In summary, I am saying that Anglican evangelicalism is wonderfully placed - perhaps, as I have said, uniquely placed - to not only know Jesus as the truth (the gospel of God, according to the scriptures) but also to live in his way through living and moving and our having our being in his body the Church; and in so doing to be enlivened, inspired, enthused by his life through the breath of his Spirit in his body.
And no where more so than its worship.
Well what does this mean in terms of practice?
It means attending to three dimensions.
A. Evangelical worship is called to make the gospel known
It is to be a demonstration and celebration of the gospel; an enactment and experience of the gospel.
It is to tell the gospel so that the gospel can be heard and believed.
It is to show the gospel so that it can be seen and felt.
And this hearing and believing, this seeing and feeling of the gospel through worship is to lead to following and living - to the faithful life of the missionary disciple, the member of the messianic community of Jesus.
Clearly the telling of the gospel involves good preaching and effective public reading of scripture. Both of those are indisputable in scripture and non-negotiable in Anglican worship. We should be able to take it for granted that they will be at their most excellent in evangelical worship. Unfortunately that is not always the case in my experience at least. Particularly when it comes to the reading of scripture in worship I am regularly shamed by the attention it is given in other traditions compared with evangelicalism. And although evangelicals do generally have a commendably high regard for preaching, the predilection for attractive themes and relevant topics, can reduce evangelical preaching to a talk on a subject supported by scriptural texts, rather than the exposition of scripture itself.
Much more could be said but I want to take a lead from Colossians 3.16-17 and widen out the reference to telling the gospel. The Colossians are exhorted to let the word of Christ dwell in them richly, by teaching each other in all wisdom, and with gratitude in their hearts, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God.
The implication here is that the word of Christ takes deep and rich hold of us as we gather together and do what Christians do together. That includes singing, of course. One of the purposes of sung worship is so that the word of Christ, the word of grace, the word of the gospel can dwell in us richly. (More of that later.) But there are other ways as well. Some are verbal and some are non-verbal.
· We pray scriptures through psalms and other liturgical texts.
· We proclaim the scriptural faith through the church's creeds.
· We use scriptural texts given for worship - eg the grace and blessings.
