It has been suggested that an Advent Study would be best.  That fits nicely into the time remaining before Christmas as one program is six weeks long.  In all probability it will be on a Wednesday.

As they say, Stay Tuned!

If you read the announcement below you may have noticed I didn’t put the day, just the time.  Well I didn’t see that.  Red Deer had its first real snow yesterday and at 7 PM it was blowing like crazy.  I had an ad in the paper but hard to find and the time may have conflicted with an Ultrea. 

So back to the drawing board, there is always a plan B.

There will be a formation meeting at 7:30 PM at 18 Ogden Avenue.

Please park beside the Oriole Park school playground and bring a Bible if you wish

Coffee, Tea and Juice will served during fellowship time after

e-mail us or phone 403-309-2390 for more information or check the website

Thanks to a delayed delivery of chairs we have held off on starting the Bible Study group.   Well, they have arrived, a set of four solid wood high back dining room chairs.  The next step is a little ad in the Advocate announcing our intention and spreading the word with a few posters here and there.   We were supposed to have our own web address donated by the Cranmer Foundation but they seem to have gone into hiding with Micheal Daley’s move to England.  For now we are here.

As usual logistics steps in front of good intentions.  We planned to have the study group going this month.  The set of six donated chairs are still in storage, they lost the key. And the Cranmer Foundation that registered a website for us has vaporized with Mike Daley moving to England.  Too bad because we had a nice address www.reddeeranglican.com

Now that the renovations to our house are, for the majority, done we can look forward to organizing a study group.  A day and time will have to be chosen and a study topic decided upon.  Sessions vary in length as well as general topics and Gospel and Old Testament specific.   Here is the list, it is quite extensive.

If you have an interest in this program, contact us.  Perhaps an informal potluck would be a start.  Archdeacon Paul Crossland has offered to come to one of the meetings once things are established.

My dear ANiC Sisters and Brothers,

While I realize that numbers in themselves can be deceiving, it still gives me a certain joy to realize that when I use this salutation today it involves so many more clergy and congregations than it did when I sent Easter Greetings just one year ago. God has generously blessed our movement and for many of you the uncertainty and frustration of your time in the wilderness has come to an end.

Although we still are involved in the ongoing aspects of our struggle (especially on the legal front), Easter gives us the time to turn aside for a moment and realize that both the CROSS and the TOMB are empty. VICTORY against the unbelievable odds of sin and death has been attained – or as St Paul so eloquently phrased it “Death is swallowed up in victory”.

Even in an age when the reality of Christ’s bodily resurrection is being challenged from the pulpit by so called “Christian” preachers, I rejoice with so many of you in just letting the reality of this event which changed our lives forever, engulf us with joy unimaginable!

Although I am sharing Holy Week and Easter with our ANiC family on the west coast of our vast country this year, my thoughts and prayers are with so many of you from coast to coast who, with renewed vigor, are proclaiming “Our God Reigns” – even when circumstances have made it necessary to do this outside a church building that held so many warm Easter memories for you.

I believe it was Billy Graham who when asked how he knew Jesus was alive, replied “because I was talking with Him this morning”. It’s as simple – and as wonderful – as that!

Bishop Malcolm and Marylou and Bishop Ron and Jan join Trudy and me in wishing you all a Spirit-filled Easter.

+Donald

This is of interest since it will guide our development direction.

In addition to the 28 parishes and church plants ANiC lists on our website, there are a number of groups meeting across the country that ANiC and ANiC clergy are supporting and nurturing. At the recent board of directors meeting, specific criteria were established for congregations seeking affiliation with ANiC. These criteria distinguish three types of ANiC congregations: parishes, church plants and projects. By creating the “projects” category the board has now opened the way for a number of smaller groups – who do not yet qualify as church plants – to become affiliated with and supported by ANiC as they develop into church plants. 

ANiC April 9th Newsletter

from the Wall Street Journal

In 2007, my wife Barbara and I left The Falls Church, which we had happily attended from the time we became Christians a quarter-century ago. It’s a 277-year-old church in northern Virginia well-known for its popular preacher, the Rev. John Yates, its adherence to traditional biblical teachings and its withdrawal in 2005 from the national Episcopal church. Our three grown daughters and their families stayed behind at The Falls Church.

