Duncan's Inaugural Sermon Launches a Movement - The Christ Church Stories Part Three, Episode 2

Anglican 1000 Changes the Subject

Prelude

Today is my 70th birthday. 🎉🥳

Tuesday, May 27th. Seventy years old.

I’m beyond thankful for the life and health God has given me, and for the extraordinary Fran I’ve shared it all with.

I had hoped to write an update about where things stand with The Anglican—a birthday reflection—but Fran had other plans.

She pulled a fast one.

She organized a surprise party along with all of our children and grandchildren, and whisked me away to a sprawling 4,400-square-foot Airbnb in Dripping Springs, Texas (which, as it turns out, is officially the wedding capital of Texas). There’s a pool, plenty of laughter, and more love than I can take in all at once.

So yes, there’s work to do, and I promised to provide an update about our birthday subscription drive. But that’ll come later. For now, I want to say:

Thank you.

Thank you to the many free subscribers who joined The Anglican in the past month, as well as to the many, many paid subscribers who make this work possible.

And if you’re reading this and thinking, “Maybe I’ll become a paid subscriber later”—why not today?

(Chip, I’m talking to you. Randy, you too. And please tell me what the deal is in North Dakota. The Anglican has readers all over the world and in all fifty states of the US—except the Peace Garden State. If any reader knows anyone in ND, please forward The Anglican!

All in good time and good humor, of course. But if the Lord nudges your heart in that direction, I want you to know: I’ll keep writing—to the best of my ability—for years and years to come. But what a birthday gift it would be! 😊

Now, back to the story.

This next installment is one I’ve wanted to tell for a long time. It’s about the birth of a movement—a spark that turned into something more. And like many good things in the church, it began with a bold idea, a crowded room, and a challenge no one thought we could meet.

Please read the last episode to catch the context of this post. Click the button below for all the entries of The Christ Church Stories.

The Start of a Movement

The installation of the Archbishop did more than provide a great moment and a great processional anthem. It changed the subject of the Anglican Church in North America, kicking off a church planting movement.

Years before—many years before—something happened to me that I would never forget.

I was twenty years old, a microbial physiology student at the University of Arizona in Tucson. My days were filled with labs, lectures, and the slow realization that, while I found science fascinating, I didn’t have the mind or the heart for a life in research. I loved the Lord. I was active in the church. Inside, I was torn, uncertain of where I belonged.

One afternoon during the spring semester, I handed in a paper, returned to my seat, and began gathering my things. And then, without warning, I had what I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. In my mind and spirit, I was lifted high above the campus, hundreds of feet in the air, looking down through a mist at the university grounds below. The students moving between classes looked like ants, small and directionless.

Then, two words came—not to my ears, but to my mind. Thunderous, undeniable. A loud thought.

Help me.

And just like that, I was back in my chair, sweating and trembling. My friend Susie, finishing her test beside me, looked over and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I truly didn’t.

I grabbed my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and pedaled straight to Grace Church, the Episcopal parish where I was active and involved. I knew the assistant rector. I told him what had happened. He listened carefully, then said, “David, that was the call of God. You’re being called into His service.”

Within weeks I was speaking to my advisor, rearranging my schedule, preparing to graduate. Two years later, I was in seminary. And from that moment to this, I’ve never once wondered what I should do with my life. Not once.

That call—those two words—set the course. My life would be about helping Him, helping the church, and helping people hear and respond to the call of Christ.

---

So when the night came—June 2009—and the newly enthroned Archbishop stood to preach, I knew in my heart what it meant.

It was more than a sermon. It was a signal fire. It launched a movement that continues to this day. And for me personally, it marked a kind of high-water mark. That night, we placed Christ Church—its staff, its people, its very architecture—at the disposal of something greater than ourselves.

Looking back, I’m grateful for that moment in church. I would need it in the years ahead.

Because ministry always moves forward, but it never moves easily.

The Preacher?

Before the Installation, it came time to choose the preacher; Bob offered me a list of names. He asked my opinion. I listened, then said, “Bob, you should preach.” He hesitated. “You should treat it as your inaugural address. Lay out a vision. Tell us who we are, where we’re going, and what we need to do.” He warmed to the idea.

After we hung up, I was overwhelmed with clarity. I saw it again—not the exact text, but the burden of it. That night, I emailed Bob what I believed the next five years could hold for our new Province. At the top was this: Plant 500 new Anglican churches in five years.

