From Why Missional Leaders Need To Get Over White Man’s Angst:

Young white males, coming out of seminary, can’t deal with the identity crisis they get when they are asked to pursue another skill or vocation alongside the pursuit of ministry. Somehow, to dive in and learn another vocation for the long term that shall feed into one’s vocation of ministry – is a compromise.

Fellow pastor Geoff Holsclaw and I were talking about this yesterday and he called it “the white man’s place of privilege.” We (white males) are used to being masters of our own destiny. We are told we can do anything if we work hard enough. So to pursue a vocation other than ministry that shall be part of ministry is a compromise. It detracts from a singular focus on ministry. It throws open the future. It disrupts the question “will this job fulfil me?” because there is no way this question makes sense anymore when we enter into Kingdom life in this way.

And yet this is exactly the path I believe many of us are called into when looking at the church through the eyes of post Christendom.

Ecclesiology is the theological and Biblical study of what the Church is and for what purpose it exists. This understanding of the Church will dictate what the local church does on a Sunday, what the church does throughout the week and what the church encourages its members to do. In Evangelical circles there has been this tension between identifying the church as an cosmic/spiritual institution and as simply the gathering of believers. There are a host of movements where individuals feel no need to belong to a local church because they feel that the occasional gathering of like-minded Christians “counts” as church (I am by no means referring to the House Church Movement, which is completely separate). On the other hand, individuals believe that the Church only exists in its institutional form consisting of a three fold order of leadership (Bishops, Priests and Deacons) and in its proper administration of the sacraments in a specific way. But why is this important? This is important because when we begin to understand that an essential purpose of the Church is to be on mission, we begun to understand why church planting is a necessary action of the Church.

“Church is only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.”
-William Temple

Jesus was incarnated and sent into our world in order to bring about the Kingdom of God. The central part of this bringing of the Kingdom was his atoning work on the cross. Jesus then established the Church on earth in order to facilitate Gospel growth and the Kingdom of God. His final commandments in Matthew 28.18-20 and Acts 1.7-8 send the disciples into the world. Now the Church is also essentially doxological and purposed to guide and aid in the sanctification of the People of God. However, each of these other two essentials encourages and facilitates mission. They are all in a feedback loop which each creates opportunity for growth in one another. Mike Breen calls these three components Up (doxological), In (sanctification/fellowship) and Out (missiological). When our ecclesiology forgets one of these, our church can get our of whack.

This Out is what drives church planting in a post-Christian context. In Christendom, church planting was often done to hold Gospel Growth. When sanctuaries grew too small or when individuals moved into new territories without churches (west coast expansion), churches were planted. It was an “In” decision. Not an “Out” one. However, in a post-Christian context like New England, churches are planted to facilitate Gospel Growth (Out). Ed Stetzer, Phillip Jensen, David Helm and others have all pointed out that generally there are great numbers of conversions in church plants for a number of reasons. So the call for church planting is both a contextual call (it’s what works in a post-Christiandom society) and a theological call (ourmissional ecclesiology). How does your ecclesiology direct your view of church planting? For your church/denomination, is Church Planting inside the “In” category or the “Out” category?

Posts in this Series

Sex in the City: Do We Still Need Urban Church Plants?
Consumerism, Competition and Celebrities
The Boston Shuffle
Why plant Churches? – Towards A Missional Ecclesiology

The shuffle. Whether you are referring to cards, the iPod or the dance, the idea is the same. You are moving around pre-existing items and in the case of the iPod, you are randomly jumping from song to song until you find one you like. Unfortunately, an analogy can be made to many of our recent church plants. As I talked about in our last post, church planting is often overwhelmed by the consumeristic nature of the American church. Here me out, I am on the side of church planters, I really am. No one starts a church in the city with a desire for consumeristic Christianity. No one ever plants a church with the intention of taking Christians from other churches in the city or merely facilitating a “Christian club” atmosphere with little to no real engagement in mission. However, this is just what is happening and in Boston there is a name for it: The Boston Shuffle.

