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In the thirty-first episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Archbishop Steve Wood of the Anglican Church in North America. Wood begins by sharing the theological distinctives that historically define Anglicanism, the ways those distinctives are drawn from the nature of parish life, and the ways those distinctives are designed to frame our days. He talks about his own calling to the priesthood, the ways he derives a sense of vocational joy from being of service to parishioners, and the obedience he found himself needing to exercise when called to serve as bishop and now archbishop. Wood explains how the Anglican Church in North America emerged, the relationships it shares with the global Anglican communion, and the structures being put into place to support the growth it has experienced. Wood then closes by discussing ways that the Anglican Church in North America and Church-related colleges and universities can be of greater service to one another in the years to come which, in his estimation, is rooted in the continued nurturing of relationships.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Steve Wood, Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America. Thank you for joining us.
Archbishop Steve Wood: Delighted to be here. Todd, appreciate the opportunity to join you on Saturdays at Seven.
Todd Ream: To begin our conversation, I’d like to ask you to help us understand the distinctives of Anglican theology and how those distinctives locate Anglicanism within Christianity.
Archbishop Steve Wood: Yeah, I’m delighted. It’s a simple question right to begin with. Now obviously I’m a homer and so I’m certainly a partisan in this story. Aspects of Anglicanism that I think are unique to us and that have particularly attracted me, is the integration of pastoral and practical theology. I think from a historical perspective, Anglicanism formed around a parish structure, right, where we had congregations in local communities. And that was really the locus of our identity being the congregation in those local communities.
And with that, we have had just simply due to the historical consequence of being in England, we had clergy trained at some of the best universities in the world. And so you had world-class clergy being trained and then, and then deployed throughout, throughout the whole of England in pastoral contexts.
And so for me, it’s always been a, it’s always been one of the attractive elements is that it’s not just theoretical theology that drives us, but it’s, it’s the practical application, is the locus of that. Actually in the local congregation, it is the equipping of the whole person, right? And so you get just being a Reformation-era church. I know, well, our history goes back well before the Reformation, but particularly thinking of post-Reformation the formation of what we understand to be the Anglican church now, you know, head and heart, sacrament, preaching. I mean, it’s the whole person is engaged in ways that I find helpful.
When I teach at a local level, you know, I will say that when Anglicans looked at the Reformation, we thought not everything was good on some side of it, and we looked at the other side and said not everything was bad. So rather than, rather than just taking a wholesale, take it down to studs approach, we sought to really embrace maintain those, the biblical of kind of Gospel narrative, the old treasure, bringing the old treasure outta the storehouse, while also being open to the new treasure.
And so, and particularly for us, the regrounding of the Word of God is central and is the touchstone for Anglicanism post, post Reformation era onward. And I find that Anglicanism where it thrives, so you think of, I think of the two thirds world, right, when you go to Africa, Asia, South America certainly will not look like mid-century England as far as the parish set up and the customs and structure.
But you still see that same emphasis and that same ethos. I mean, it is still, it is still grounded around the local congregation. You know, dioceses, provinces exist to equip the local church, to equip the local clergy person, to both for evangelism, also for discipleship, and then missions so that they can then reach, reach their own community. And so that groundedness in a community has been something that has always been a hallmark of Anglicanism.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. You mentioned that Anglicanism, you know, didn’t wanna throw everything out. So it came out of 16, 17 hundreds, et cetera, you know, but it didn’t want throw everything out with the process.
John Henry Newman referred to it early on in his career as the title of one of his books, the Via Media, that it was the pathway between Protestantism and Catholicism. Can you say a little bit more about the way that it sort of moves beyond, between, but yet also beyond those two?
Archbishop Steve Wood: Well, I mean, obviously, you know, as you look at now, the Anglicanism varies profusely as you go around the globe. I mean, it has been contextualized, right? And so in the Reformation era we maintain vestments, we maintain liturgies, we still have a, still defined by a Book of Common Prayer. Every province has their Book of Common Prayer, so you still see those pieces.
But obviously as culture has changed and world has changed, you know, it’s as as normative to go into a church in Nigeria and see a worship liturgy projected on a screen or to be in Uganda and have a booklet or maybe not the actual prayer book itself. So you see some contextualization in that regard.