Bob didn’t reply, but later, when he stood to preach that hot June night, it was electric. When he came to the topic of church planting, the room stilled. Then, he said, “I call for the planting of 1,000 churches in five years.”

Great Scott! The Scot had doubled the number! What?

A wave hit my chest. I felt the call—a divine shove. A holy pressure. There was something in the air when he said it that didn’t take my breath away, but added breath to it! It was like the room was in-spired.

Others felt something too. A wave. A wave of possibility.

(If you were there, did you feel or sense something when the newly-minted Archbishop called for 1,000 churches?

The following day, I called him. “Bob, are you serious?” I asked. “About the thousand churches?” “Absolutely,” he said. “Well,” I replied, “we better get busy.” Then Bob asked what I had in mind. “David, you’ve got to lead this.”

I stammered. I didn’t have the time, but I found myself speaking words I knew were right and true. I remember listening to myself speak to the Archbishop on the phone, but at the same time, my mind was chasing down my tongue, commanding it to stop talking.

My mouth and my mind were at odds.

I kept going: “We need a manifesto,” I said, and a team of doers. I just read a great book about starting a movement. We don’t need bishops, though. We need doers, not observers, not managers, but doers.”

He said, “Go for it, David. You’re in charge.”

Anglican1000

I’m proud to say my son, Jed, was preparing to plant Restoration Church in Richardson, Texas, just miles to the south. It would be church plant number one. Two more churches followed from our soil. But it wasn’t just about Christ Church. We needed to mobilize a movement across the U.S. and Canada.

I turned to Daniel Adkinson, a priest on our staff—bright, creative, and underutilized. “Let’s kick this off,” I said. We made a plan: We’d try to visit with Tim Keller. I purchased a dozen copies of Steve Addison’s excellent book Movements That Change the World: Five Keys to Spreading the Gospel. I handed them to the team that flew in to meet at Christ Church in September.

And we’d fly to Nashville to meet Ed Stetzer at Lifeway, known affectionately as the Baptist Vatican. Ed was a favorite Anglican-turned-Baptist (raised in the Reformed Episcopal Church) who understood church planting and our movement.

Ed didn’t sugarcoat it. “I love the Anglican Church,” he said, “but you’ve got a hodgepodge now. And here’s what’ll happen—you’ll lose the ends. The high-high and the low-low. They won’t stay.” He was right.

Second, he warned, “Movements don’t grow from the center. They grow at the edge. Pay attention to the outer fields. Those are the heroes of your movement. Get them to tell their stories.”

Third, he said, “It’s impossible. You’ll never plant 100 churches, let alone 1,000.” Politely, he said Episcopalians, now Anglicans, just don’t do that.

He was wrong about the last one.

We got to work. Logo. Twitter handle. Website. A roadshow. Daniel and I went from diocese to diocese, gathering stories, spreading vision. We held conferences at Christ Church. They were electric. The first was intimate. Ed was there as our keynote speaker. My favorite Canadian priesst, R.D. Glenn, was the Emcee. We featured stories from the field—Field Reports. The second conference featured Tim Keller—the third, still strong.

We stopped talking about what we left behind. We started talking about what we were building. Anglican1000 had changed the subject.

The following slides were from my presentation to the Anglican1000 Convention in 2012.

These are the registration numbers from the last Christ Church A1000 conference. We had seen and celebrated 276 church plants across the US and Canada.

We even redirected much of Christ Church’s annual diocesan assessment, once nearly $500,000, to support church planting through Anglican 1000. The other half still went toward our diocesan assessment, but the movement had real money and momentum.

Until issues arose.

The Titanic

One of the key metaphors used by bishops and clergy leaders back in the day was the sinking of the Titanic. TEC was the ship. It struck an iceberg. (I didn’t know enough then about 1967, but I would have named the iceberg after the Seattle Convention of 1967, or the 60s) Hundreds of survivors were gathered into lifeboats (dioceses) to await rescue. And we all hoped somehow that rescue would come. Our “mayday” call had gone out from the Plano Conference, and we trusted that rescue would come. The Carpathian ship was the Global South Anglicans. Until their arrival, we were to lash our lifeboats together and dream of getting home.

It was all very compelling and dramatic. But the folks in the lifeboats weren’t used to each other. They had different ideas about church, unity, and liturgy. Shakespeare's quote was bandied about with ease: “Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

Anglican1000 was a test: could we work together on a shared mission? Could we plant churches together? The answer was, well, sort of.

Ed Stetzer would have added one more warning to his three—perhaps he did, but I can’t remember. It would have made sense for him to warn that we’d never be successful if there were conflicts in the body.

