Mission: Orthodoxy

Tips and tales from the world of conservative, confessional friends.

We’re better and stronger when we work together.

That’s the ethos which propelled the formation and growth of conservative renewal movements in various mainline denominations. It kept us going for quite a while. Financially and in membership, The Renewal Fellowship within The Presbyterian Church in Canada peaked in 2002, about 20 years after it was founded. Many denominational renewal movements which arose in the 1960s-80s have dissolved. Some were re-formed as orthodox congregations departed the fold and regrouped. But RF remains – albeit smaller – and continues to enjoy the blessings of paid staff and dedicated supporters.

The cultural and, I daresay, theological landscape has changed since the early 1980s. But the need for evangelical voices in now-officially liberal mainline denominations remains. Truthfully, it is a struggle for unofficial, member-supported renewal groups to get traction when the denomination has departed from orthodoxy. After the fight to maintain historic doctrine was lost, many supporters have withdrawn. Those who remain, seem to keep their heads down and focus on the congregation.

Jim Statham, a retired PCC minister and longtime RF supporter, is among those who continue to stoke the fires. While no longer attending a PCC congregation, he’s blessed to be attending a conservative Lutheran flock, where he just happened to meet up with leaders from Lutheran and Anglican renewal movements, Ed Skutshek and Jim Donison.

Earlier this year, Jim pitched an idea: tap their deep knowledge and experience and have a conversation. Learn from each other. While we’re at it, let’s invite friends from Living Stones: A Movement of Reformed Churches in Canada and PCC Renewal, the new Generation Z-led renewal movement. Shannon Bell of Living Stones and Rachael Chen from PCC Renewal, agreed.

This was the conversation starter – “What can Biblically orthodox believers in the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition learn from the experiences of Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada, who each have a formal network of supporting congregations?”

Earlier this summer, we gathered via Zoom. It was an illuminating, inspiring and energizing time of sharing. What follows are excerpts from the conversation.

Present for all or part of the  two-and-half-hour gathering:

• Jim Statham, a retired minister in The PCC, who lives in Peachland, British Columbia.
• Ed Skutshek is an emeritus Lutheran pastor and a former president of the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations. He lives in Kelowna, B.C.
• Mike Donison, a retired lawyer, is Chancellor of the Diocese of Canada in the Anglican Church of North America. He lives in West Kelowna. B.C.
• Shannon Bell, a former PCC minister, is chair of the Steering Council of Living Stones, a movement of Reformed Churches in Canada.
• Rachael Chen is co-founder of PCC Renewal, an organization committed to reforming and renewing the PCC according to God’s Word
• Serving as host was Rev. Andy Cornell, executive director of The Renewal Fellowship and minister at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Dresden Ontario..

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Summary of our conversation:

1. Most orthodox Anglicans and Lutherans in Canada departed from the mainline denominations over theological differences and eventually formed their own respective denominations: Anglican Church of North America and Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations.
2. Some PCC congregations in orthodoxy have departed and formed a new expression: Living Stones. Some are in the process of leaving. However, many appear to be remaining.
3. A few orthodox congregations remain in the mainline Anglican and Lutheran denominations, but they are not formally organized or aligned.
4. Renewal Fellowship continues as a voice and place of encouragement for those in PCC orthodoxy, but struggles against apparent lethargy and a lack of awareness.
5. A new movement has recently arisen: PCC Renewal, led by Generation Z orthodox believers.
6. RF and PCC Renewal are advised to be aware of cultural and institutional challenges, but are encouraged to carry on their missions.
7. Key advice from Mike and Ed: adhere to orthodoxy at any cost, be missional, avoid  politicization, remain courageous, speak the truth, preach the Gospel, remain centred on Christ, market/advertise/spread the word of the mission, be countercultural, and don’t give up.

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What follows is a heavily abridged version of our two-and-a-half-hour conversation. It was edited for readability and brevity.
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Andy: I’m going to get it rolling. The Renewal Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church in Canada is very much committed to the PCC, even though the denomination has moved towards apostasy with its dual definitions of marriage and openness to pluralism. We saw that at our General Assembly last week, in which there was a great reluctance to even advance something as basic as apologetics. We need to accept all religions, was the tacit message. We are deeply, deeply divided. But orthodoxy does remain in congregations here and there, coast to coast, but the thing is, orthodoxy has kind of had the wind knocked out of its sails to some extent. Some have departed, and we stand with those who have departed – they are dear brothers and sisters and we’re going to maintain our relationships. And we’re delighted with PCC Renewal.

Shannon: I was fifth generation in the PCC until November 1st, 2022, at which time, myself, my husband, and our congregation, left the PCC and became part of Living Stones, a Movement of Reformed Churches in Canada. I am the chair of the Steering Council, which basically acts like an executive for Living Stones right now, until we grow. We’ve been just really blessed to be out. It’s been an adventure. We’re trying to listen to God’s leading in the directions that we’re going. It’s different from what we maybe anticipated, but that’s usually how God works. Living Stones is very committed to maintaining our relationships with our brothers and sisters in the PCC, and particularly through Renewal Fellowship. We feel it’s really important to keep supporting one another. And we are trying to keep in touch with congregations, particularly those that are still in the PCC but going through the process of withdrawal. Just to see how we can help and support them, whether or not they become part of Living Stones.

Ed: Hi everyone. I was the president of the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations for 12 years, from maybe seven congregations, and we’re up to maybe 38 now. And we came out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. We formed an alliance with an American Lutheran seminary, The Institute of Lutheran Theology, and it now has an undergraduate school completely online, and a graduate school up to the PhD level. And we’ve achieved a lot of success. ATS accreditation, which is the Association of Theological Schools, which is the highest sort of accreditation that there is in North America. I’ve served on the board, and I just got elected for another four-year term. And I’m on the board of regents of their seminary, which is the Christ School of Theology. And I’ve been involved because I have a passion for the education of not only clergy, but lay people, lay leaders. There’s probably as big, if not bigger, demand for lay leaders in the church as ordained leaders.