One reason for this shuffle is financial. Many urban church plants are like “start-ups” and begin with a full operating budget (or at least have their salary covered) from outside supporters for a period of 3-5 years. As soon they hit the ground, the clock towards self-sustainability starts ticking. Planters may have the best intentions to be missional and to reach out to non-Christians, however, to really reach Boston as a pastor means ministering to either disillusioned (by the sex scandal) Roman Catholics, legitimate post-Christians, and (though some camps marginalize this) reaching the immigrant populations. There is now a whole generation of Bostonians whose Baby Boomer parents have chosen to raise their kids without religion. In Boston, it would be wrong to assume an individual is familiar with the basic Bible story of Jonah, for instance. Once individuals realize the soil is slightly rougher than expected, they check the clock find their money is running out and are then left debating whether or not to encourage the addition of the already churched (and already tithing) vis a vie transitioning from a missional based model to an attractional based one.

Another reason for this shuffle is denominational change. According to the Pew Forum, roughly 44% of Americans now profess a religious affiliation that is different from the religion in which they were raised. This is especially true of the Anglican church (the denomination I belong to). We have seen tremendous growth over the last decade from either disenfranchised evangelicals yearning for a deeper understanding of church history or Roman Catholics who desire an evangelical faith with a familiar liturgy. In Boston, the “Anglo-curious”, as I call them, first come to church on Ash Wednesday, Easter Vigil or some other Feast or Fast day that isn’t celebrated in their evangelical denomination. The only problem is that many of these “Anglican converts” are better proselytizers of the liturgy than they are of the Gospel.

The Boston shuffle has actually become so bad in Boston that a well-known senior evangelical pastor and seminary professor does not encourage the planting of churches.  He argues this is because they end up just shuffling people around from church to church. So what is the answer? I think it’s two-fold. First we just need to say no. When healthy evangelicals come knocking at your door looking to switch churches because of preference, kindly say no. Ed Stetzer recently wrote a similar post in which he had no problem saying no to an individual who wanted to join his church. Sure it sounds crazy, but trust me, it’s better than waking up five years later and realizing that your church has had no conversions or adult baptisms in one of the most unchurched areas in the United States.

Second, we need a culture change. Mike Breen writes in his book Building a Discipleship Culture, “If you make disciples you always get the church. But if you make a church, you rarely get disciples.” Our focus needs to be, once again, focused on drawing those who are far from God to God. In Boston, we are transitioning from a Christian culture to a post-Christian one. Pastors are no longer managers and curators, we have to be facilitators of mission (I would also argue that pastors should reflect mission in their own lives- a good question to ask is: Are your pastors on mission themselves?) The only way we can get our core group to be on mission is to encourage in them discipleship and be on mission ourselves. Our end goal shouldn’t be a building, a salary, a certain number of congregants, programs or staff members. Our end goal should be a movement of disciples making disciples which in turn leads to mission.

Posts in this Series

Sex in the City: Do We Still Need Urban Church Plants?
Consumerism, Competition and Celebrities
The Boston Shuffle

Let me begin with an apology. I wrote on Monday that I would post again on Wednesday, however yesterday was my birthday and between being bi-vocational and celebrating with my wife, I didn’t get around to posting. Ok. Here is a quick recap on Monday: I summarized various sources, including Tim Keller, who believe that the city has shifted dramatically in the last 10-15 years and part of that shift has been an influx of what I am calling evangelical suburban tourists. “Evangelical” because they would self-identify as church goers at one of the many non-denominational megachurches (50 percent of churchgoers attended the largest 10% of congregations – 350 regular participants and up) or large conservative mainline denominations (PCA, etc). “Suburban” because this is their place of origin, where they were raised and most likely where they went to college. In fact, I can think of only a handful of evangelical seminaries in cities and only one on the “other side of the tracks”. The suburban way of life (personal space, reliance upon cars, monoculturalism, definition of time, etc.) is vastly different than the urban life. And finally “tourists” because an extremely large portion of these individuals and families are moving to the city for a short period of time, anywhere from 1-5 years on average (and subsequently fail to really engage with the city, but instead engage marginally). Overall, cities have increased in their young adult population (18-34), but have shrunk in what is typically the age of adults who have school aged children (35-45) (studies found here). Now obviously there are many systemic factors at play (education being a major one), but the fact is that many of these individuals are not moving to the city to set down roots, raise a family and eventually die – even though there is extremely compelling evidence as to why living in the city is advantageous.

