Whenever a new edition of the Wave reaches my mailbox, I cringe anew with whatever froth from the bottom of the seething ocean of “relevant” evangelicalism will wash up on the AMiA shore. Usually, I almost blog about it, but then think better of it and stop myself. But I can’t this time, I just can’t. And, as a disclaimer, I am an AMiA parishioner and couldn’t be happier about it. But our local churches are a small pocket of sanity and theological depth in a denomination full of pirates.
This month’s Wave trumpets (as always) the forthcoming Winter Conference. Who is coming this year? How about notable Third Wave weirdo Jack Deere, a blast from the Counterfeit Revival past? Is AMiA trying to become the Vineyard? I don’t need to delve into all of his past, but here are some of the troubling facts. Are there not any Anglican scholars that we can get to come to an Anglican conference?
Are we so desperate that we have to bring in retreads from the Toronto Blessing and “emergent” folks – seven years after that fad reached its peak? Don’t we have any church planters who might be called on to talk about how Anglican church planting can work in an urban setting? We really need Jack Deere to talk to us about “ministering in the power of the Spirit”?
Okay, now I have that off my chest. Let me just cool down and…wait! What? Another speaker is the Rev. Cynthia Brust, “Associate Pastor of a new church plant in Mission Viejo, California”! What the Moses? Mrs. Brust is the wife the Rev. Canon Ellis E. Brust and is the Director of Communications for “theAM.” She is probably a great lady, but here we go with warmed over Episcopalianism. Here’s a stick in your eye all you who believe in what the Bible says about ordaining women and what the Church has held for, well forever. But wait, there’s more:
Page 9 talks about the Northwest and tells us: “Other developments include adding Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) priest Kristen Yates of the Anglican Diocese of New England to his (the Rev Aaaron Burt’s) staff in October.” And page 11 has a picture of “Bishop Todd Hunter and the Rev. Aaron Burt ordain(ing) the Rev. Jennifer Roach – the first Anglican Mission clergy to be ordained in the Pacific Northwest.” Wow. What a great first for theAM.
While none of this is surprising, the volume and prominence of the embrace of women’s ordination is totally disheartening and heterodox. I saw this coming with Todd Hunter last year, see here. So theAM is going down the wrong road, WAY down the wrong road, and it is at the behest of Bishops like Hunter and Murphy. I am not a Puritan, and the answer is certainly not in hiving off into “purer” denominations. But the time is really here for orthodox folks to join some kind of diocese or whatever else they want to call it, and to take a firm stand against this foolishness.
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