Mike: I serve in the office called the Chancellor. It used to be called the Anglican Network in Canada. The acronym was ANIC. It’s now called the Anglican Diocese of Canada. I just call it The Diocese. And so we have the Diocese of Canada in the Anglican Church of North America, which is a totally separate province of the Anglican Communion, totally separate from the Episcopal Church, and totally separate, of course, from the Church of England, and, most importantly, for our purposes, the Anglican Church of Canada. It’s a long history. It goes back to the late ’80s. There’s a thing called Anglican Essentials, which was an attempt within the Anglican Church of Canada for conservatives or orthodox to stay in the Church, which some of you are nobly attempting with your churches, which in the end failed, by the way, and that debate began as early as the early 1990s. It involved eventually some parishes and clergy and eventually a bishop or two leaving the Anglican Church of Canada to form this new thing, we originally were called the ANIC. And then in 2009, the Anglican Church of North America was formally established as a separate freestanding province in the Anglican World Communion, and then we joined it as a diocese. We’re still relatively small, all of Canada is a single diocese. The Americans currently have about 38-40 dioceses. And we’ve just been in the process of continuing to build orthodox Anglican Christian faith. We’ve probably moved away from further along the line, perhaps, perhaps not, than some of you have. One thing we can talk about, some time ago, most of us gave up the thought of reunion. In other words, we put that behind us. You used the word apostasy. Well, in our view, the Anglican Church of Canada is not just almost there, it’s there. We still have individual discussions, but we’re just moving on. . . . We have two bishops, two suffragan bishops. I think the clergy is around 150 now. I could be wrong on that. We have about 50 parishes across the country, some quite small. I go to one, for instance, here in Kelowna, which is usually only about 8 or 10 of us worshipping together on Sunday evening. Two larger congregations, you know, sometimes 300 or 400. I think the largest is about 600. And I would say probably it’s estimated that our entire diocese across all of Canada, which stretches as far as Vancouver Island to St. John’s, those 52 parishes, we probably have on an average Sunday, my guess would be maybe 10,000 worshipping. And the entire province, and all of North America, with all of its size, maybe 150,000 to 200,000. So, in terms of North America, we’re still very small. But I think we’ve been slowly growing.

Andy: I was born and raised Anglican, Mike, so I understand the whole diocesan system.

Mike: I was born and raised one, too. Cradle Anglican, as we say. But I left the church for a while, and in fact, I’m a Lutheran, I say, on Sunday mornings, because I go to Grace Lutheran Church with my dear wife, but I attend an Anglican service in the evening. So I’m a Lutheran in the morning, and an Anglican in the evening.

Ed: So you’re L’Anglican.

Mike: Thank you, Ed. I’ll use that. The other thing I’ll say, when I’m having conversations, maybe with even non-Christian friends, when I say I’m Anglican, I make a point that I’m not associated with the Anglican Church of Canada. And the expression I use is, we’re the Anglicans who literally believe in the resurrection.

Ed: Thank you.

Mike: Just to sort of differentiate from the others. Anyway, I’ll leave it at that.

Andy: Amen to that. Rachael, why don’t we hear from you and then Jim.

Rachael: Hi, I am actually kind of new to the PCC. There’s been an online movement called Operation Reconquista, but it’s recently been renamed to Operation Reformation, and it was started by a YouTuber called Redeemed Zoomer, and he educated a lot of us on church history, and just opened up that world to us. And, concurrent with the educational aspect of his channel, he also has this mission, which has a vision of remaining in the mainlines by supporting the most orthodox churches in the mainlines, to acknowledge, support them, let the liberal ones decline as they usually do and have that be our main strategy of retaking the mainlines. And he taught a lot of us about the concept of schism. A lot of us are new to mainlines, but a lot of us have also been in it for a long time. And this was like a call awakening us to just how important the mainlines are and their heritage, in their history, their confessions and how it’s very hard to replace those things when you leave. And so discovering his channel actually made me look into the mainline churches and decide to become PCC. And it’s been a very enriching but also difficult journey. And I’ve only been to GA twice. So this year was my second time. I could sense the frustration that was there, but based on principles laid out by a lot of church fathers and Westminster Divines, like Robert Bailey and Samuel Rutherford, we’re convicted that as long as the church doesn’t force us out, and if practising orthodoxy is still possible, and we’re not forced to affirm anything heretical, then that is our line that we would like to draw to stay. It’s sad to see the fragmentation in the church, but I also understand that principle has to be combined with some pragmatic concerns. I’m just here to hear about your experiences.

Andy: Thank you. And so you mentioned GA, which is short for General Assembly. Same as the Anglican Synod, and I’m not sure what Lutherans have in their national gathering every year.

Ed: It’s a convention. Lutherans have conventions.

Andy: Okay. Jim?

Jim: I’m a retired Presbyterian minister, ordained in ’73, and had three three pastorates. I was brought up Anglican, and then we settled in Burnaby and moved from Kelowna to Burnaby in ’59, I guess it was, and we started to go to a Presbyterian church because my dad got the job as the organist there. And so that’s where my Presbyterian heritage comes from. My mother is a Presbyterian from Nova Scotia, so she was quite pleased, I think. Anyway, it was in that church I was converted through quite dramatically too. I was going to study for the ministry because I thought I could do the job. And then I got converted when I was at university. So that’s just a bit of my personal history. But I’ve always been on the outside in the Presbyterian church because I understood conversion and the necessity of it. And since I started ministry in ’73, it’s been just really sad to see the decline in the Presbyterian Church numerically, but also that you see the cause of it, and that’s the loss of our core message: the cross and the resurrection. It’s just being lost. And I was saying to Andy in an email just last week, we’ve become like the 10 lost tribes in the empire who just assimilated the culture and have disappeared. And that’s what’s been happening to us. And I think it’s helpful to understand that. So I’ve been in the minority in my denomination, but I’ve always had churches that have been growing because people were converted and excited about their faith. I live in Peachland, which is near Kelowna. But the Presbyterian church in Kelowna is too far to go. So my wife and I  were led by the Lord to settle into Ed’s church 12 years ago. And Ed loves the Lord. So we settled in there and we got involved in ministry there. And then I discovered afterwards that Ed was the lead minister bringing the orthodox Lutherans out of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. And I thought, oh gee, that’s going to be interesting. And then along comes Mike, who is a key figure in the Anglican movement in Canada. So here’s the three of us in the same congregation, a Lutheran congregation. Mike’s wife is Lutheran. Lord, what are you doing here? Is there some message I’m not getting? So I spoke to Andy about this. This meeting today is kind of the result of it in many ways. Ed practised law for many years before he went into the pastorate and what he didn’t say, Ed was the lead minister in bringing CALC into fruition and setting up the organizational structure. And that’s how I believe, Ed, you were very essential in that. And I’m hoping that there will be some insights for us.

Ed: I did. Yeah.

Jim: What kind of structure would be suitable for us? Mike also is a lawyer and was one of the advisors for Stephen Harper. So Mike teaches at UBC Okanagan but he’s got lots of knowledge in organizational skills. So I don’t know where our meeting today is going to go, but I have hopes. But I also have been praying for the door to shut, a door or open or show us a way forward that will fit our denomination, because the Lutherans and the Anglicans have different organizational structures, but we have the same goal, and that is to recover an orthodox biblical faith within the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Andy: The irony here is that some of us remain committed to the pursuit of genuine renewal, which means ditching the apostasy, moving back into orthodoxy. Only recently, and I’m talking two or three weeks, my board of directors granted me permission to pin to the top of our homepage a very strongly worded statement, which is that we want The Presbyterian Church of Canada to return to orthodoxy. I haven’t shouted that from the mountaintops yet. [The official PCC stance is] they believe that they are brave new warriors in this wonderful rainbow world, and that it’s the future, because we’re going to attract people to the church. The thing is, since we went with the dual definition of marriage and officially ditched Biblical theology, Biblical orthodoxy, we haven’t grown as a whole. And the congregations that have the rainbow flags and march in the pride parades might have grown, but not because of people converting and having a true born-again experience. It’s a social thing. It’s a social justice thing.