But that essence of maintaining the richness of our tradition, we’re still a sacramental church, right. Some of the churches that came out of the Reformation are principally word oriented churches, right? And so it’s, you know, Sundays typically look like a number of hymns. Maybe a scripture reading, maybe a 30, 40 minute sermon, and then another hymn or two and you’re probably gone.
And we would recognize that the whole of the liturgy teaches, the whole of the liturgy forms, and that, that certainly comes from our heritage coming out of the, out of the Catholic Church, lex orandi, lex credendi, right? What we pray we believe. And so that’s really visible, maintain, it’s still visible within the Anglican Church as we still affirm creeds. We have extended time in prayer and the prayers of the people we hear. We hear every Sunday, the whole of the story, the salvation stories we gather at the table. Most churches do that every Sunday, right. And obviously not every but most churches.
And that is where you still see though, I guess maybe the segue into moving beyond is that as churches have as the Anglican Church has really proliferated globally you’ll see some of the local context, the local provincial ethos emphasis, begin to emerge. And so you might have, some of our provinces might be more classically Protestant or evangelical than some others. And you’ll see, you’ll see still from Anglicanism but you’ll see the lead beats coming from particular kind of Anglicanism that would’ve shaped them. Whereas, on the other side, you’ll still see some very traditional, more Catholic side of the faith with all the vestments, all of the sensory experience.
For me personally, because I think we’re in a missional era, and I think that mission really needs to set the pace, I find the whole richness of Anglicanism a toy chest in many ways. I mean, we have so many resources we can draw against, right? And so, you know, some of the liturgical wars of the early, mid-20th century, those aren’t really in very many people’s lived memories anymore, right.
And so, so would have in our, in the diocese where I’m bishop, the Carolinas, I mean, we would’ve churches in Asheville, which is a very artistic community who are more Protestant in their preaching and in their ethos. But they are certainly going back into the richness of Anglicanism, pulling out vestments and incense and, and making a much more participatory sensory kind of evangelistic service, particularly in a community that is really open to these kinds of things.
And so I appreciate, at a whole different level, the richness of our Anglican heritage because I think it has set us up very well for the missional era in which we’re living.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. If I may ask about one particular practice that seems to be central or definitive of Anglicanism in certain ways is the Holy Office. In 2024 Cascade published Greg Peter’s Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction. And I’m admitting that I may be oversimplifying here in some ways, but Peters contends that Anglican spirituality is invested in this practice, a pattern of morning and evening prayer.
Archbishop Steve Wood: Absolutely.
Todd Ream: This pattern he also contends is eucharistic and an expression of personal devotion. In what ways is that pattern then reflective of Anglicanism’s unique place within Christianity?
Archbishop Steve Wood: Yeah, that’s a fantastic quote. I would agree wholeheartedly. I think the Daily Office is part of the genius of Anglicanism. You know, it was obviously laid out by our reformers to engage people in a daily rhythm of prayer, a daily practice of prayer. It really sets the ethos. It frames the theology of Anglicanism where we move through our lectionary readings in that cyclical pattern, allowing Scripture to flow over us, flow through us, be thought about, talked about, picked up morning and evening.
You know, we’ve added classically, obviously morning and evening prayer, but the noonday prayers in the compline service. I think the compline service is one of our most extraordinary services in the prayer book. At, at the end of a day, an extraordinary way to wind down one’s day in a reflective, prayerful posture. And so the Daily Office is really the framework, the, the, maybe the backbone, the structure of Anglicanism, moving people, shaping them in their prayer daily.
Clergy, it is part of a clergy routine. Most Anglican clergy I know all Anglican clergy I know, do morning and evening prayer, and they may modify what aspects of it they do out of the service. But, you know, we’ve make that commitment to one another that prayer shapes our life. So this goes back again to the lex oredendi, lex credendi. I mean the Book of Common Prayer in many ways is the Bible set to prayer. You’ll, you’ll know the versicles and responses. I mean, they’re just lifted, right outta Scripture as we pray them back and forth with one another.
And so that becomes the daily pattern of life, morning and evening prayer to which, you know, you have your Eucharistic services. That’s why for churches, you know, some of them are Protestant churches, maybe once upon a time, did communion once a month. I grew up in a church that was a once a month communion service. But with the advent of the 1979 Prayer Book, they made a transition to a weekly service.
