Day 12

 We turn now from these outer observations to inner ones to see before the altar the meaning of mission and the reasons for missions.

THE CHURCH IS GOD’S INSTRUMENT

Consider next the Church.  As Anglicans, we pride ourselves on our tradition, and tradition rightly understood is our life;  but the danger to Anglicanism is an over veneration of tradition, the making of it into an idol, so that we sometimes worship tradition rather than the Living God.  To look back is right, as Christians we must look back, but onlyprovided that we look ahead as hard as we look back, and that we look back to our tradition in order that God may speak to us through it about our present task.  It is this eagerness about our destiny and our task which one sometimes misses in Anglicanism.  Instead of being frontier fighters serving our Lord, we sometimes appear timid, concerned with what is respectable, concerned with good taste.

If our destiny as a Church is not clear, we do not constantly question as we should the traditional manners and organization of the Church.  “Is the leadership of the worldwide Church”, asks Stephen Neill, “in the hands of men and women who know how to lead others one by one to Jesus Christ?  We are so concerned with planning and administration that there is danger lest we allow these things to serve as an excuse for not doing the one thing on which all else depends.”

The Church is that body to which has been entrusted the bearing of the Gospel to all men, the conversion of the world.  Never forget that the Church is God’s instrument existing for the sake of the wide world around us. 

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