There is so much to be excited about this coming week at All Saints! On Tuesday we'll host Christopher Watkin for a guest lecture that you really won't want to miss (to get to know Christopher better, you can watch an interview I did with him last year here). I especially want to draw your attention to our class this Sunday on the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). The class meets during the 9:30 service, so attendees should plan to attend the 8:00 or 11:00 service for the next several weeks!

As you may know, the BCP is the 16th century text that shapes our liturgical life at All Saints Dallas. One of the pushbacks we receive against the BCP, or liturgy generally, is that it's inaccessible to those exploring the faith. "It's a hindrance," so goes the critique, "to people hearing the gospel." In this way of thinking, "liturgy" and "evangelism" are juxtaposed. But as we'll see in the class, the BCP is the very enactment of the gospel. It's the good news of Jesus rehearsed in community!

In his wonderful biography of Billy Graham, Grant Wacker describes the great evangelist's deep affection for the Anglican tradition. It was the gospel he saw in the BCP that drew him to the “spiritual beauty in Anglican order." Too often, the “order” of the Anglican liturgy is contrasted with the biblical call to evangelization, as if the latter is most fully realized in a simple service in which a sermon is sandwiched between two praise songs.

Yet, those of us in the Anglican tradition understand that the affection Graham had for the liturgy wasn’t in spite of his passion for evangelism, but because of it. “The church depends on the gospel for its existence,” said John Stott, and “the gospel depends on the church for its defense and proclamation.” Said differently, there’s a reciprocity between the ecclesial and the dogmatic, the liturgy and the evangel. This is what keeps me returning to the BCP everyday: it preaches the gospel with the same zeal Graham did.

I've always appreciated J.I Packer’s description of Anglican liturgy: “Prayer Book worship is, first to last, justification by faith set forth in liturgy so that it might be apprehended and re-experienced in regular acts of devotion.” Incidentally, that quote is taken from Packer’s foreword to the aptly titled book, Archbishop Cranmer’s Immortal Bequest: The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England: An Evangelistic Liturgy. The title keeps the words “evangelistic” and “liturgy” next to one another, where they belong.

Please join us Sunday as we explore the BCP, and thereby the gospel, more fully!