Sutton explained that before the Great Commission could be implemented, the disciples had first to experience Jesus (and worship him) on the Mount of Transfiguration before they could begin their mission of going into the towns and villages teaching, healing, driving out evil and proclaiming the advent of the reign of God on earth.

Sutton noted that before the losses started in TEC, the institution grew because it was known as the Church that worshiped well....emphasizing ancient prayers and rites, beautiful liturgies and music that lifts the soul out of the everyday into the glorified presence of a resurrected Lord. If the Episcopal Church was known for anything in those years, it was that.

"But then something happened around 2002 and 2003 that changed the public's perception of the Episcopal Church. Do you remember? That was the period when the conflicts flared up in full force around the full inclusion in the church of all God's people, and in particular celebrating the gifts that gay and lesbian Christians bring to our common life. In 2003, my friend Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire, which caused a firestorm in the church here and in the Anglican Communion. We began fighting, and many members -- including substantial parts of four dioceses -- left the Episcopal Church. Of course, we continued to gain new members, but that did not make up for the loss of those who left.

"The point I'm making is that the Episcopal Church in the public's mind became more identified with conflicts, property disputes, fighting, and sex than it became known for its distinctive embodiment of worship. In short, in an era of sound bites, quick opinions, and superficial allegiances, the Episcopal Church lost its brand."

VOL: This is a correct analysis up to a point except for the fact that nothing has changed since 2003. TEC's downward spiral continues, recognized by Episcopal Church researchers and historians like George Clifford and Susan Snook who have documented the decline since 2003 and who believe that unless there is a turn around, TEC is doomed. These are liberals saying this, not conservatives. The average age of most Episcopalians now is in the mid to late 60s with congregations under 70 in size.

The other truth is that most Episcopalians wouldn't know where to find the Great Commission in the Gospels if their lives depended on it, have not heard it preached from their pulpits, nor does Mrs. Jefferts Schori believe in it. Those who do have left TEC have formed the ACNA whose priests and people do believe in The Great Commission and, as a result, have nearly a 1000 churches and 112,000 members. In the last 10 years, TEC has started just three churches. An 11 times alternate/deputy veteran to General Convention, Ted Mollegen recently released a 66-page presentation urging the Episcopal Church to develop a grand strategy to reverse numerical decline, attract more money for development, and improve the church's mission.

"The restructuring planned for [General Convention] 2015 won't turn around TEC's negative growth trend -- unless it incorporates the church growth/redevelopment principles of this document," Mollegen wrote. "Cost-cutting is clearly necessary for TEC, but it basically consists of treating only the results of decline, not the root causes. TEC needs to find and counter the root causes of decline, while concurrently taking action to get positive growth going again."

SUTTON: But there is good news here. Unlike many of our brothers and sisters in other Christian denominations, we Episcopalians are coming to the end of those troubles. Those members who are still unhappy with our church wide stances on inclusion have already made the calculation that this is not the issue that is going to drive them away, and more importantly, their children are not at all likely to leave the Episcopal Church because of our openness to the presence and gifts of all people.

VOL: Not true. Statistically, TEC dioceses have been slowly and steadily draining members by death, attrition, and a steady flight to the ACNA, the Ordinariate, and the Roman Catholic Church. There has been a slight uptick in money, but that is because a few older members are giving more. They will not live forever. Furthermore, The Episcopal Church has not had any success in bringing millions of Millennials into its embrace. The recent study by George Clifford and Susan Snook suggest that TEC's woes are far from over and contraction is in the air. Furthermore, TEC's theologically liberal-driven seminaries are offering up an uncertain sound about the nature of the gospel, preferring talk of inclusion and diversity over the verities of "the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

SUTTON: My brothers and sisters, I submit to you that repeated calls to "just focus on mission" is seriously missing the boat on what has been behind our institutional losses of membership and attendance. The "Go, therefore..." of the Great Commission is a very important call to the whole church -- but it is the second call. The first call at the end of Matthew's Gospel is to go to the mountain, meet Jesus there, and worship Him. Sadly, in the Episcopal Church at this present time, we hear very little about that first call. This issue of the "first call" is very personal for me...it goes to the heart of the matter as to why I am an Episcopalian. I was born in this city of Washington, and my faith was nurtured at a large, black and vibrant congregation in the center of the black community. What this means is that I sang, clapped, swayed, stomped and shouted my way into the Christian faith -- for which, of course, I am eternally grateful!

