Part 1 of an #Interview with Dan Alger, Author of Word and Sacrament

 

Part 1 of an Interview with Dan Alger, Author of Word and Sacrament While much of church planting today is approached as a new, innovative effort, church leaders can take comfort in the truth that they are simply stewards of what the faithful church has been doing for millennia. In Word and Sacrament: Ancient Traditions for Modern Church Planting, Anglican church planting veteran Dan Alger shows pastors how the rich traditions of liturgical worship are a gift to the work of starting new churches. Q: No one can give a better introduction to a book than the author himself, so introduce us to your new book, Word and Sacrament. I wrote this book to fill a gap in the contemporary church planting conversation. Church planting is often discussed as a primarily new and entrepreneurial exercise, but faithful missionaries and congregations have been planting new churches since the very beginnings of the church itself. In fact, I propose that church planting is more about carrying on a torch than innovating something new. This news should be quite encouraging to us—we are not starting with only a blank white board, our creativity, and our work ethic—we are building on centuries of the church on mission. So, what lessons has the church learned throughout its history about how to be the church and start new churches? How do we properly contextualize to a modern culture but maintain the integrity of the purpose and identity of the church? How do we look backward to better understand how to move forward? I hope that this book explores church planting through this ancient lens. Q: Tell us more about your own background in church planting and your current position in the church. I wear two hats in the Anglican Church in North America. I am the Provincial Canon for Church Planting, which means I help to encourage and support the work of church planting for our denomination throughout North America. Our church planting initiative is called Always Forward, and our denomination has planted hundreds of churches since our formation in 2009. I am also the Dean of the Cathedral at Redeemer Anglican Church in Greensboro, NC. Anglicanism likes its titles, but essentially, I am the director of our denomination’s church planting initiative and the senior pastor of an active and growing local church. I have served the work of church planting as a planter, overseer, coach, adjunct professor, and trainer for over twenty years, experiences through which I have had the honor of speaking and teaching on church planting all over the world. I have been the lead planter for two local church plants—one in Fayetteville, NC and one outside of Atlanta, GA. Q: Word and Sacrament is written from an Anglican perspective, but is the audience for the book wider than just church planters in the Anglican church? Absolutely. One of the charisms of Anglicanism is that we are a generous tradition. We work well with any tradition that holds Jesus at its center and stands on the authority of the Scripture. My hope is that this book is beneficial to anyone of any tradition who desires to think deeply about planting churches. To that end, every chapter has a note written specifically to non-Anglican readers to help them apply the content of the chapter to their specific tradition. Q: For those who may not be as familiar with the Anglican tradition, can you give a brief overview of Word and Sacrament to make sure everyone is on the same page? What remains the same for every congregation and what may vary from local church to church? The Anglican tradition has its roots in the Church of England (if you watched a royal wedding or the recent coronation, you experienced an Anglican service), but Anglicanism has spread throughout the world and is now significantly influenced by a global family. In fact, Anglicanism is the third largest Communion in the world, behind Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, with 85 million members throughout the world. A full treatment of the history of Anglicanism is beyond the scope of what we are able to accomplish here, but suffice it say that the church did not begin with Henry and his need for a divorce as some would commonly think. Anglicanism’s roots are much deeper than that. The church as it developed in England was built upon Scripture, as well as the authoritative councils and creeds and the church fathers. Anglicanism was profoundly influenced by the Reformation (although a bit differently than on the European continent) and subsequent movements such as the holiness movement and the liturgical revival. It is a tradition that is rooted firmly in the Scripture, the sacraments, and the Spirit, with a faithful doctrinal foundation and a history of fruitful mission throughout the globe.    You will find Anglican churches that are very “high church,” with formality, precise liturgy, incense, and ritual. At the same time, you will find Anglican churches that are much more “low church,” or informal, contemporary, and casual. There is a broad spectrum of proper Anglican expression. One of the aspects of our tradition that positions us well for faithful mission is that our liturgical expression is both rooted in the history of the church and able to be properly contextualized for the local modern mission field. Although we can look different in various places, Anglicanism is defined by its doctrinal standards, its familial connectedness, and its formularies. I like to say that we are bound by a creative fidelity; in other words, we are able to locally innovate, but that innovation is properly restrained by our liturgy, polity, and ethos, so that we do not innovate ourselves into unfaithfulness.

