| About Us |
|
| The Church of the Epiphany |
| Epiphany has brought together Winniett, All Saints and New St. Paul's to form The
Church of the Epiphany, on March 26, 2006 the deconsecration of Winniett
took place, below are links pictures of the event and the
service brochure. |
|
The Church of the Epiphany
A Service of Thanksgiving |
|
 |
|
March 26, 2006
4 p.m. |
|
 |
|
click here to open PDF of the service |
click
here to go to the photo gallery |
|
We Accept You As You Are |
|
Some would ask "What must I do to inherit the kingdom of
heaven?" At Epiphany, we believe we already have
inherited it (this is what the cross and Good Friday were
all about) and so we behave as if we are already part of
that great kingdom Jesus spoke about. We accept you as
you are and celebrate our common life in our reflective
and study times, our social time and of course, in our
liturgies (the acts of worship). If you genuinely
would like to make and keep friends from all walks of
life, belong to a community of intelligent, responsible and
caring people, and explore God's diverse ways of entering
into humanity, then you have found a spiritual home at
Epiphany. Come on in an pull up a chair (or a pew) it is
that simple. Come to one of our services, call us, or drop
by some weekday for a visit, we would be happy to see you
and answer your questions. |
| Spiritual Life at Epiphany |
|
 |
 |
- Intercessors
- Readers from Laity
- Blessing of Animals
- Fellowship
- Lenten Meetings
- Family Services
- Library & Movie Loans
- Holiday & Family Celebrations
(Christmas, Easter, Baptisms, Marriages )
- Creative Worship
- Anglicanism 101
- Eucharist at various times
|
- Baptisms
- Book club
- Lenten Film Series
- Men's Group Bible Study
(eye-opener)
- Wednesday Prayer Services
- Confirmations
- Youth Representatives to Synod
- Sunday Service
- Children's Ministry
- Intercessory Prayer Group
- BAC
|
|
Introduction |
| The Anglican Church is one of the most
important Christian denominations worldwide, with about 75
million members.
Much of Anglican worship, like that of other churches, is
based on traditions stretching back for centuries. The
Anglican Church welcomes new members, but faces a serious
difficulty; to a newcomer, much of what we do in church
looks puzzling or entirely incomprehensible. |
|
| This web page attempts to explain the basics
of Anglican Christian belief, and to serve as an
introduction to what we do, and why. There are sections on
general Christian beliefs, on the Anglican Church in
particular, and on what actually goes on in a church
service. There is a glossary of terms at the bottom of the
page. |
|
| The most vocal Christians are often the
minorities who hold extreme views, and so the general public
view of Christianity is not necessarily accurate. (Some
Anglicans are actually nice, sensible people.) Please read
on - we hope you might be pleasantly surprised by what you
find. |
| What is the Church for?
Why not be a Christian in private? |
The Church fulfils three important
functions. Worship is one of them. We don't worship God
because we have to, or because we're afraid of what God
might do to us if we don't. We worship God because we
believe that God is a being who fully deserves our respect
and love. Worshipping God is simply the most appropriate
behaviour for the beings He has created, and a church
service is an effective and time-honoured way of carrying
out this behaviour.
The second purpose of the Church is teaching. Partly this is
something we do to each other; passages from the Bible are
read out in church, and sermons comment and enlarge on them
and other issues, and relate Christianity to real life. But
Christians also have a responsibility to make their own
insights about God available to the rest of the world, and
an organized Church can attempt to do this in ways that
individual Christians cannot.
Our third purpose is fellowship; we are a community of
people with a common goal, supporting and strengthening each
other as we work towards that goal. An important part of
Christian teaching is the need to have compassion for
others, and so this, too, is an external as well as an
internal activity. The Church provides material support for
the needy, and it attempts to promote social justice to the
rest of society. |
|
| Who can come to an
Anglican service? |
Anyone! You don't need to be an Anglican or
even a Christian to come along. (Holy Communion, a ceremony
which takes place during many of our services, is
technically restricted to baptized Christians; see section 3
below.) Attending a service doesn't commit you to anything.
We will (hopefully) try to be friendly, but that's all. You
can become a Christian at your own pace.