VOL: The problem is that Presiding Bishop Jefferts does not believe in the necessity for The Great Commission. That doctrinal and theological choice has moved to the Anglican Church in North America, which now has nearly 1000 congregations and over 100,000 new members. TEC bishops do not believe in the Great Commission and most people in the pews haven't got a clue how to share their faith with another person. Do you think that the hoard of bishops who show up at Gay Pride Parade days sitting on the open backs of cadillacs believe in evangelism? Theirs is a doctrine of inclusion, not a doctrine of repentance and faith. Who are you kidding?

SUTTON: By my high school years, however, this way of worshiping no longer worked for me. Already by then, I was wary and weary of the constant demands for a highly charged emotional response on my part as the evidence that the Holy Spirit was present. I was tired of the anti-intellectualism, the easy answers to complex issues, the focus on individual gifts of performance rather than on the majesty of God, and the lack of a worshipful connection with the ancient past and the lives of our spiritual forbears in faith.

VOL: Grow up bishop. Many of us had similar experiences, anti-intellectualism is, in the end, a choice. You don't have to stay there. No one does. I went to three seminaries to bone up and deepen my faith. (I came from fundamentalism, you came from Black gospel churches). There's more to the gospel than Billy Graham (and he would admit that) or Bill Bright and his Four Spiritual Laws. There are theologians of renown like J.I. Packer, Canon Michael Green, N.T. Wright, and the Rev. Dr. John Stott whom David Brooks of the New York Times said would have made a great Protestant pope...and he was an evangelical Anglican for goodness sake!

SUTTON: It wasn't until I stepped into the Church of the Ascension & St. Agnes -- that venerable downtown Anglo-Catholic parish -- that I found my "home." Who said that an African American urban kid of 17 years old couldn't be attracted to the tradition of liturgy that has stood the test of time for 2000 years?

VOL: So you discovered Anglo-Catholicism and worship. Well done. But tradition and liturgy, smells and bells, however well done doesn't save souls. A goodly number of ACNA priests are Anglo-Catholics or evangelical catholics; they preach a gospel of repentance and faith, WHILE AT THE SAME TIME perform good worship. The tragedy of most TEC Anglo-Catholics is that they are no longer Anglo-Catholic but Affirming Catholic (with some notable exceptions) who embrace gay unions and rites for same sex marriage, thus they have pushed the church backwards not forwards....at which point you are no longer truly Anglo-Catholic. See Steven Kelley's Where have all the Anglo Catholics Gone here: http://tinyurl.com/lfnabpy

You, Bishop, now have more in common with Frank Griswold and Rowan Williams than you do with a Newman, Cranmer, Peter Toon or even with our contemporary evangelical, Archbishop Justin Welby!

SUTTON: My brothers and sisters, this bishop believes that our parishes need to focus more on their community's worship as the vehicle for the kind of evangelism that works for us. The problem for the Episcopal Church is not that we are neurotically and unhelpfully fixated on music and liturgy. Rather, the problem for us from an evangelical and church growth stance is that we are not focused enough on our worship.

VOL: Worship is not evangelism. Worship is what believers do when they gather together to remember Christ in his suffering, death and resurrection. Evangelism is the preaching of the euangelion -- the Good News about Jesus. When we call people to repentance and faith in Jesus, that is when we do evangelism. From that initial experience of believing in and trusting Christ for our salvation comes worship. You have completely muddied and confused the picture with that statement.

SUTTON: Good worship consists of its own "three legged stool": music, liturgy and preaching. Each leg of that stool is important, and if one of them is weak than the other two will not be able to stand for long. The truth is no matter how earnestly a church may pour itself into serving its community (which, as I said earlier, is a good thing), if the preaching is uninspiring, the liturgy is sloppy, or the music is barely listenable, then that church will shrink and eventually may have to close its doors as a worshiping community.