Where you see a difference in growth is that the Biblically orthodox churches become missional congregations. Their growth outpaces the liberal. The reason is that the orthodox Church is actually countercultural. – Ed Skutshek

Ed: Can I just chime in?

Andy: Please.

Ed: I think this is really important at this juncture in my ministry to the Lutheran Church. I’m involved with the Institute of Lutheran Theology on the board, but I’m also involved in a Canadian charity, the Institute of Lutheran Theology, Canada Society, and we are an educational institution. We do our work through an agency agreement with the American seminary. We have Canadian instructors. I’ve taught ethics and preaching. I’m doing research on congregational revitalization. We have a cohort of 12 congregations right now across North America that are going to be receiving coaching from a group called Church Doctor Ministries.  So I’ve been doing a lot of research on the whole sense of congregational revitalization. And the statistics are startling. Because if you look, if you try to measure growth in congregations, it’s not conservative or liberal. The conservative churches as a whole are declining. And the liberal churches are declining. If you just look at statistics like Mike was talking about, the churches that are growing, what they do is they become missional congregations. What’s important to the members of the church is that they bring people into the church. There’s evangelism, there’s discipleship, where people are encouraged to grow. And you know where it tends, where you see a difference in growth is that the Biblically orthodox churches become missional congregations. Their growth outpaces the liberal. The reason is that the orthodox Church is actually countercultural.

[Murmurs of agreement from others]

Ed: And it says that to be a follower of Jesus means to embrace Biblical truth about family, fatherhood, motherhood, vocation, you know, all of those things. That tends to be the area of growth. And, you know, quite frankly, what is turning people off is the politicization. Like, when we politicize things, where we put a banner over our church saying we either support marriage or inclusive marriage or not, or we support transgenderism or not. What should be the most important thing on a Sunday is that people come to church, that they meet Jesus. I mean, more than Isaiah, maybe Isaiah will make a cameo, or Hosea or Paul. You gotta meet Jesus. . . . Protestants are joining the Roman Catholic Church in the United States in droves. You wanna know why? When they’re interviewed, they say, “I’m sick and tired of a political sermon, an object lesson. I just want to hear about Jesus, and I want the sacraments.” And they’re joining the Roman Catholic Church.

Jim: That’s good.

Institutions are only a mechanism. They’re not the end-all. I know in our diocese now, the whole emphasis is on church planting, on going into new communities . . .we’ve got all this structure. That’s not what we first introduce them to. We introduce him to the Lord Jesus Christ. – Mike Donison

Ed: But separation is not gonna change anything unless as a part of separation, you say, we are gonna become an evangelical, missional, disciple-making machine for Jesus. That’s the future. I understand organization. You can’t legislate virtue, you can’t legislate harmonious relationships. That comes from the Spirit, that comes from the people. And so I’m not that concerned about all the organizational stuff anymore. You know, that’s politics. You can hire a lawyer. They’re a dime a dozen. It’s gonna cost some money. They do all that stuff for you. I look at Rachael, and I say, you know, I love your passion. I think it’s great to kind of stand up, right? Stand up to liberalism. But be careful. Be careful because like what happens is, like I could see how our institution, the Lutheran church was taken over. The leadership becomes liberal. There’s no dissenting voices.  But I admire your courage and your conviction, and I could see you standing up at a convention and saying, “Hey, I thought we believed in the resurrection. You know, and I think we need to, you know, we need to get back to that.” So God bless you. I love it.

Mike: I agree with everything Ed just said. Institutions are only a mechanism. They’re not the end-all. I know in our diocese now, the whole emphasis is on church planting, on going into new communities, and you’re absolutely right, Ed. I mean, we just welcome them in. And in the lower Anglican, we’ve got all this structure. That’s not what we first introduce them to. We introduce them to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then slowly over time, you can, you know, as they get more involved, they can see how these institutional structures can be used. They can be used to hurt it, but they can be used to further it. But I don’t disagree fundamentally with what you’ve said. There’s always a problem of too much institutionalism, and not enough emphasis on what we’re about. One thing I was going to say, and I don’t want to be discouraging. I can only speak for the Anglican experience. Rachael said, you know, we’ll stick with the church until we’re actually kicked out or told. Well, that’s actually what happened. I won’t go through a long history, but in the Anglican Church of Canada, there was a bishop by the name of [Michael] Ingham, who was the Anglican Church of Canada bishop in what was called the Diocese of New Westminster, which is basically the Lower Mainland, Vancouver. And he actually defrocked the conservative clergy.

Ed: Yep.

It’s been just really sad to see the decline in the Presbyterian Church numerically, but also that you see the cause of it, and that’s the loss of our core message, the cross and the resurrection. It’s just being lost. . . we’ve become like the 10 lost tribes in the empire who just assimilated the culture and have disappeared. – Jim Statham

Mike: The irony is, one of those – some of you may have heard of him – he’s one of the great world Anglican Protestant theologians by the name of J.I. Packer. And he was a local priest, and Ingham had the nerve to defrock him, to try to take away his orders from him. So there was a lot of negative things that went on, but what happened is it eventually convinced at least a minority of the minority, like a minority of the conservative orthodox, that they had no future trying to work within that existing structure. And that’s what caused, you know, eventually the quake in the United States for different reasons. But here but no, I would second Ed’s motion that the churches that are growing are the ones that are, in fact preaching the gospel.

Ed: And given the knowledge that I have now and all the experience, you know, confronted with this, I would say, you know, I think it’s important to form alliances. There’s no question. Alliances is where you network and you’ve got people that are connected to one another, that are in dialogue with one another, that are encouraging and supporting one another. But the important thing is, like you said, Rachael, churches that are not centred on Jesus Christ will fail. The churches that are centred on Jesus Christ will survive, will endure and will overcome. Those things will happen and that church is one, like Luther said, is everywhere. It’s everywhere. It doesn’t have one particular denomination. It’s everywhere. In my mind, today, this is the important question you have to ask yourself: are people’s lives being changed? That they go from hopelessness to hopefulness. That is the important thing, that they feel they’re included in God’s family, and that Jesus, that God is with them individually, personally, corporately. That’s the important thing. Those are people that can stand when everyone else is falling.