We didn’t leave in anger. We didn’t have political or theological anxieties. Rather, we left for a new church because our old church wanted us to. The Falls Church has become entrepreneurial as well as evangelical. It’s in the church-planting business. And we were encouraged by Mr. Yates to join Christ the King, the church “planted” near our home in Alexandria. We were a bit ambivalent about the move, but when Christ the King opened its doors in September 2007, we were there.

Well, not quite its doors. The church began with a monthly service in a 600-seat school auditorium. About 30 people showed up, mostly members of the seed group dispatched from The Falls Church. Soon Christ the King, which was launched with a grant of $100,000 from The Falls Church, rented an assembly hall, seating about 100, in a private school and started regular worship every Sunday. Now, with 130 adults and 40 kids, we meet Sunday mornings in another church, whose own service is held in the evening.

But we don’t just meet one day a week. One of the problems for a new church is that most of the parishioners don’t know one another. They’re not yet a community. Barbara and I knew fewer than a dozen of the original members of Christ the King. So David Glade, the 35-year-old pastor, organized everyone into dinner groups that gather monthly. Indeed, they had better gather: When our group skipped a month, Mr. Glade wanted to know why.

Three men’s Bible studies have popped up along with a women’s group. There is a prayer ministry, a vestry, and a choir led by a volunteer music director. A church retreat is set for August. Newcomers tend to be singles or young couples, and six baptisms are scheduled for the Sunday after next. Barbara and I are the old folks.

“It’s a pretty amazing start,” Mr. Yates told me. But it’s not unusual. Church planting is a burgeoning movement among evangelicals who are conservative in doctrine (but not fundamentalist) and inclusive in their outreach to nonbelievers and lapsed Christians. It’s a growing missionary field.

There’s a theory behind church planting. It rejects the idea of trying to fill up existing churches before building new ones. Old churches are often “closed clubs” that don’t attract new residents or young people or “the lost,” says the Rev. Johnny Kurcina, an assistant pastor of The Falls Church. Besides, population increase far exceeds church growth in America. This is especially true in cities.

As an Episcopal Church rector, Mr. Yates began thinking about planting churches 20 years ago. But the bishop of Virginia “wouldn’t allow us to discuss it,” he says, fearing that new Episcopal churches would lure people from older ones. In 2001, he was allowed to plant a church, but only a county away in a distant exurb.

Mr. Yates was strongly influenced by the Rev. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan. Mr. Keller has led in creating new churches — Redeemer has planted more than 100 churches in New York and other cities around the world. Innovative new churches, he has written, are “the research and development department” for Christianity, attract “venturesome people” as fresh leaders, and have the spillover effect of challenging existing churches to revitalize their ministry.

Leaving the Episcopal denomination (while remaining in the Anglican Communion) has given Mr. Yates the freedom to plant churches in urban areas amid many Episcopal churches. (One is next door to Christ the King.) His goal is to plant 20 churches in northern Virginia before retiring. Christ the King was the third, and a fourth was recently planted in Arlington. Mr. Kurcina, 33, who is my son-in-law, is preparing to plant a fifth in Fairfax County.

For a growing number of young preachers like Christ the King’s Mr. Glade, planting and then leading a new church is an ideal option. As orthodox Anglicans, they didn’t feel welcome in the Episcopal church. And they felt a strong calling to lead their own parish. Mr. Glade grew up as an Episcopalian in Jacksonville, Fla. After graduation from Florida State, he came to The Falls Church as an intern and spent four years as a youth leader before attending Trinity Seminary outside Pittsburgh. He returned to The Falls Church eager to lead a theologically conservative Anglican congregation. “In order to do that, you had to go out and do it yourself,” he told me.

“Every new church has an awkward phase, figuring out who they are and getting to know each other,” Mr. Glade says. That phase is over. Christ the King has also become financially self-sufficient. It aims to be a “healthy church,” like its parent. “A healthy church reproduces itself,” Mr. Glade says. Christ the King may soon do just that. Its assistant rector wants to plant his own church.

Mr. Barnes is the executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a Fox News commentator

Done, now where did you put the – - – ? A whole lot of new stuff in place or ordered. I’ll post a few before and after pictures. The basement is still a work in process and we are customizing it for Loraine’s sewing work and my office and amateur radio station.  The town house was nice but bigger and more expensive than we needed and this place has lots of parking for the Study Group.

I have another batch of study group material from Parables and I hope to run a small ad in the Red Deer Advocate on the Churches pages.