I read a great blog post a little while back on the late Dr. Robert Webber. Webber was hugely influential on my own personal journey to Anglicanism. His background was in Bible Church Fundamentalism (he went to Bob Jones University). He became a professor at Wheaton College and while there, became an Anglican in the early 70’s. He wrote a whole bunch of stuff on worship and coined the term: “Ancient-Future.” One of the books he wrote is called “Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals are Attracted to the Liturgical Church.” It’s a wonderful book and pretty easy to read. I highly recommend it.

Nine years ago, a couple of things happened in my life that began to narrow the historical/liturgical journey that I had been on for several years. In the previous year, I had spent some time worshiping at a Lutheran  Church. It was my first touchpoint with liturgy. But then in the summer of 2001, I was introduced to an Anglican Minister in the Reformed Episcopal Church named Dennis Cagle (no connection to Gunny Cagle from Recon School!). I didn’t really quite know what Anglican was at this time. Dennis began meeting with me and mentoring me in the Anglican Way.

Soon after this, I was given a book to read by another friend, who was not Anglican. The book was “Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World” by Robert Webber. I had never heard of Webber before. In fact, at this point, I was feeling very alone and confused about my journey. I didn’t even know how to explain the things I was thinking and feeling to my longtime friends the non-denominational church I was a part of. Then I read Webber and I no longer felt so alone!

I found out that the things that God was doing in my heart, He had already been doing in many others.  So between Dennis Cagle and “Ancient-Future Faith,” I made a small step towards Anglicanism. I still had a long way to go, but the personal trail I was on was starting to merge into the larger Canterbury Trail, even if I was fighting it. I wrote these words in my journal around this time:

Hanging out with him (Dennis) and reading Robert Webber books and I was afraid I was supposed to become Anglican! While that isn’t the case, I am so amazed.

Those words came back to haunt me! And I’m glad they did.

So what was it about Webber and what he had to say that was so powerful. I’ll let you read the whole post that I read from the Internet Monk that tells the story well. But here are a couple of excerpts that I personally identified with back then, and still today. In “Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail,” Webber outlines these connection points with liturgy.

In the end, as Bob Webber tells his story, he found six areas of faith that were only satisfied by getting on the Ancient-Future path into a Christ-centered communion that was organically integrated with the ancient Great Tradition of evangelical Christianity.

1. Bowing before divine mystery
2. Participating in genuine worship
3. Experiencing sacramental reality
4. Embracing a fuller spiritual identity in the historic church
5. Accepting the unity of the catholic church
6. Finding a purposeful path for spiritual formation

You can read more of Webber’s story on the post here: Father of the Ancient-Future Path

In my next post, I delve into another part of my Canterbury Trail.

Shane+