VOL: "How shall they hear without a preacher"? It is preaching that ignites faith, not the sound of music. Music has strong emotional appeal, but it is through the hearing of the word that faith comes. Music is a great accompanist but that is all. When George Beverly Shea sang, as he did for decades, "I'd rather have Jesus..." it moved people. When Billy Graham preached, people came forward. Evangelical Anglicans may do it differently and with a different style, but the end result is the same. The tragedy is that today there are tens of thousands of praying, paying, and occasional obeying Anglicans who are going along with it all because that is all they know. They are nominal Anglicans now approaching their 70s who look forward to the consolations of the columbarium they paid for.

SUTTON: This means that growing churches are going to have to spend more of their time, money and other resources on having a good music program -- not less. They are going to have to spend more time developing good liturgical practices for their services, not less.

VOL: Music programs change nothing. I have met dozens of high church Episcopalians who love the "show". The music, lace and livery is like an off Broadway production they enjoy at half the price or, as Robin Williams famously put it, "all of the pageantry, none of the guilt."

SUTTON: And they are going to have to insist that their clergy spend more time, effort and training on becoming good preachers, not settling for mediocre preaching. Ultimately, the reason for this turn, or "return," to worship isn't to maintain market share. It's not to make us "feel" good, or to achieve some vague spiritual high. The reason the Episcopal Church must focus on worship is to prepare itself to make disciples of all nations. It is to take seriously the first call of Jesus before the great commission to "go to the mountain, see Jesus there, and worship him."

VOL: Tell that message to the seven or so liberal seminaries that are churning out a generation of preachers who haven't got a clue how to exegete the text of Scripture, refuse to come under the authority of Scripture, or, more often than not, use Scripture as a sounding board or stepping stone to the latest sexual fad. Check out what seminarians are being taught at Episcopal Divinity School, filled with gay theologians and led by a lesbian president who believes that abortion is a blessing. What else is she teaching that will make churches grow? Your fantasy world just keeps growing bishop.

If TEC really wants to grow, it is going to have to preach an unalloyed declarative gospel of Jesus Christ, calling sinners to repentance and amendment of life. And that is simply not happening. Worship by itself, however good the music and liturgy is, won't cut it. Most of the preaching is appalling rubbish. My wife and I recently visited Christ Church Episcopal in Philadelphia and heard the most dreadful drivel from the pulpit wherein a layman praised the church's social outreach invoking a "higher power" that helped him lead the charge. Most sermons leave people dead; this one certainly did. Most do not touch the heart or head. I have listened for years to liberal and progressive preachers; what they say ultimately empties churches. Watching football on Sunday is more fun and more entertaining. Millennials are not going to play the game of worship unless they have a reason to worship and believe what it is the church stands for. TEC is now the unofficial "gay church" and they are not winning converts to Christ or the church. TEC needs revival and renewal, for the moment that is not happening.

Most worship is little more than performance theater in Episcopal churches. Its dress up in lace and livery, "doin'" the Prayer book thing when in truth most people's hearts are far from God because it is all about show (with not much tell).

The Rev. John Stott described it, "Fundamental to New Testament Christianity is the concept of the union of God's people with Christ. What constitutes the distinctness of the members of God's new society? Not just that they admire and even worship Jesus, not just that they assent to the dogmas of the church, not even that they live by certain moral standards. No, what makes them distinctive is their new solidarity as a people who are 'in Christ'. By virtue of their union with Christ they have actually shared in his resurrection, ascension and session. In the 'heavenly places', the unseen world of spiritual reality, in which the principalities and powers operate (Eph. 3:10; 6:12) and in which Christ reigns supreme (1:20), there God has blessed his people in Christ (1:3), and there he has seated them with Christ (2:6). For if we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, there can be no doubt what we are sitting on: thrones! Moreover, this talk about solidarity with Christ in his resurrection and exaltation is not a piece of meaningless Christian mysticism. It bears witness to a living experience, that Christ has given us on the one hand a new life (with a sensitive awareness of the reality of God, and a love for him and for his people) and on the other a new victory (with evil increasingly under our feet). We are dead, but have been made spiritually alive and alert. We were in captivity, but have been enthroned."

When the church looks and acts like this Bishop Sutton, it will be a church worth attending.

END