GAFCON 2013

[0:00] As I'm speaking, I'd like you to ask questions that come up in your mind. We'll have a little time at the end as well, but it's fine to ask questions as I'm going through as well, what I'm going to be talking about.

[0:13] Now, I'm going to do things a little bit backwards. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give a little bit of an introduction to what GAFCON is and was there, and then I'm going to go right into what I was going to do at the end before.

[0:30] That is to talk about the Nairobi commitment and what that might mean for us as well. There are two things we're going to be talking about broadly.

[0:49] We're going to talk about how this GAFCON is a movement of God, a real movement of the Holy Spirit. But inevitably, there are politics involved as well, as you can imagine, with the Anglican Communion and all that we've gone through in the last 10 years.

[1:09] Actually, a few more than 10 years. But certainly, the crisis really came to the surface here in the Diocese of New Westminster in 2002. I always remember when that happened, when we walked out of synod, because it was two days before my oldest son, Alexander, was born.

[1:26] So I know how long it's been since that, just by having his birthdays. So it's been a long time. But the thing that I do want to say, just by prefacing as well, is that GAFCON, the movement that I'm going to talk about, and what we are about in ANIC, there's a real similarity in that.

[1:50] There is very little looking back at this crisis that really has split the Anglican Communion, and largely a looking forward, looking forward to what God will do through the Anglican Communion in the world.

[2:07] The Anglican Communion is uniquely positioned to be a real powerful move of the gospel in the world.

[2:17] Partly, we have to thank the British Empire for that, because missionaries followed the merchants and those who were exploring, those who were expanding the British Empire, and they brought an evangelical faith to many parts of the world.

[2:37] And it was a faith that, because it was true, because it was the gospel of Jesus Christ, has borne incredible fruit over the last hundred years or so.

[2:52] And just to let you in on what that fruit is like, and this is one of my slides that I'll show later on, briefly. But I want to tell you about the Anglican Church growth that has happened in these places where these missionaries, you know, a hundred years or more ago, first brought the gospel.

[3:11] You have a place like Uganda. In 1970, so this is just 43 years ago, Uganda had 1.3 million Anglicans going to church on a Sunday.

[3:24] Today, there are 12 million Anglicans going to church on a Sunday. Now, I want to put that into perspective, in that the Anglican Church of Canada, which we left, has 100,000 Anglicans in church on a Sunday.

[3:42] And the United States has about 800,000 in church on a Sunday. And so here you have a church that has 12 million, and that's one of the provinces.

[3:53] Nigeria had 2 million Anglicans going to church on a Sunday in 1970. Today, they have 20 million going to church on a Sunday.

[4:05] 20 million. And that's out of a total population of Anglicans going to church on a Sunday, about 70 to 75 million in the world.

[4:17] And so just those two countries have almost half the Anglicans going to church on a Sunday, which is remarkable.

[4:27] These are the places where the gospel came. Sudan, I'm going to talk about Sudan a little bit later on. But Sudan, as you know from the news, has experienced horrific deprivation and warfare, violence, homelessness, famine, and persecution of the Christian church as well.

[4:51] And in that context, this is what's remarkable to me. Since 1970, it has been reported that about 2 million Christians have been killed in the past 43 years there in Sudan.

[5:06] 2 million Christians. During that time, the Anglican church grew from 1 million to 4 million. And you think about that in a place of such hardship that the church is flourishing with no resources, no resources whatsoever.

[5:25] And it is the power of the gospel that was brought originally by missionaries all those years ago. And, you know, the stories go on.

[5:37] The Kenya, where we were meeting, in 1970, had 587,000 Anglicans, 587,000. They have 5 million today.

[5:49] So there has been extraordinary growth in the church, in the work of the gospel, in the world. And what happened is that it came to light to the wider Anglican world, thanks, unfortunately, or maybe this is God's blessing, to our diocese, to this city of Vancouver.

[6:13] The old diocese of New Westminster really brought to light to the Anglican world what the agenda of liberal Anglicanism had in mind.

[6:26] And so what was in the dark was brought out into the light. And I think of David's sermon from last week when he talks about what fellowship is all about.