But even within our evangelical world, I can’t cite the chapter in verse where John Stott said it, but he indicated it was anticipated that Sunday mornings would be a principally eucharistic service. Doesn’t mean every church follows that. But that really is the framework in the guts. I mean, that’s the heart of Anglicanism is this daily pattern of prayer. So when we talk about formation, that’s what I mean by that is that the book of Common Prayer is Scripture set to prayer that forms us and shapes us.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you.
If I may, I want to transition now to asking you some biographical details about your calling to the ministry. You grew up in Northeastern Ohio. And I assume, as is the case with everyone I seem to meet from that region of the country, that you’re quite proud of being from Cleveland. You earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Cleveland State University and then a master in Divinity of what is now Virginia Theological Seminary. At what point did you begin to sense a call to the ministry and a sense to call to the ministry in the Anglican tradition?
Archbishop Steve Wood: So I grew up in the Episcopal Church, probably for some, an anomaly in that regard. My mother made the religious decisions in our family and my mother decided at an early date we would be Episcopalians basically on her family history lineage. And I’m grateful for that. You know, I never knew anything other.
I grew up in a slightly different kind of Episcopal church. I wouldn’t have known this language at all. This was just church to me, but probably in the late sixties, early seventies, so somewhere between six and 10 years old for me, our church entered into kind of an evangelical, charismatic renewal stream. And that wing of Anglicanism or that expression of Anglicanism was profoundly formative. That’s what I knew growing up.
However, our church was not an isolationist church, and so we were part of the Diocese of Ohio at that time. And the Diocese of Ohio did youth programming, middle school and high school. I guess we called it junior and senior high back then, but did junior and senior high programming, and our youth leaders would take us to these things and get us involved. And then they were very good experiences, very formative experiences in my life.
The Diocese of Ohio had a heavy focus on training young adults, kids to be peer leader, peer ministry we called it. So we’d be trained in how to lead small groups, how to introduce discussions, how to keep things flowing. We would always have a Saturday night prayer and praise service because there was enough of an expression of charismatic evangelical renewal in Ohio at that time. And kids coming from those backgrounds, where you’d have a Saturday night contemporary kind of service—so we called it prayer and praise back then. And then, and a kid would give a testimony and I’d usually be one of those, doing some of that.
I really had not considered ordained ministry. I went to college. I anticipated I was a history major, political science minor. I anticipated going into law. And then politics was where I really ultimately wanted to end up as a teenager, probably early twenties as I was in my earlier or mid college years. But it was during that timeframe a whole lot of things going on in family life, personal life during that timeframe.
But one of the things that was happening as well was that I had transferred home from Bowling Green University back to Cleveland State, because I was toying with the idea of going to seminary. And I could do that easier with no debt transferring from Cleveland State, leaving Cleveland State in, but I was just also, there’s a lot happening in personal and family life at that time. And I reconnected with the youth leader at the church where I had been involved in youth ministry as a kid. He had formed a young adult group with, basically my peers that had stayed home to go to a local college.
And it was, it was in that milieu that I would end up, we didn’t call it teaching, we called it sharing, or Steve will bring the word tonight kind of language, and I began to just offer commentary on what I was reading in the Bible. And my peers would often say things like, well, it’s helpful when you explain it, I understand it. That grew then into a discernment process.
I had a very proactive rector and he actually sat me down two, actually two clergy, both my rector and the man, the priest that was the head of the youth programming for the Diocese of Ohio. Both of them on various occasions had pulled me aside and said, you really need to give serious thought to ordained ministry. But it was probably the end of my junior year of college where I thought, okay, what would this look like to do this? And then, you know, just continue to proceed forward.
I was probably 22, 21, 22 maybe, when I began formally the discernment process for the Diocese of Ohio. I guess I was 22, I was married. We got married young, 19 and 22. I know Jackie was, my wife was part of that process. At that point, I felt very called to ordained ministry, but the Episcopal church was starting to, even at that point, show some fraying on some of the theological issues that have emerged many years downstream, at least in Ohio. I probably thought it was part of the Bible at the time, but I would’ve adopted a “bloom where you are planted mentality” and so God had me in the Episcopal Church and so we went forward in the Episcopal church.