Jim: And what we’ve discovered the last several years in the Presbyterian Church is that orthodox Christians don’t have a place at our Presbytery levels, regional meetings and at our National General Assembly. But we have, I don’t know how many, congregations that have decided to stay in the Presbyterian church. We call them churches that are staying and praying. They’re orthodox, they love the Lord, they’re opposing the inclusion stuff, the loss of the core Gospel message. They’re not buying into that kind of thinking, but they’re not organized, and if there’s a need, any need or desire for them to have some kind of interconnectedness, we don’t know. So we’re just wondering, you know, should we contact some of these congregations and pastors and see if they want to get together in some kind of formal structure like you guys have? Or not? Are they happy just staying and praying and being congregational? Because they’re not connected. Andy’s up to date on what’s going on in the denomination. I’ve been retired too long. But he would better know how many congregations are out there, how many pastors are out there, and is there a need for them to be organized? So that they can support one another and develop.

It’s probably one of the most orthodox presbyteries in the PCC. And yet almost all of those congregations have chosen to remain. But how much are they networking and supporting one another and saying, hey, you know, here’s a whole bunch of us. I think there’s a lot of potential influence there. – Shannon Bell

Andy: That’s what Renewal Fellowship since 1983 has been trying to do. It was once much stronger, it peaked. But it’s really tough to get a reading because at General Assembly, here’s the thing, there was a motion from the floor from an evangelical minister to integrate apologetics as part of the curriculum at the three seminaries that we have. Not necessarily a separate course, but just integrate it, make sure it’s there. Oh boy, that was shot down. In between sederunts [when there’s a break] some orthodox ministers were coming up to her. Candace was the minister who did this. Young minister in Brampton, the most Hindu and Sikh place outside of India. And she is trying to evangelize. She’s trying to witness. And she wants the tools, because seminary — she only graduated a few years ago – didn’t prepare her for it. And so during the breaks [at GA] she was getting some ministers and elders coming up to her, encouraging her, giving her advice. One guy, he had experience teaching apologetics. And so I’m thinking, great, this guy’s gonna stand up and speak. But he didn’t. It’s so frustrating, because there is orthodoxy, but they just want to survive. Make it to retirement? I don’t know what they’re thinking. I want to go, “come on, people!”

Shannon: Yep. I have to ask whether the desire is there. Like, Jim, what you’re describing. The prehistory of Kamloops would be the most logical place for that to begin to happen. We were the only people with the only congregation out of that presbytery to leave. And yet when the vote came with regard to the remits [to approve the redefinition of Biblical marriage] our presbytery was almost unanimously opposed to them. So it’s probably one of the most orthodox presbyteries in the PCC. And yet almost all of those congregations have chosen to remain. But how much are they networking and supporting one another and saying, hey, you know, here’s a whole bunch of us. I think there’s a lot of potential influence there. And yet, I don’t know if the little bit that we hear, which isn’t much anymore, but I don’t see that happening. And so I have to ask, well, where is the will to change things, to be there for one another?

Jim: In our presbytery here, they’ve become congregational. And that’s what happens. Yeah, no role for the denomination and no role or function to support other congregations that you’re congregational. And that’s it. And they’re all worried about when they retire or leave, are they ever going to get a minister? Because people aren’t going into the ministry anymore.

Shannon: Yeah, and I’m seeing that across the country. A number of those congregations are our supporting churches, because the ministry we’re in is a mission. And so I get a chance to get out. I’m in Ontario regularly, I’m speaking in some of these churches, and essentially what they’ve done is they’ve just withdrawn participation in presbytery, in General Assembly, and they’re not paying anything into Presbyterians Sharing anymore. So they are no longer functioning completely as Presbyterian congregations, which is part of why, with Living Stones, we valued our structure, our history, of being a Reformed tradition, and, you know, we wanted to reflect that we’re solid theologically, but also open and less bureaucratic. Because the reason we left was not only theology around human sexuality, but the very toxic bureaucratic structure that the PCC had become, and we no longer had the freedom to do ministry that would really count and really make a difference in people’s lives.

Jim: The advantage that the Presbyterian Church has, unlike the Anglicans, we can have a very flexible system of church government. And we’re seeing the fruit of that, I think.

Mike: One thing I would mention in that regard, again, just historically, is that, on the surface, Anglicanism is very structured, but I’ll give you an example of what’s happening in England. I don’t know if you follow the Church of England. I mean, that’s the ultimate in structure. There’s about 10,000 parishes, and the institutional church has just gone over the deep end on the liberal position. They recently defied all the Anglican theology. I mean, they’re just way off on some kind of political left field. But what’s happened is a lot of the parishes in England are very, very well-funded. And a lot of them, they just ignore, in Anglicanism, we do what’s called tithing. It’s the 10 per cent. Each parish is supposed to have 10 per cent of its income, revenue, from all sources it gives to the diocese. And the diocese, in turn, tithed to the province. That’s been the Anglican structure. But what some of the really powerful, large churches in England, parishes, they’ve just refused to tithe. They’re just carrying on. They have their own buildings. We had a different problem in North America, we didn’t own. And so one of the alternatives is not to break, and just to hunker down, be autonomous, and just do your own thing locally. But the problem with that then, which is what I think Andy’s been talking about, how do you evangelize? How do you get beyond just taking care of your own and your congregation, which they’re doing. But they’re not reaching out to the rest, you know, the United Kingdom community. So they’re staying within the Church of England, formally, but just ignoring all its rules and just going and doing their own thing, and that’s one alternative. So, despite the rigid structure there, they’re just ignoring the structure, but staying within it. How long that will last, we don’t know. But a lot of it is financial resources, and that’s one of the other problems that you have when you have a breakaway. I don’t know what the solution is for orthodox Presbyterians.

Jim: Yeah, sustainability of stay and pray.

We’re convicted that as long as the church doesn’t force us out, and if practicing orthodoxy is still possible, and we’re not forced to affirm anything heretical, then that is our line that we would like to draw to stay. – Rachael Chen

Ed: I was just gonna say one of the things I was just thinking about is that is it possible to have a non-geographic presbytery, based on orthodoxy and and based upon commitment to orthodox education of pastors. In that way, could there be an alliance of the congregations, and good funding for that particular group and supporting higher education and so on. It seems if you could do something like that, because just the challenge with stay and pray, the challenge with defiance is that the organization around you gets more and more corrupt and crumbles. And then you’re stuck in an organization, again. But the big thing for me is, can you call an orthodox pastor, educate your candidates in a way that includes things like apologetics, which at Institute of Lutheran Theology, is at every certificate, every degree, apologetics is a part of the curriculum. I think it’s essential today.

Shannon: Well, that idea was floated. It came as far as the 2019 General Assembly, where it was one of four options that were offered to the Assembly. One was no change, stay the way that things are with the marriage definition. The other was go completely affirming. The third one was to create a structure within the structure, like a separate synod, or a separate presbytery, where the presbytery would be created on theological grounds. But it didn’t float. It didn’t go.