[6:37] And if there are people walking in darkness and calling what God calls sin, to call that a blessing, in other words, to lie about what the truth is, then there cannot be fellowship.

[6:50] And so what happened, inevitably, once that's brought to light, is that fellowship was broken. And back in 2008, there was going to be a Lambeth Conference.

[7:04] And the hope of the Global South was that there would be a real discipline about what had happened that was not going to materialize. So in the space of three months, something called GathCon was organized amazingly quickly, and it took place in Jerusalem.

[7:26] And was anybody here there in Jerusalem? There were a few people from... Jim, you were at Jerusalem, were you at GathCon? No, I wasn't there. Oh, you weren't there. David Short was there.

[7:37] The Edgertons were there. The Changs. Bronwyn. Bronwyn Short was there. But this was a real important time because it was a reaction.

[7:50] It was a response to this split in the Anglican world and not addressing the problems that clearly were taking place in it. And so what they did was to form together the bishops who were quite concerned, or a number of them, 200 or so bishops, to come there and to respond to what was happening with something called the Jerusalem Declaration.

[8:21] Now, we've had the Jerusalem Declaration out for people to read, and I just want to say something very, very simple.

[8:37] There is a statement that was made, and it was really a lot of work. It's amazing that it became something that was agreed upon by all of these delegates from all over the world.

[8:48] But there was a statement, and basically what it said, was it said that the Anglican Communion was threatened by a departure from the truth of the gospel, and that the existing instruments of unity, and there's four of them, by the way, in the Anglican Church.

[9:03] I don't know if you know this. I'll be interactive. Does anybody know what the four instruments, or one of the four instruments of unity in the Anglican Communion is? Anybody guess what one of them is?

[9:17] Sorry? Well, no, but these are people or organizations. Yes? It's a Lambeth Conference. Lambeth Conference is one of them.

[9:27] Every ten years, all of the bishops of the Anglican Communion get together. What's the second one? A second one is the Archbishop of Canterbury. And a third one is something called the Anglican...

[9:47] There you go. Consultative Committee? Council, yeah. ACC. Anglican Council. And what they do, Anglican Consultative Council, is it is dominated by liberals from the West, and it sets the agenda for what the Anglican Communion is doing.

[10:04] And this is a group that is responsible for a lot of the really disastrous decisions and directions and lack of discipline.

[10:14] And then there's a fourth one as well, which came into prominence about ten years ago or so. Well, you jumped ahead of me. That's the real one. But the fourth one is the primates.

[10:29] There are 37 primates, and they're just in charge of what's called a province. And many countries are a province made up of dioceses. So these are the four instruments.

[10:42] They have failed, or as they put it in that declaration, they were unable or unwilling to deal with the crisis.

[10:54] And so this group met together. There was about a thousand, mostly lay clergy and bishops in Jerusalem.

[11:05] And what they did was they claimed not to depart from the Anglican Communion, but to, and this is the important line to remember, to reform, to heal, and to revitalize the Anglican Communion and expand its mission to the world.

[11:19] And I love that phrase. This is what GAFCON is about from the very beginning. It is to reform and to heal and to revitalize the Anglican Communion, first of all, and second of all, to expand its mission to the world.

[11:35] And wonderfully, in the last five years, that has been happening. The first question that was asked at the first GAFCON, because it was taking place just before Lambeth, was, are you leaving the Anglican Communion?

[11:50] Are you leaving? And the answer always was, right from the very beginning, of course not. We are the Anglican Communion. How can we leave?

[12:01] And that is really the essence of what GAFCON is. They, we, are the true Anglican Communion. And, um, as Traf said, this is a true movement of unity.

[12:17] Because in the Bible, the unity that Jesus talks about is always unity in the truth. And so there is an extraordinary coming together of cultures, languages, different types of churchmanship, Anglo-Catholic, charismatic, evangelical, that are coming together under the same gospel.

[12:38] And it brings a unity and a purpose of mission, which is striking. I mean, to experience a conference like that is to live that out, sort of a microcosm of that unity.

[12:53] And it's an extraordinary thing. It's a gift that we have in the Anglican Church, GAFCON. Well, thirdly, what that first GAFCON did is that, that, um, Jerusalem Declaration is it grounded its authority on the primary authority of Scripture.