I also did not know that the year we went forward, because typically, at that time, Diocese of Ohio was sending older clergy or older candidates, usually wanted them to work five, ten years in secular employment before going into seminary. But I did not know that the year I went forward the then bishop said we want to start sending some younger men so that by the time they’re in their forties, they’ve been shaped by the church for 20 years rather than shaped for 10 years by the church.
And so providence met circumstance and I ended up going to seminary at 24, a 21-year-old wife and a little boy. And I’ve been, I’ve been very happy. I mean, there were certainly difficulties as we navigated the late nineties to the late aughts in the Episcopal church but have always had a sense of being where the Lord wants me to be.
And actually I remember it came to a point, you know, because those were difficult times when we were having to, I mean, I had a deep and profound love for the Episcopal church. I came to faith in the Episcopal church. And and those were, those were painful times for everybody, right. Not just one side. It was painful for everybody.
And, I really almost felt like Peter when, in John 6, when everyone was leaving Jesus. And he said, do you want to go too? And Peter’s like, where else would we go? And I, I probably had a little, there were probably different moments of those existential crises where I’m like, this isn’t what I signed up for. I don’t wanna fight this. I just, I wanna talk about Jesus. And it kind of, well, what else could I do? Where else would I go? And I’d find myself coming back to that, you’re where the Lord wants you. You just bloom where you’re planted.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In terms of that process then you were ordained to the diaconate in 1991 and to the priesthood in 1992. You served churches in Ohio before being called in 2000 to serve Saint Andrews Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. In 2010, the congregation at Saint Andrews voted to join the Anglican Church in North America.
What theological convictions then led the congregation at St. Andrews to make that choice? And in what ways are those convictions aligned with what we were talking about earlier in terms of what makes Anglicanism distinct?
Archbishop Steve Wood: Yeah. Far in my rear view mirror, which is a good thing. So the fundamental question for us was the place and the authority of Scripture. I have no problem with Scripture containing difficult truths. I think what people can forget, what contemporary people can forget is Scripture challenges every culture all the time in every era. Parts of Scripture today will cut very differently across the Middle East or Africa than it cuts across North America or, or Western Europe. Christians in different eras will be challenged by different aspects of Scripture. It’s always been that way.
What I think is different is that some more contemporary people, it seems as if we don’t want to be confronted by an external authority, right. The whole locus of truth and our understanding of truth is changing culturally. I would still argue for a received traditional understanding of truth that it is received from outside as revelatory. In many ways for me revelatory through Scripture mediated, you know, in faith by Scripture.
I know fundamentally for us, what is the place of Scripture? What is the authority of Scripture? And then I think kind of going back to kind of classic questions about true wisdom, true knowledge consists of true knowledge of God and true knowledge of ourselves. I think the answer to both of those questions begins with Scripture itself, begins with the text itself. What has God disclosed to us about His nature and character? What has God disclosed to us about what it means to be human?
I think we, the Episcopal church, lost the plot. Now they would disagree with me and I’m fine with that. But it ultimately led to a massive reordering globally of the Anglican Communion. And you see that, see that today where, you know, the ACC is part of the Gafcon world and global South world, and I think 80% of Anglicans are in communion with us. The Western 20% aren’t.
There’s been a profound shaking, a profound reordering and a profound re-missioning because one of the things that came hand-in-hand with setting Scripture again at the center of Anglicanism in the contemporary world has been the priority and emphasis of mission again, and, and evangelism and people taking responsibility to actually share the good news of Jesus Christ.
We have at the very center of our Eucharistic services, at the end of the confession, we do what we call the comfortable words, which is an extraordinary Anglican presentation of the Gospel every single Sunday. And then, and then we move right out of that into the actual going forward to receive communion of, yes Lord, I believe this.
And so again, you know, you see, you see even in the reform movements of the latter 20, early 21st century, the maintenance of this Anglican ethos where the Word is at the center, and there’s a response to that Word elicited every week.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2012, you were elected Bishop of the Anglican Church in North America’s Diocese of the Carolinas, which you mentioned earlier, and then in 2024, just last year, you were elected Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America. Would you please explain the discernment process that led you from serving as a rector to serving as a bishop and now serving as Archbishop?
