Friday, October 16, 2009

Survey: Does Your Church Use the 1662 Book of Common Prayer


I am taking a survey of Anglican churches in North America that use the classic Anglican Prayer Book—The Book of Common Prayer of 1662. If your church uses the 1662 Book of Common Prayer at any or all of its services and is located in Canada or the United States, Puerto Rico or one of the US territories, I would like to hear from you. Please leave your answers to the following questions in the comments section below.

• What is the name of your church?
• What is the name of its current pastor? Did he introduce the use of the 1662 Prayer Book? If not, who did?
• With which ecclesial body is it affiliated? If it is affiliated with the ACNA, please also give the name of jurisdiction and the cluster, diocese, district or network to which it belongs.
• What is its location?
• What is its email address?
• Which forms of service—Morning Prayer, Litany, Holy Communion, Evening Prayer, Baptism, Confirmation, etc.—from the 1662 Prayer Book does it use and at what services?
• What other worship aids—service books, hymnals, songbooks—does your church use with the 1662 Prayer Book?
• Further comments.

Please note that churches using the Reformed Episcopal Church’s new Prayer Book—The Book of Common Prayer of 2005—are not using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer but a service book that combines elements taken from both the 1662 Prayer Book and the 1928 Prayer Book. The result is a service book that differs significantly in its theology from the 1662 Prayer Book.

The purpose of this survey is to identify churches that actually use the classic Anglican Prayer Book and to learn more about them and their use of the 1662 Prayer Book. This includes new church plants in their early stages, meeting in a private home or other non-traditional setting. In conducting this survey, my intention is NOT to ascertain individual devotional practices or to start a discussion on the strengths and weakness of a particular service book or related topics but to obtain a picture of what churches are using the 1662 Prayer Book and how they are using it. Thank you for helping with this survey.

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