Yet I left Monday’s post by saying we still need to plant churches in urban areas and we do for a number of reasons. First, since 2007 more than 50% of the world’s population resides in cities and many estimate by 2050 it will be close to 85%. Second, cities are the arteries of our country. The best way to change a region is to first change the major city (see the book of Acts). Third, the two most unchurched regions of America (Northeast and Northwest) are home to major cities that have influence over the entire nation. While I hate to give statistics, I am certain that under 20% of Bostonians attend any sort of church on Sunday. Finally, there is indeed a lot of systemic change that is needed in our cities and our calling as Citizens of the Kingdom demands that we push (with humility) to enact those changes. The problem is that if we continue to plant temporary holding pens for suburban, evangelical tourists we will fail to ever engage our city.

Before I go on, let me offer a caveat. I love the suburbs, grew up in the suburbs, and think the Gospel is doing some amazing things in the suburbs. But the devil is also doing some amazing things in the suburbs and some of those things are affecting the culture of the American Church(Note: These things are affecting the culture of the city as well, but I am talking here about their suburban manifestations with are being immigrated into the city). Three of these things are consumerism, competition and celebritism. If you do a simple Google search for the church and these three things, you will see plenty (and I mean plenty) of articles and blog posts about them, so I’ll be brief in diagnosing the problem. These three things are not simply endemic of the church, but of the American culture in general. Our whole society is built upon consuming, competing and making celebritism the end goal in life. This is then manifested in the church as members view Sunday as the main event in which they drop something in the basket and obtain an experience in return (of course we always talk about not wanting to be this, but if we were realistic often times this is what the church becomes especially in the fight of the business of the city). Churches are then encouraged to compete with each other to see who has the bigger building, the larger staff, the flashier website and the most sermons downloaded or books sold. This then means that pastors become celebrities who can say no evil and do no evil. In fact, the goal of many individual members is to become a celebrity themselves by singing on stage or becoming a “leader” in the church. Sound hopeless? Well it’s not.

What if we planted churches that engaged the city on the city’s terms? What if we planted churches that looked like its neighbors, that had local leaders and that sought to affect systemic change? What if these churches, in turn, transformed these suburban tourists into disciples and they, in turn, moved back into the suburbs with a radically contagious faith?

This is where we are going because my purpose in this series is to do more than diagnose, but to propose a way forward. However, one more diagnosis has to be made…and that is on contexualization. See you Friday…

Posts in this Series

Sex in the City: Do We Still Need Urban Church Plants?
Consumerism, Competition and Celebrities

This is the beginning of a series on church planting in the city. While I am no expert, I hope this series will ask the hard questions about consumerism vs. discipleship, money, contextualized mission, race and the future of American cities. Every Monday a new topic will begin with further posts on that topic posted throughout the week. You can see a rough schedule of these posts here.

There has been a swell of urban church plants in the last ten years. I was recently talking to an older church planter in Boston. He moved to the city in the 1970′s, when the South End was still a slum, and has been a part of multiple successful church plants that cross racial and denominational lines. The old joke was that in the 80′s and 90′s a certain wealthy, southern denomination would load a church planter up with several hundreds of thousands of dollars and send them to Boston to “save the city”. The planter and his family, who would have been severely ill-equipped to handle urban Boston, would spend 1-2 years floundering in the city and would then move back home. This was apparently repeated every 5-7 years. The few church plants that were successful were usually led by people from Boston who reached out to the city’s middle and lower class. And then something changed…

In the last 10-15 years more and more church planters with suburban backgrounds moved to the city and began planting large, successful churches. These churches were located in the center of the city, desired to love the city and sought to engage the finer points of culture in the city (i.e. art, the academy, etc.). But a question that needs to be asked is, “What changed?” Maybe it is that more and more church planters are being trained to understand the city? Maybe church planters have lost the messiah complex and no longer see the city as a broken, evil thing crying out for a savior? I think the answer to many of these types of questions is…yes…but I also believe this has changed because there has been a significant demographic shift in America’s cities over the past 10-15 years.