[13:10] Which, of course, this is what our problem had been here in Canada and the West, is that the authority of the Bible was undermined. And that was necessary in order to bring all kinds of innovation to compromise with the world, to take on beliefs that are contrary to what God reveals in the Bible.

[13:33] In order to do that, you have to undermine the authority of Scripture and tear it down. And what Jerusalem Declaration does is it grounds everything on that. And on the creeds and councils of the ancient church as well, which, of course, arise out of Scripture.

[13:49] And also, the Reformation Articles of Religion. It just, it's renewing that belief that it's been the strength of Anglicanism. And it puts it together in a contemporary statement of faith, which is the Jerusalem Declaration.

[14:04] And we had lots of copies out, and we can put more out as well. But I do urge you to look at that. It's a really wonderful document. It's something that will last a long time.

[14:14] It will be something that will be very prominent for the GAFCON movement. And then fourthly, it formed a GAFCON Primates Council. And these were primates in the Anglican Communion.

[14:28] And what they did, they set the agenda for what that mission movement will be. But they also invited the Anglican Church of North America in to the Anglican Communion in a significant way.

[14:41] Because, you see, what the Anglican Church of Canada wanted to say is that we had left Anglicanism. But what they were saying in Jerusalem is, no, you've actually come in to true Anglicanism by doing this.

[14:57] By standing up and walking out of Synod, you have walked into the center of Anglicanism, what it was meant to be about, which is a gospel movement and a gospel church.

[15:10] And so this is an extraordinary thing because they received official recognition and membership in the council by the time we came to Nairobi last month.

[15:25] And then finally, what they did in Jerusalem was they formed a network which is called the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. And this is something that St. John's will be a part of.

[15:39] It's something that includes churches and dioceses from all over the world that are together in fellowship by signing up, by saying the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement are what unites us.

[15:58] And I think that the thing that I find helpful about that statement is that it's an expression of what has been called mere Anglicanism, of what is really basic to Anglican faith and practice.

[16:14] And this is why such a diversity of churchmanship can be in such close fellowship with one another because they have a unity in the truth.

[16:26] So there is a bit of an overview of the background for this GAFCON taking place five years later after Jerusalem.

[16:38] And it's something that I find striking is that that was a reaction to what happened.

[16:49] But what they did is to lay the groundwork for a movement of the gospel into the world, which is really a gift. And we saw the fruits of this last month in Nairobi.

[17:03] We saw the fruits of that structure being made so that there's communication, there's a sense of fellowship, and a real direction saying this is a wake-up call.

[17:15] It is a wake-up call to the Anglican communion to take very seriously the work of the gospel and to also take seriously that there is such a thing as a false gospel.

[17:27] There is a false gospel that is being preached. And you have to name it. You know, we as Canadians are pretty, you know, we're pretty polite.

[17:38] We don't want to be too direct about saying something is false. But in this case, we are left with no choice. And the thing I found very refreshing about Gafcon is that was really clearly said we are dealing with a false gospel in the Anglican communion and we need to preach the true gospel and differentiate between the two.

[18:03] And that's why the word confessional comes up over and over again. because you are actually you are actually articulating with words very clearly what Christian belief is and what Anglicans believe as well.

[18:21] There was when I was when I was a student back in seminary we were talking about kind of what the agenda of liberals in the Anglican Church of Canada is and you see some of that by the way in some of the liturgical services but there was a very helpful saying that somebody told me that explains what was going on there and that is there was a principle that said symbols unite words divide and what they meant by that is if you can have symbols that people all agree on you can have unity because because people can pour different meanings into those symbols you're not you're not actually articulating what they mean whereas whereas words actually state very clearly this is what we believe and this is what is false well this is what is happening through Gafcon is there is a clear articulation of Christian belief and what that does is it revitalizes and you bring life and so

