Via Media Emerging

As I begin this little blog, I am hoping to use it as a tool to share with those close to me as well as those who may not know me well the things that are on my mind and heart.

The thing that is on my heart right now more than anything else is something that (as I talk with more and more people) most folks are unaware of.

I hope to use this blog as a means to share this with you all.

The thing that has captured my heart is what I will call the "Anglican Movement." Throughout the world the Anglican Communion is growing by leaps and bounds, and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world. But what is it?

The Anglican Church (the Church of England) has existed since christianity first landed in Britain in the third century. The Church as we know it though has come to us as a result of the 16th Century Reformation.

When Martin Luthers Reformation finally hit England it found a nation that was not willing to take the shift in the church as far as Luther and Calvin were taking it. It was a Church that wished to remain catholic, but to fix the abuses that the Roman Church had caused.

The result was a body of believers that was BOTH catholic AND reformed. Niether Protestant nor Roman Catholic. It was truly the ecclesia reformata, qui semper reformanda (the reformed church, and always reforming).

But how is this body that is the middle way between the two faiths changing the face of modern Christendom?

This holy body is moving across the world pulling double duty as a instrument of the Gospel to the world that is perishing, as well as an example of Orthodoxy to a church drowning in post-modern, existential, relevancy doctrine.

Our [Anglican] Church represents and uses the beauty of the Ancient Future mode of worship, using the liturgical elements of our Churches 2000 year history as well as looking forward to our future. The Anglican Way allows for the Church to include cultural worship styles, to reach out in worship in ways that people everywhere of any background can embrace, while all the time grounding ourselves in the illustrious history of our Faith.

And now, 500 years after the great Reformation, our Church is being called to stand for the faith once again.

When the Episcopal Church began to deny the Gospel, going so far as to ordain homosexuals to the Priesthood and even to the Episcopate, to bless same sex union, and to bless and defend the right of women to abort a child they abandoned their place as the representative body of the Anglican Church. When these things began to happen the churches of Africa began to send Missionaries to the U.S.

Since that time new Churches have been planted, parishes have left the Episcopal Church, and a new Province of the Anglican Church is rising. God is doing a wonderful thing in our midst, and He is using the Anglican Communion to share the Gospel of Christ with millions.

This is what has touched my heart. I hope that you will all inform yourselves as to what God is doing in the world! I praise God for the Anglican Church, and what He is doing in it!

Soli Deo Gloria,
-Matthew