Archbishop Steve Wood: The latter two were interesting. So, candidly, I love the parish. My heart’s in the parish. It’s always been in the parish. I am a field general at heart. I love being with my people. And so being rector was the most noble ambition that I’d ever had and was very content as rector.
During the meltdown of the Episcopal Church at that time, the ACNA, it was right around ’09 when we began our process of disaffiliation. The ACNA was in ascendancy, but had not quite yet formed as we were in the beginning stages of our disaffiliation within the parish from the Episcopal Church. And there was something called the Anglican Mission in America at that time as well, the AMIA. And honestly, I just needed a break when we came out of the Episcopal Church.
And so we ended up going into a diocese that was like a diocese in formation, kind of a holding diocese. Bishop John Guernsey was the bishop. It was the Diocese of the Holy Spirit. It was part of the ACNA. But when we came out, I mean, coming outta the Episcopal Church was hard. I mean, it was painful, right? I mean, relationships were burned. I left a really good diocese, the Diocese of South Carolina, an extraordinary diocese, but we just couldn’t stay within the Episcopal church anymore. And, you know, relationships there were strained because we were leaving a good diocese.
So when we came out, I basically said, look, I’m not ready to date anybody. I just need to be on the sideline. I just need to catch my breath. And then Bishop Guernsey got elected to what would become DOMA—Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic. And all of a sudden the question of ecclesiastical affiliation moved to the top of my list.
I was happy to be what was called the Vicar General. I like organizing. I like planning, I like strategy, I like creating structure. And so the Vicar General really had a lot of the administrative side of the office of a bishop. It did none of these sacramental, ministerial side, right? It was all the administrative, organizational and principally also helped write the Constitution in canons for our local diocese. And I was very happy to help in that regard.
We had slow walked our formation. You know, it’s typically a one year process from diocese in formation to becoming a diocese. We’d slow walked it because I was not overly interested in being the Bishop of the Carolinas, so it took us almost two years actually to go from formation to conclusion. During that timeframe, I nominated one of my best friends to be the bishop of the diocese. He declined.
And I’d been nominated twice, I don’t know by who, but my name, went to the nominating committee twice on two different occasions. I turned down the first one. And then I turned down the second one, and then I got a call from then Archbishop Duncan, to talk to me about the nominating process and suggested that if my name were to go in a third time, I should trust the discernment of the collective body, rather than just my own personal discernment. And didn’t play this card, but gently said, you promise to obey your bishops and all things lawful and canonical, as lawful and canonical to be a candidate. And so I did and I was elected bishop in 2021 of the Carolinas.
In my mindset I thought, you know, probably seven, nine years would be a good tenure because candidly, I would, I would’ve always expected to return back to the local parish even if after that, not coming back necessarily as rector, but coming back, doing Christian formation, pastoral care, evangelism mission. These are the things I love. I could always envision myself coming back to that.
And then I’d have to say that seven to nine years goes pretty quickly. We found ourselves, we the ACNA, found ourselves at the point this past summer where it was time to elect Archbishop Foley’s successor. And again, I did not nominate myself for that position. And we go into conclave, so the substance in nature conclave is confidential. Some things I certainly can say because it affected me.
But for instance, I think one of the questions was what would your vision be for this? And I said, you know, I think it would be inappropriate to have a vision for this, that I don’t have a vision per se, of what an archbishop should do. I have ideas about what an archbishop should do as I read the cannons and have experiences in the life of the church. But my commentary back to the bishops was, my understanding is it’s our responsibility as bishops to discern the person we believe God calling us. And that if we discern that, then we have to trust that God will equip that person.
I am not the most theologically astute bishop in the college. I’m not an academic. I’m quite literally a field general. I’ve led small churches, medium churches, and large-sized churches over the years into mission. My heart, and perhaps that is a perspective I bring to the Office of Archbishop, is that my heart is so clear for the parish and for the local clergy.
I think it’s easy for organizations and for institutions to assume a bottom up mentality. And I’m really a top down. How, how does what I’m doing today negatively or positively impact the local church and her mission is a constant question that I have for myself.
