"Anglicanism Remixed"

This morning I had the opportunity to head to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco to hear Stephanie Spellers speak at a forum. The title of the forum was "Anglicanism remixed: Embracing our Traditions, and Embracing the Other"    Stephanie is an Episcopal Priest, Author and editor for church publishing from Boston, MA.  Her book is entitled, Radical Welcome, Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation.

The message that she is preaching is one that resonates very strongly with me.  She believes that the Anglican tradition must change.  It cannot stay the same or it will die.  The average age of our members is over 65 and that our congregations are over 95% white and include the wealthiest people in America.  We are the church of the Empire.  After all, we are THE Church of England. This is the foundation our tradition is built on.  For the most part, we are not a melting pot of nationalities or races.

Of course their is good in us as well.  The Anglican tradition has a powerful tool in the Book of Common Prayer and we should be proud of it.  She said that it is common in two ways, first that it is used by many people in a similar fashion all over the world and also that it is common in that it is in the vernacular of the people.  Back in 1549, Thomas Cramner wrote the prayerbook in English so the people could understand it and we should be doing the same.  Stephanie believes that we should be able to take the prayerbook and mix into it some modern ideas as well.  In her church, they congregation uses a chinese version of the Lord's prayer because there is a chinese population that worships there.

One of the biggest things she feels that we as a church need to be able to do is allow people to name their fear.  The fear that happens with change within the church as well as the fear that people have about changes within their own lives.  We must be able to accept fear and not try to fix it but allow it to exist in the open and not hidden.  Once that fear has been realized, then and only then can change start to happen.  For church to change it must look at what we are already doing and add to it based upon the needs of the community.  Change must be based upon the strengths of the community not the weaknesses.  It must address what is needed within the greater community.

This is just a small piece of what Stephanie spoke about and I am not doing her justice.  I purchased her book and will be more than happy to share it with any of you after I'm done reading it or you can get your own copy.  Stephanie's sermon is available online at the Grace Cathedral website.  Please listen to it, you won't be disappointed.

If you want to talk more about this subject, please send me an email or stop me when you see me.  I'll be glad to talk about this in more depth as this is something I am very passionate about.

Jesus said: "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me." Matthew 10:40

Would you welcome Jesus?  Are you radically welcoming?