Month: April 2021

I know it’s barely Spring but I’ve been working out what projects to attempt in the coming Summer. My thinking was sparked by two events: a chance meeting last Sunday at Good Shepherd Anglican, Wayneboro, VA, and the number of notices of new viewers/reader following this blog. What was said at Waynesboro encouraged me greatly. The person involved had been following my work from my days as Rector at the now-closed St. John Chrysostom Anglican Church in Richmond, VA. He’d seen the live broadcasts of service via one of the earliest streaming services, UStream, and was aware of the later development of The Anglican Internet Church programs, which led to the creation of this web site. Knowing that there are people out there buying AIC Bookstore Publications and watching the rebuilt videos via our new host site at Vimeo.com makes the continued efforts to upgrade all the features of of this site more meaningul.

Before I share the news of what’s next, let me quickly review what’s happened so far since last Fall: First, the updating of all 45 episodes in the New Testament: Gospels; the 8 episodes in The Nicene Creed; both episodes of The Lord’s Prayer: Phrase-by-phrase; all but one of Seasonal Video series for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, “Gesima,” Lent, Good Friday, Easter and Trinitytide; and the first episode in the revised version of The War on Christianity are now available through links on either the Bible Study/New Testament or Digital Library pages. Second, the publication of the first two of the four books in The Gospel of… series. The two completed books are The Gospel of John: Annotated.& Illustrated and The Gospel of Luke: Annotated & Illustrated. Both books are available in paperback and Kindle editions (with the Kindle version offering a facsimile of the pages of the print version). The Gospel of Mark: Annotated & Illustrated is ready to go to print pending receipt of a single image from a library in Germany. Once I receive the image, I can have the book in print within a week. The final book, the longest in the series, The Gospel of Matthew: Annotated & Illustrated has just started the proofing process using an 8.5 x 11 printed page format. I don’t anticipate completion before midsummer. The missing Seasonal Video is Lessons & Carols for Christmas Eve, but the wait should prove worthwhile. The revised version will have new music produced for us. Finally, I’ve nearly completed the modification of this site to build upon the WATCH-LISTEN-READ initiative I announced earlier this year.

That final item provides a nice transition into the announcement of what’s coming this summer: I’ve already started a new project to upgrade all the Podcast Homiles series and the Podcast versions of all the series I mentioned earlier. The upgrades will include enhanced cross-references to Other AIC Resources based on the 2021 versions. I have no timetable and don’t expect to have the Advent and Christmas revisions ready until some time in late May or early June.

Thanks for your continued interest and support. Again, I urge you to find a local Anglican Church where you can receive Holy Communion. If that is not possible in your area owing to state and federal restrictions, I suggest you find a clergyman willing to provide Holy Communion based on the Visitation of the Sick in the 1928 B.C.P.

Glory be to God for all things! Amen!

The AIC Christian Education Video series, The War on Christianity, is being reconfigured as part of our celebration of the start of the AIC’s second decade on the Web. It not only gets a new title but also enhanced content, including many new images, and a new purpose. The series will become a more important component of the AIC’s commitment to teaching traditional Christianity. The entire series is getting a new voice track and a facelift, with the design consistent with the other updates to our Seasonal, Bible Study and other Christian Education series. Episodes will continue to be linked from the Digital Library page.

Episode One remains a general introduction to the threat, with data and examples from the news updated to early A.D. 2021, plus an illustrated update on what the AIC has been doing on the Web since the series began in A.D. 2017. Episode Two and Episode Three remain focused on “A Summary History of the Church from Pentecost until Now,” which is intended to help viewers put the new threat into historical context. Episode Four and Episode Five continue to be focused upon three case studies of the decline of the Church in parts of the world where it was once the dominant religion: the Holy Land, North Africa and Asia Minor.

Episode Six will be the first episode with entirely new content focused on the importance of traditional worship tied to the Anglican Church Calendar and the liturgies in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (American Edition, as amended in 1943). Topics to be discussed in later episodes, beginning with Episode Seven, include a broad exploration of the best uses of the canticles in the 1928 B.C.P. plus liturgical techniques, particularly the Anglican style of sung Holy Communion and sung Litany and the Creeds of the Church. Taken together, and, hopefully, internalized in the hearts and minds of the faithful, these traditional forms of worship are the best possible defense against the secular world’s War on Christianity.