Dr. Anthony Bradley, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College, has blogged on this very topic. Dr. Bradley quotes Joel Kotkin who in an article on urban upward mobility writes,

America’s largest cities are increasingly divided into three classes: the affluent, the poor, and the nomadic class of young people who generally come to the city for a relatively brief period and then leave. New York, the aspirational city of my grandparents, now has the smallest share of middle-income families in the nation, according to a recent Brookings Institution study, with Los Angeles and San Francisco not far behind. In 1980 Manhattan, New York’s wealthiest borough, ranked 17th among U.S. counties for social inequality; by 2007 Bloomberg’s “luxury city” was first, with the top fifth earning 52 times the income of the lowest fifth, a disparity roughly comparable to that of Namibia.

What has happened is that wealthy (wealthier) Evangelicals who formerly resided in suburbia and attended suburban, Evangelical churches have now moved into certain sections of urban America – areas commonly called “city-centers” (the Manhattans, Back Bays and Lincoln Parks). These Evangelicals desire to attend church and they want this church to be a more hip, urban version of their suburban church. They want a suburban church, but one that has the sexiness of the city. Essentially what is being argued is that urban church planting has now become suburban church planting in city centers. The people are no different, just a slightly different geographic context. David Fitch, a church planter, seminary professor and blogger has also noted this phenomena and writes that this has resulted in urban church plants full of a young, transient population who have moved to the city for an education, job or for all of the lights and plan on leaving again once they have children. Urban church plants are not growing because the unchurched are converting, but because Evangelicals have found the city to be sexy and are moving there in droves. Church planting ‘guru’ Tim Keller actually affirms this in a comment on Fitch’s blog:

…starting in the mid- to late 1990s things definitely changed in the big cities including NYC. Young adults began to pour back into center city areas as the cities regenerated and got safer. And along with them came a good percentage of young adults from the south and midwest with evangelical backgrounds. Starting in the late 1990s, I noticed for the first time “shoppers”–people moving here and beginning to look around for a church… Today it is very possible to start an center city church simply by attracting people from evangelical backgrounds to live and serve in the city. You can gather a church without actually evangelizing the residents.

So the question becomes: Do we need to plant urban churches if the only ones coming are suburban evangelical tourists? Individuals who come to the city to get something (education, job, the notoriety among their friends for living in the city, etc.) and don’t really desire to give back to the city? Individuals who end up pricing the urban middle and lower class out of their own cities.

Well my answer is yes. Yes we still need to plant urban churches…but you will have to wait till Wednesday and Friday to hear why and how.

Mike Breen at City Collective

On Monday I wrote about the importance of listening and learning from other church planting movements and how hard it can be to be aware of innovative and effective ministry outside of our networks. I want to continue by introducing you all to Mike Breen. Mike is considered by many to be one of the initiators of the missional movement. In 1994, Mike became senior pastor of St. Thomas Sheffield, an Anglican-Baptist church. Mike is a CofE guy, but has never been afraid to try innovative things that draw those far from God to God. He began experimenting with clusters and those eventually become missional communities back in the 1980′s. His two most famous books are Launching Missional Communities and Building a Discipleship Culture. Oh and Mike will be a main speaker at the Anglican 1000 Summit this year. Again, introductions aside, Mike led our time of teaching at the City Collectivetwo weeks ago in NYC and I wanted to share my reflections from that time.

