VIRTUEONLINE VIEWPOINTS

“Let us watch against pride in every shape — pride of intellect, pride of wealth, pride of our own goodness. Nothing is so likely to keep a person out of heaven, and prevent them from seeing Christ, as pride. So long as we think we are something we shall never be saved.” — J.C. Ryle

“God’s love is not a reward for repentance. Repentance is itself a response to God’s gracious initiative.” — Dr. Ronald Moore

“If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility.” — St. Augustine

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

LEADERSHIP AND HUMILITY: Why Some Leaders Finish Well and Most Do Not

“At every stage of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend.” So wrote John Stott, and few men in the last century had more reason to be proud, or less inclination to be.

He could have been a bishop many times over. He was the most influential evangelical voice in the English-speaking world, the chief architect of the Lausanne Covenant, and the author of books that sold in the millions. Yet he lived in a modest flat behind All Souls, Langham Place. He handed the rectorship to Michael Baughen in 1975, at the height of his powers, and spent his final years at the College of St Barnabas, a home for retired clergy. His last book, The Radical Disciple, ended with chapters on dependence and on death.

I knew John Stott. He never needed to be the most important person in the room, which is precisely why he so often was.

The Wreckage

Now set beside him the wreckage of the last two decades. Bill Hybels built Willow Creek into one of the most imitated churches in America. In 2018 he stepped down early amid allegations of misconduct. Within months the lead pastors and the entire elder board had resigned, and an independent advisory group later found the allegations credible. Mark Driscoll’s Mars Hill collapsed in 2014. Hillsong fired Carl Lentz in 2020. And after his death, Ravi Zacharias was shown, by an investigation his own ministry commissioned, to have abused women for years.

Different men, different sins. But one thread runs through almost every collapse: concentrated power without counterbalancing governance.

The pattern is depressingly familiar. A gifted founder builds something remarkable. Growth follows. Boards fill with friends, donors and loyalists. Questions become disloyalty. Accountability exists on paper but has no teeth. The leader becomes the brand, and the brand must be protected at all costs.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: we mistook growth for health. We counted heads, budgets and campuses and assumed God’s blessing was proven by the numbers. But a tumor grows too.

Anglicans Have No Cause for Smugness

Consider two men I know.

Bishop FitzSimons Allison is in his hundredth year. He has been a seminary professor, a diocesan bishop, and one of the sharpest theological minds the Episcopal Church ever produced. He still consults with Christian leaders. When I call him, his first question is always: how are you doing, David? He never talks about himself. I have to squeeze it out of him. A century of life, and the man is still more interested in you than in his own story.

Contrast Archbishop Steve Wood. He was chosen to lead the Anglican Church in North America as a reformer. Inhibited since last November and tried in September before a closed church court, he has every right to declare his innocence, and he does. But he has chosen to fight tooth and nail rather than resign for the sake of the church he was called to serve. A humbler man might have said: I am innocent, I will prove it, but the province matters more than my office. Whatever the court decides, the Washington Post story will not go away, and neither will the damage to a young church that cannot afford it.

Finishing Well

Stott understood something the celebrity pastors forgot. What you are doing is not nearly as important as who you are becoming. A man can preach brilliantly and lead a movement while his soul quietly hollows out. The pulpit can become a hiding place.

Finishing well is not an accident. It requires people who can tell you no and mean it. It requires handing over the reins before they are pried from you. It requires the daily discipline of repentance, the habit of staying small in your own eyes. Stott asked to be remembered simply as a disciple. The men who fell wanted to be remembered as builders.

The question for every leader, in every pulpit and every boardroom, is not how large your work has become. It is who has the authority to stop you, and whether you would let them.

John Stott finished well because he never thought he was indispensable. FitzSimons Allison is finishing well for the same reason. That is the whole lesson. The rest is commentary.

THE DEAD CAT BOUNCE IN EPISCOPAL PEWS

The Episcopal News Service is very good at what it does. Hand it a decade of hemorrhage and it hands back a headline about “stabilization.” Its account of the 2025 Parochial Report speaks of engaged Episcopalians, excited young people, and membership that continues to “slowly decline.”

Slowly. Consider the numbers.

In 2015 the Episcopal Church reported nearly 2 million members. In 2025 it reported 1.4 million. That is 600,000 people gone in a decade, 30 percent of the church, the equivalent of a good-sized diocese vanishing every year. Sunday attendance fell from nearly 600,000 to 407,000, a drop of 32 percent. Fewer than three in ten members are in a pew on an ordinary Sunday.