[19:27] Gafcon was a very lively conference it was very lively and we had the full expression of Christian services of Anglican services so this cathedral and I'll show you some pictures of the cathedral is a very it was a very traditional looking English kind of cathedral because of course Kenya has a long history of British influence and it's a gorgeous cathedral it's very impressive and so you know you could have been in England in a service the organ and a lot of traditional hymns although sung with great gusto those hymns were and it was you know and we had we had communion services that we would just see very as something very familiar in our 9 and 11 services but we also had you know we had morning prayer every morning in the conference center right next to the cathedral which held about 2,000 people and we had the liturgy of morning prayer but we also had music

[20:41] African music and and it was very very lively I mean you it's kind of like it's kind of like being at a Christian rave well maybe I was trying to figure out how do I compare it but it's great to see bishops dancing around and and and really it was like being at a party right it was it was it was joyous and the we also had in the morning teachings on Ephesians you know about a 40 minute 40 to 45 minute teaching on the book of Ephesians one chapter per day and that was just very life-giving too and there was interaction and there was you know people people are a little bit interact more interactive in the sermon than we are here and I'm not I'm not advocating this but you know there was a lot of amens and you know happily there was nothing that was disagreed on otherwise I'm sure they would have said no no no you're wrong but it was it was a a real a real celebration of the gospel on those mornings as well and because the again because of the

[22:01] British influence it was a very very um tasteful sort of way of having the schedule too we had tea about three times a day you know in addition to your in addition to the meals that we had they fed us very very well but they had this huge the the cathedral was a very large um uh physical plant with a number of buildings uh and they run everything very very well in Kenya at the very beginning of the Gathcon we uh the dean of the cathedral said you've all heard of African time we said yes he said well uh we're gonna run it according to a schedule that will be very very un-African it will be an un-African schedule and he could do that partly because that cathedral has 15 services on a Sunday which means uh and that's in several buildings of course because you can't have that many in a day in one building and what that means is that you have to be very very precise in how long the sermon is how long the music is uh how long uh the administration of communion is so they're on a on a tight schedule and uh and so they ran things in that way at that cathedral which was very impressive in fact it was the westerners who were to blame for messing up the schedule usually you know one too many interviews from the front uh that they wanted to push um but anyway they had they had tea you know in in the morning they had it uh before lunch and they had it before you went uh in the middle of the afternoon as well uh and in and so what that meant is there was an incredible social aspect to things where you connected with people from all over the world and there was always a great joy in meeting together and to talk about what god is doing uh and often as i mentioned in my sermon a couple weeks ago a deep sense of fellowship that was um pretty immediate you know that people you'd never met before uh there's a sudden um connection because of the gospel and uh so there really i i i i felt that at this gaff con you saw a little picture of heaven and a picture of heaven because of the fact of there was deep fellowship because christ was in their midst and because they had been saved by the same gospel of grace so there was this um there was this deep sense of unity that pervaded and a real sense of life and liveliness all of the time uh that we were together um and i and i think that that what may have been an overriding thinking for me was not only there's a picture of heaven but a real sense of hope in the future of the anglican church in the world too that that arose out of it um uh one of the things that i saw was leadership from all over the world being exercised in really remarkable ways so there were a number of speakers uh our speakers that were the the keynote sort of speakers on ephesians were from uh the united states from uh brazil uh from nigeria uh one was from sri lanka and he has a church in australia so you're sort of adding this up in every continent except for antarctica was represented in those five speakers there was five continents uh represented and um it was it was marvelous teaching uh and in between there were speakers on various um aspects of uh