And there was. The AMiA (Anglican Mission in America), which had much of the missionary DNA for our church planting effort, had joined with the ACNA. They were more than strange bedfellows. They were strained bedfellows.

It wasn’t going to last.

I was in the AMiA. Chuck Murphy, the visionary, genius leader of the AMiA, had the stated goal of reaching the 130,000,000 unchurched people in North America. He had been made a bishop by other Anglican bishops in a rogue overseas consecration. He was a firebrand. He famously claimed that the authority of the Episcopal Church was impaired—it no longer believed the gospel.

He was right, of course.

He marveled at the strength and vitality of Christ Church and the effort we were making in Anglican 1000. He wanted it in the AMiA. Always a strategist, he asked me to consider becoming a bishop. Fran and I spent a few days in South Carolina going through a vetting and interview process. I would have made the cut (I think), but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t fathom the role of a bishop and the burden of being the Rector of Christ Church simultaneously.

My plate was full. Rector. Anglican1000. I dropped out.

Strange and Strained Bedfellows

In a conversation with Chuck, in a room in South Carolina, I heard him speak about the main difference between the AMiA and the ACNA. He put it in biblical terms, always with a southern drawl.

We are at the same place as the Council of Jerusalem. James is the ACNA. They are the bureaucracy. They want to preserve power and build the Jerusalem Church. That’s Duncan. The AMiA? We are Paul in Antioch. We are the ones who want to plant churches and go on mission to the 130,000,000 unchurched people in the United States.

I saw what he was saying. I understood it. But I told him rather frankly, “Chuck, with all respect to your analogy, I don’t think the James of Jerusalem vs. Paul from Antioch idea blesses the leadership of the ACNA.”

Things started to unravel.

The AMiA had initially joined the ACNA. That meant that I was in the ACNA and under the pastoral authority of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. I felt at home. Stabilized. Bob Duncan was my boss and my bishop. We gave 5% of our church budget to the Diocese. Everyone seemed happy.

Let’s plant more churches.

Then the strange bedfellows decided they couldn’t make it work.

In December 2011, AMiA pulled out of the ACNA. Then, AMiA bishops began distancing themselves from the movement. Chuck Murphy broke fellowship with the Church of Rwanda—his original jurisdiction—and eventually declared that AMiA was no longer a church but a missionary society.

One by one, the bishops left him—all except one: Philip Jones.

Philip moved to Dallas to lead a church plant we had started—All Saints Dallas, born from Christ Church’s vision, people, and resources.

Imagine the irony: Christ Church planted All Saints, recruited its Rector, and watched him become a bishop, one now out of fellowship with both me and Christ Church.

What the…? I was furious. I felt like an idiot, frankly. I was embarrassed by this.

I thought we had left the Episcopal Church out of principle, but this latest move left me feeling personally betrayed and ecclesiastically stunned. To borrow the now-tired Titanic metaphor, the bishops and leaders I had partnered with—trusted, supported, stood beside—were now throwing theological flotsam and jetsam at one another, and Christ Church and I were getting trashed.

It was a mess.

Earlier in this series, I mentioned that the Canons of both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in North America don’t allow for church splits. On paper, it just isn’t done. But splits were happening everywhere. Stetzer had been right. The ends were breaking off. The movement was splintering.

All of this gave us very good reason to rethink our goals. A thousand churches in five years had always been aspirational, but now it felt increasingly unattainable.

I told the Archbishop we needed to revise the number.

Nope. Bob wouldn’t budge. “It stands,” he said. “A thousand churches.”

I was a dutiful soldier. But in my heart, I knew the truth—it wasn’t going to happen. I suspect Bob did too. But he wasn’t willing to back off the dream.

And maybe that’s what leaders do. They hold the line, even when the ground beneath it shifts.

There was one more thing, though—something I haven’t written about before.

I should be included here, but this story’s already long enough. And what comes next deserves its own chapter.

I’ll tell you what it was.

I couldn’t lead Anglican1000 without confronting the most vexing, divisive, and unsolvable issue of all.

The Ordination of Women.

That’s what’s next on The Christ Church Stories.

Grace and Peace,

---

The Anglican is the Substack newsletter for LeaderWorks, where I share insights, encouragement, and practical tools for clergy and lay Christians. I’m also an author of over a dozen books available on Amazon.

If you are a Paid Subscriber, thank you! Thank you for supporting The Anglican and the ministry of LeaderWorks. If you are not a subscriber, please consider becoming one today.