My visit to Church of the Redeemer
I had not planned on visiting another church from my shopping list this weekend. However, as I drove away from my husband’s church after the incident that morning, my first thought was: I guess I get to spend the next three hours at home by myself sulking. Then I realized, that’s stupid; you should go visit another Protestant church. I had made plans to visit Redeemer on the 13th, but I figured they would not mind if I showed up a week early, so off I went.
Church of the Redeemer is part of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), a group which was formed in 2000 “by Episcopalians and Anglicans who see the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) as apostate.”1 Here are some facts about the worship and beliefs at Redeemer:
- They celebrate the Eucharist/Communion every Sunday.
- Like the Evangelical Covenant Church I visited a few weeks ago, they recognize both credobaptism and paedobaptism.
- They don’t take a stance on Arminianism v. Calvinism.
Of course, the first question I asked when I e-mailed their office was, “What is your position on women and ministry?” They put me in touch with their Pastor of Worship & Congregational Care, Amanda Holm, a TEDS alumna and recent M.Div graduate who was active in the Trinity Society of Women while she was at TEDS. She explained it like this:
Formally speaking, Redeemer is part of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), which is a denomination that will ordain women to be deacons (which is a significant ministry role in Anglican churches). AMiA does not currently ordain women to the priesthood. Redeemer includes both people who would love to see women ordained as priests and people who believe women’s ordination is untenable. Although I lean toward accepting female priests, I like being part of a church in which those of us who disagree on this issue can worship in peace beside one another.That being said, Redeemer is a place in which the question of women in ministry is just plain not a hot-button issue, and we would like it to stay that way — we’re not looking to start any gender wars. The church tends to function in a very egalitarian manner, in part because our rector (Fr. Jay Greener) sets that tone for the congregation. We value women and men serving alongside one another in partnership. In practical terms, there are no ministries that are closed to women, women both teach and lead our education hour, services always include both women and men (as readers, communion ministers, musicians, leading prayers, etc.), and our staff consists of both women and men (in almost equal numbers).
In the AMiA, priest is the equivalent of presbyter, and in other Protestant churches, presbyter is the equivalent of the office of pastor and elder. So as far as ordination goes, their position is not all that different from a lot of complementarian Protestant churches. Given my feelings on the matter, you may be asking why I’m even considering Redeemer in my church hunt at all.
The answer is, the Holy Spirit has honestly been prodding me not to be so judgmental of other evangelical churches just because of their positions on women. Just as there can be churches which say they ordain women but rarely ever do it in practice, there can be churches which don’t ordain women but essentially have egalitarian congregations on the local level. Redeemer appears to be one of the latter. On a practical level, the only thing they restrict women from being is the functional equivalent of senior pastor (priest). They allow women to serve as pastors of other areas of ministry, as Amanda Holm does, and they ordain women to the diaconate. Since I’m not interested in ever becoming a priest, and they do not have a board of elders which they restrict women from like a lot of other churches do, there aren’t any offices or ministries in the local congregation that I would be barred from participating in.
Would I still object to barring women from the priesthood in principle? Sure. However, I think Redeemer deserves credit for their efforts to embrace people from both sides of the debate and foster an egalitarian congregation in spite of denominational polity, so I decided to consider them.
As far as women participating in the Sunday morning service goes, I certainly was not disappointed. There were women serving as prayer leaders, scripture readers, leading worship and serving the Eucharist. Worship was done with drums, a keyboard and a guitar, but it was much more traditional and mellow than what you see at most evangelical churches.
The service was certainly more high-church and liturgical than anything I’ve attended in a long time, which was a big change for me, but not an unwelcome one. It included some opening worship interspersed by Fr. Greener leading the congregation in the recitation of prayers and liturgies, followed by readings from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the New Testament and the Gospels. After that Fr. Greener gave a message, then there was an offering and the administration of the Eucharist (with more worship songs interspersed throughout). There was also a lot of sitting and standing. Concerning the Eucharist, the program gave these instructions:
Jesus invites everyone to come to his table. If you desire to follow Jesus and have been baptized, you are welcome to receive communion. … If you have not been baptized, we invite you to come forward to receive a prayer of blessing. Please come forward with your hand over your heart—this will signal to the communion minister that you wish to receive a prayer instead of communion.
Overall, I thought the service was really lovely and well done, and Amanda did an incredibly thorough job of answering my questions in e-mail. Fr. Greener spoke about being thankful for difficulties and tough times, which was a pretty timely message given what had happened to me at my husband’s church that morning.
I’m not completely sure if I can set aside my disagreement with the denomination’s polity concerning women and the priesthood, but you can be sure that I will prayerfully consider it.
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My visit to Church of the Redeemer — 5 Comments