Building a Discipleship Culture
While Mike may have become known for his work on the missional church, he firmly believes that one cannot have mission without discipleship. He recent posts on “Why the missional movement will fail” emphasize this. One thing you will quickly realize about Mike is that he is not playing around. Mike firmly believes that the church’s task is to disciple its people and then to send them out on mission to draw those far from God to God and to then disciple those new Christians to go out again. At one point during our morning someone asked him what we should say to individuals in our church who don’t have time for discipleship, and he replied that we should encourage them to find another church.

Cultural Idols
Mike began the morning by sharing out of Luke 4 on the Temptation of Jesus. He said that the three temptations can be summarized as Approval (“throw yourself down from here and God will save you” i.e. that is how you will know he approves of you), Ambition (“bow down and all the kingdoms will be yours” and Appetite (“turn this stone to bread”). These three things are actually the root idols of every culture. He said this is manifested in Britain as “Order/Class”, “Duty/Manipulation” and “Stewardship/Scarcity”. I’ll have to trust him on that, I mean he is British. In America, he believes that these idols are manifested as Celebrity (Approval), Competition (Ambition) and Consumerism (Appetite). Now it took him about 30 minutes to move from the Temptation of Jesus, through a brief history of western civilization and finally to America’s idols, but when he finally got there I think he was right on. The problem is that the American church is not immune from these three idols, so we need to build a culture of discipleship that wars against these idols.

Building Disciples vs Building a Church
If you want to build a church, according to Mike, it’s quite easy. Find a talented public speaker to be the senior pastor, a semi-sexy and gifted worship leader to lead music and finally make easy, attainable goals for the people to consume. If your primary goal is building a church, you won’t be able to make disciples. However, if you start by discipling people, you will eventually get the church. But how do you disciple people? Mike’s model of discipleship is built upon three things: Information: You need to know who Jesus is through the study of God’s word; Imitation: You need to have an example, another disciple, who you can model your life after; and Innovation: Disciple making and risk taking are one and the same. You need to take risks and push boundaries (personal, familial and communal) to fight the idols of our culture. The problem is that most of our American disciple making is focused only on transmitting information. Michael Rudzena, a pastor at Trinity Grace tweeted, “The lack of discipleship in America essentially boils down to a lack of lives worth imitating.” And he is dead on.

A Few Critiques
I was really excited to hear Mike at the City Collective and this was one of my most anticipated moments of the weekend. Mike is a great speaker and very relational, but there were times when I felt like he was pointing out the obvious as he transitioned from one point to another. Now this might be because I read his blog, but I was hoping he would get past his “shtick” and into some of the more difficult moments of actually creating a culture of discipleship that seriously takes on America’s idols. Maybe I just needed to get a pint with him and push him on a few of his points. The only other area of criticism was his sweeping summary of western civilization. Now he did make a disclaimer at the beginning by saying he wasn’t an expert, but there were several moments where I looked at my wife and thought, “where is he going with this?” He did however, finally “land the plane”- as they say in homiletic’s class – and make his point.

Mike Breen continues to bless the Church by challenging leaders to build a culture of missional discipleship and I, for one, am thankful for that. If you want to continue to learn more, pick up his latest book and check out his blog.

So in the spirit of moving outside our networks, I want to introduce you all to two exciting church planting movements. Today is Trinity Grace Church (TGC). TGC has planted five churches in New York City in five years and each of them are self-sustaining (with two more on the way). Then on Wednesday, I am going to introduce you all to Mike Breen, who is the leader of 3DM and is the father (grandfather?) of the missional movement (Mike Breen will also be speaking at the A1K Summit this year). So while Trinity Grace and Mike Breen are not officially connected, they share a similar ethos. I was able to be with both of them last weekend in NYC at the City Collective gathering. Introductions aside, my hope in this post is to describe the distinctives of Trinity Grace. A quick note: Jon Tyson, the Senior Pastor of Trinity Grace, is Australian and I know the Australian culture (unlike our American culture) abhors gushing reviews. So while this post will be positive, there will be a few things I will offer as a critique as well. And another note: Jon is about to blow up with his recently published book, his speaking at Catalyst and articles in Christianity Today. Don’t forget you heard it here first.

