Save the Date–EFAC USA 2019 Conference

 

America’s J. C. Ryle

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the 19th century leader of the evangelical party in the Episcopal Church, bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine, having read about him here and here. Tom Isham has a new article about McIlvaine in the latest issue of Crossway, the quarterly magazine of Church Society, arguing that he is America’s equivalent of England’s J. C. Ryle. Ryle is also familiar to our readers—too many posts about him to list here, type his name in our search box and you’ll find dozens.

More information about Crossway, including a subscription form, can be found here; the new issue also has articles on the life and ministry of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the advantages of long-term persistent expository preaching, an article on “preaching the negatives” as well as the positives, and a helpful look at the confusing subject of transgenderism, and how Christians should respond to it.

 

 

Recent Conference of Evangelicals Keeps on Going

The recent gathering of Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church, known as Evangelion, was seen by many around the church, as well as those present, as the best thing that has happened in PECUSA for quite some time. Bruce Robison has invited the Evangelicals in Pittsburgh who were unable to be present to attend anyway, hosting a video replay of the entire event on June 19th at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Highland Park. Nine people have signed up to attend, and no doubt there will be some walk-ins. This made possible, of course, by the video recordings made by Kevin Kallson of Anglican TV, to which there are links in the posts below.

If you’re not on Bruce’s mailing list, but would like to attend, the address of St Andrew’s is 5801 Hampton St, Pittsburgh, PA 15206 (412-661-1245). Let him know you’re coming via the ‘comment’ link to this post and he’ll make sure there’s a chair for you.

Seems like an easy way to spread the encouragement around, and I suspect that other readers of this blog might be able to get a similar group together. Let’s pray that Evangelion I keeps rolling round the country till it’s time to register for Evangelion II, the dates and location of which should be confirmed shortly.

 

Lessons for TEC from one of its Victorian bishops

At the recent conference of Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church, Tom Isham brought a wonderful message from the leader of the evangelical wing of the 19th century House of Bishops (believe it or not, Evangelicals and Revisionists were pretty evenly matched in those days): no matter how few of you there may be, keep a high view of Scripture, a warm spirituality, a sound and well defined theology, an informed conscience, and the courage of your convictions. Check it out here:

 

Spring Conference 2015: Evangelical Identity in the Episcopal Church

Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church are invited to St Stephen’s, Delmar NY, April 24-26, for the first national gathering of Anglican Evangelicals for some years. The theme is Evangelical Identity in the Episcopal Church, and the keynote speaker will be Lee Gattis, Director of Church Society, which has been supporting and encouraging evangelical ministry in the Church of England for almost 200 years. Many of the great names of Anglican evangelical history are associated with the Society, including Bishop J C Ryle, W H Griffith-Thomas, Philip Hughes and J I Packer. Lee has been Director of the society since 2013.

Other speakers are Thomas Isham, author of A Born Again Episcopalian: The Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McIlvaine, and the Revd Dr Philip Wainwright, author of Biblical Reasons for Staying in the Episcopal Church. Workshops will also be offered on a variety of subjects. More details can be found at http://www.evangeliontec.org/conference-2015.html. Details of the talks will be posted on this blog as they become available.

Save the dates!

 

Bishop McIlvaine

An evangelical layman, Tom Isham of Trinity Episcopal Church in Marshall, Michigan, is working with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to add the 19th century evangelical bishop, Charles Pettit McIlvaine, to the calendar of the Episcopal Church. The Commission is more likely to do this if there are already commemorations of McIlvaine taking place in some Episcopal Churches, and clerical readers of this blog are asked to consider using the propers below, and the brief biography, on or near March 12, the anniversary of his death.

Readings:

Proverbs 4: 20-27
Psalm 119: 121-136
Romans 8: 31-39
Mark 8: 31-38

Collect:

O gracious God, you kindled in your servant Charles Pettit McIlvaine a burning zeal for the salvation and sanctification of souls, and equipped him to those ends with great gifts of leadership, preaching and writing. Grant us to heed the example and teaching of this your servant Charles, that we too may have a hand in bringing to faith those whom you have called; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Biographical note:

As a man of great and varied gifts, Charles Pettit McIlvaine did many things and he did them well. Combining evangelical fervor and liturgical dignity in equal measure, he distinguished himself as a leader, author, scholar, educator, preacher, revivalist, reformer, ecumenist, and Sunday school pioneer. His literary and scholarly gifts advanced the evangelical cause in the Episcopal Church, defended Christian doctrine, and addressed social issues. He was an active delegate at the first Lambeth Conference.

