All posts tagged Anglicans

++ Hugh

by Hugh on September 22, 2011 in Faith, Life with No comments

It’s ok, no need to bow, curtsey, kiss my ring, look up at my mitre, be touched by my crook or any of that kind of nonsense…

But you could show a little bit of Malawian style respect…

I think there was some confusion; visitors from the UK from ‘Bishop Hannington Church’… at some point turned into ‘UK Bishops’. They were very kind, and hid their disappointment well.

I find being the “distinguished guest” slightly awkward, I’m never really a good guest, and distinguished is not exactly the first thing that I put to answer the question ‘describe yourself in 3 words’.

Supporters of Women Bishops are Nazis!

by Hugh on November 3, 2010 in Faith with No comments

Yeh… not really… although a title like this probably gives a few extra hits!

Although that’s how the press are “quoting” Bishop Wallace Benn today.

The Telegraph being a classic example of sensationalist journalism, and blatant untruth.

This all comes from a Q&A at the Reform conference… of which Ruth Gledhill, of The Times posted a video of (see below).

I’d like to respond to what Ruth Gledhill has written… but in an age of blogs, Internet and Social Media I still find it hard for a newspaper to justify charging for it’s content… maybe I’ll cough up one day!

Make your mind up… as you can see, no mention of Nazis… and quite rightly Bishop Benn stands by his comments (not the twisted version of them though) on Radio 4. No one likes a War Metaphor… but, unless provisions are made for ‘Traditionalists’ that’s where it’s heading!

Meet the FoCAs

by Hugh on July 7, 2009 in Faith with 2 Comments

FCA UK On Monday I, along with some other staff members from my church went to Westminster Central Hall for the launch of FCA UK (Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans)…

Lots of people spoke… letters read from Bishops in Nigera and Rwanda, news from the church in Sudan, Baroness Cox, Jim Packer, Bob Duncan, John Hind, Wallace Benn, Vaughan Roberts, Michael Nazir-Ali… and lots more.

While this was an exciting, potentially history-making day and event, it was possibly the most dull Christian conference I’ve ever been to! The content was great, but the presentation was lacking, a poor advert for the church really.

Highlights included a rousing address from Peter Jensen, practical thoughts from Vaughan Roberts, and video/in person interviews of the encouragments and discouragements of mission, ministry, church planting and partnership across the UK, including a vox pop with Champ Marko. You should be able to watch some highlights on the Anglican TV site.

Here’s some questions I have in light of FCA:

Are we standing with Anglo-Catholics (Forward in Faith) because we are in fellowship with them, or simply because they don’t like the liberals either?
Some ministers talk big about witholding parish share and alike – my question is do they still expect a pension, and for the central church to pay for training of ordinands?
My Bishop was at FCA, he spoke, and seems supportive, Wallace Benn is an area Bishop in the diocese, at least 25 parishes were represented on the day… while I support those in untenable situations, I am happy to continue to work within my dioceson structures… (that was a statement rather than a question?)

Anyway… the big question still remains… “So what now?” – which still seems unclear. A key event could be coming up in the General Synod…

The Church of England’s governing body, the General Synod, could be asked to indicate whether it supports the new traditionalist movement after a lay member from Chichester, Lorna Ashworth, put down a Private Members’ Motion on the topic.
Should it receive more than 100 signatures, a future meeting of the Synod will be asked to vote on the proposition: “This Synod wishes to be in communion with the ACNA.”

I fear that the motion will be rejected, and this could speed up things here. But I hope the Synod will support the ACNA.

Coming Up

by Hugh on April 7, 2009 in Faith, Life with No comments

Well I’m back from NWA! I’m not sure it was quite the holiday I needed – didn’t get much sleep, and the 8 hour journey doesn’t help, but at least it was sunny. Anway… I suspect I shall produce some concluding thoughts in the near future post Word Alive.

Also, I’ve started looking into the process of Ordination in the Church of England, so before anything official happens I need to do some reading on Christian leadership, on Anglicanism and on some issues, particularly on Infant Baptism… so it seems my blog would be a good place to record stuff that I learn from this.