The TGC Structure
The best way to describe Trinity Grace Church is that they are a network of churches in New York City. They are more than a network though, because each of the five churches have their own leadership and authority, but they are connected to one another as a larger urban church. They put it this way, “The model envisions one urban church community consisting of several neighborhood churches that network together for the common good and renewal of the city. The city parish church is diverse in its essential nature, uniting women, men, and families from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds across a major metropolitan area.” TGC calls this model the “Parish Church” and I think it’s quite brilliant. Cities are made up of very different neighborhoods and this model allows each neighborhood to have a completely contextualized church. The worship is contextualized, the sermons are contextualized and the outreach and discipleship are contextualized. However, each neighborhood is also part of this larger city, and the fact that TGC gathers together once a quarter for city-wide allows them to work together to tackle systemic issues, to engage in the various industries of NYC (business, art, fashion, finance, etc) and to be a witness to the city at large. You can read their white paper on this model here.

Missional Communities
Another distinctive of TGC are their missional communities. They describe these as “mid-sized groups of 15-40 people that exist to love God, pursue wholeness and transformation, care for one another, and serve our neighbors while promoting justice in our city.” These mid-sized groups are centered on mission. The idea is that most New Yorkers have no reason to show up for church out of the blue on a Sunday, even if they are invited. The Sunday gathering just isn’t a natural place for New Yorkers to first meet Jesus. At the other end of the spectrum, small groups are an equally difficult environment to first introduce New Yorkers to Jesus. They are often too small to feel welcome and either too awkward or too intimate to effectively welcome newcomers. Additionally, Sundays focus on worship and small groups are focused on discipleship, which leaves no venue for mission. Enter the mid-sized Missional Community. These communities each have a geographical missional focus and offer a place where there is enough people-power to mobilize mission (it’s a lot easier to volunteer if your group is 35 people as opposed to 10) and also a bigger group to welcome those asking questions. These groups meet both for missional purposes (bbq’s to welcome to people or volunteer work) as well for mini-worship gatherings during the week. Jon breaks this concept down really well in his 2008 talk at Catalyst.

Theology of Work
The final distinctive I want to hit on is TGC’s focus on a Theology of Work. Their tagline is “Joining God in the Renewal of All Things” and they believe it is vital to have a theology of work. This makes total sense because most people spend anywhere from 2-5 hours a week at church or small group and 40-70 hours a week at their job. If we don’t have a theology that encourages our engagement at work, we are seriously missing out on the Kingdom of God. TGC quickly gets beyond the notion that the only way to engage the workplace as a Christian is to share the Gospel with your co-workers and seeks to find the redemptive edge in each industry or field. They recently preached a sermon series on this topic entitled Joining God in the Renewal of All Things.

A Few Critiques
Overall, TGC is doing amazing things. I mean five churches in five years and they are all sustainable? That is nuts. But each of these five churches was planted in very affluent areas of New York City. That is both a feat and a concern. A feat because the rich are often the most difficult to reach, but a concern because these are the neighborhoods of t.v. shows, movies and music. When one thinks of NYC, they usually think of Manhattan, fashion and affluence. I hope TGC continues to plant churches in other parts of NYC that are contextualized to those neighborhoods, but still connected to the larger TGC network. My second critique, which is connected to this, in that their Theology of Work is also an affluent theology. What I mean by that is that they do a great job of creating a theology for artists, musicians, business people and others whose jobs include the engagement of the mind. But what about the custodian or the butcher? What beautiful things are they creating for the Kingdom? Again, this is obviously connected to the areas where they planted churches and might change as they plant in other neighborhoods.

If you are ever in NYC or looking to plant churches in a city check them out. TGC has been extremely helpful to me and I hope my relationship with them will continue to grow.

