Reasonable Christian Ministries

As I believe God is calling me to full-time ministry, I am praying that God will provide a way to establish an official ministry and to plant a church here in the Wauchula, Florida area.  For those who wish to contribute to this endeavor I sincerely ask for your prayers and your support.  Anyone would would like to be a part of this church plant and ministry as a board member, advisor, and prayer partner should feel free to call me at 863-375-2948 or e-mail me at cranmer1959 DOT hotmail DOT com.  I am in need of like-minded Christians to stand with me in the gap for the doctrines of grace and the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Anyone who would like to donate financially to this effort may send your check to:

Charlie J. Ray, Reasonable Christian Ministries.

P.O. Box 731

Bowling Green, Florida 33834-0731

As of yet I have not applied for an official tax status with the IRS so your donations are not tax deductible.  However, it takes time to establish such a status with the IRS.  Know that your donations will be used solely to support the establishment of Reasonable Christian Ministries and a church to be called Sovereign Grace Anglican Church, Wauchula, Florida.

Regarding spiritual accountability I will be initially submitting to the Heritage Anglican Network and the Anglo-Reformed Movement.  Also, I  am consulting with Christ Church Longwood where my church membership was before I moved to Wauchula, Florida.

I have decided to call the apologetics and theology based ministry, Reasonable Christian Ministries, based on Romans 12:1-2 and Isaiah 1:18,

"Come now, and let us reason together," Says the LORD, "Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18 NKJ)

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:1-2 NKJ)

The burden God is placing on my mind and heart is to plant a truly reforming and reformed Anglican congregation here in the Wauchula, Florida area.  The emphasis will be a low church worship and liturgy utilizing the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as interpreted by the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.  The confessional basis for a Reformed or Calvinist Anglican congregation is known as the "Anglican Formularies".    (See:  Thirty-nine Articles:  The Historic Basis of Anglican Faith).

It is necessary for a Reformed witness to be established in every city.  Since the mainline Episcopal Church has gone liberal and ordains homosexuals and women as ministers and consecrates homosexual and women bishops, it is unreasonable to join with such congregations here in the United States.  The other Anglican or Episcopal denominations here, such as the Anglican Church in North America, are more conservative on moral issues but theologically are unreformed, Anglo-Catholic/Tractarian, and openly hostile toward truly Evangelical and Reformed Christians.  If one joins their congregations or the denominations (i.e. the continuing Anglicans are Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian in general), one is expected to go along with their heterodox teachings without protesting.  Obviously, Anglo-Catholicism and the Reformed Anglican faith are mutually incompatible:

In the sluggish waters of one of our western streams, a friend of mine found last year a wondrous water-lily. In its broad leaf, and in its perfect blossom, he recognized at a glance the lotus that Egyptian monarchs sculptured on their tombs. He naturally asked what brought it here? What strange causes could have conspired together to have taken from Egypt's torrid clime the symbol of a despotism that nourished five thousand years ago, and have transplanted it to our northern skies, to our modern civilization, and to our atmosphere of freedom and equality? So, to-day, if we have transplanted Episcopacy--Episcopacy that, I do not hesitate to say, has been, in every age since the Reformation, more or less, in proportion to the degree that the truth has been suppressed or developed--has been the symbol of despotic power and ecclesiastical arrogance--into the atmosphere of evangelical religion; if it is the same historic Church, and yet changed in its circumstances and relations, we naturally expect the question: "Why?" I do not shrink from meeting it. I answer, that reform in the Episcopal Church is the direct result in the first place of intellectual and spiritual growth. "Two nations are in thy womb---two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels," was God's declaration to Rebekah before the birth of Esau and Jacob. The same strange statement could have been made to the Episcopal Church from the very hour of the Reformation down to the present day. Two systems, the exact opposite of each other, have been struggling for supremacy within her. The Ptolemaic theory in regard to the movements of the planets around their centre, and that of Sir John Herschel, are not more utterly irreconcilable than these two systems of Theology. I stand here to-night, and I make the assertion without the fear of contradiction, that the gospel that my dear brother (who has said some hard things about me) preaches in Trinity Church, is as utterly irreconcilable with that which is preached in the cathedral on West Washington street, as these two systems of astronomy. They are utterly and wholly and radically different from each other. Now I can make discordant elements in chemistry blend together. I can take two substances that struggle in the crucible, and, by the mystic processes of the art I have learned, can make them combine in perfect peace. But here there is no possible accord. If the doctrine of justification by faith in the blood of Jesus, is the truth of God, then justification by sacraments is a lie, whose author is the Father of lies. There is no possible ground on which to stand between the two. If the one is true, the other is false. Like the Arve and the Rhone, like the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence, the same external boundaries may indeed contain them, but their waters refuse to mingle.

The theory of the High Church party, down at its very foundation, is that, while the Bible is indeed the inspired word of God, it is to be received by the people, only with the authoritative interpretation of the Church. In other words, if I believe that the Bible teaches me a certain truth, and yet my minister tells me that that truth is not in the Bible. I must accept the teaching of my pastor, because he is the representative of the Church, rather than the plain unvarnished statements of the Scripture that God inspired.

The theory of the Low Church party, on the other hand, has ever been that which Chillingworth announced long years ago--that the sole rule of faith and practice is the Bible and the Bible alone; that Scripture is to be interpreted to the Christian conscience, not by Churches, not by Councils, not by creeds, not by confessions of faith, not by doctrines of any human authority whatever, but by the Spirit of God sought in prayer.

Between these two systems there can be no harmony. To reconcile them is as impossible as to make truth and error a perfect unit. But, if both these opposites had remained dormant, the work of Reform might have been indefinitely postponed.

  (See:  Charles Cheney:  The Reformed Episcopal Church).

This is the reason I resigned from my ordination as a deacon with the Reformed Episcopal Church in 2004 or so.  The REC is no longer faithful to its original reason for being, namely opposing Anglo-Catholicism and standing for Evangelical and Reformed teaching and the Five Solas of the Protestant Reformation.  The REC has now completely re-interpreted The Declaration of Principles upon which the denomination was originally founded.

In light of the above, please sincerely pray about what God would have you to do in support of the planting of a sovereign grace Anglican church here in Wauchula, Florida.  If you live in another area maybe you would like to pray that God would establish such a church in your area?