We don't charge membership fees. (We're always after
donations, but how much you contribute is up to you, and
entirely private.) There's plenty of ceremony in a typical
Anglican church, but we don't have secret initiation rites
or anything else scary or sinister. We don't even have a
dress code - people normally dress tidily for church, but
you don't have to wear a suit or a big flowery hat.
Audience participation in an Anglican service isn't
particularly strenuous. The words of the service are
provided, either in the Book of Alternative Services (the
green book) or an equivalent, or on a piece of paper. If
you're not familiar with the service, just sit near the back
and do what everyone else does. You can stay in your place
when people go up to the altar for Communion, if you don't
want to take part in this section of the service. |
|
| 1: What do Christians
Believe? |
There are two important parts to Christian
belief. Firstly, Christians believe in a God who is an
all-powerful intelligent being, existing independently of
the physical Universe, and responsible for its creation. We
also believe that God cares deeply about the Universe and
all of its inhabitants.
This belief is common to many major religions. Jews, Muslims
and Christians all worship the same God, in different ways.
Secondly, Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth (c. 6 BC
to AD 27) was a manifestation of God on Earth as a human,
and that His teaching as recorded in the Bible is therefore
a direct insight into God's wishes for humanity. |
| Lots of people have
claimed to be gods. Why do Christians believe Jesus really
was? |
There are several good reasons. Firstly, He
taught a path of self-denial and caring for others, and
followed these teachings Himself, and as a result He was
executed by the Romans. This is hardly the behaviour you'd
expect from a person claiming to be the Ruler of the
Universe – unless He was telling the truth.
Secondly, He was clearly not a construct of people's
expectations. The Jewish people of the time had prophecies
concerning a Messiah, but they were expecting an Earthly
ruler - although with God's authority - who would kick out
the Romans and make Israel great again. Jesus was not at all
what they had expected. Later theologians had great
difficulty in finding Old Testament ‘prophecies’ which
actually seemed relevant. And yet - without once commanding
an army or any material wealth - Jesus became the most
influential person in recorded history.
Finally, Jesus rose from the dead shortly after His
execution, and appeared to hundreds of his followers before
(we assume) returning to God. Whether you believe this or
not depends on how much weight you give to these eyewitness
accounts, and to the simple fact of Jesus’ continuing,
dramatic influence on history through the people who had
known him. |
| So what did Jesus
teach? |
Jesus came not to form a new religion, but
to reinforce and improve people's existing relationships
with God. His main commandments were to worship God, and to
care for other people. He said that God has very high
standards - but that God understands that we usually can't
live up to them, and loves us nonetheless. God is always
willing to forgive, and let us make a clean start, as long
as we keep trying.
The very presence of Jesus shows that the God who created
the universe, and who probably knows the position and state
of every subatomic particle, also cares deeply about
individual humans, and wants us to love Him and live
fulfilling lives in accordance with good moral principles.
Christians believe that when Jesus became a human, He opened
the door for us to become more closely connected with God.
And no, we do not actually know how. |
| Where does the Bible
come in? |
| The Bible is the record of humanity's
gradually increasing knowledge of God, culminating in the
Gospels - four accounts by different writers of the life of
Jesus. |
| Is every word of the
Bible true? Do Christians believe that the Earth was created
in seven days? |
| Some do, but this is not a common view in
mainstream churches. Christians believe that God inspired
the Bible. However, different parts of it were written for
different audiences and not all of it is intended as literal
history. Christians take the teachings of Jesus, as recorded
in the Gospels, very seriously indeed. |
| Is Christianity
incompatible with science? |
| No. It can't be, because science is a
self-correcting method of finding truths about the Universe,
and we believe that Christianity is one of these truths. As
a general principle, science tells us ‘what’ and ‘how’ and
religion tells us ‘why’. |
| What about life after
death? |
| Christians believe that human consciousness
doesn't cease when we die. We don't know what Heaven is
actually like; it's probably something well beyond our
current capacity for understanding. We believe that we will
have a permanent existence in the presence of God, in a form
fuller and richer than our current physical one. |
| What is the Trinity? |
| The short answer is; we don't know.
