the motions. I feel that I can follow this form without too much effort. Then by the time the mass is over, I often find that my focus is back on Christ and I am lifted out of myself.
Welcome to the Anglican group Sara! Feel free to tell us about what books you like to read or would like to read in this group.
Hello Barbara, and welcome to the Anglican group! I hope that you find good books to read here and please feel free to share your thoughts on any Anglican books or other books of Christian faith.
Karen L. wrote: "Hello Barbara, and welcome to the Anglican group! I hope that you find good books to read here and please feel free to share your thoughts on any Anglican books or other books of Christian faith."Thank you Karen.
Hello David, welcome to the Anglican group. It is so nice to have some new members join us!
Hello Jeff, welcome to the Anglican group. I hope you and some of our new members will share a little bit about yourselves and your interest in Anglicanism here :)
