By David W. Virtue
and Mary Ann Mueller in Wisconsin
www.virtueonline.org
Sept 14, 2009
NASHOTAH, WISCONSIN---In a stunning pronouncement, the American Anglican Council (AAC) announced the launching of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans-North America (FCA-NA) this week bringing together individual Anglicans in the great Diaspora who are unable to find an ACNA church near them. Orthodox Episcopalians and Anglicans can join to become ministry partners.
"I am pleased to announce the formation of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans - North America as a ministry partner of AC-NA to which you can apply immediately," said the Rev. Phillip Ashey AAC's travelling chaplain. He urged Anglicans to go on line and join the FCA -NA apply at: www.fca.net
FCA-NA joins with FCA in England and South Africa.
This much-awaited announcement was made at the Nashotah House refectory in front of more than 50 members the Southeastern Wisconsin American Anglican Council (SEWAAC) chapter monthly meeting.
GAFCON secretariat and FCA director Anglican Archbishop Sydney Jensen charged the ACC to organize the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in North America. Since then Fr. Ashey and others, including Nashotah House Dean Robert Munday and Fr. William Beasley - who were both present at this month's SEWAAC meeting - have been working towards seeing FCA-NA become a reality. As AAC's Chief Operating Officer, Fr. Ashey has been kept busy with back-to-back meetings while in the Upper Midwest. He will address delegates at a major FCA-NA planning summit in Plano, Texas, this week, along with Dean Munday, Fr. Beasley and others, to hammer out detailed plans for the FCA-NA's eventual roll out.
FCA has rolled out with great fanfare and success in England and South Africa. The next logical step was North America where the infant Anglican Church in North America is getting a foothold and seeking formal recognition from the rest of the Anglican Communion as the Thirty-Ninth Province. Hopefully, FCA's American unveiling will take place before the end of the year.
Fr. Ashey explained that ACNA's focus is to reach North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ, and with the help of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which was originally conceived through last summer's GACFON meeting for the "benefit of the church and the furtherance of its mission".
"We must move ahead together. But there is one situation where we are in danger of leaving Anglicans behind," the AAC priest lamented. "This is the situation we are in..."
Many southern Wisconsin Episcopalians feel disenfranchised from their orthodox Anglican roots and traditional Anglican heritage. They have found it spiritually necessary to either leave The Episcopal Church or hang tough in The Episcopal Church because there is no local ACNA congregation to plug into for a variety of reasons including distance and lack of enough members to plant a parish.
SEWAAC President Bill Chapin explained that many SEWAAC members particularity feel disenfranchised because they are trapped within a revisionist TEC diocese, sit in revisionist TEC pews and because there are only three ACNA churches within the entire Diocese of Milwaukee. There is nowhere else to go. The three churches are: St. Edmund's, Elm Grove; Light of Christ, Kenosha; and all Saints, Milwaukee. The Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee encompasses the entire southern third of the state, stretching from Lake Michigan to Iowa along the Mississippi River. The other Episcopal dioceses in Wisconsin include Eau Claire and Fond du Lac.
Fr. Ashey came to exhort, build up, and encourage the SEWAAC members and support them in their Anglicanism. He explained the spiritual mechanics of ACNA and how it can help the beleaguered Wisconsin Episcopalians as they struggle to remain faithful to their Anglicanism in a spiritually hostile environment.
"At this watershed moment we need to be sure that it is God that is going before us and not just our own ideas," he cautioned. "Don't get ahead of the Lord - we must move together."
Fr. Ashey was quick to point out that even though TEC has become theologically revisionist through a false gospel, heretical, and heterodox ways in the post-modern, post-Christian culture, The Episcopal Church leaves behind a great tradition.
"Saying that TEC is dead does not remove our respect for what was once great and Godly," he explained. "Our Book of Common Prayer, our worship, our architecture and hymnody ..."
He mentioned some of the great Episcopal orthodox bishops including Jackson Kemper who was a driving force behind the creation of Nashotah House and is still a Wisconsin legend.
However, the priest cautioned that too many times the problematic preoccupation is with the hurts of the past and the loss of buildings, rather than reaching out to the next generation with the life-giving power and transforming love of Jesus Christ.
He then laid out a game plan in which SEWAAC members, indeed all Anglican Christians, could grasp the essence of the Gospel message.