[26:03] the anglican church as well as something called a mini conference that was led by different teachers from all over the world and in all of this i just saw a very godly and uh uh very very gifted leadership that was uh evident all over uh consistently and i thought this is uh this is remarkable this is this bodes very very well for the future of the anglican church uh in the world um now i want to uh hopefully this stuff is coming in about seven minutes but i want to first of all i want to ask i want to see if there's any questions and i'm going to go into a couple of the themes of the conference that were striking yeah harvey any uh on the broader pictures since you've gone into that so far any uh observers from the orthodox world or from rome uh no not as far as i know no that were present there no um that's a good question i i don't i don't remember i don't remember anybody being there from that background the uh the archbishop of canterbury uh had actually intent had asked to come to be part of it and then realized that there was a baptism of a certain young prince that took place in the middle that he had to be part of uh prince george was baptized in the middle of our conference uh but the archbishop of canterbury came at the very beginning uh and preached at the cathedral the day before the conference and he also met with the primates as well uh that were part of gafcon but um uh the other thing that happened there which is very interesting is that there was a state a state meeting gathering a luncheon actually with the president of nairobi and the primates the leaders of gafcon which they said was quite an extraordinary gathering because um uh because they they had to wait sort of an hour and a half past where they were supposed to be meeting with him but they ended up meeting with him for another hour and a half and you know it's very different in africa they they uh they they talked through things and they just talked about spiritual things as well and how that affects governments and countries and and kenya and at the end he the president asked them to pray for him and his leadership of the country and to spend time doing that so uh it was very much certainly in africa very much uh prominent uh internationally and and politically and so forth uh which was uh it was great to see at the very end of the conference um security as you know was an issue because of the bombing or because of the attack on the uh the mall at westgate and so we had all kinds of you know soldiers and police and uh uh they were heavily armed and at the end the chief of police uh he was brought up and he was thanked at the beginning at the front of the whole gathering for his work for us in the security and uh they presented him with a bible and he said uh and they said to him and now you can share with all your policemen the gospel of jesus christ and he said thank you very much i will um so there's uh you know there there was a very much it was it was a an event in the life of kenya too and that that part of africa that was taking place which was one of the reasons there was lots of security because it you know potentially could have been a target anyway uh long way of saying there weren't any roman catholic or orthodox people there as far as i knew uh but they have very much been in contact yeah there were greetings that were sent and so forth yeah yeah how about um people from southeast asia well

[30:03] that's a good question i there there's um here's where politics may come into play uh i got to know actually two of the bishops from um malaysia who were there with the blessing of the primate but the primate himself was not there and there's a bit of a history there um and the short story is that um initially the uh the the movement in the united states called the anglican mission in america uh which was a bit premature they they they ordained bishops and started alternative anglican churches in the united states way back um actually i can't remember the year but it was certainly before things happened here in new westminster um those the the people that came to the aid of the americans were from malaysia and so moses tay i don't know if you've heard of him or young ping chung were all um they were they were the primates from that area but they went ahead and did things without sort of gathering consensus with their bishops and there was a real worry about it there was a bit of a split about it and so the last two primates have been uh cautious even though they're very much friendly to gafcon and the thing this is where we get into the politics of things as well is that in the anglican world this there is something called the southern it is it is the um what is the phrase that they use um anyways it's the southern hemisphere church not global south yeah i kept thinking southern cone for some reason global south and you know that really overlaps largely what gafcon is um but there's a there's there's a hesitancy on some of them because they don't want to appear even appear as though there's uh they're breaking with the archbishop of canterbury at all and so anyway the uh the malaysian primate is very much part of that uh global south group and very friendly towards gafcon but was not there um so and that's an area that needs to be strengthened and renewed and the bishops that were there uh really were hoping that that would happen because they they see that as a real strengthening of their work of mission they're very uh mission minded planting churches and so forth and uh that's potentially a real huge area of growth in the future wasn't there a bishop that came to one of our conferences out in delta who was from was it indonesia or like it was just amazing work of mission that he was involved he was a bishop but anyway yeah never mind yeah well we've this is the thing there's been lots of connections with north america and uh and there's a real concern that they had there it has to do with internal um relationships there but there's there's a complete there is a complete agreement with uh gafcon and and its purposes uh by the global south by by them and as i said much of gafcon is is this is synonymous with global south most of the primates and bishops would be in both yeah yeah all of them and structurally then the relationship between gafcon and global south and acc yeah is that clear now or no well the acc you're talking about the anglican consultative council uh there's it be here's the thing to remember very important to remember about gafcon is that it is a movement and not a structure and we heard that over and over again it's a movement and not a structure so they were not attempting to uh build a separate structure what they are doing is that they know the

