Amazing Preview Service

This past Sunday, almost 90 of us gathered for St. Paul's first Preview Service. It was a truly wonderful time and I hope that you will join us for the next one on May 17th!

Preview Service this Sunday!

This Sunday, April 26th at 10:30am, we will be having our first Preview Service as we gear up for our official launch this coming September.

As usual, we will be meeting at 122 East 83rd Street between Park and Lexington Avenues.

Childcare will be provided and there will be refreshments to follow.

I hope to see you all there!

Easter at St. Paul's

We had a wonderful Easter this past week, my facial situation notwith-standing.

I spoke on the resurrec-tion (what else?), specifically two questions, giving much more time to the latter:

1. Did it happen?

2. Does it matter?

Using the early 20th century German theologian Karl Holl as a guide, I claimed that Easter matters because Jesus is the only God who claimed to be the Friend of Sinners.

For the audio, click here.

10 days until the Preview Service!

Funny (and Indicative) Story

Brief preface: My oldest son Jackson goes to an all-boys K-8 school called Buckley, whose chief rival is another K-8 boys school on the Upper East Side, St. Bernard's.

On Saturday after dinner, Jackson and I decided to take a little post-meal scooter ride. It was a beautiful evening and we headed straight for Central Park, where we rode to Belvedere Castle & the Great Lawn before the sun set and it was time to come home.

Jack's been on crutches and in a booty for a couple of weeks because of a slightly underdeveloped bone in his left foot, which, the doctor tells us, is quite normal for boys his age and will resolve itself soon. For this reason, Jack and I were on the same scooter - him in front, me in back pushing.

As we were coming home on 72nd Street, we hit a slick piece of pavement just after crossing Park Avenue and took a nasty spill. He

was bleeding and crying, I was bleeding, we were a mess.

A kind, well put-together woman in her 40s and her son, who was in coat and tie, stopped to help us. After checking to see how we were, she started looking through her purse for something to help stop the bleeding.

After a few moments, she pulled something out and said to me, "I hope you're not a Buckley family, because all I have is this St. Bernard's napkin!"

New Website

After a very late night, stpaulsnyc.org has gone live. It's very much a work in progress, but I hope that you'll stop by and let me know what you think!

Wonderful Palm Sunday!

We had a great meeting yesterday. Good crowd (almost 50, and lots of new people), good food, good times.

To check out my sermon, which was on Jesus' so-called "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem (what else?) five days before he was killed(!), click here.

The basic theme was that we are all much like the crowd on that day 200o years ago, in that we want God to do our bidding, to conquer our enemies and problems, and we start to resent Him when He doesn't deliver. Even so, Jesus conquers our selfishness and unbelief, not by destroying us, but by destroying himself, thus forgiving those who "know not what they are doing" (and even those who do!).

Hope to see you on some Sunday soon!

Why Anglican? (part 1)

Why Anglicanism? Why start an Anglican church? Why in a world with so many denominational (and non-denominational) options, would one choose to call themselves Anglican or attend an Anglican church? 

While I am not so out-of-touch as to believe that these are besetting questions for many, they may be at least interesting for some:)

Therefore, in the first in a continuing series, I will offer a few thoughts, some banal, some (hopefully) not, on Anglicanism as a viable Christian option.

Reason #1: Anglicanism is the bedrock Christianity of the English-speaking world.

Though we may not realize it, whenever we speak the language of the Bible, consciously or not, we are almost always speaking in Anglican terms. That is to say, when we say "the spirit is willing..." or "Our Father, which art in heaven..." or "you shall know the truth..." or simply "let there be light," we are quoting the King James Bible (and William Tyndale), which sprung out of the Anglican church. And this is no accident. 

Anglicanism was the first arm of Christianity to bring the faith to the English-speaking world in the vernacular, and with such a clarity, power and beauty so as to be ingrained in the collective consciousness. Beyond the church, Anglicanism, in the words of Yale Scholar David Daniell, "gave England (and English) in the middle of the sixteenth century its first disseminated plain style."

Simply put, Anglicanism is the original English Christianity and has had a profound, positive and enduring effect on the English language.