And I mean obviously still early days in this, right. Eight months maybe. But even still, we’re beginning a process of reorganization and restructure within the province and, and putting people in positions where we have the local, the mission. How can I best support bishops? So as the archbishop, I’ve told them, you know, my job is to be the servant of servants. And so I’m diligent in my prayer life for them. I communicate with them often.
And I have a high value for communication both ways. I’m very open to conversation, but it goes both ways. I mean, I’m happy to hear what they think, but you know, I’ve said you’ll probably need to hear what I think on some of these things too. And so how I really view myself as the pastor to the chief pastors of the church God-willing, reflecting the ministry of Christ to our bishops, who then in turn serve their clergy as they serve their parishes. So really having that as a conscious mentality.
And to say that doesn’t mean we didn’t before. It just means it’s a bent, an ethos that I bring in. I felt very well cared for in the past by Archbishop Bob and Archbishop Foley. And they may have thought and felt these very same things. I’ve just never spoken to them about it. Archbishop Foley went on sabbatical as soon as he finished. And so that would be my heart, my ethos.
And, honestly, candidly, I’m beginning to get some glimpses of why I think my colleagues might have elected me. I’m okay at organizational leadership. I’m okay at creating structure, mission, vision, setting objectives. How do we attain those objectives? I’d like to problem solve, and I do better with a challenge. When things are peaceful and easy, I get bored. I do better with challenges. And so it’s been I’m getting glimpses, I think, of why my peers might have thought I’d be suitable for this position other than just the Hail Mary, so.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In addition to large churches, the Anglican Church in North America is comprised of a growing number of church plants. For example, just north of where I am in Indiana is the Anglican Church of the Ascension, an Anglican church in North America parish that first met as a congregation on Ascension Sunday in 2017.
In addition to the movement of the Holy Spirit, how do you understand the growth in the number of these church plants? What do you believe in their meeting in terms of the needs of the parishioners that come to them?
Archbishop Steve Wood: I mean, I’ll go back to things I’ve been saying throughout, throughout the conversation that we’re having. I think fundamentally, Anglicanism is pastoral. It’s a missional pastoral setting. I mean, we have a high value, I mean, Anglicans typically will go to small towns. We certainly plant in large cities also, but I mean, we have a value for the community and for being in those communities and being an integral part of that community.
We don’t simply measure if it is fruitful if we have 75 people a Sunday in a semi-rural community? I mean that’s, yeah, I mean, it’s absolutely fruitful. If Gospel mission is, if Gospel’s being preached and the sacraments are being celebrated and people are being disciplined and cared for, that’s worthwhile.
I think people, as they come into our environments, encounter a different kind of church than they may have experienced, particularly in the American Protestant world, that’s more dynamic than just simply hearing a 40-minute sermon may be great, but a 40-minute sermon and go home, right? Sing a couple songs. It’s participatory. It involves the senses, it’s the whole body.
But then beyond that, we have a value for education from kids all the way through adults. Anglicanism has never just been defined by a Sunday school program for kids. The Episcopal church excelled at doing adult education. That’s part of our ethos and heritage. And so there’s this constant opportunity to grow in faith, which I do like because, you know, as a young, as a young person, a young adult, it was always baffling. You know, if the whole point was just come to Jesus. There’s a whole lot of life between, come to Jesus and go home to Jesus. What am I supposed to do in that life?
And I think Anglicanism, and we’re not the only ones that do this, but we have sought to address that spectrum of life between what does it look like to come to Jesus and what does it ultimately look like to go home to Jesus. And I think that gets communicated and it’s participatory. I mean, you know, we have high school kids reading Scripture upfront. We have families ushering together. It involves people. It’s the work of the people, right? The true understanding of liturgy. It’s the work of the people coming together to be the people of God in that place.
You know, ideally my dream, I’d love to see, I’d love to see several hundred, 250-person churches scattered across a few thousand 250-person churches. And, you know, there’ll always be the outliers, the bigger ones. We certainly have larger than that. But I think 250-person churches can reach communities with great effectiveness and impact, so my mind, my prayer, my goal is to see our church, to see just a whole raft of 250-per size church just out across North America.
Todd Ream: Yeah, the Anglican Church in North America shares formal relationships with several seminaries, but no formal relationship with Church-related colleges and universities. Through the growing number of parishioners committed to the academic vocation, at least that I’ve engaged with whom I’ve engaged, however, do you understand the evolving relationships shared by the Anglican Church in North America may intersect with Church-related college and universities more in the coming years?
