Our Tradition

Anglican Christianity

Restoration Anglican Church is proudly Anglican…it’s literally in our name! Every Sunday, you will see the richness of Anglican worship — liturgy, communal prayer, Holy Communion. But there may be times when you feel like you’re not quite sure what’s going on. The priest, with his white collar, says to pray, and you bow your head, only to discover everyone is praying aloud. You sit when you were supposed to stand. Wait, now we’re kneeling?

Take heart! The people of Restoration Anglican come from a WIDE variety of faith backgrounds, from Southern Baptist to Catholic to non-denominational — and everything in between! We’re all learning together. Our deep desire is to lean into the beauty the Anglican church offers, the Biblical, holistic approach to worship, while also having grace with one-another.

Sacrament

Anglicans value the historic practices of the church as means of forming us in the gospel of Christ. These practices include the sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist, the 3-fold order of church governance (bishops, presbyters/priests and deacons) and the historic order of worship known as the liturgy.

SCRIPTURE

Anglicans value the Scriptures as authoritative for Christian life and practice. We read Scripture in worship, pray Scripture within the liturgy, preach Scripture in sermons, provide Scripture reading plans for daily devotion, and rely on the Scriptures to shape our understanding of the gospel.

Spirit

Anglicans believe in the ongoing work of the Spirit in our midst. This work includes awakening every believer to faith and growing all Christians in the character of Christ. It also includes occasional gifts such as physical healing, words of prophecy, empowerment for ministry, and other displays of Christ’s authority to restore all things.

MultiEthnic

Anglicans are a global family of faith: there’s over 85 million of us in 165 countries, with the vast majority residing in the Global South. The “average” Anglican is a 20-something African woman! Since Restoration is an outpost of the Rwandan Anglican church, we see the kingdom as broader than our borders and deeper than merely cultural Christianity.

Ancient

Anglicans see themselves in continuity with the ancient church. The gospel has not changed: we are inheritors of a faith preached by the apostles, handed down through the early centuries of the church, and renewed in the English Reformation. Even our forms of worship would be recognizable to 2nd-century Christians as belonging to the same lineage of faith.

Building with distinctive wavy architecture

Vibrant

Anglicans are a diverse and vibrant corner of the kingdom. Many have encountered Anglicanism through C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright, the Alpha Course and through Peace & Reconciliation movements. We seek to proclaim the gospel both in word and deed and are committed to planting churches, developing leaders, and discipling the rising generations.

Frequently asked questions

The Anglican tradition is both catholic and reformed. Our catholic heritage comes from Celtic and Roman missionaries to the British Isles, founding a distinct “Church of England.” This vibrant and mission-oriented church embraced biblical teachings and catholicity (universality). These Christians actively spread the Gospel by integrating into villages and cities and engaging with people in their daily lives.

In the 16th century, Christian leaders reformed the Church of England. They embraced the gospel of grace and affirmed Scripture’s authority yet preserved the sacramental and liturgical worship and bishop-led church government in place since the first century. Our beliefs can be summed up in confessions like the 39 Articles of Religion of the 16th century or the 21st-century Jerusalem Declaration.

Our worship is structured by the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). First published by Archbishop Cranmer in 1549, the BCP collected the ancient liturgies of the church and reformed them according to the teachings of scripture.

The BCP includes services for the whole of Christian life. There’s daily prayer, Sunday communion, and services for the sacraments and the stages of life, from baptism to burial.

On Sunday Morning, Anglicans celebrate communion, also called Holy Eucharist. What are the different elements of this service? It typically begins with a procession and singing. The clergy will be wearing vestments. People will bow, kneel, and make the sign of the cross. The congregation will confess sin, read scripture, hear a sermon, say the creed, walk forward to eat the bread and wine. We believe in multi-sensory, embodied worship, a tradition dating back to ancient Israel.

Anglicans, along with Christians of many other traditions, organize their year not by the secular calendar but by the Church Calendar. Over the centuries, the Church has sought to proclaim God’s message through its cycles of fasts and feasts, just as the ancient Hebrews did before us. Through these, we preach the gospel to ourselves and others by commemorating moments in Christ’s life, significant doctrines, and faithful saints and martyrs from church history. For each season and commemoration, we have an assigned color, so you will see green, purple, white, and red (and occasionally others) at various points in the year.

Anglicans have long valued art and beauty as reflective of our creative impulse from our creation in the Image of God. The full-bodied worship and intentional beauty of our worship spaces, liturgy, and music that resulted were essential in pointing to the transcendent truths of God.

This intentionality has led many great writers such as Jane Austen and C.S. Lewis, poet-priests such as John Donne and George Herbert, hymnists such as John Newton and Charles Wesley, and composers such as George Frederich Handel to flourish within the Anglican tradition.

New to Anglicanism? Find even more great resources at Anglican Compass!

Live in the story of God’s restoration of all things.

Visit Us