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Communion Partner Bishops hold Low-Key Clergy Recruiting Event

Communion Partner Bishops to hold Low-Key Clergy Recruiting Event

By David W. Virtue, DD
www.virtueonline.org
August 28, 2018

Are you discerning a call to Christian vocation, namely on becoming an Episcopal priest?

Well, for $395.00 you can hear some top-flight Anglican speakers telling you why you should pay the money and attend a two-day event (Sept. 20-22) at the Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, Texas, where you will hear the likes of Tom Wright, Ephraim Radner, even Archbishop Justin Welby who will tell you how successful Church of England priests are in growing his church! Throw in Stanley Hauerwas and Oliver O'Donovan and you will learn more about the ancient order of the priesthood as a 21st Century calling. Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry will make a cameo appearance.

A blurb at the website reads; "Anyone who is interested in thinking about and celebrating ordained ministry; for any who have a burden for proclaiming Christ to a lost and broken world in need of healing and redemption. This conference was conceived as a place to have a conversation about what this looks like in the Anglican tradition, and to give missional, Gospel-burdened young adults a space in which to reflect on their vocation, i.e. calling."

The only problem with this statement is that Episcopal Church priests haven't got a clue how to proclaim Christ to a lost and broken world because they don't believe the world is "lost and broken", having embraced the culture and unbiblical doctrines of inclusion, diversity and pansexuality. TEC has marginalized, kicked out of the church (or they have left) the very people who would and could do that -- namely those who are now with the Anglican Church in North America, one of the fastest growing denominations in America, while The Episcopal Church is one of the fastest dying denominations in the country. If you attend this event and decide to become a TEC priest, you will become a 'kissing Judas,' "an act appearing to be an act of friendship, which is in fact harmful to the recipient".

So why are these mostly orthodox 'top gun' Anglicans crossing the oceans to plug a dying denomination, and why is the Episcopal News Service (ENS) (or ACNS) not running this up the mast as a major news event to attend?

Perhaps the reason is that the event is sponsored by the Communion Partner bishops, that remnant group of orthodox bishops still left in The Episcopal Church; so clearly it would not be right to give them any publicity. However, you would think that the appearance of head honcho Welby might be a cause for adulation and rejoicing, but apparently not.

Of course, if you attend, (pay your $395) and decide TEC is for you, consider the following. Your choices of seminaries are really only two -- Trinity School for Ministry (evangelical) and Nashotah House, (Anglo-Catholic) all the others will effectively destroy any faith you might have. By the time you climb into a pulpit several years later, all you will have left are the tatters of faith but be armed with a bewildering array of social causes to plug starting with racism and white privilege. If the 55-strong congregation whose average ages are in the mid-sixties and believe they can actually support you full time, can they pay a salary that allows for cost of living, seminary loan repayment and pay to have your 2-3 kids in day school while your wife works to help pay the bills you can't pay on a rector's salary?

Knowing your Bible won't be a requisite for a pastorate, as most liberal Episcopal seminaries barely open the book, but there will be endless lectures on the feminist reading of Scripture, LGBT inclusion and more postmodern tropes. Your parishioners, mostly over 60, will sleep through your sermons, but they will be glad to have someone, anyone under the age of 44 to hopefully bury them in the columbarium built by the previous rector, who is now in the columbarium. The church's endowment will be there to keep your salary coming for the next ten years because that is about all the time you have left till your church closes its doors.

The moral of this story is; have a second career ready as a standby, you will need one.

END

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