Throughout his career, Bishop McIlvaine emphasized spiritual rebirth. Hence he preached at numerous revivals, conducting them in good Episcopal fashion, ‘decently and in order.’ His awakening at age seventeen matched the experience he recommended. ‘It was in the college of which I was a student,’ he recalled. ‘It was powerful and prevailing, and fruitful in the conversion of young men to God; and it was quiet, unexcited, and entirely free from all devices or means, beyond the few and simple which God has appointed… In that precious season of the power of God, my religious life began. I had heard before; I began then to know.’

Though raised in the East, McIlvaine served as Ohio’s second bishop for forty-one years. Earlier, he served churches in Washington, D.C. and Brooklyn, N.Y.; twice served as U.S. Senate chaplain; lectured on Christian evidences at the University of the City of New York, and served as chaplain and professor at the U.S. Military Academy, where he transformed the reigning secular ethos into one of Christian awareness, setting a new tone for the nation s officer corps.

During the first dozen years of his episcopate, he also served as president of Kenyon College and Seminary. He stabilized the college’s finances, built academic structures and faculty housing, and set the standard for racial harmony.

Early in the American Civil War, he served President Lincoln as envoy to Britain, where his wise counsel and diplomatic bearing assured the British would not ally themselves with the Confederacy. Later, he brought the Gospel to soldiers in the field, tended the wounded, and sought reconciliation between victors and vanquished.

It will be important to report any commemorations held to the SCLM; any reports added to this post as a comment will be forwarded to them, or you can e-mail Tom directly at ishamthomas [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

 

Responding to Homosexuality

Here’s a link to the best resource I’ve yet found  both for understanding homosexuality and for showing the most effective Christian response. It can be easily recommended to someone experiencing same-sex attraction, and to people who believe that the Church’s response to it should be to ignore the Bible’s teaching on the subject, but its biggest benefit to me has been showing me a better way to respond personally to people in either of those categories. It’s run by Christians living with same-sex attraction but who don’t reject the Bible’s teaching. In current circumstances, it’s a resource for all Christians.

 

Building on History

A recent project in the diocese of London has shown local churches how to put their own history to work for the benefit of their life today, and can be easily used by parishes in the Episcopal Church in the US. From 2007 to 2011 two church historians worked with the diocese (whose own recent history is an interesting exception to the contemporary pattern of decline found in most major cities) to set up a web-site that could be used by parishes to do an ‘audit’ of their history and the history of their local community during the 19th and 20th centuries, and to train members of those churches to apply the insights gathered from their history to the problems and opportunities they face today.

Several trends of interest to local parishes emerged in London. First, ‘church attendance was never in the last two centuries anything approaching universal’, which means that poor attendance today is not necessarily a symptom of inexorable decline; second, the surrounding culture is not as hostile to Christianity as it is sometimes portrayed, but still has an element of ‘diffusive Christianity’ that is ‘potentially responsive to effective mission’; third, current controversies over sexuality are not much different in emotional content from past controversies over churchmanship.

The diocese also had something to learn: during the 1960s and 1970s, change in the nature of certain localities led the diocese to close many churches. The ‘audit’ shows that this was ‘short-sighted and premature’, and that some other option should be looked for in similar cases today.

The resources used for the project are still on line here, and can be used by any interested parish or diocese. The site is currently being hosted by the Open University, but may be moved in the future to the Lambeth Palace Library’s web site. A search on ‘Building on History: the Church in London’ should lead to the right web site fairly quickly, regardless of host.

 

Puritan Stock

Tomorrow is commencement at Harvard. Their commencement hymn, which I believe they still sing, assumes those who have studied there have ‘deepen’d the streams/That make glad the fair city of God’, and prays ‘Let not moss-covered error moor thee at its side/ As the world on truth’s current glides by’, and urges the graduates to ‘Be the herald of light, and the bearer of love,/Till the stock of the Puritans die.’

No doubt many of the graduates hold fast to the biblical principles which guided those who founded the school, but they didn’t learn them there, and nor did anyone who came there without having learned them. (‘There’ being the institution itself; no doubt there are some wonderful campus ministries and local churches bringing students to faith.) As far as Harvard is concerned, the stock of the Puritans is already dead.

