Given the Anglican Mission's focus on the 130 million unchurched, how can we keep our message accessible to culture while preserving the Truth?

We need to balance the occasions of proclamation with the opportunity of teaching to smaller groups. Teaching in small groups allows for a strong element of practicum and going deeper, but this doesn't conflict with standard preaching occasions, celebrating the Sacraments and so forth. There is some value in divisions or levels of such classes, but be careful. In the old model of a one room school, all levels learned while one grade was being taught. Don't allow these classes to be too homogeneous - those in various levels of understanding will learn from each other. Steel sharpens steel. Churches shouldn't segregate too strongly - let people choose small groups voluntarily and give opportunities to re-group for different study projects, perhaps allowing six to eight weeks for each topic.

How can Anglican Mission congregations avoid the pitfalls of going broad but not deep in discipleship?

Sunday sermons won't do the job, and that's why small groups are so important. In this context, we can teach others to know what Jesus taught and to put faith into action - to learn to minister, thereby affecting the home and the community.

What is the one piece of wisdom or counsel you would give to a young church planter (20 something) looking at a 40-50 year ministry?

Be sure you have periods of solitude and silence regularly - once a month. Christ took times apart, and if you follow ministers who succeed, you will find that they took their time apart which helped them hold onto their character, have fruitful ministries and raise healthy families.

This is the first time in history that five distinct generations are alive at once. What does this mean for the Church?

Be sure that small groups are cross-generational. We need relaxed gatherings of varied ages that mirror the days when three generations of families lived in one house. We need to nurture real community and being part of the Body. We take young children out of church, and we separate the church by ages. Children learn to be adults by being with adults. It's a tragedy that we have lost the sense of multi-generational community.

If you were to give voice to the Church's greatest vulnerability today in terms of its effectiveness in proclaiming and giving witness to the Gospel, what would it be?

We have accepted the displacement of Christian teaching from the domain of knowledge - the Bible is a book of knowledge. The Church is responsible for teaching believers to keep and hold fast to everything Christ taught. We are called to witness to what we know and such knowledge should result in transformation such that people under our influence are becoming Christ-like. We lack a theology of discipleship, of spiritual formation. This is the Church's greatest vulnerability.

The Wave is the quarterly magazine of the Anglican Mission. To subscribe, visit the website http://www.theamia.org/subscribe/home.

---Cynthia Brust heads the Dept. of Communications for the Anglican Mission in the Americas