| − | In recent years church planting has exploded in popularity in our North American context (for reasons both good and bad), and at the same time, the ancient sacramental practices of the church are receiving renewed interest and attention. It was inevitable that these two trends would intersect. With Anglican church planters, and because the sacraments and church planting are important, we are excited about the liturgical church regaining its missional side and many mission-filled churches coming home to historical roots. In sacramental church planting, Communion and Baptism are not simply “add-ons.” We do not simply make them a part of our efforts because they are hip, trendy or practical helpful; they are the center point of our worship, the primary means of catechesis and discipleship, the undergirding of our devotion, the source of our community. Through the liturgical forms surrounding our sacramental practice, we teach doctrine and we commune with our God and each other. Sacramental church planting means that the identity, function and values of the new faith community flow from our sacramental reality. In a church plant that simply includes the sacraments, the sacraments are only small part among many; in a sacramental church plant, however, the greater whole is fundamentally shaped by our understanding and practice of the sacraments. The centrality of the sacraments means that the church plant takes on the nature and attributes of a sacrament in its form and function. As Anglicans, we are looking to plant gospel-centered, catechetical, missional, and sacramental churches. The sacraments aren’t merely tools for church planting, nor are they another “resource” for ministry, they themselves are the encounter of the living Christ in visible form, “the saving mystery in earthly guise.” (Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, 45,) The church, is the sacrament of Christ himself, the realization of his salvation visibly and materially in this world, “the external sign of the redemption a visible prolongation on earth: the visible Church.” (Schillebeeckx, 50, 62, 63). In other words, the Eucharist isn’t a style among others to begin and grow churches, it is the reality of the church itself—and we celebrate it not because it’s amazing (though it is), but because it’s true. So the church planting question becomes more like, how do we participate like midwives in the birth of a local expression of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church? How are we co-opted into the mission of Christ’s real presence in our neighborhoods? We’re reminded just how sacramental Jesus’ commission was to his disciples in Matthew 28. The sacraments are not a liability to evangelism and mission but in fact the instruments of God’s work in the world. Simon Chan digests Orthodox rock-star theologian Alexander Schmemann, “As Christ makes himself available to the world in the sacraments, the church in turn makes itself available to the world as the ‘embodied Christ.’…One can see why mission sustains the closest relationship to the Eucharist: The Eucharist is mission. It is mission in that it is making the church, the embodied Christ available to the world” (Liturgical Theology, 40). A sacramental imagination for church planting resides in the worshipping community that is caught up in God’s Eucharistic work in and through His church. The recommended reading below by Ed Stetzer is a great book, but doesn’t focus on some of the other key Anglican essentials for church planting.
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