John Harvard was a Church of England clergyman, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, founded during the English Reformation for the express purpose of training preachers. He took 400 books with him when he sailed for Massachusetts, and served briefly as a minister at Charlestown. He died of consumption after only a year in the new world, leaving his books and half of his capital to the school being organised not far away. Since that bequest tripled the seed money for the proposed college, it was named after him.

In 1638, the year of his death, many of its clergy, even those serving in the plantations, still hoped that the Church of England would complete or return to its reformation, depending on how they read the history, Emmanuel graduates especially. It is those who still have that hope for the Church of England’s daughter in the new world that are Harvard stock, and they are not dead.

 

Evangelical laity wanted

In various conversations in which I’ve taken part recently, a desire has been expressed for evangelical lay people to be involved in one project or another, but in the diocese where I serve, at least, they have been hard to find, and hard to recruit when found. One rector I approached, asking for names of such people in his parish, told me that those he knew were ‘gun-shy’—presumably a reference to what it was like the last time they became active outside their own parish.

When the English Reformation was brought to a sudden halt on the death of Edward VI, and Protestants who refused to return to Roman Catholicism were threatened with death at the stake, the vast majority of those who refused to be intimidated were lay people—men and women, some of them still in their teens. Matthew Foxe, who kept a record of all those who were put to death, said of one congregation that its members were “exceedingly well learned in the holy Scriptures, as well women as men, so that a man might have found among them many that had often read the whole Bible through, and that could have said a great sort of St Paul’s epistles by heart, and very well and readily have given a godly learned sentence in any matter of controversy”. When any controversial question arose, Anglican lay people knew that the answer was to be found in Scripture, and they knew their Bibles well enough for any of them to be able to answer for themselves. In the trials that led to the burnings, the question was constantly being asked, “Who are you, a tailor or a housewife or a miller, to challenge the judgement of the best theological minds of the Church?” The inquisitors—many of them conforming Anglican clergy just a year or two earlier—were scandalised that ordinary people claimed to be as able to “give a godly, learned sentence” as the theologians, but they did claim exactly that, because they had learned God’s word.

The Episcopal Church needs another generation of lay people who have learned God’s word so well that they are no longer reluctant to face those who would order the church according to the word of Man rather than the word of God. The cure for timidity in the face of false teaching or immoral living is a better knowledge of God’s word. When evangelicalism began to revive in the Episcopal Church in the 1960s and 70s, the means of reforming the church was the foundation of an evangelical seminary to train clergy. That doesn’t seem to have worked. It’s time for lay people to reclaim their Anglican birthright.

 

Pittsburgh Puts Evangelism Back on the Agenda

A dozen or more clergy in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, together with the bishop, Dorsey McConnell, agreed today to undertake a study of evangelism, using John Richardson‘s book, A Strategy That Changes the Denomination. Their first meeting will be on February 26th, and all parishes in the diocese will be invited to participate.

The book and matters arising therefrom have been discussed before on this site, here and here and here and here. I’ve read some useful and interesting discussions on Richardson’s own web-site, here, but it doesn’t appear to have a way to search the site for them.

To quote the review linked to above, ‘The heart of Richardson’s case is that Evangelicals have been content to be a party within the Church with evangelism as their specialty, when in fact evangelism is the purpose for which the whole Church exists. Mission societies, the means by which Evangelicals have pursued the goal of evangelism for generations, actually undermine the evangelistic enterprise, because they don’t involve the whole Church, which was founded by Christ as a mission society: ‘God’s mission work to the world flows from Christ through the Church… the Church is the missionary organisation seeking people’s conversion’ (88f). Evangelism is not part of but the heart of all the Church’s mission (pp 30, 90).’

The book is only $5.63 plus shipping, and can be ordered here, and I hope evangelical clergy elsewhere in the Episcopal Church will follow the Pittsburgh example.

 

Evangelical Mysticism

Not a few Evangelicals in recent years have longed for some point of contact with Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, and have tried to blend one of those traditions with our own. Dewey Wallace‘s book, published last year, Shapers of English Calvinism 1660–1714 (Oxford University Press), reminds us that if we will only revisit our own tradition, this un-natural blending will not be necessary. He examines the life and thought of five Church of England Calvinists, including Peter Sterry, the Calvinist mystic. Michael Brydon, reviewing the book for the latest  Journal of Theological Studies, observes that ‘Calvinists are supposed to be hostile to mysticism, for fear that it might compromise the evangelical message of the Reformation. In fact, the tradition of Reformed mysticism can be traced back to Calvin, and Sterry continued to give it a distinct identity by setting out a mystical model that was to be lived not by solitary celibates, but within the family and community. He was also able to describe classic Calvinist emphases in mystical ways, as shown by his description of predestination as the ravishing of the soul by God.’