Q: When discussing church planting, the sacraments are not frequently brought up. How do you feel the sacraments are important to the work of planting? The sacraments have always been a significant part of the life of the church. We see this in the Scripture itself and in the witness of church history. Even in the Reformation when the church returned to its core identity, we see it rooted in Word and sacrament. In the modern West, however, we see the sacraments neglected in many parts of the church. The Reformers called the sacraments the “visible Word.” Commonly defined as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” the sacraments bridge the gap between the spiritual and the physical. A sacramental lens helps us see that our faith is not simply about where we go when we die, but rather that the gospel is the renewal of all things. The physical matters, not just that the church does mission, but that the way it goes about mission is important. Healing, feeding, justice, mercy, reconciliation, marriage, even politics, beauty, and food, all matter. There is no bifurcation between the spiritual truths of the Scripture and our physical living out of the gospel. The sacraments inform our life in Christ in such a way that brings us out of a simply emotional or intellectual faith and into one that gives purpose to our bodies, the created order, and the physical outworking of our faith. This perspective informs every aspect of our lives as Christians, from our experience of worship to our understanding of discipleship, life in the Christian community, and our mission to the world. Q: You discuss the importance and function of liturgy quite a bit in your book. Some may think that traditional worship practices are a barrier to modern mission. Can you explain liturgical worship and why you think it is a help to mission? Every church has a liturgy or an order of service, a choice of vocabulary, and a narrative arch to worship gatherings. The church has historically been very precise in the liturgy because these things shape our understanding of who God is and how we participate with him. In other words, worship is not merely expressive, but also formative. An ancient saying of the church says, “How we worship, is how we believe, is how we live.” Is God stern and stuffy? Informal and relaxed? Near? Far? Angry? Kind? The words and actions we use in our worship inform our answers to these questions. The practice of the historic liturgy utilizes the words of the Scripture (85 percent of the Book of Common Prayer consists of direct quotes from Scripture) to structure and script our worship services so that our perception of God, our rehearsal of our interactions with him, our doctrine and practice, are all formed by God’s own words which he said about himself. Liturgy done well is never boring or stifling, but Spirit-filled and full of life. The liturgy leads us to look at all aspects of God, not just the ones we are most comfortable with. We learn to rejoice, to mourn, to repent, to be relieved, to reconcile, and to be comforted. The words of the liturgy show us that God is pure, profoundly holy, and unwaveringly just, but that because of Jesus we can come before the throne of grace with confidence. If mission is about making disciples who are members of the people of God, growing in their knowledge and love of him, and in turn being sent out on mission themselves, the liturgy is the guide that allows all of these things to take place in every worship service. Q: Why do you think no one has previously written a book like Word and Sacrament, bridging the gap between the sacramental church and a missional perspective? Many traditions in the North American context have downplayed the importance of the corporate church. The Christian faith has been largely hyper-individualized, spiritualized, and sentimentalized. On the other hand, the church traditions that have emphasized the importance of the Great Tradition have often neglected the work of mission and church planting. Anglicanism has historically been a winsome middle way. I pray that our recent decades of renewed missional vigor in North America have matured our voice so that we can both spur on the work of planting and challenge the assumptions of churches on the edges of either extreme. This book is a product of attempting to live in that sparsely inhabited middle space which holds up the importance historical, sacramental, and liturgical heritage of the church as well as the work of modern mission as mutually beneficial to one another. Q: What do you consider one of the most important chapters of Word and Sacrament, and why is it essential to church planting? Section one of the book discusses the reasons why we plant, which is important for all church planters. The second and third sections of the book are the more unique sections, as they offer a look at planting through the lens of Word and sacrament. They are important because they are going to challenge some preconceived notions many church planters hold. If I had to name a single chapter, I would say Chapter 10: “Sacramental Church Planting” most clearly articulates the central theme of the book as it discusses how our sacramentology has a direct impact on our planting methodology.   Word and Sacrament: Ancient Traditions for Modern Church Planting by Dan Alger Print ISBN: 978-1-64507-303-1 May 1, 2023 / Retail Price: $24.99 RELIGION / Christian Ministry / Pastoral Resources

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About the Author

Dan Alger, DMin, has been in church planting ministry for over twenty years, currently serving as the Canon for Church Planting for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and Dean of the Cathedral at Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro, NC. Through his role with the ACNA, Alger started the Always Forward Church Planting Initiative which seeks to equip dioceses to become effective at raising up, training, sending out, and supporting church planters to plant Gospel-centered, sacramental, missional churches.   Alger is also an adjunct professor, speaker, trainer, and coach. He is cohost of the Always Forward Podcast and author of Word and Sacrament: Ancient Traditions for Modern Church Planting. Dan and his wife, Karen, have two sons. In his spare time, he enjoys woodworking. Learn more at danalger.com. He can also be found on Facebook (@dan.alger2) and  Twitter (@dan_alger).