To think that teaching in a church should be bible based

[ReallyTired]

Ie. a priest should refer back to the bible to back up his points in a sermon.
He should not go on ad nauseum about his holiday or DIY or talk endless about nazi concentration camps. Its more interesting for the priest to explain the logic behinds the obsecure bit of bible that is on the newsheet.

I visited a very evangelical church which had excellent teaching, good sunday school activities, but I didn't care for their taste in music. Electric guitars and drums aren't really my thing. They are a fanastic bunch of people and it had an amazing atmosphere. They put the word of God into action through outreach work as well.

I'm looking for a high anglican church with good bible based teaching and that is friendly to toddlers. Why is this such an impossible thing?

Probably vicars and our lay reader in particular, prattles on about the first thing that comes in to their head. We had a big give more to charity guilt trip last time I went.
If you don't want to catch up on sleep the CofE is not for you.

Toddler friendly and high Anglican is a tall order, as child-friendly services need to be shorter and more lively.
My church has good bible-based teaching and great children's and youth groups.
Have you considered that the "drums and guitar based music" may be there to engage the young adults that no longer attend the youth groups, to keep them interested in the church?
My church in Trafford (Will PM you the name if you want) has different services to suit different sections of the community, perhaps you could take your toddler to a child-friendly service, then attend a more traditional service by yourself while your DC plays at a friend's house or goes home with DH?

I sympathise! I don't think every word of the Bible is literally true in some weird creationist sense, but as a Christian I do think that God speaks through it and that it is our main source of authority for how Christians should live (especially Jesus' teachings in the gospels obviously) Hope you find what you're looking for.

PS A big evangelical Anglican church near us has a family-orientated service around 10am and a traditional liturgical / choral service after that, with the drums and guitars reserved for the evening. Maybe something like that would work for you?

I think you need to look more carefully at what different branches of the Cof E believe. I don't think you are looking for High Anglican at all, which is usually tending towards Anglo-Catholic. What you are looking for is a traditional Evangelical, probably leaning more towards Calvinism, but finding one of those nowadays is quite hard, never mind finding one which tolerates small children. Another alternative is to try a Cathedral, but you might want to pick your preacher. Or maybe find an Evangelical which has alternative more traditional services (although this still may not be child friendly). For example my DH plays for Evensong and Matins at a local Evangelical C of E (but there aren't kids at those services).

I think it is pretty difficult to square up a strong bible-based teaching and high Anglican worship style.

Anglican churches then to be strongly evangelical, broad church or catholic. You get the bible based teaching in evangelical, and the high worship in catholic.

I do agree that sermons should be bible based which is why we go to an evangelical Anglican church.

"I think it is pretty difficult to square up a strong bible-based teaching and high Anglican worship style."

I think that ALL churches should have bible based teaching. Having no bible based teaching is like having a primary school that doesn't teach reading or maths. The new testament is the only real source of infomation on Jesus' teaching.

Interesting topic OP. When I've heard "bible based" before, it has always been a euphemism for "taking the entire Bible literally", from fundamentalists.

The Anglican church looks to three authorities - Scripture, Tradition and Reason.

I think it helps to find what the bible has to say to us today, through human understanding and experience today and before. Yes you need to refer to the Bible and its history and possible ways of interpreting the passage given. But this can be a bit dry if not related to anything in the modern world at all. So I think it's also fine to include something of the speaker's own life experiences if these relate to the topic in hand and help to make the subject more "real" to others.

Maybe they are attempting to move away from 'bible based' to encourage more people to attend.

I agree with you RT.

Our sermons basically take the reading and go through it line by line - talking about what it meant in the context in how it was written and what it means for us today in our lives and in our approach to mission.

We don't use the lectionary, but rather have a teaching series, where the preacher exposits on the text.

In a high church style of worship, they are probably whizzing through the bible on a three year programme, with a reading from the OT, the gospels, the Psalms and an Epistle. They can't possibly go into scripture with the same depth as an evangelical church.

We have a 90 minute main service with a 25 minute teaching. We do Lord's Supper just once a month. And lots of singing.

If you are at a 1 hour AC service, so much time is taken up with the liturgy, anthems, all the readings, and HC, that there is often only time for a 5 minute talk, which clearly only scrapes the surface of the readings.

I know a lot of people who enjoy high Anglican worship but are just as frustrated as you over the teaching. What they do is split their time between two churches, so that they get their fix of each. Gradually they move to the one where they feel most involved.

sparetime - "Toddler friendly and high Anglican is a tall order, as child-friendly services need to be shorter and more lively." couldn't disagree more.

toddler friendly only has to mean that they are catered for (eg busy bags or sunday school)- it doesn't mean it has to have crap music (imo ) and jumping action songs.
i grew up in a high anglican church and we had sunday school and then went into the service proper. very traditional, and as such i learned how to behave nicely in a church and love traditional music even now.

we have a priest who does baptism services because he's quite jolly and "modern". he also jumps up and down and squeals in his sermons. some regulars don't attend when he's in charge.
we have a priest who is traditional, follows the service to the letter and has 10 minute, simple, bible-based sermons. most of the regulars love his services.

come and join our chat thread

Can't help about where you ae going to find that particular combination. you may have to look outside the anglican church and try a few places.

How many people attend your services, typically, Nickelbabe?

We have 450 on a typical Sunday in our CofE church. People are actively seeking to hear the word of God and eager to put it into practice in our local community.