Christians see God as having three aspects; God the creator,
Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit, which is the
manifestation of God which we believe can still interact
directly with human beings. We do not believe that God is a
sort of committee; the idea is more that a single God
appears in different forms for different purposes. In the
past, theologians have attempted to explain and codify the
idea of the Trinity, but in fact it's something which we
don't fully understand. |
|
| 2: What about the
Anglican Church? |
The Anglican Church is an organisation with
branches in 164 countries and a total of about 75 million
members worldwide. The national Churches have a good deal of
autonomy, but all recognise the spiritual leadership of the
Archbishop of Canterbury (Canterbury in England) and they
talk to each other via a body called the Anglican
Consultative Council. Also, all Anglican bishops come
together at the Lambeth Conference, held every ten years.
There are many differences between individual Anglican
churches, but we hold four things in common:
- The Bible as a basis of our faith;
- The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, basic statements of
Christian belief;
- Recognition of the sacraments of Baptism and Holy
Communion, and
- The historic episcopate; that is, the continuity of
the line of bishops since the time of Christ.
It has been said that the Anglican Church rests on the
three pillars of Faith, Reason and Tradition.
The unique strength of Anglicanism lies in our balance of
these three aspects of our religion. |
| Wasn't the Anglican
Church formed by Henry VIII so that he could annul his
marriage? |
| Ouch. Yes, it was, but leaders in the Church
of England took the opportunity to make a number of reforms
which the central authorities of the Roman Catholic Church
opposed. Something like the Anglican Church would probably
have happened without Henry VIII’s political interference,
but it might have taken longer. King Henry's main concern
was simply independence from Rome. |
| So what else changed? |
| At the time, there were a number of
doctrinal concerns, such as the exact nature of the
Eucharist. The main practical difference between the
Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches nowadays is that the
Anglicans, while maintaining a hierarchy of priests and
bishops, give much more autonomy to individual churches.
This means that, while the basics of our belief are fixed,
there are wide differences in our style of worship from
parish to parish. |
| Is the Anglican Church
male-dominated? |
| It's trying not to be. Most services and
modern hymns use inclusive language. Some traditional hymns
and forms of service do unfortunately contain male-specific
language which can't be removed without damage to their
poetic quality. We still often (but not always) refer to God
as ‘He’ and ‘Father’, because sadly the English language has
no suitable neutral terms other than the horribly impersonal
‘it’. We are working on improvements in this area. |
|
| 3: What Happens in
Church? |
| The core of many Anglican services is
Holy Communion, also known as Eucharist. This is
a ceremony derived from the supper, which Jesus held with
his followers on the night before his arrest and execution.
Christians believe that this ceremony creates a special sort
of contact with God, which helps to strengthen us as
Christians. |
| What actually happens? |
| Holy Communion involves the giving out of
bread and wine which has been consecrated, or made holy,
with special prayers. In some parishes real bread is used;
others use special wafers which look like slices of
glue-stick. Normally the congregation walk up to the front
of the church and kneel at the altar, receiving the bread
from the priest in cupped hands. The chalice, the ceremonial
goblet containing the wine, is usually taken round by an
assistant. |
| Won't I catch horrible
diseases from sharing a cup? |
| Probably not, as alcohol is a disinfectant
and the rim of the chalice is wiped between uses. If you are
concerned, you can hang on to the wafer and dip this into
the wine instead of drinking directly from the chalice. |
| Does anything weird
happen when you receive Communion? |
| Mostly, no. People do have mystical
experiences, but they are not a normal part of Communion in
most churches. (Some branches of Christianity actively
encourage them; the Anglican Church tends to be suspicious
of this sort of thing.) In general, Communion strengthens
your relationship with God in the same way as you can get to
know people well by spending a lot of time with them over
many years. |
| Can anyone take part in
this ceremony? |
| Officially, you have to be baptized in order
to receive Communion. It doesn't have to be an Anglican
baptism; any branch of the Christian Church will do. The
ceremony of Confirmation (a deliberate reaffirmation of the
vows of baptism, made when we're old enough to know what
we're doing) still exists in the Anglican Church, but it's
no longer necessary to go through this process before you
can receive Communion. |
| Will I go to Hell if I
don't receive Communion regularly? |
| We sincerely hope not! Holy Communion, like
most of the Church's activities, is a means to an end rather
than an end in itself. However, the Anglican Church believes
that Communion is a valuable component of our relationship
with God. |
| What else happens in a
church service? |
| Anglican services are extremely varied and
flexible. Set forms of words are available. There is much
variation in style between individual parishes, and some
parishes use different services on different Sundays.