Archbishop Steve Wood: Oh, I hope so. I mean, I hope so. And now this reflects personal prejudice and interest, right? I’m not a theologian but I have always had a very high value for theology in the local church. And I think that both the academy and the local church were weakened when they got separated from each other. And so, yes.
You know, so in the Carolinas we have a working relationship with Gordon Conwell, Denver Seminary, and then also Asbury, but then also Asbury has the college attached to them, right? And so there is a natural opportunity for further engagement beyond the seminary environment, in not just ministry, but also getting the idea of Christian vocation on the table.
And we’ve tried. Saint Andrew’s, the parish or rector has tried. It’s been a tough nut to crack. I’ll be candid with you. We haven’t solved this problem yet, but we have sought from a vocational point of view to try to identify young adults right at the beginning of college who might have a sense of calling or who, who we might perceive a sense of calling in and begin to engage ’em even at that point to give them opportunities to come home maybe during the summer and do some ministry opportunity, maybe to speak into some of their course selection, to try to give them some guidance.
I think the American church in this century needs to tie as many strings together as we can possibly tie together to create a much stronger whole. And so it’s an artificial demarcation to just simply say, seminary, but not college. Why not college?
Again, I go back to my missional mindset, the RIF, RFA, Reformed Fellowship right on, on college. They’ve been extraordinary at raising up young adult leaders out of that ministry. And, and why can’t something like that be replicated and from a practical point of view, right?
So mission for us means church planting. I’d love to have recruited a college kid that has already know how to raise money and, and really or knows how to put together leadership team that can actually produce something, because one of the challenges coming outta seminary is most seminaries don’t teach seminarians how to fundraise, how to church plant. And it could be daunting. To look at it and say, I have to raise 30,000 a year. How do I do that?
Now, God-willing or not God-willing, but because He is already doing it, thanks be to God there are networks that exist to help people learn that. But we need to move our target ages back and start going after kids in college.
Todd Ream: In what ways then, in terms of tying these strings together, then, as you use that sort of image there, in what ways in the coming years can Church-related colleges and universities then be of greater service to the Anglican Church in North America?
Archbishop Steve Wood: Hmm, great question. I think we would just start with, with the introductions, right? Just, I mean in, in the best sense of this, I’m not being cynical in any way, but we just don’t know each other. I mean, some are, part of the world, you know, Asbury is well-known, Wheaton’s well-known, Covenant’s well-known over in Tennessee, Beeson well-known. But even though known, I don’t really think relationships exist.
And I think cross pollination bringing in a, perhaps there’s a college professor that could teach a weekend seminar at a local, at a local church. Just at one level, you have to start at the most basic. Hi, I am Steve. It’s good to meet you. Can we be friends? Can we work together? And I think, so almost immediately, I think that would be the, a, a very pragmatic step of cross invitations, for Christian leaders to come on different campuses, you know.
And for the academy to reengage the Church world. I don’t put this at the academy’s feet, but I really don’t think the Church or the academy have been well served with the separation of theology from the local congregation. Maybe somewhere along the line one side would’ve proactively challenged another side in their weakness or in their blindness if we hadn’t been separated from each other. So I most simply, for me, it would be beginning to meet, you know develop some, some kind of relationship, very easy partnerships. Now, I know it is certainly reflective of Saint Andrews, we have a program called the Ridley Institute. And so you know, Dr. Gerry McDermott, who’s down at Beeson, has been here to teach Jonathan Edwards. You know, we brought in faculty, Tom Wright was residential here, Eric Moore from Trinity Seminary came to teach. So we have classically brought in folks like that to expose our laity to them and just to expose ’em to some of the very best teaching there is. And then the question becomes, now how can we build on that and how can we work on that?
Todd Ream: Hopefully that will certainly be the case.
Archbishop Steve Wood: I hope so. It’s a desire of mine.
Todd Ream: Yeah, months and years moving forward. Thank you.
Our guest has been Steve Wood, Archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America. Thank you for taking time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Archbishop Steve Wood: Delighted to be with you Todd. Appreciate the time. God bless.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