[34:04] acc is like uh a cork in a bottle as far as the the gospel going out into the world and so this is just getting on with the mission of the church without having to deal with the acc at all uh so um it's just really recognizing that it's irrelevant for the work of the gospel really the way that it is functioned because acc is really a dysfunctional um group even though it's very very powerful um they cannot they cannot make decisions of discipline they cannot make decisions about the direction the whole church will take but it can set an agenda whereby nothing can happen and the false gospel is masked so they're really uh it's running sort of parallel in a way now the other question the other part of that question was how does it relate to uh what was the other thing you said acc and the global south yeah gafcon and the global south as i said are are really um they overlap in in a lot of ways there the agenda is the same the concerns are the same um but what i would say with the globe the gafcon is it's um uh it's it's actually calling the liberal church on what is false and it is it is saying no to certain directions that the uh liberal anglican church is going uh and so what they will do and here's what i think the biggest difference is uh what they do and you'll see this in the dot in the um nairobi commitment is they will cross boundaries in order that the mission of the church can go forward so our example is the anglican church in north america you know they provide oversight they they uh they also are in communion with us and not with the anglican church of canada or the united states so you've got half the anglicans in the world at least that are not in communion with the united states until they repent same with same with canada the episcopal church and the anglican church of canada um and so that's a big difference with the global south is they they stand up and they say we will provide oversight for those churches that are experiencing persecution or deprivation because of their belief in the gospel they won't do it for uh churches or diocese that just aren't getting along or they don't like the bishop they will only do it in cases like ours where the gospel has been compromised um but that's that's one of the big differences is that the gaff con primates and bishops will take that step and they will come into an area like the united states or canada and say we recognize anic and acne yeah yes like nowadays like in this world now does the archbishop of canterbury have a lot of power to influence you know against the liberal well yeah the archbishop of canterbury does come from a evangelical background he's very associated with holy trinity brompton where alpha came from uh but the archbishop of canterbury is a very very political position you know because you are very much involved in the politics of england not just the church of england and um uh that's that makes things difficult now he does not have any kind of authority as far as being able to have jurisdiction over areas he has what's called a moral authority so he can influence things that way of what he's lending his

[38:07] support to and what he's sort of recognizing but he cannot he he can't discipline he can't tell people you're out of the communion or in the communion or yes and what happened was that when lambeth conference was first formed back in 1867 by the way canadians were the ones who asked that that it happened lambeth the canadian church they deliberately for better for worse said this is not going to be a gathering that can make decisions for the anglican communion um that can that has the kind of authority to discipline or to set the direction now what it can do is it can make statements um that this is what we all believe and so there was a very important statement back in 1998 on human sexuality which affirmed the biblical view that sexuality is is meant by god to take place within the context of a man and woman in a marriage i mean that's simplifying it but uh that's where you know things really started shaking up because that's where the the strength of the gafcon and global south uh bishops came to the fore they realized oh here the the center of anglicanism is in africa it's in asia it's in south america not in england uh but anyway that's a long way of saying that the anglican the archbishop of canterbury does not have the kind of authority like say a pope would have that can determine well the thing is this is what's happened in the anglican world is that it has grown in the last 150 years and you can see those numbers i gave you the whole landscape has changed whereas most anglicans were in england and so yes there was a great deal of power now it's just a small percentage of the anglican world it's become an international church uh and you know the power of the church in far as numbers is residing in a place like nigeria or in uganda yeah yeah still a lot of evangelicals there i mean in england yes there are i don't want to i don't want to say it's the spiritual wasteland there's lots of evangelicals in england yeah yeah yes central africa were they at gafcon or is central what is central africa well there's the central africa republic but there's also there's a province of central africa which includes a place like malawi and um congo um zimbabwe no one of the issues of gafcon this is why it was remarkable that you had people from all over is the cost of getting to nairobi from all over the world is is really you can't you can't even reach the idea of doing it most places you know it's the cost is prohibitive for somebody living in congo or somewhere where there's where there's no money and so what gafcon has done it was to raise money for some delegates to come from from myanmar from fiji or from there was some from congo there was you know they're from all over and that made it really helpful but we know that there were many many people who would be interested in coming who could not come people who were invited that could not come because of cost uh and um you know that which is amazing because we had 40 countries were represented um so yeah there weren't there weren't um many people from a place like zimbabwe uh or or congo uh this these are the countries that make up zambia these are the countries that make up central africa uh province yeah yes you have to go down and put pressure on the sunday school