Andy: And there was no transparency in that. There were four options, you had to rank them. And all of a sudden they said, okay, this is the one. So there was no, how did it get that way, right? Show us the sausage factory. But no. The end result Option D, totally affirming. So the PCC is officially an affirming denomination. That’s what resulted in the remits, the remits creating the dual definition of marriage to avoid schism.

Mike: Can I ask a question? How can you be moderate about something? I’ll be the devil’s advocate here when it comes to apostasy. A lot of us conservative orthodox have decided you can’t be moderate about that. You can’t modulate that. I’m intrigued, as fellow Christians, how do you temporize with apostasy?

Rachael: Well, I think the question that tripped a lot of orthodox ministers and prevented them from entering was because they were just blunt and like saying they wouldn’t accept any other view. But I think there’s a difference between you personally not accepting it and completely denouncing the faith of those who do, because I think there’s a line that could be drawn between disagreeing and denouncing someone’s faith because they disagree on this one thing. And it’s hard to say definitively that those who disagree on this one thing are truly not Christian.

Mike: Well, that’s a good point. That is a dilemma. That’s an intellectual thing to work on.

Andy: So, for ministers and ruling elders now, at the Presbytery level, when a minister married to a same-sex spouse is called by a congregation, you do not have the right to vote against that. You have the right to not show up, you have the right to abstain, but you can’t vote no for that call if it’s based on their lifestyle. And I’m just waiting for it to be tested. And for somebody to be challenged by the moderator, and to be shown to be in contempt, and have a complaint, and go through the whole process, because I think that would – you legal minds here would know – that that would set a precedent of sorts. You’d be testing the remits, you’d be testing the theology. Does this hold water? Hasn’t happened yet. And so everyone’s being very polite. And, well, moderate to survive in that sense.

Mike: Where we’re at in Anglicanism, at least orthodox, is that, to a certain extent we’ve gone beyond that. In other words, like, some of these issues are just not in question. We do not ordain same-sex persons. I mean, it just doesn’t happen. There is a sensitivity. Our bishops have come up with a notion called same-sex attraction. And that’s not a sin. We think it’s a temptation, but it’s not a sin. And where we’ve drawn the line, and trying to be caring, is, no, they’re brothers and sisters in Christ. But it’s not the attraction that’s the sin, it’s the conduct. So we take a very traditional approach, which is that the conduct is acceptable if it’s abstinence. You abstain from sexual relations outside of conventional marriage. But that doesn’t mean we don’t love you any less as brothers and sisters in Christ. It doesn’t even mean you can’t come to church. And I think that’s what Rachael’s talking about. Sometimes on this sex issue, the conservatives tend to be very harsh in the tone. I agree with you. I think the tone can be different. And if that’s what you’re talking about, I agree with you on that. So there’s a way to handle that, still be loving and just say, but this is what we honestly believe. Scripture tells me it’s a sin. But the actual conduct and asking me to glorify and bless it? Turn it into a sacrament? I can’t do that. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t speak to these people, doesn’t mean we can’t be welcoming them as human beings. We simply can’t give them positions of authority, we can’t recognize their conduct as something we can bless as a church.

Jim: The difference between the culture and the orthodox Church, there’s three phases to this. The first one is SSA, same-sex attraction, which is a human phenomenon. We don’t have a problem with that in the church. The second stage is behaviour. The world says, if you have same-sex attraction, you’re to act it out. And then thirdly, that becomes your identity. So people have an identity of being in same-sex attraction. We draw the line in the church after step one, same-sex attraction. We don’t condone the behaviour. And we do not say that that’s your identity. Your identity is in Christ.

Mike: We’re the same, Jim. We’re exactly the same on that issue.

Jim: It’s a simple way of looking at it, you know, but the judgmentalism tends to creep in. I mean, we all have people in our church, churches who are, we’re all sinners. So if somebody’s acting out on their same sex attraction, they need to be part of our fellowship so they can hear about the Lord and create change. And I’ve worked with people in my Ottawa congregation on this issue, and it makes a difference.

Ed: In my own personal experience with a family member, my brother, there’s several couples that come to church on and off that are same sex couples. Now that I’m retired and no longer a mouthpiece for anybody, I’ve come to really understand and have good conversations with my brother and other couples, same gender couples. We have to understand, we have to think about what people hear, not what we think we say. But the message that they hear is that “You really can’t belong here until you clean up your act. You really can’t belong here and that we really don’t see you.” Ultimately, we’re talking about conversion. And the converter is Christ. And sometimes we try by doctrine, by policy or whatever, try to convert, or that we justify things. I’ll tell you what. Lutherans, this is what we believe: everything’s a sin. I don’t try to justify anything. It’s all a sin. And we gotta get over that. We try to justify things. Jesus justifies, not the church. That’s the problem. Gay people understand that the gay-affirming churches are really not a church. They don’t get Jesus, they don’t get anything. It’s like they get the greening of Canada, they get all this other stuff, and political garbage. So I think we need to, and I think what Rachael is talking about is that we have to be real, and we also have to say we have, like, my brother needs pastoral care. But I’m the last pastor he would come and see, because he thinks I don’t think he’s kosher. That’s a problem. That’s the bigger problem than all this stuff. You don’t need the denomination. You need Jesus.

Jim: My parent’s generation, they didn’t talk about religion, sex, or politics, so nobody talked about Jesus. He just went to church services and sat there.

Ed: I mean, it just breaks my heart.

Mike: You know, Christian people want to stay in that institution, but need to be connected with other Presbyterians like them. Right. That’s what you need to be working on.

Andy: That is my major frustration right now, because Renewal Fellowship is not an official organization. We do not answer to any court of the church. We can be an observer at General Assembly, where there’s two dozen booths at every General Assembly, from every agency in the church, and I can’t set up my Renewal Fellowship banner because we’re outsiders. When we had a denominational magazine, it had editorial independence, because it wasn’t supported by the denomination, but it was still the Presbyterian Record. It was true journalism. My predecessor [at RF] had a column. They did a cover story on his encouragement road trips. After the Record folded due to lack of financial viability, it was replaced by an in-house PR piece. They don’t recognize us, so getting the word out is exceedingly difficult. So we’ve got the congregational mentality. People are just not getting involved. They’re just dealing with evangelism. And they’re trying to make disciples, but they’re doing it on an individual congregational level. And so the frustration for Renewal Fellowship is in our glory days, we could work together, because we were able to communicate with one another. Facebook only goes so far. Robin Ross, our wonderful webmaster, has a great database. But that only goes so far, too.

Ed: Can I just make a suggestion? Mike knows this, I know this. At the time that Anglican Essentials was in its, you know, kind of heyday it was organized, it was a charity, it had a board of directors we had called Solid Ground.

Mike: Yep.

