The American Anglican Council is pleased to offer you two new resources that will enable you and your church to grow in the knowledge and love of the LORD and in mission to your local community.
The first comes from a team led by AAC Trustee Mrs. Willa Kane. Eighth Day Prayers: Daily Hope for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. This first volume comes out of a simple idea that would have been impossible to execute without the enlivening help of the Holy Spirit. During the global Covid pandemic in 2020, a friend of Willa’s asked her if there was a way to call people to pray for eight minutes at 8pm wherever they were in the world. You will remember how our world in that time of pandemic was in a state of fear, isolation, and confusion. Willa enlisted the help of Sally Breedlove and the Rev. Madison Perry to do a simple thing: set up a website and post daily invitations to pray based on the ancient Lectio Divina model of prayer. Each of those first 150 devotions includes an invitation to read a passage of scripture appointed for that day (lectio), followed by a brief meditation on the text (meditatio), a scripture-soaked prayerful response to what may be speaking to us (oratio), and a question that leads us more deeply into how God may be speaking to us (contemplatio). The prayers provided often come from our own ACNA Book of Common Prayer (2019), the Saints, and the Church Fathers.
For those of us who struggle with prayer, this volume provides a reachable goal—eight minutes of scripture reading and prayer. It also explains why this simple online model eventually gathered over 10,000 followers by the end of 2020! This first volume (on the Incarnation Cycle) is ordered to follow the daily readings appointed for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. It includes other writers in addition to Willa, Sally, and Madison: ACNA bishops Steve Breedlove and Andrew Williams, the Revs. Nathan Baxter, Art Going, and Steven E. Breedlove, and others, to name but a few. Volume Two will include the paschal cycle of readings (Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost), and Volume Three will focus on Ordinary Time. We encourage you to purchase this first volume as an Advent gift for yourself, your friends, and your church! You can find Volume One here.
The second resource is our Anglican Perspective Podcast series for the next three weeks (listen in here), a discussion with the Rev. David Hanke, Rector of Restoration Anglican Church in Arlington, Virginia (ACNA Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic). Restoration began in January 2009 with Rev. David and 60 mission team members he recruited from The Falls Church who had a love for Jesus and the lost, a heart for serving Arlington County, and enough “relational room” to add new people into their network of friendships and small groups. Today they are a multi-generational congregation of approximately 600 adults and 200 children who worship in our Anglican Prayer Book tradition at two packed services, with childrens’ small groups at both services. Young families abound. Children are loved and crawling throughout the church!
How do I know? My daughter worships and serves there on the worship team. We have been privileged to worship with her on several Sundays. And people keep coming to visit along with us. Between Christians seeking a new home and non-believers seeking Christ, they are on their next five-year strategic plan to have 100 people make new commitments to Christ, which may lead to another church plant. The following short video will give you a picture of all this growth and the experience of a healthy, thriving Anglican church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZe9eNgZS5s&t=20s.
I know from my own experience planting and leading churches how frustrating it can be to try and emulate another church. That’s not the purpose of this podcast series. We spent a day with Rev. David talking about the needs of Anglican churches all across North America and their mission of reaching people with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. We asked him to identify the biblical values, principles, and processes that any congregation of any size anywhere can draw upon to become a healthy, mission-focused, multi-generational, family-friendly Anglican church in their community. And do you know what we found? We discovered how much those yearnings, values, and principles of leadership he discovered for Restoration are exactly the same as those we already share in our AAC Anglican Revitalization Ministries.
I hope and pray you will listen in the next few weeks. I believe you will be deeply encouraged and that God will speak to you about his vision for your church and your community at this time! I was blessed to have Canon Mark Eldredge of Anglican Revitalization Ministries and the Rev. Josh Lake, co-planter with me at St Simon’s Anglican Church and one of our AAC Anderson-Trane Fellows join the conversation. My prayer is that this lively conversation will give hope to your hearts and inspiration for the days ahead in all your ministry!