At the end of the month, we’ll be gearing up for Bible by the Beach – I’ll be blogging all about what goes on and probably posting some videos about what’s happening.

So… you don’t really care about this, but I figure if I write down the stuff which I propose to blog about then I might actually get off my bum and do it.

Discipleship Explored DVD

by Hugh on October 18, 2008 in Books, Faith with 2 Comments

So last night I went to All Souls, Langham Place in London for the launch event for the Discipleship Explored course DVD… on the train up I happened to bump in to the chaplain at my Uni (well I’ve graduated now), Hi Gavin, if you happen to be reading! We chatted for the whole hour of the train journey about whether you can be an Anglican but not Protestant… so I got a history lesson of the Reformation, and we had some good debates about the inerrancy of Scripture and sacramental theology… he’s a clever man but he did says that ‘legally’ I won the debate with my trump card – The 39 Articles! Anyway, that’s an aside… but another aside I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of people I’d only known virtually; fellow blogger Dan Green and Emily from GBC – Hi Emily!

So why was I here?? Well I’m sure most people reading have heard of Christianity Explored… I’m sure that most, but probably a few less have heard of it’s follow up course, Discipleship Explored which has been around for a few years. The great thing about the DVD is that it makes it much easier to run a course!

Here’s a trailer for the DVD, giving you a flavour…

The DVD takes you through the book of Philippians in 8 sessions�� . Each session is about 10 minutes long; the passage is read by a guy with a cool Scottish accent, then a key verse is picked out. The key verse along with the rest of the passage is explained, common questions about the Christian life are answered, the presenter Barry Cooper does a great job of clearly explaining stuff and getting us to the point. These sessions aren’t really a substitute for a talk or Bible study but they’re a great launching block into the passage, and a great way to start a group and get people thinking.

Here’s another little video. Rico Tice interviewing Barry Cooper about the Discipleship Explored DVD… great question and answer is the one to the first question “Why Philippians?”… sorry about the angle of filming, couldn’t be bothered to move:

Coming soon… a couple of short video interviews, one with Barry Cooper, and one with Rico Tice.

For more information and to order resources visit the Good Book Company… the Discipleship Explored DVD is available for just �30.

Interview with Tim Chilvers

by Hugh on August 27, 2008 in Faith with 3 Comments

Tim Chilvers is associate minister at Christ Church Surbiton. Like me, he’s from an Anglican church, like me, he went to the Brighton New Frontiers conference, and like me he’s just been interviewed about his experiences of the conference by David Capener.

Good interview. Sounds like we both had a similar overwhelmingly positive experience there (with a few little niggles).

Willams on GAFCON

by Hugh on July 2, 2008 in Faith with No comments

So GAFCON have released their statement here, which basically just affirms that which the Anglican church has always believed.

Rowan Williams has responded to it in his own statement.

Firstly, it smacks of arrogance to say this is not ‘colonialism’ but at the same time to assume he has authority to speak on behalf of the whole Communion, and with more authority than African Bishops who have more Anglicans under their oversight.

Second, the quote below highlights the difference between Williams viewpoint and Biblical Christianity:

A �Primates� Council� which consists only of a self-selected group from among the Primates of the Communion will not pass the test of legitimacy for all in the Communion.�And any claim to be free to operate across provincial boundaries is fraught with difficulties, both theological and practical � theological because of our historic commitments to mutual recognition of ministries in the Communion, practical because of the obvious strain of responsibly exercising episcopal or primatial authority across enormous geographical and cultural divides.

Williams speaks of theological problems, but notice he does not appeal to Scripture, or even to the Creeds or the Articles. He appeals to historic traditon, this is not a theological argument!!

Packer on Williams

by Hugh on June 28, 2008 in Faith with 2 Comments

So it seems my post reporting on Jim Packer’s comments while speaking at Holy Trinity Eastbourne have caused a little bit of a stir in the virtual and real-life press. Few people were interested with Packer’s insightful analysis of Liberalism, or his thoughts on the future of the Anglican church, but on one sentence – “I would say with great respect Archbishop, I believe that the way of wisdom is for you to resign.”