We have almost 200 children on our books and they require more respect than a busy book and to be seen and not heard in their little groups. JMHO.

The problem with "Reason" is there is a danger of going along with fashionable or cultural thinking rather than looking at the Bible. The problem with "Tradition is that the New Testament was designed to over turn tradition.

I think there is a middle ground between taking everything in the entire Bible literally and ignoring it. The Bible is a mixture of metaphor, poetry, stories, history. The challenge is interpreting it and seeing how it relates to the 21st century. Some church of england minsters run away from the Bible because it is difficult. Parts of the bible completely conflict. Ie. What does spare the rod spoil the child actually means for 21st century christians. Is God really calling on us to physicall beat our kids? What does the term "rod" actually mean?

My problem is that the speaker is just enjoys talking about himself/ herself and not relating it back to the Bible. If you never refer back to the Bible then you become followers of Father Bloggs rather than followers or Jesus.

Your church sounds gab claireAl.
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"toddler friendly only has to mean that they are catered for (eg busy bags or sunday school)- it doesn't mean it has to have crap music (imo ) and jumping action songs."

Agree nickel. Some children and toddlers do prefer the quieter services, or are quite happy in them. It's an unimaginative cliche to think all young people are the same and one size fits all.

This is a really interesting thread to me as I'm in Scotland so the established church is presbyterian, not high anglican. I've never attended a Church of England service but I've been to a few Scottish Episcopal services and am guessing it's broadly similar - ie quite a bit of ritual and liturgy?

I attend a Reformed Calvinist denomination - I think there are a lot of misconceptions about these kinds of churches. Our congregation is very child-friendly - ie minister always says in the intimations that there's a creche available but that children are very welcome to stay - and there's a Sunday school for older kids.

Re. music - even within the Calvinist denominations within Scotland there's a move to try and make them more "relevent" - for some reason, "relevent" always means guitars/drums etc. I really don't get this myself as the Word of God is always relevent! The most importand thing is that the gospel is shared - in spirit and in truth. If not, then God is not there, and if God is not there then then it doesn't matter how many guitars, drums, young people you have - you might as well not bother.

Sorry RT, I haven't really offered a solution as am guessing you are not very near Scotland, but as mummytime says, maybe you could try looking for a Calvinist/Reformed church? Possibly not very easy depending on where you are, sorry!

What is this crap music that we refer to?

Isn't that a bit unpleasant to refer to what others hold dear as crap?

TTD, the SEC church I go to in Edinburgh has no visible liturgy (obviously it does have structure to its services). Their music is all modern, but they keep their drummer in a perspex box. The rector wears street clothes too, but his preaching is outstanding and relevent to life.

Even a busy bag will only keep a lively toddler amused for 30 mins to an hour (and I'm being generous there), with parental input. Difficult to reconcile with a traditional service, that is typically 1-1.5 hours long.
Also, the demographic of parents with one toddler/small child is a small proportion of the congregation. Services need to accommodate single people, the elderly, families with children of all ages, as well as different tastes and favourite styles of worship. modern Christian music (the kind that gets young people excited about church) is based on current musical styles, there is some great Christian music available, to suit every taste, and churches often source new music ideas from Christian festivals such as New Wine. If you want to influence the music at your church, I suggest you join the music team or church council, and help shape the music.
Teaching should be bible based, but doesn't have to be dry. Jesus' teaching was never dry, often based on the lifestyles of the people he talked to.
One thing my church does, is record sermons as MP3 files.
OP, could you get recordings of more liturgical sermons to get your "bible fix", through the (in the grand scheme of things) short time while your children are young.

Oh I agree that referring back to the Bible is important. But not applying any reason at all? I think this can be dangerous - this way fundamentalism lies, with people blindly following what they think "the Bible says" even if it causes them to reach some pretty unpalatable conclusions. They are Being Un-reason-able Isn't reason exactly what you're advocating, when you suggest different ways of understanding what "spare the rod spoil the child" means, instead of just taking it literally?

Having said that, I'm not the greatest fan of tradition at all - some traditions drive me nuts at how silly, sexist or useless they seem to be. Others are harmless or helpful, and a matter of personal taste, and can help connect us to those before us.

I understand the Methodists also add "experience" to the list. Looking at the reasoning/traditions/experiences of Christians before us, in how they've attempted to understand scripture, can be a good starting point for us to do the same, whether we accept or disagree with their findings. I think this is preferable to always trying to start from scratch ourselves, although that's interesting too. We'd miss a lot if we ignored what every other Christian before ourselves has ever thought, done, reasoned or experienced. Of course there are things we'll choose to reject, but best not to throw the baby out with the bathwater I think.

I am not sure you understand a typical expository sermon, TPO. They are generally made very relevent to our lives today.

Oh yeah, I know, I've been to churches where they've had a whole praise band, guitars, drums, etc and the preaching was great - really challenging. That kind of worship is not my kind of thing for a number of reasons but that's just me, everybody's different :) The preaching is the most important thing IHMO.

I think what bothers me is that there are some churches that do that just to be seen to be trendy and to get "young people" in the door - it's not neccessarily about how God might best be glorified. Getting "young people" in seems to be a sort of holy grail for a lot of churches nowadays - loads of churches have youth-workers etc, even although there's a generation of older people now who are not church-going and the gospel is for them as well!

I never saw youth workers as a bad thing before.