ACNA: Imagination Forfeited

ACNA has mule churches. We need rabbit churches

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I May 13, 2026

The Anglican Church in North America entered history at a genuinely pregnant moment. The Episcopal Church had lost its way. After years of conflict, lost buildings, broken relationships, orthodox Episcopalians needed something safe. Stable. A place to land.

It didn’t happen.

We left the house on fire. And then we built the same thing next door.

We replicated the architecture we had repudiated. Dioceses multiplied. Bishops multiplied. Meetings multiplied. The kingdom did not. We were sincere. We worked hard. And we reproduced a model that wasn’t working when we left it.

The ACNA was never the safe, stable, reliable expression of Anglicanism so many of us desperately sought. What emerged instead was something closer to a Star Wars bar scene — a fascinating collection of traditions, personalities, and ecclesial experiments, held together by what we had escaped rather than by where we were going. The genuine work of the Holy Spirit is visible, particularly among younger clergy finding their way forward. But it is happening around and despite the institution. Not because of it.

ACNA had no clear identity.

When asked what we were, our most honest answer was: not them. Not the Episcopal Church.

That is not an identity.

It looks backward by definition. It requires the Episcopal Church to exist in order to know what we are. No one has ever been converted by it. No movement has ever been catalyzed by it. Negation is not the Gospel.

And we were unable to fill that vacuum with anything commonly owned. Ask ten ACNA clergy what Anglicanism is and receive ten answers. Anglo-Catholic. Reformed. Charismatic. Prayer Book conservative. Each coherent on its own terms. None of them the same thing. No shared center holding them together beyond not-TEC.

That is not a communion. It is a coalition. And coalitions held together by a common enemy dissolve the moment the enemy recedes.

Every tradition requires a commonly owned confession — a shared understanding of its particular grace and calling. Without it, disintegration is not a risk. It is a destiny.

We also assumed we would prevail because we were orthodox. But the right beliefs held in the wrong spirit produce exactly what we have — a church confident in its legitimacy and uncertain of its purpose. Orthodoxy is a gift. It was never meant to be a trophy.

NEEDED NOW

We needed a handful of genuinely apostolic bishops — men freed from administration, devoted to catalyzing movement, identifying and releasing leaders, keeping us oriented toward mission. Instead, we built a supervisory superstructure that consumed the resources mission required. Institutional overhead is not a vehicle for apostolic mission. It is a replacement for it.

Meanwhile the Spirit has been moving at a scale that should stop us in our tracks. Across the Global South. Through Iran and China. Along the Swahili Coast, where High Church Anglicans — full liturgical inheritance, catholic order, evangelical fire — are multiplying communities of remarkable depth and velocity. They didn’t choose between Anglican and apostolic. They refused the choice. They read their cultural moment. They proclaimed the Gospel boldly. And the kingdom advanced.

We have mule churches. We need rabbit churches.

Rabbits multiply. Mules do not. The difference isn’t resources or liturgy or episcopal order. The difference is apostolic imagination — the willingness to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom boldly, make disciples who actually obey Jesus, and trust that obedient disciples multiply.

Jesus never said make church members. He said make disciples. Church members maintain institutions. Disciples multiply movements. We have spent fifteen years making church members and wondering why nothing multiplies.

What we need is not another summit. Not another bishop. Not another reorganization. We need a network of networks — institutionally lean, missiologically alive, held together by a shared rule of life and apostolic imagination rather than diocesan machinery. Four or five truly apostolic bishops. Room for the Spirit to move. Space for indigenous leaders to emerge.

The tradition is sufficient. The raw material is there. The moment is still — barely — available.

But rabbit churches don’t emerge from mule institutions. Something has to change. Not at the level of structure first. At the level of imagination.

I write this with genuine love for the Anglican way. For its beauty. For its depth. For what it could yet be in North America. The grief here is not cynicism. It is the grief of believing deeply in something and watching it settle for less than it was made for.

We missed our moment. By God’s grace we may yet find another one.

But not by doing what has never worked with greater enthusiasm.

The kingdom does not wait for our institutional comfort.

For more on the multiplying of churches click here: https://be.thechurch.digital/blog/the-case-of-multiplication-or-how-all-of-asia-heard-the-gospel

Here are two sample paragraphs: Multiplication in Discipleship. Making disciples is supposed to be a multiplying movement, not an “addition” movement. Typically, though, disciple is not done nor viewed as such. Discipleship is usually carried out in what I call reciprocating discipleship, where Christians meet with Christians to “grow in the word.” Making disciples, however, is leading nonbelievers to Christ and teaching them to do the same thing. Disciples start to multiply.

In Acts 19:8-10, we see Paul stayed in Ephesus for two years, and while he was there, all the residents of Asia heard the Gospel. ALL. Every single one of them. Historians estimate that there were between 8 and 15 million people in Asia during that time. Now remember, this was not the Bible Belt. This was pagan country. NO ONE had heard of Jesus Christ yet and within two years everyone heard the Gospel. Paul stayed in Ephesus during that time so we know he did not personally share with them. So how exactly did 8 million+ hear the Gospel in only two years? Exactly. Multiplication.