The story has been mentioned by Martin Beckford in the Telegraph, Ruth Gledhill in The Times and on the Church Times Blog. It’s also been discussed on Peter Kirk’s blog. Now personally I don’t think it’s a huge story by any means, but it just goes to show how the media has changed, I can blog something which otherwise would go unheard outside its original audience, isn’t technology good?!

You can listen to Dr. Packer’s talk yourself, and the question time.

Wallace Benn on GAFCON and Lambeth

by Hugh on June 26, 2008 in Faith with No comments

Wallace Benn How he’s been enjoying GAFCON and why he won’t be going to Lambeth…

Video on SydneyAnglicans

There’s loads of other videos there, little snippets from the conference including Vaughan Roberts.

Packer in Eastbourne

by Hugh on June 25, 2008 in Faith with 5 Comments

Last night I went to Holy Trinity Eastbourne to listen to Dr. J.I. Packer speak, the title of his talk was ‘Lessons to be learned from the Canadian Church Experience’. This comes in response to the rumblings in the Anglican church and the personal experiences of Jim Packer and other Canadian ministers in dealing with their liberal Bishop, Michael Ingham. 3 months ago I blogged about these issues, Packers De-licensing and his response to Ingham.

With that background in mind Packer set out to define 4 terms involved in the current debates:

Orthodoxy - Packer sees this as a synonym for Evangelicalism which focuses on the teaching of the Bible (because it acknowledges the authority of the Bible) and on the message of the Gospel (being based on Faith and Repentance).
Anglicanism - He highlighted two different views, those who saw Anglicanism as being bound up with historical practises (defined by traditions) and those who saw it as being defined by principles, as contained in the Creeds, Prayer Book, 39 Articles etc. Packer made it clear he stood in the 2nd camp – Anglicanism is based on principles. He also stated that he believed Anglicanism is “the richest version of Evangelicalism that the world has seen”.
Liberalism - Dr. Packer used 4 S’s to define liberalism…
- Subordinates Scripture to the culture and individualistic Christian experience
- Sanctifies the Secular
- Scales down the Supernatural
- Sweeps away Biblical Standards
Homosexuality - He basically made it clear that he was talking about the practise and not the temptation. Packer gave examples of temptations and how we should not yield to them and included homosexual temptations in this – we should not yield to the temptations because the actions are defined as sin by the Bible.

Dr. Packer went on to give the basic facts about his situation in the Canadian church, the history, how it happened and how things stand now. He highlighted the changing situation, that Bishops are no longer just theoretical heretics but are heretics in what the practise. He referred to Acts 27:27, Paul in the storm and used this as a metaphor to speak of being faithful through the storm in the hope of reaching land.

Big Jim then addressed 4 questions in conclusion…

What is God doing to the Anglican Communion?
- Purging of liberalism
- Preparing faithful Anglicans for counter-cultural and enterprising mission
What is the pattern of ‘alternative oversight’ doing to the Anglican Communion?
- Drawing together a fellowship of the Orthodox
- Parallel jurisdictions are disrupting the traditional diocese/province model
What are those who have ‘realigned’ to do now?
- Pioneer faithful Christian outreach
- Renewal of teaching, mission and discipleship
How should English Evangelicals react?
- Watch and Pray

The question-time that followed came up with the usual questions from slightly ‘un-balanced’ folk, and a few good ones – “Dr. Packer, if you could have 5 minutes with the Archbishop of Cantebury, what would you say?”…

Packer stated that Rowan Williams’ views about homosexuality (documented before becoming A of C, and not changed since) mean that he is not qualified to lead the Anglican Communion and enforce rules layed down at Lambeth in 1998. Big Jim was clear, “Rowan Williams should resign”!

It so happened that earlier in the day I’d done some computer training with the Holy Trinity office staff, so as payment I got 3 free Packer books – God has Spoken, 18 Words, and Growing in Christ… good times.