A Dead Cat Will Bounce

ENS makes much of attendance having “rebounded” from its pandemic low of 300,000. Wall Street has a name for this: a dead cat bounce. Even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height. The release concedes as much, admitting attendance has rebounded only “to the previous point of decline.” COVID did not cause the collapse; it interrupted it. The church has simply climbed back onto the same downward escalator it was riding in 2019. Add every livestream viewer to the in-person count and the total still falls short of 2015.

The median Episcopal congregation draws 43 people on a Sunday, and that includes those watching online. Half the parishes in the church cannot fill a school bus.

Only 54 percent of the church’s $2.7 billion income comes from plate and pledge. The rest comes from endowments, investments and rents. Much of the Episcopal Church is now funded not by the people in its pews but by the people in its churchyards.

Collecting, Not Making, Disciples

Then there is the figure ENS did not calculate. Of attenders who joined a congregation in the past five years, 77 percent came from another church, 20 percent were returning after years away, and just 3 percent were new to church. Three in a hundred. Everything else is reshuffling. A church that grows only by receiving the disaffected of other congregations is not making disciples. It is collecting them.

The upbeat survey findings come from people who are still attending. The 600,000 who left were never asked. It is like polling the passengers still aboard a sinking ship about their satisfaction with the voyage.

More than 4,300 congregations reported how they are cutting their carbon footprint. The release says nothing about baptisms, confirmations or conversions. If the past decade repeats, the Episcopal Church will have about a million members by the mid-2030s.

A church that does not make disciples does not have a future. It has an endowment, and endowments run out. You can read the full story here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/the-dead-cat-bounce-in-episcopal-pews

If you have a funny bone, you might enjoy my satirical essay, “The Episcopal Church Held a Revival and Nobody Came”: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/episcopal-church-holds-revival-nobody-came

ALL ARE NOT WELCOME: A New Documentary on the Downfall of the Episcopal Church

McLEAN, Va. — The Church Reform Initiative has released “All Are Not Welcome: The Downfall of the Episcopal Church and How to Reform Her,” a documentary examining the theological and institutional transformation of the Episcopal Church through the testimony of those who lived it from the inside.

The film features the Rev. Jake Dell, author of the forthcoming memoir Exile and Return (Good Hill Books, Nov. 17, 2026); podcaster and vestry member Ann Jambor; the Rev. Ian Montgomery; and the Rev. John Jordan. Combining archival footage with firsthand accounts, it traces the denomination’s changes from the late 20th century to the present on sexuality, marriage, abortion, gender, biblical authority, clergy discipline, and the power of bishops over local congregations.

Its title plays on the Episcopal Church’s best-known slogan, “All are welcome,” and asks whether that promise still holds for Christians with traditional convictions.

Montgomery and Dell describe informal blacklists and interference with parish searches, and both recount being targeted under the church’s Title IV disciplinary canons. Jordan recounts the conflict over the Diocese of Fort Worth and the litigation over who controls local church property.

“I think the Episcopal Church is like a trust fund alcoholic,” Montgomery says in the film. “In all likelihood, the trust fund alcoholic is going to die from alcoholism before they hit rock bottom.”

Yet the film is not only an account of decline. Jambor and Dell argue that vestries and parishioners still hold real authority under the church’s own rules, and that reform can begin in the parish. The documentary closes on cautious hope, pointing to congregations, including the New England church Dell now serves, founded in 1659, where traditional preaching and historic worship continue to draw younger Christians and families.

Write to info@churchreforminitiative.org, or watch it here: https://jonharris.substack.com/p/youtube-targets-all-are-not-welcome?r=2j3qvv&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewerOr here: https://x.com/Protestia/status/2110783154952831394

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: Does the Botched Killing of a Woman Stand the Biblical Test?

She lay strapped to the gurney, awake enough to ask whether her arm was supposed to feel that way. Then came the snoring, and it went on for more than an hour. The lethal injection had failed — twice. Christa Pike did not die.

Four months earlier Tennessee had tried to execute Tony Carruthers. His executioners probed his arms, feet, neck and chest for more than an hour before calling it off. Two failures in one year in one state.

Pike, 50, was condemned for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, committed when Pike was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in two centuries. Governor Bill Lee called the outcome “deeply disturbing” and halted executions for the rest of the year. Slemmer’s mother, May Martinez, called what she witnessed “a mess.” Her grief is real, and any Christian answer must reckon with it.