I am working as a supply priest for a Kenyan church that doesn’t have a pastor this morning. Check out this Kenyan prayer that is prayed during Holy Eucharist:

It is right and our delight to give you thanks and praise, great Father, living God, supreme over the world. Creator, Provider, Saviour and Giver. From a wandering nomad you created your family; for a burdened people you raised up a leader; for a confused nation you chose a king, for a rebellious crowd you sent your prophets. In these last days you have sent us your Son, your perfect image, bringing your kingdom, revealing your will, dying, rising, reigning, remaking your people for yourself. Through him you have poured out your Holy Spirit, filling us with light and life.

I mean come on: wandering nomad to family, burdened people to leader, confused nation to king, rebellious crowd to a people for yourself? The Africans definitely know how to pray transformation!

I am often asked by people wanting to go deeper into the history of the Church how to pray with the Book of Common Prayer. I searched a bit for a website providing an easy to follow outline but I couldn’t find one, so I have taken on the task. Below you will find simple (hopefully) instructions on how to pray the Morning Office. I will offer a brief explanation of how to pray the morning office, how I pray the morning office (showing the flexibility of the BCP) and a look at the traditional way to pray the morning office.

Introduction
Before I began let me offer a few brief introductory explanations. First the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is an Anglican prayer book. It offers prayers, both ancient and modern, to help guide communal and individual worship. Each nation has their own local book of payer and the BCP is the American book of prayer. These prayer books are revised every so often and I will be describing prayer from the 1979 BCP, which is the current version and the one most easily accessible. There are two different types of morning prayer (Rite One and Rite Two). The major difference between the two is that one is written in old english and the other in modern english. I will be describing Rite Two, which is in modern english.

Definitions
“Morning Office” – We call the morning prayer liturgy the Morning Office. “Office” simply means work and this implies that prayer is not passive, but an active interaction with God and our community.
“Officiant”and “People” – The morning office was designed to be prayed in community and thus there are instructions for an “Officiant” or leader and the “People”. However when praying alone, one assumes both roles.
“Rubric” - A rubric is an instruction to the reader that is not meant to be read out loud. These are in smaller, italicized type.
“Antiphon” – A response which was chanted in monasteries. Today it usually just spoken.
“Canticle” – A biblical passage that was originally a song. Mary’s Song (Luke 2) is a good example of this.
“Suffrage” – A series of short prayers read in a call and response manner.
“Collect” – A prayer that focuses on the theme of the day or season.
“General or Authorized Intercession” – Spontaneous prayer…the type of prayer most evangelicals are used to.

Brief Explanation
The Morning Office begins on page 75 of the BCP. Our prayer time begins with opening sentence from scripture that is based upon the current season. Since we will be in the season of Epiphany starting tomorrow, turn to page 76 and pray any sentence under the Epiphany heading. Next, we move to the Confession of Sin found on page 79. One may either say the entire paragraph or simply, “Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor”. After a period of silent confession, recite the confession paragraph. Then turn the page and pronounce the absolution (declaring what Jesus has already done) found on the top of page 80. Don’t forget to substitute “I” or “us” for “you”.

After this introductory section, we now move into a time of worship through the Psalter. A short response from Psalm 51:15 is recited, “Lord open our lips”, “And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.” Then the Gloria (“Glory to the Father…”) is said. After this an antiphon or short prayer, is said based upon the season. Find the one said during Epiphany on the top of page 81. After that is said, turn the page and pray either the Venite or Jubilate (rotating each day). You may then return to the antiphon prayed on 81 and repeat it or move on to the psalm (depending on local custom).

At this point one is instructed to read passages of Scripture. Feel free to devise your own reading schedule, including the Psalms (see below for an example). Upon completing the scripture reading turn to page 96 and proclaim your faith with the Apostles Creed (I will explain pages 85-95 in the traditional explanation).