"First get a grip on God's promises," he said. "Draw on the great Evangelical stream of Anglicanism."
He noted that exegetical preaching and teaching in worship and small groups give the Christian the much needed opportunity and time to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the Word of God in Holy Scripture.
"This will mean intentionally supporting seminaries like Nashotah House," Fr. Ashey noted.
He also noted that all Anglicans need to be committed to Bible study and allow what they learn to shape their values in the vision, mission and strategic objectives of the church and that every person needs to consciously commit Scripture passages to memory.
The next step is to get a grip on God's patterns --- personal holiness of life including Anglo-Catholic spiritual disciplines, which help to cultivate the interior life in Christ. He pointed to developing a Rule of Life which includes frequent Eucharist, the Daily Office, Scripture meditation, listening prayer, spiritual accountability and regular confession.
"Every member of the church is called to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ," he said.
Next comes laying hold of the presence and power of God through the Holy Spirit, a new Pentecost need for renewal of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Life of the Spirit - a Christianity with Power as the supernatural dimension of the normal Christian life.
Other points Fr. Ashey mentioned were that worship and prayer have to take priority because they are what shape everything in ACNA.
"As foolish and powerless as it may seem, our Number One strategy to build the Anglican Church in North America is to preach Christ Crucified." Fr. Ashey explained. "We will preach Christ crucified through personal relational evangelism: 'presenting Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that people everywhere will put their trust in God through Him, know Him as Saviour and serve Him as Lord in the fellowship of the Church."
He went on to say that other ways of preaching Christ crucified are to fulfill the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations... equipping each member so that they may reconcile the world to Christ ... establishing mission partnerships with the Global South and to learn from them.
Finally Fr. Ashey enumerated various points on how ACNA can gain recognition as the Thirty-Ninth Province and help stem the tide of the false Gospel from continuing to spread and infect "the torn Communion."
He noted that ACNA's leadership needs to join in demanding that the Ridley Cambridge Draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant be immediately released; that ACNA join others in asking the Archbishop of Canterbury to request that all TEC representative withdraw from participation in any Anglican Communion office including the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council; request that the Church of England's General Synod, as well as the other primates of provinces of the Anglican Communion, recognize ACNA as the only Windsor-compliant authentically Anglican body in North America; help facilitate a meeting of wider the Confessing Communion to address various aspects of TEC's revisionist theology which depart from the historic faith and order of the ancient church; and support Nashotah House as it enters into theological collaboration with the Orthodox which could hopefully lead to an Anglican-Orthodox statement.
Also: ACNA leadership must demand that the Communion-wide "Indaba listening process" be suspended until such time that an alternative funding source can be secured; continue to help inform the Global South and GAFCON partners of TEC's underhanded way of attempting to infiltrate their Provinces through the use of money, seminary exchanges and the corrupted Indaba listening process; help the GAFCON's Global South partners establish solid Biblical and confessional inter-Anglican ministry networks and help bind together the Confessing Communion; and finally, help support Global South and GAFCON provinces in engaging the Torn Communion other than on Canterbury's terms and TEC's liberal agendas, focusing instead on the Jerusalem Declaration.
"The most effective thing we can do is gain recognition as a genuine, robust Anglican Province is to stay focused on our mission," Fr. Ashley concluded, "to continue to preach Christ crucified, and to continue to share the transforming love of Jesus Christ to all of North America through evangelism, church planting, discipleship, and mission."
"Let us build a Church like the one in Acts 2:42-47," he urged, "a Church that is worthy of recognition as the Thirty-Ninth Province."
Following Fr. Ashey's presentation, SEWAAC's President Bill Chapin said that in his opinion Fr. Ashey's address was "one of the finest we have ever had."
SEWAAC has been helping disenfranchised Wisconsin Episcopalians stay moored to the wider Anglican Communion while they are currently trapped in a revisionist parish in a hostile diocese.
"We are a conduit for orthodoxy," he noted. "We are an orthodox advocacy group. There are no SEWAAC parishes. We do not plant churches."
Chapin said that SEWAAC has worked hand-in-glove with Nashotah House through the years. He is very grateful for the traditional seminary's enthusiastic support in helping provide a meeting place and theological underpinnings of the Christianity 101 course and upcoming Christianity 201 course.
END
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