The idea of my soul being ravished has no appeal for me, even (especially?) when described in terms of predestination, but some readers of this blog will be glad to know. The stained-glass window featuring him is in the chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Anyone willing to read up on Sterry and tell us more?

 

Christianity in College

It’s about 35 years since I first set foot in an Episcopal Church, and I’ll bet that in the first year alone I met ten people who told me they had ‘become Episcopalian’ in college, usually because a friend or room-mate took them to an Episcopal Church or Canterbury Club (as most Episcopal college chaplaincies were once known). After entering ordained ministry some years later, I continued to hear similar accounts, but also became depressingly familiar with its contrary: parents telling me that their son or daughter had dropped out of church while in college, or, what seemed to some of them to be even worse, were attending a non-Episcopal Church—again, usually because a room-mate or friend had taken them to one.

Next week is orientation week at many colleges and universities around the country. Another cohort of freshmen will be free, often for the first time, to make decisions about how or whether to continue any commitment to the Christian faith.

What can you or your church do to help them?

 

Evangelism in the Episcopal Church II

I watched the rest of the videos that are intended to accompany the Evangelism Commission’s report to General Convention, as described in the post immediately below this one (click here if you have trouble scrolling down) at least twice, and have re-read the report, and I think I can now state without fear of contradiction that the report is, from the evangelical point of view, uninspiring.

Least depressing turned out to be the focus on the need to restructure the church, even though I had suggested in my last post that it was a distraction from the Evangelism Commission’s proper business. The report asserts an ‘urgent need to re-imagine General Convention and our Church governance structures so that they serve the mission of God’, and certainly makes a case that the way that we select and train people for ministry makes the development of non-traditional churches difficult, and points out that clergy, vestries, bishops and commissions on ministry are all in too much of a rut to know how to deploy someone who might be good in a non-traditional situation. And the statistics certainly raise the possibility that the traditional parish is not the wave of the future, so their concern in this area is a rational one.

What’s still depressing is the resulting suggestion: set aside a million dollars to fund the creation of ‘diocesan mission enterprise zones’ in which faith communities focussing on particular age-groups, ethnicities etc would be set up. From what I hear, the national church is so broke that this is not likely to be approved, but the fact is that money is not needed for such communities—they don’t need and don’t appear to want highly trained ‘expert’ leadership, and certainly don’t need their own building, which account for most of the costs of the faith communities we are familiar with. And if the Commission had looked around a bit further, they would have discovered that these things have been tried in some places and have for the most part led nowhere. A few years ago my diocese was all excited about such communities, which were popping up in lots of places because so many people were graduating from seminary without a traditional parish job to go to. They were aimed at twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings or the underprivileged, and they had names like ‘Three Nails’, ‘Charis 24/7’ and the like, but the jury is still out on whether or not they are the future of the church. Some have faded away, some have become satellite ministries of traditional parish churches, some are still soldiering on, but I don’t think one has become anything like what the Evangelism Commission urges us to imagine in their videos.

What’s embarrassingly bad is the fact that the Commission seems so vague about the gospel. The only reference to an actual evangelistic encounter comes when students at Berkeley Divinity School at Yale are shown discussing what ‘authentic episcopal evangelism’ looks like, and they say they have ‘discovered the deep value of “invited spiritual conversation”’, where a Christian is invited to discuss a spiritual matter with another person. The response to the invitation, according to these students, is to help the inquirer identify what is holy, where God is already at work in their life and in the concern that they have. ‘We have found that people [responding to the invitation] are able to bring up to the surface the deep things of their relationship with God and find themselves sharing that with someone else and having that heard and people are actually excited about that.’ Whether those deep things include the recognition of sin, the need for repentance and amendment of life, and new life in Christ through accepting Him as Saviour and obeying Him as Lord, as the Prayer Book puts it (pp 302f), is not stated. And if we can’t even bring ourselves to mention such things in the Evangelism Commission report, how likely are we to mention them in Starbucks or wherever these new faith communities are to be formed?

There is no suggestion about what to do while waiting for an invitation, either, but presumably we acquire the tools for evangelism. These, I’m afraid, are ‘community organising, racial organising’, ‘story training’, multicultural training’—anything, apparently, but training in how to lead a person to Christ.