Tennessee’s Episcopal, Lutheran and Roman Catholic bishops urged the governor to commute Pike’s sentence. No evangelical leader joined them. Where were the ACNA bishops? They were nowhere to be found.

What Scripture Says

The Church has never spoken with one voice. Tertullian opposed executions; Augustine accepted the state’s right but pleaded for mercy; Aquinas and Calvin upheld it. Article 37 of the Thirty-Nine Articles permits it. Pope Francis called it “inadmissible,” and the Episcopal Church has opposed it since 1958.

Scripture’s case for it is weighty. Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” predates Sinai and rests on the image of God. Numbers 35 forbids ransom for a murderer. Paul says the ruler “beareth not the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4), and before Festus he did not refuse to die if guilty. The penitent thief called his own sentence just.

But Scripture also counsels restraint. God spared Cain. He spared David. “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11). The Torah demanded two or three witnesses, punished false ones, and built cities of refuge against hasty bloodshed. Jesus told the woman taken in adultery, “Neither do I condemn thee.” And at the Cross, the innocent One died under a lawful capital sentence, satisfying once for all the blood that cleanses the land.

Where America Fails the Test

Here American practice collides with the biblical standard. Since 1973, 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, roughly one for every eight executed, after an average of 13 years under sentence. About 70 percent of those cases involved official misconduct. DNA can clear only a small fraction of the innocent. Deuteronomy’s evidentiary bar is not being met.

Then there is the wait. “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecclesiastes 8:11). Justice delayed three decades is not justice. The 18-year-old who killed Colleen Slemmer is not the 50-year-old who lay snoring on that gurney. Moses’ system had no death rows.

Scripture permits it; America has forfeited the right to do it.

A state that cannot execute justly, swiftly and without torture should not execute at all. America should join most of the free world and abolish it, not because Scripture forbids it, but because America cannot carry it out justly. Pike’s co-defendant, Tadaryl Shipp, received life with the possibility of parole. Would parole after 30 years for Pike be such a bad thing? You can read my full take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/capital-punishment-does-the-botched-killing-of-a-woman-stand-the-biblical-test

DEREK JONES TAKES HIS FIGHT TO THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

Derek Jones, the former chaplaincy bishop deposed by the Anglican Church in North America after trying to take his jurisdiction out of the denomination, is appealing his trademark case against the ACNA to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The U.S. District Court in Charleston dismissed his lawsuit on First Amendment grounds on September 28. VOL reached out to the Anglican Reformed Catholic Church for comment but did not hear back.

VANDERBILT DIVINITY IN RECEIVERSHIP: The Fate of Liberal Seminaries

One of the nation’s most prestigious divinity schools, Vanderbilt, has been placed in receivership, prompting speculation that it might close or change beyond recognition.

“After careful consideration, including an independent review, we have placed our Divinity School in receivership as a mechanism for renewal,” a university spokesperson told RNS, promising to spend the next two years positioning the school “for long-term success, investment and growth.” The university insists receivership is not a pretext for closure. But there has been no public announcement and little comment from university leadership, and alumni are worried.

They have reason to be. Theological education is shrinking across the board. CARA reports that college-level Catholic seminary enrollment fell 6 percent in 2024–25, from 889 to 840, and graduate-level enrollment fell 8 percent, from 2,920 to 2,686. The Association of Theological Schools reports that 57 percent of its member schools saw enrollment decline, with the Master of Divinity, the core pastoral degree, shrinking fastest in the mainline.

Schools are selling the family silver to survive. Gordon-Conwell sold its South Hamilton campus. Fuller’s planned move to Pomona collapsed. Episcopal Divinity School dissolved its faculty and moved into Union Theological Seminary as a tenant.

A former professor at a liberal seminary told VOL he was not the least bit surprised. Every seminary is suffering from reduced demand, he said, but liberal schools like Vanderbilt have a harder time still. Why train for a church that preaches on Sunday morning what people already hear on NPR?

PHILADELPHIA: A SPIRITUAL WASTELAND

If you want to see how Philadelphia has become a spiritual wasteland, follow the link below. These once-proud churches are now condos.https://x.com/history_hacked/status/2110392938588958929

CONMEN FOR THE LORD

One by one they die off. Jim Bakker, who died October 5 at 86, is the latest of the conmen for the Lord. Jimmy Swaggart went before him in July of last year.

