Discovering the Ancient Paths

Stand by the roads, and look,    and ask for the ancient paths,where the good way is; and walk in it,    and find rest for your souls. Jer 6:16

As I wrote in an earlier post, one of the driving factors of this journey has been the search for roots and tradition - for meaning from heritage. In 2001 Terry Virgo, leader of Newfrontiers - a 'new church' charismatic movement of which our church was a part - released a book called No Well Worn Paths. Part spiritual autobiography and part ecclesiological manifesto the book describes how Virgo developed a conviction that there was a need to 'restore' the Church. He saw this as local, informal gatherings with an emphasis on preaching and charismatic manifestations.

At the same time, my wife and I were talking about the scripture above from Jeremiah 6:16 - to 'ask for the ancient paths' (some translation render it 'uncover the ancient paths'). The disparity between what the leader of our Church movement was writing and what we were discovering was stark, and the timing of it seemed almost prophetic.

Around the same time I was working on an article providing an overview of books on Church history, and was able to spend a week absorbing some of the best scholarship in print writing about the origins of the Church. It was, without wanting to indulge in hyperbole, an epiphany. Episcopal structures, Apostolic Succession, the Mass and even the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome were all clearly there to be seen in the writings of the earliest Church Fathers.

Terry Virgo's ecclesiology was the logical outworking of Protestantism - independent, ahistorical and esoteric. Our path was moving in a different direction and the divergence had never been clearer. Within a couple of years we had rejoined the local Church of England church ("at least we're only one step removed from the original Church" as my wife put it), and started to embrace a more historical and rooted spirituality.