Despite Anthony Guillen’s plea that General Convention be about evangelism and not about resolutions, the Commission will introduce several, asking for the national church staff to prepare an evangelism guide, for two changes in the canons, adding to existing canons about requirements for ordination the category ‘the practice of ministry development and evangelism’ as a subject in which training is needed and naming the groups in the evangelisation of which ordinands are to be trained (people of Asian descent, people of African descent, people of indigenous/Native American descent, people of Latino/Hispanic descent, young people and sexual minorities), for the creation of the mission enterprise zones already referred to, for diocesan evangelists be identified, trained and sent, and for the church to reform its structures (including General Convention) so as to encourage evangelism.

Is there no Evangelical capable of getting him or herself elected to this committee and bringing them up to speed?

 

Evangelism in the Episcopal Church

Last fall we had a good discussion about the work of the Evangelism Commission (pardon the informality, I know that’s not its full name), and now we have its report to this year’s General Convention. You can read it in the Blue Book here; it begins on p 497.

It’s not an easy read, because many of the points it wants to make are apparently not in the report, but in a series of videos produced by the Commission and accessible on Youtube or Vimeo, and the report asks the reader to watch those videos at the appropriate point in his or her reading of the report. I haven’t done this yet, so these are merely preliminary observations, but two things stand out at the first reading: a note of panic about the church’s need for new members (which of course is not the purpose of evangelism), and an assumption that evangelism is an activity directed at groups rather than individuals.

The panic is expressed on the first page, which talks about ‘the reality of our church’s continued, systemic decline’, the ‘alarming’ statistics of which are presented on p 499. The statistics are concluded with the somewhat mysterious observation that ‘half of all Episcopalians will die in the next 18 years.’ Since all of them will presumably die eventually, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but the Commission is clearly made very anxious by our decline in membership.

The assumption that evangelism is a group activity rather than something any particular individual does determines the report’s description of who needs to hear the gospel. One resolution talks about evangelising ‘groups who are under-represented in the domestic church’, and the goal of evangelism appears to be the creation of ‘new faith communities’ rather than new Christians. We are to ‘share the gospel in new communities… grow faith communities’, p 504. The report also assumes that it is groups that evangelise: it is congregations and dioceses who ‘invite all people to experience God’s amazing grace’ and ‘can live into our baptismal promises and thrive, if  we’re equipped to respond as mission-hearted evangelists’, p 501. The report acknowledges the failure of the Decade of Evangelism and the 20/20 project, but does not analyse the reasons for their failure; I wonder if it was because they too gave too little attention to the fact that the gospel is good news for sinners, and will only change communities as it changes the members of them.

One negative effect of thinking of evangelism only in organisational terms is that the Commission has felt obliged to weigh in on the divisive subject of the structure of our own group as it is manifest in General Convention, asking the reader to ‘imagine a General Convention that provides training and inspiration for mission and evangelism’ and then giving the members’ opinions about restructuring the convention. I’ve been imagining an Evangelism Commission that provides training and inspiration for mission and evangelism, but apparently that’s not how it’s done. I’m afraid that this intervention in what must surely be the affairs of some other standing commission is likely to distract Convention from a serious consideration of evangelism.

I look forward to considering the report in more detail, although I must say I find the requirement that I resort to Youtube, of all things, highly irritating, and can’t help suspecting that if it can’t be said clearly in written words it probably isn’t going to be said clearly in video either, but that only shows what an out of touch dinosaur this particular Evangelical is. I’m sure there will be readers who will set me straight on this. At any rate, this is where the Episcopal Church is as far as fulfilling the Great Commission is concerned; how can we encourage further progress?

 

‘Evangelical Gospel’ Man for Pittsburgh

The election of Dorsey McConnell as Bob Duncan‘s successor as Bishop of Pittsburgh is good news for Evangelicals, both in the diocese and in the wider church. In his biography (here) he speaks of creating ‘a network of clergy and lay leaders committed to an evangelical Gospel’, and says that ‘all I really know is that I cannot live without Christ, that I depend on him completely, that all my joy resides in his determination to make my life his own.’