Give the man his due. Out of puppets and a borrowed studio, Jim and Tammy Faye built the PTL satellite empire and Heritage USA, a Christian theme park that drew millions.

Then it came apart. The Jessica Hahn affair and the hush money got him defrocked in 1987. In 1989 a federal jury convicted him of fraud for selling “lifetime partnerships” he could never honor, while ministry money bought mansions and an air-conditioned doghouse. In prison he concluded the prosperity gospel was a lie and wrote I Was Wrong. It did not last. He ended his days selling survival buckets and a silver “cure” for COVID.

Bakker was not an aberration. He was a type. Swaggart, Haggard, Tilton, Popoff, Ravi Zacharias. What unites them is the lie. They preached one thing in the pulpit and did another when the cameras were off. They knew it was sin. That is why they hid it.

Hide It, Repeal It, Bury It

The televangelists hid their sins; the Episcopal Church simply repealed them. Resolution D039 in 2000 recognized “other life-long committed relationships.” B012 in 2018 pushed same-sex rites into every diocese. If the Church could not stop the sinning, it could stop calling it sin. Gene Robinson hid nothing; he married, divorced, partnered, married again and divorced again, all with the Church’s blessing. Hypocrisy, said La Rochefoucauld, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. The Episcopal Church stopped paying the tribute.

When neither hiding nor repealing would do, the bishops closed ranks. Anglican Watch has documented how Title IV became a shield for clergy and a maze for victims. In England, Peter Ball and John Smyth were shielded for decades, and Justin Welby became the first Archbishop of Canterbury to resign over safeguarding. Orthodox Anglicans are not immune: ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood has been tried in a closed church court on allegations he denies. The test is whether the process runs in the light.

Three roads, one destination. The televangelist hid his sin. The progressive church abolished it. The institution buried it. No one would submit to judgment.

“For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.” It still must.

Jim Bakker once wrote I Was Wrong. It may be the only honest title in the whole sorry library. You can read my full take here: https://www.virtueonline.org/post/conmen-for-the-lord

SOUTHERN CROSS NEARS TWELVE

While Western Anglicanism slowly sinks into the sunset, there are signs of hope. Here is one.

The Diocese of the Southern Cross, Australia’s orthodox Anglican refuge, is quietly growing. On October 10 in Brisbane, two lay ministers were due to be ordained deacons, bringing their congregations in as Member Churches. The Anglican Church of the Torres Strait is about to join as well, making it the twelfth Member Church.

On October 17 in Perth, the Rev. Mekyal Keira, who pastors the Sudanese Kush Southern Cross Anglican Church, will be ordained a presbyter. Gafcon Australia Chair Peter Smith will preach.

The Torres Strait church has its own history of resistance. It came out of a 1996–97 split, when conservative Islanders disputed a leadership choice after the Diocese of Carpentaria was merged into North Queensland. Faithfulness in the Strait did not begin with Gafcon.

Southern Cross holds to the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Communion (formerly Gafcon) and the historic Anglican formularies. It was formed for Anglicans who could no longer remain in good conscience in the progressive dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia. It is a separate, parallel body and not part of the Canterbury-linked Communion.

Bishop Glenn Davies, former Archbishop of Sydney, leads it for now. As it grows, a synod to elect its own bishop will follow. Across the Tasman, the Church of Confessing Anglicans Aotearoa/New Zealand elected a bishop when it reached twelve churches. Southern Cross need not follow that timetable.

The pattern is familiar: ACNA in North America, the Confessing Anglicans in New Zealand, and now Southern Cross in Australia. Revisionism empties pews; orthodoxy plants churches. Source: John Sandeman

VOL IS IN A TRANSFORMATIVE MOMENT

VOL is experiencing major growth, and the numbers show it. In the last two months we have gained more than 4,000 new readers. Readership was up 146 percent in September, and unique visitors were up 191 percent. We are now read in 186 countries, and page views are well over one million.

To keep the growth coming, we need your financial help. There are no salaries, but we have contract writers, an ISP and a webmaster to pay, as well as Internet services, phone, and occasional travel to bring you the latest news and commentary.

We have no mega-donors and no grants, only faithful readers who believe in what we do. We have proven ourselves over more than thirty-five years of writing about Anglican affairs. Please consider a tax-deductible gift. Even $50 helps enormously.

Online: virtueonline.org/donateBy check (tax-deductible): VIRTUEONLINE, P.O. Box 111, Shohola, PA 18458

Thank you for your support.

David W. Virtue, DDPresident and Managing Editor