Ed: And we organized, we were a charity. We filed articles of incorporation in Ontario. We got our charitable status and we had memberships. You could become a member of Solid Ground. And it could be a congregation could be a member or individuals could be a member. People crave some sort of an organization that they can be a part of.

Andy: Been there, done that. We are charitable, we’re registered, we have a board, the whole nine yards, all of them.

Ed: You need to market it, man. You’ve got to do some bold things.

Andy: Okay. Marketing. I get it, absolutely.

Ed: You know, you gotta get somebody to do something like to stand up. I mean, at the convention, I mean, a few times where, I mean, I stood up and – I even cringe thinking about it – but sometimes you gotta say it, you gotta do it, because people are waiting for somebody to say something. That’s what they’re waiting for. They’re waiting because they don’t feel they have a voice. And if you’re that voice, that’s the start. They need to hear someone say, what we’re doing is stupid. It’s stupid.

Jim: I think it’s been said, Ed.

Ed: Keep saying it!

Jim: From what I’ve heard, we’re not welcome in the Presbyterian Church.

Ed: You could say, I’ve been thrown out of a lot of better places than this. I’m serious. Because I’ve got thrown out of places.

Mike: Again, just drawing on the Anglican experience, the Anglican Essentials experience, it did all those things. And the leadership of the church simply ignored them.

Ed: To their detriment.

Mike: Eventually, Essentials itself split. Some of them said we have to stay within the church. I hate to say this, gentlemen, sometimes it takes a real crisis. You’re probably familiar with this story. It may not be applicable, but it may be. I don’t know if you know the story about how this blew up in the Episcopal Church in the United States, you know, the American version of Anglican. They were having the same kind of debates, particularly over the sexuality issue and so on. And they – I don’t have exact dates here – but they elected their new primate female archbishop. She was an arch-liberal. Meanwhile, they’re having all these debates within the church. Meanwhile, the Episcopal Bishop of New England retires. One of the senior bishops of the church retired, and she made the decision to replace him as Bishop of New England with a practising male homosexual. And that finally, finally, enough of them in the Episcopal Church said, enough is enough. I mean, it created just an explosion, which is probably what she wanted, actually. And that led to the Anglican Church in North America.

Ed: Brilliant.

Mike: Those people coming out of that, she just pushed them right to the wall.

Ed: And sometimes that’s what it takes.

Mike: So, I’m not suggesting you want to go through that experience in a Presbyterian church, I don’t know what the analogy would be, but maybe people just have to be woken up to the reality.

Andy: Perhaps we’re looking for that issue, definitely, but there’s a lot of politeness, a lot of collegiality.

Mike: Yeah, you also suffer from another burden. We all suffer. We’re Canadians. No, there is a cultural thing here too, right? At least in America, Americans, enough of them, you get pushed to the wall and they do something. Yeah, Canada. Can I go along with it?

Andy: It’s enormously frustrating, but we’re just gonna carry on doing what we can. And so here’s another cool thing. Rachael and three of her cohorts were observers at General Assembly. They purchased a meal plan. They came on their own dime, which was absolutely awe-inspiring. They’ve only been around for about 18 months. They have a constitution, they’re getting off the ground, and they’re just preparing to make their voices heard. And that may be the thing that prompts a pushback. That ignites a debate.

Ed: My sense would be that the young people in the church can really be the change agents, because everybody looks with hope and favour at young people. You find the most, how do I say it, effective liberal people tend to be in their 60s and 70s. They’re the ones that really perpetrate this. You know this, the younger people today, if you look at young people like Rachael, I mean, she strikes me as someone that is very practical, wise for her age. And these are young people that can make an impact. Because, you know, the liberal people say, oh, the young people go along with it. But I don’t know that the young people go along with this stuff anymore.

Mike: I picked up on that a little bit just in the few years I’ve been teaching at UBC Okanagan. Just anecdotal, of course, but I’ve had several students come to me. One of them would put it very nicely. He said, “I don’t swallow the Kool-aid of either side,” which I thought was a good expression. He said, “I don’t buy the liberal progressive line, and I’m not so sure I buy all this conservative right of centre stuff either.” And I thought, that’s good. Good on you. A young person should have an open mind, keep an open mind on this stuff and be discerning. And it’s still a minority, but they’re a distinct minority of that generation that are like that.

Jim: But he’s thinking about the issues. That’s the key thing he’s thinking about. He’s aware of them and how important they are.

Ed: And when you look at our culture, it’s so technologically based, like technology is everything. People, friends, friends of my friends, my wife’s friends, they’re going through these medical issues, and it’s just amazing how medical technology keeps people going. It’s just unreal. And you know, you can almost do anything today. And what people are beginning to realize is that just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.

Mike: Yes. This is where AI, of course, is going to become a real challenge for us too, the whole artificial intelligence thing, how we deal with that. That’s a whole other topic.

Ed: Yeah, it is.

Andy: Mike, you said something really at the beginning in your intro. You were attempting to nobly remain. But it failed. This was in the Anglican Church of Canada.

Mike: Yes.

Andy: What happened there? Why did it happen?

Mike: Well, this actually predated me because when all of this was happening, I was just going to the Lutheran church with my wife, like I always did. I had left Anglicanism. To be honest, what brought me in, my son was an Anglican Church of Canada priest. And he left to come into what was then ANIC, and I kind of followed him in. I didn’t fight the noble fight. It happened all before I actually got involved, so I don’t take any credit for any of that. But I was using the expression, some people decided to nobly stay. And we know some of them.

Andy: So is it fair to say that within the traditional Anglican Church of Canada, that there are some priests in Orthodoxy, but they just . . .

Mike: Oh, yes.

Andy Cornell: . . . .play the game?

Mike: Well, yeah, they do the local thing. They pastor their flock, their local flock. For instance, New Brunswick, that diocese is considered conservative. They don’t put up a big fight. The ACOC has continued to be left liberal. It just continued in that direction. But they’re kind of tolerated, I guess. But the trouble for the Anglican Church of Canada is they’re losing membership. So they’re not kicking people out anymore. Because that didn’t work for them, did it?

Andy: Wycliffe, the Anglican seminary at U of T, is solidly orthodox.

Mike: It’s not regarded as orthodox at all anymore. No.

Andy: What, Wycliffe?

Mike: Most of ours go to Trinity in Pittsburgh. It’s Episcopal, orthodox Episcopal. It’s actually associated with the Anglican Church of North America, though. Or Regent. Regent College is highly regarded. It’s not Anglican. Although you should read some stories about what’s happening at Regent. They’ve been taken over by diversity, equity, and all this stuff. Even Regent is moving towards a more left-progressive institutional structure, even they are.

Andy: And so that’s the challenge of having seminaries that are connected to public universities.

Mike: Regent is on the UBC, but it’s not actually officially connected to UBC at all.