The value to Evangelicals in Pittsburgh of leadership rooted in this personal a relationship with Christ is obvious, but God willing there will be benefits from this election for the wider Episcopal Church, and even beyond. McConnell stresses the importance of ‘congregationally-based mission both within and across our own denominational boundaries’, and a determination to ‘share the riches and ethos of Anglicanism with other churches who are daughters of the Reformation’. It’s been a long time since I heard anyone speaking this sort of language in the Episcopal Church; I pray we’ll all hear a lot more of it in the future.

 

Evangelical Heroes and Heroines

Yesterday the diocese of which I’m part elected a bishop. The result is good news for Evangelicals, and I’ll have more to say about that later today, but there are some people who should be honored for their role in that election, and I want them to have their moment ‘above the fold’.

First, thanks to candidate Michael Ambler. At the beginning of the day yesterday there was not much reason for hope in worldly terms, especially with news coming that two of the clergy who incline towards the evangelical position were kept away by sickness. I was sure that the diocese would be too divided to elect someone from either side of the aisle, and Michael was the one candidate who had placed himself firmly in the center. I thought we would all need to turn to him eventually. That process was just beginning on the ballot that produced the election, and I believe Michael was doing the godly thing by remaining available for that purpose, even though it couldn’t have been very enjoyable for him.

Second, thanks to the handful of lay people who switched from Stan Runnells to the winner on the sixth ballot. That was a big move, in churchmanship terms, and I doubt it was because of any sudden conversion. I’m convinced they turned away from their own desires for the sake of Christ’s body, and for no other reason. When I grow up, I want to be just like them.

 

A Born Again Episcopalian

I’ve been reading and enjoying Thomas Isham’s recent biography of Bishop McIlvaine, the best known of all the evangelical bishops of the Episcopal Church in the 19th century. He was Bishop of Ohio from 1832–1873, and a famous defender of the Protestant heritage of the Episcopal Church when Anglo-Catholicism was beginning to undermine it. He was also well known for his preaching (which caused a revival among West Point students when he was chaplain there), and his insistence that those who upheld the authority of Scripture had to support the abolition of slavery. Isham covers every aspect of McIlvaine’s ministry, and readers of this blog will find much in this biography to encourage their own witness to the authority of Scripture in today’s church. It’s also worth reading just for the joy of knowing that there once was a time when it was not unusual for a bishop to stand so publicly and uncompromisingly for that authority.

Isham is a member of the Episcopal Church, and was a member of EFAC-USA when that organisation was active. Thanks for keeping McIlvaine’s evangelical witness before the church!

The book is available here. The Banner of Truth edition of a collection of McIlvaine’s sermons, Preaching Christ: The Heart of Gospel Ministry, is also still in print, and available here.

 

RIP John Stott

John Stott, who transformed Anglican Evangelicalism, sleeps today where he has lived for over seventy years, in Christ. There’s nothing the Barnabas Project can add to the obituaries, a selection of which can be read here and here and here, except to say how much he supported the ministry of Evangelicals in the Episcopal Church when he had the opportunity, urging people to stay and work for the reform of the church rather than leave it. Memorial services are being planned in London, Wheaton, New York, Dallas, Vancouver, Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Delhi, Bangalore, and no doubt more to be announced. A memorial web-site has been established here by the Langham Partnership, the hub of his ministry for the last few years, and designated by him to carry it on into the future.

We truly will not see his like again. But God uses all of us, so let’s continue to work for the reform of the Episcopal Church anyway.

 

Evangelical Ministry

On the SCLM blog page for Sam Shoemaker Lamar Vest, President & CEO of the American Bible Society, added a comment saying how much Sam’s poem, ‘So I Stay Near the Door’ meant to him as a young man. The poem sums up evangelical ministry. Here’s the whole thing.

SO I STAY NEAR THE DOOR

By the Reverend Canon Samuel Moor Shoemaker, Jr., D.D., S.T.D.

I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world–
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it – – –
So I stay near the door.
The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door–the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch–the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man’s own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter–
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it–because they have found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him – – –
So I stay near the door.
Go in, great saints, go all the way in–
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics–
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, or sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
Sometimes venture a little farther;
But my place seems closer to the opening – – –
So I stay near the door.
There is another reason why I stay there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia.
And want to get out. Let me out! they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much;
Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving–preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would like to run away. So for them too,
I stay near the door.
I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door,
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay too long,
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him, and know He is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there, too.
Where? Outside the door–
Thousands of them, millions of them.
But–more important for me–
One of them, two of them, ten of them,
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
For those I shall stay by the door and wait
For those who seek it.
I had rather be a door-keeper . . .
So I stay near the door