There are specific words to accompany Communion, and the
Lord's Prayer will normally find its way into a service.
There will often be a Creed, a formal statement of basic
Christian beliefs. Most services include hymns, which may be
either traditional or modern. There will be prayers; some of
these will be in set words, but we also pray about current
issues. Services also include readings from the Bible. |
| And a sermon? |
| Quite often. We're fully aware that sermons
have a reputation for inducing sleep. This doesn't have to
be the case. Some preachers are very good speakers, adept at
making Christianity relevant to everyday life. |
| And . . . ? |
| Yes, we admit it. There will normally be a
collection. We need to meet running costs and pay salaries,
and the Anglican Church is also a major social service
organisation. No one will pay attention to how much you're
dropping in the basket, and you don't have to make a
contribution at all. If you see any value in what we're
doing, you'll probably want to help if you can. |
| Why do priests wear
funny clothes? |
| Like many of the details of our worship,
this is a historical accident. A priest's robes are based
roughly on the garments worn by Roman officials in the early
days of the Church. We've added Christian symbols to them,
but (being Anglicans) we haven't actually changed anything
much. |
|
| 4: Where do I Go from
Here? |
| Newcomers are always welcome at any Anglican
church. There are no membership fees and you don't have to
fill in any forms. Anyone can attend any Anglican service
and see what happens. |
| What if I like what I
see? |
There are two ceremonies relevant to
becoming a fully functional Anglican. The first is
Baptism, and the second is Confirmation.
Baptism is a ceremony representative of spiritual
cleansing, ‘renewing’ a person upon entry into the Church.
Originally the recipient was fully immersed in water; a
modern baptism in the Anglican Church involves a ceremonial
sprinkling of water on the head, and special prayers.
Some people are baptized as babies. This is an indication
that the parents have decided to bring up their child as a
Christian. In this case, people can be Confirmed when
they are old enough to make their own decision to be part of
the Church.
You can take part in most of the activities of the Church
without going through either of these procedures, and there
are no rules about how soon, or how late, you should make a
formal commitment. Talk to your friendly parish priest about
it some time. |
| What can the Church do
for you? |
The Church can bring you closer to God. We
believe this is more important than anything in ‘ordinary’
physical existence. It can also help teach you to become a
better person by living in a more ‘God-like’ way. The Church
answers the human need for something greater than themselves
in which to believe, and gives our lives a sense of meaning.
The Church also provides community with fellow humans, all
working towards a common goal. |
| What can you do for the
Church? |
Many Christians become involved in the life
of their Church in ways other than simple attendance. Any
member of the congregation can undertake many functions in a
church service, such as reading lessons from the Bible. Many
churches have choirs and music groups.
Parishes also run groups, which operate outside the confines
of Sunday services. These include youth groups, studies and
courses, and community service organisations.
Christians can also become qualified as ministers. Becoming
a priest requires several years of study, and a deep
commitment to Christianity. However, all Christians have a
part to play, using their own individual talents in their
everyday lives to further the work of the Church and bring
the world a little closer to the way God wants it to be. |
|
| Glossary of Terms |
Baptism: the ceremony of cleansing
used when a person becomes a member of the Christian Church.
Confirmation: a conscious reaffirmation of baptismal
vows, for those baptised as babies.
Congregation: the group of people who attend a
church.
Creed: a formal statement of Christian belief.
Diocese: a regional grouping of parishes under the
direction of a bishop.
Eucharist: another term for Holy Communion, or the
service containing it.
Gospel: one of the four accounts of the life of Jesus
in the New Testament.
New Testament: the part of the Bible dealing
specifically with Christianity, and containing the Gospels.
Old Testament: the part of the Bible predating Jesus,
and containing Jewish religious laws and traditions.
Parish: an individual church, and the area for which
it has responsibility.
Sacrament: one of the core ceremonies of the Church,
defined as 'outward and visible signs of inward and
spiritual grace'.
Theologian: a scholar who studies questions of God
and religion.
Trinity: the combination of the three recognised
aspects of God, known as Father, Son (Jesus of Nazareth) and
Holy Spirit. |
|
|
We would like to credit The Diocese of
Niagara - website click here |
|