Andy: So that was one of the biggest arguments [at General Assembly] against the apologetics course, or apologetics training, because at the Toronto School of Theology at U of T, you’ve got three Roman Catholic, you’ve got two Anglicans, you’ve got Emmanuel.

Jim: United.

Andy: United, and then Knox.

Mike: In our diocese, we’ve just created a new seminary named after J.I. Packer, but it’s in St. John’s, of all places, Newfoundland. So we have a new diocesan seminary. It’s called Packer. It’s just getting going. So they don’t even have to go through Trinity or Regent. They can go through an actual Canadian Anglican seminary.

Jim: That’s encouraging, Mike.

Andy: So, Packer was defrocked?

Mike: Well, he couldn’t be defrocked. Ingham tried. All he could do is take his license away. But Packer was the leading world Anglican theologian. But because he’s orthodox, Ingham decided to kick him out.

Andy: His book, Knowing God, is my – if I’ve had a tough day, I’d just sit down and read a chapter.

Mike: Probably his most famous. Yeah, he wrote about 20 different books, I think, in his lifetime, but yeah, Knowing God, I commend that to any Christian to read that. Yeah, that’s great.

Andy: And that, to me, should be required reading.

Mike: Yeah, probably put it on the list. I’m not a theologian, I’m not an expert, but I think it would be something you went to, like John Stott, too, was the great Church of England writer. His stuff is, to me, it’s seminal.

Jim: Was to me. Changed my life.

Mike: So anyway, we’re trying, but it’s hard going. It’s hard, you know, it’s hard slugging. But you just keep on.

Jim: We’re counter-cultural. And it’s new territory for us. We are not used to this. We never had to be counter-cultural.

Mike: No, we’re not. In fact, Anglicans were the epitome of establishment. Anglicanism was the opposite of being radical or, you know, being rebels. It was very difficult temperamentally. I think that’s why a lot of them, my son knows a lot of, you know, fellow priests that stayed in, they’re still good friends, but they’ve stayed in ACOC. It’s partly inertia, and it’s a hesitancy to break with them. It’s the institution. It’s hard stuff.

Andy: Well, I guess we have to keep on keeping on. What keeps me going, among other things, is last week, for example, we, on one day, received a $3,000 donation from an individual elder. And another $3,000 donation from a congregation who’ve never really given anything sizable before. And so that tells me, okay, there’s a demand, there’s a desire.

Mike: Well, there’s definitely a desire, and it’s just a question of you trying to work out some way of communicating that.

Jim: In what shape?

Mike: Yeah, how do you do that? I don’t know.

Andy: We’re having a struggle even finding directors. We downsized our board of directors, we right-sized it, but we still have one vacancy on our board, and we just can’t find anyone to be on it, so that’s enormously frustrating, too.

Ed: I think that you are finding that that is becoming a real challenge within the church. There was a time, like in my generation and generation before, that people saw leadership in the church as something very important, and that we’re brought into the leadership structure, and encouraged and trained. And to be effective leaders in the church. And that’s just not the case anymore.

Mike: Well, for instance, Andy, are you allowed as an organization, since you’re separate but you’re still Presbyterian. Are there individual Presbyterian ministers, if they’re more orthodox themselves, invite you to come and make a presentation? Are you allowed to speak?

Andy: I do.

Mike: You can still do that!

Andy: Part of my job description, when we had more money, was to do encouragement road trips. And so I would organize them. And Jim, that’s why you and your wife opened your home to me. . .

Jim: Yep.

Andy: . . . for one night right as I was speaking at congregations in BC and Vancouver Island and then I did an East Coast trip, just to spread the word. We ran out of money for that kind of thing and we’re trying to do it electronically.

Mike: Hmm. Okay. Good.

Jim: The prayer you gave us is still in our fridge, Andy. Seriously. That’s 10 years ago. It’s still there for the Renewal Fellowship.

Andy: Well, that means a lot. Thank you. The desire and the need for that was personal, face to face.

Jim: Yeah.

Andy: Maybe we need to do that again, just bite the bullet. I mean, we do have some money in the bank. Maybe we better do a road trip, I don’t know.

Jim: That, I think, is something for us to consider. It was on my list of ideas. Face to face.

Mike: Have you worked, Andy, at sort of creating a network of individual Presbyterian clergy? They’re a minority, obviously, but are willing to kind of stick their neck out a little bit. And have you got a connection with a group of them?

Andy: Yes. But a lot of the orthodox biblical ministers don’t even want to take out a membership. It’s a $10 a year thing. We don’t publish our membership. It’s all private, but they still don’t want to take on a membership, because it might link them with something that might cause them trouble. Privately, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, I support you and everything like that,” but that’s about it. Because they don’t want to get flack from people in their Presbytery, or whatever.

Ed: Or even in their congregation.

Andy: Yes, exactly. So, congregations are quite often deeply divided, so they’re just trying to speak the truth in love and be very careful. There’s one time I did speak at a congregation a couple years ago. I preached a no-holds-barred Gospel truth message. And afterwards, one of the older members of the congregation came up to me and said, “thank you, I haven’t heard that in years.” So when I talked to the minister after, I told him, in a polite way, and he said, “I could not have delivered that message that you did.” I said, why? “Well, because I would have got flack.” So it’s easy for me, you know, I’m going to go home.

Ed: Yes.

Andy: There’s a lot of fear amongst Biblical orthodox ministers against stirring the pot. Again, they want to survive. They don’t want complaints. They don’t want investigations. It’s that game of whack-a-mole.

Ed: Sometimes what we have to do is state the obvious. Give them the obvious, right? The greatest thing that we can do for the church is to go back to the most basic doctrine. And just state the obvious, because people are not as Biblically literate as we were. Go back to your basics because you have no idea the level of knowledge, Biblical knowledge that people have in the pew, and every year it gets worse.

Andy: Yeah, we no longer have catechism anymore.

Ed: Oh, my goodness. That’s bad.

Andy: I used the word catechism in a message several years ago, and all these old ladies’ ears picked up.

Ed: Exactly.

Andy: It was beautiful.

Ed: Yes!

Mike: So do you have confirmation in the Presbyterian Church?

Andy: We have Profession of Faith.

Mike: And there’s no education behind that?

Andy: It’s local, loosey-goosey, nothing prescribed.

Jim: Yeah.

Mike: There’s no firm catechism, like we have a catechesis. You know, you don’t have a catechism that you . . .

Andy: Well, there is, but you don’t have to follow it.

Jim: Yeah, it’s historic.

Ed: You know what’s interesting? Luther wrote a catechism, the Small Catechism. It was his first, sort of, widely circulated publication. And in there, you’ve got the Ten Commandments, you’ve got the Apostles’ Creed. You have instruction on Holy Communion, baptism, confession and absolution, right? It’s your basics of faith. It’s the absolute bedrock. And Luther said: You never get smart enough as a theologian to not go through your catechism once a year. Because it takes you down. It brings you down to the basics.