After this comes the section on Prayer. While the entire morning office is a prayer, this section focuses on intercession. It begins with the Lord’s Prayer and then two sets of short sentence prayers (Suffrage A and Suffrage B – pgs 97-98). Feel free to alternate each day. After this a Collect of the Day (a themed prayer for the day) is prayed. You will notice that there are enough prayers for each day of the week. I usually pray the “Collect for the Renewal of Life” on Mondays, the “Collect for Peace” on Tuesdays, etc. But feel free to mix it up as well.

There are then three different prayers for mission on pages 100-101, which can be rotated. The morning office then closes with either the prayer of “General Thanksgiving” (pg 101) or “A Prayer of St. Chrysostom” (pg 102). After that there are three different general blessings that may be pronounced. And that is that. You made it through the Morning Office. Total time w/o scripture reading = 10 minutes.

My Morning Prayer
Rather then repeat what is above, I will point out the liberties I take with the Morning Office to show a few ways in which it can be adapted. I am a strange mix of high church liturgy, charismatic worship and evangelical study, but I am able to squeeze all that into the morning office without it feeling forced. I usually begin my time in silence in order to quiet my heart and mentally process some of the things I encountered the day before. We have so little time to reflect that I take some time to do that. If I am unable to be quiet, that is ok because I apparently needed to process things. Other times I will listen to a worship song to take my eyes off myself and put them on God. It depends on where I am at internally. After some time I begin as directed above.

If I am praying with others I always split up the Gloria (pg 80). The Leader will pray, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit”, with the People responding, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever.” I also split up the Seasonal Antiphon (pgs 80-81). For example, in Epiphany the Leader would pray, “The Lord has shown forth his glory” and the People respond, “Come let us adore him”. Then as we pray the Venite or Jubilate, I have us pray it responsively, breaking at the asterisk. After the Venite or Jubilate, I go back to the Seasonal Antiphon and pray that responsively.

When it comes to scripture reading I try and mix reading large chunks of scripture with a few short passages for meditation. I keep a journal of the passages I read and either directly copy a verse or reflect on each passage I read. I do this in order to take my reading beyond intellectual exercise. I begin by reading three Psalms slowly and a Proverb. I then read a chapter out of the OT. I am currently going through the minor prophets. Here I look for general themes of God’s covenant faithfulness. After that I read a chapter from a NT Epistle. Since I cycle through the letters (Romans-Revelation) and its the beginning of my reading schedule, I am in Romans. After that I read a passage from one of the Gospels (currently John). I try and be more meditative with the Gospels. Sometimes I read an entire chapter and other times it’s just a few verses.

I respond to my time in the Word with the Apostles Creed and the Prayers (96-97). Sometimes instead of the Collect of the Day I will read the Collect of the Season (pg 214). I then read a prayer for mission. At this point I usually plug in my headphones and listen to song or two to help me pray. I usually do the charismatic pace and take some time to pray for my family, friends and the parish. When I feel “led” to stop, I end with one of the closing prayers (pg 101-102) and go off on my day.

Now this is an obvious over-simplification of the reasons and the truth is that it was complicated, confusing and produced a lot of hurt and unnecessary brokenness. Things were done poorly, there were no systems and structures set up to handle something like this and mistakes were made (on both sides). There is still a tremendous amount of healing and reconciliation that needs to be done with the leadership of the church and in the heart and soul of my wife and I. But we are beginning to move on.

It has been 60 days since the last time I worshipped at that church. I found a job in less than a month (which can only be seen as a provision from God in this economy), that seeks to be a bridge between a local Christian college and urban high school students. And, did I mention, that we are moving on?

We refuse to be defined by what has been done to us. We refuse to grow bitter and we refuse to define ourselves over and against something else. We are not anti-church or anti-church plants. We feel more called than ever to plant churches and we refuse to plant a church that “won’t be like that one”. Movements that define themselves over and against something else never multiply. Sure they may grow quickly, but they also quickly grow insular.

So we are moving on. What you will see over the next few weeks are posts that are about something new. And that something new is planting urban churches that exist for the sake of others. For those outside of the church. So keep reading and post your comments.