Mike: I bet you there are Lutheran pastors, certainly ELCIC, who’ve never even read it.

Ed: It sort of summarizes the basic faith of Christianity. And so when you go through it, you get our worldview. When you look at our worldview, most people see the world as sort of cyclical. And you know so you’ve got seasons and they swirl around. But the scriptures teach us it’s linear, that we are going on a definite trajectory, and at the end of the trajectory is God, the hidden God, is revealed.

Mike: That’s right.

Ed: And there’s judgment, and there’s eternal life. There’s good news, eternal life, and bad news, eternal life. That’s what comes out. These are our foundational documents. And so, if you really understand them, you understand that’s where we’re going historically. And it’s a linear project, progression. It’s not cyclical. It doesn’t go round and round and round and round. There’s no room for karma. There’s no room for reincarnation. There’s no room for anything. Boom, it’s a straight line. And it ends this way. And sometimes we forget that as Christians and we know we get into all these debates, but it’s a progression that God is taking the universe in a direction. And it’s going to end. God will be revealed and everything will be made clear. That’s what the Catechism reminds me of all the time. It reminds me that when I’m baptized, I’m regenerated. I’m a child of God. I’ve been incorporated in the body of Christ.

Jim Statham: Yes.

Ed: You know, I’ve been joined to his death and resurrection. When I receive Holy Communion, I receive Jesus. I receive the forgiveness of sin. It’s a participation, and when you’re baptized, you receive. It’s a participation in justification and sanctification and everything. So, when you go through this, you remember, this is what’s core about being faith, of being a Christian, and it’s not about object lessons, and it’s not about, you know, what can I do, you know? No, it’s about. It reminds me who I am. It’s who I am intrinsically.

Jim: Yep, and that’s being lost in today’s culture. People don’t know who they are. Walking with the guys this morning, they’re looking at these women with tattoos, and one of the guys is all upset because this woman’s covered, she’s all black with tattoos, and he doesn’t know why she’s got all these tattoos. It says she’s looking for identity.

Ed: Yeah.

Jim: She doesn’t know who she is. And you’re talking about identity. That’s got to be a core message for us in our messages. Our identity is in Christ.

Ed: And you know what’s interesting, a very good friend of mine, his son-in-law is a pastor in Calgary and he and his wife couldn’t have children. So they take in foster children. And they got a really tough case about a young woman that was starting to identify as a man. Or as male. The kid first came in and was really brash. Tell me your church’s position, blah, blah, blah. This was after the passage of the amendment to the Criminal Code about conversion therapy. So the pastor said, you know, I really don’t want to talk about that. What I’d like you to do is go to a Bible study and get to know people in my church. I want you to meet Jesus. And so she, he, lived with them for a year. And as she was aging out, you know, and had to go out of foster, she started to dress like a girl again. And so the foster parents are wondering, what’s going on? So finally, the pastor says, “I have to ask you, what’s going on? Why are you dressing feminine again?” And she goes. “Well, Jesus told me I’m a girl.”

Jim: Authority.

Mike: There it is.

Ed: Jesus told me I’m a girl. And, you know, what does Jesus tell me about what it is to be even a man, a pastor or whatever? I mean, I think this is the secret of the faith. We’ve been co-opted by philosophy, psychology, sociology, into thinking that it’s a therapeutic enterprise. It’s not. It’s about conversion.

Mike: But that causes a lot of trouble in the culture.

Ed: And we don’t even know what that is anymore.

Jim: Yep.

Mike: You take a non-therapeutic approach to life. But everything’s therapy now, right? That’s all.

Ed: Oh my gosh. You would not believe, in conversations with people, saying “Yeah, I was in therapy for about four years, and now I feel justified living the way that I do.” And it’s like, there’s that word, justification. And it’s like, you know, everyone will ask me, well, is it okay if I have cancer and then I don’t, you know, take treatment and I just, you know, I just say, you know, is that okay? And I always say, look, it’s all a sin. You have to go to Jesus. I can’t justify what you’re saying. I’m not going to justify it. Let’s go to Jesus. What’s Jesus saying? What’s Jesus going to tell you? Don’t listen to me. I’m just a human being. I’m not going to justify anybody anymore.

Mike: Right. It’s interesting about simplicity. I remember there’s a story about a famous Anglican archbishop, I think he was talking to a bunch of communicants. And one of the smart kids said, well, can you summarize in one sentence, what our faith is. And he talked for a minute, and you know what he said to him? “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells us so.”

Ed: Exactly. And I love the one we do for Vacation Bible School. The kids learn, “Jesus loves me when I’m good, when I do the things I should. Jesus loves me when I’m bad, though it makes him very sad.” Yes, Jesus still loves you when you do something bad, but it’s like he’s sad, and we don’t want Jesus to be sad.

Jim: That’s profound.

Mike: Jesus is telling you to stop being stupid.

Ed: Exactly. But seriously, it’s that simple.

Mike: Yep.

Andy: We’ve been talking more than two hours, and we’re just keeping going here, but . . .

Mike: We’re having fun, I think.

Ed: Yeah, that’s right.

Mike: Can I just mention one thing before we do prayer? Because we’ve been talking about orthodoxy and the struggles, just to show that nothing has changed. There was a BBC television series called Yes, Prime Minister. It was in the 1970s and 80s about a fellow who becomes Prime Minister. One of the episodes, The bishop’s gambit is where Jim Hacker, who’s not particularly Christian, he’s the prime minister, and he has to appoint a new bishop. He has to recommend it to Her Majesty. Anyway, he meets with the ecclesiastical advisor and he doesn’t understand any of this. He’s the Prime Minister. Later he says to his senior public servant, they’ve given me two names to appoint, I choose, and he’s described as a modernist. What does it mean to be a modernist priest in the Church of England? And this was in the 1980s, we’re talking 40 years ago. And Sir Humphrey says, well, a modernist is a priest that no longer believes in the Bible or in God. So, of course, then the Prime Minister says, well, shouldn’t he be defrocked? You know, he’s an atheist? No, no, no, no, Prime Minister, we don’t call them atheists. We just call them modernists, so we don’t have to defrock them, okay? That’s the first thing. The other thing he talks about, he said about theologians, well, these are atheists that can stay in the church. Then the last one is the funniest. He’s talking about this particular candidate. And he says to him, well, he doesn’t seem to particularly believe in God. Is that optional? And Stromford says, yes, in the Church of England, it’s optional. So this is 40 years ago. The church is full of these priests who don’t even believe this stuff. Anyway, it’s quite an amazing episode. It’s worth watching. Very funny.

[We had a time of prayer, then the conversation continued informally for another 20 minutes.]

Title Photo Credit:  AI image by Canva