[42:13] they're coming up and i'll show you those pictures the sunday school has the cord that i need and the sunday school are using it and they have promised that as soon as they're done which is any minute now they're gonna walk through the door set it up and so that's why i'm doing the uh yeah uh there was there was at least two delegates from china there was no bishops from china itself that were there yeah yes harvey yes yes yes wow wow it would be well i i think that it's very unlikely i mean all of these have uh different liturgies there's a similarity uh but uh i don't yeah i don't see how that could happen you also have different languages as well of course that these are all in now that's the the um you i mean really that's a good question that's a good question we're having we're having a hard enough time in the anglican church in north america as you know getting getting that symbol together um but you know what was interesting is that we had a different liturgy every morning um from the different countries and same at the communion service at the beginning at the end of the cathedral and there was a real kind of basic similarity to them like you felt you were in an anglican service even though there were differences in them and uh the new liturgies on the morning prayer anyway uh a couple of them were done and they were actually good they they were uh which i was surprised by um i mean they were shortened a bit because they had this long talk and lots and lots of music but uh yeah i anyway i i don't see that in the near future yeah yeah yes john just two things uh gumbel who started alpha he said in england that christians has grown in london 70 percent but the start of the limbo movement i've heard from uh dr victor shepherd a former presbyterian minister then united and present but he said this fridrick schein meifer in the 1800s was more popular to read than luther luther is second popular and then methodists and presbyterians came from canada uh and got inspired in the united church in canada for him has that affected the anglican church of canada you think oh yeah yeah frederick schleiermacher is the father of of liberal thinking and uh um yes he was a 19th century um theologian uh liberal theologian yeah yeah but i i want to just say uh uh thank you jason the the uh the sunday school has come through here and we'll see whether it actually works or not but i just want to say uh i want to talk for four minutes about the um the the uh nairobi commitment that we um have because this has to with the question and i do invite you to listen or to read it as well but the first thing there's nine things i'll go through very quickly 30 seconds each one is that they committed themselves again to the jerusalem declaration and statement that i talked about earlier and then secondly they committed themselves to supporting mission locally and globally including outreach to muslims and this was an issue because um many anglicans are living in areas where there is uh there are significant numbers of muslims uh and what i found surprising was the issue was not conservative muslims in fact the relationships

[46:18] between christians and conservative muslims are often very very good and uh there is great conversation about the gospel and yes as a result many muslims become christian uh this is part of the reason that fundamentalist militant islam uh moves into areas because they're really concerned about the power of the gospel and uh are you plugging into no we can use this one yeah yeah because i have it on a flash drive so um uh so the problems come in when militant muslims come in and begin uh violent um actions against the church and so the question is you know how do we deal with this and so there was a real commitment to uh to do this um and as part of mission uh and you'll see how mission-minded this is there's a particular attention that they wanted to do to mobilize young people for ministry and leadership so it was a real theme of training we need to be able to train people uh in in the whole world for leading the church and teaching and leading mission and then thirdly um that's why they committed themselves to a greater priority of theological education which is very important they they really recognize as a high priority the need for lay leaders and clergy to be well trained okay you don't need to as long as it's uh yeah yeah if you can go to uh finder get rid of this there we go okay thank you um fantastic good good good well you'll get to see some pictures here in a second thank you jason appreciate it um so they want people to be able to read the bible very faithfully and then fourthly they they committed themselves to defending the essential truths of the biblical faith even when defending those truths threatens the existing structures and that's the part where politics come into play because what they're saying is is that they will provide oversight in cases where provinces and diocese compromise the biblical faith and then they committed themselves to support uh uh defend the apostolic truth in diocese that are marginalized and so they committed themselves to helping out in brazil and a diocese that's there and even in england something called the anglican mission in england for those places in the church of england where there is a real opposition to orthodox clergy and churches um the sixthly the sixth of the the nine commitments is to teach about god's good purposes for marriage and and uh singleness so uh you know in all of that they're they're teaching about wanting to strengthen healthy marriages and families and support people who are being faithful in that way now the other thing that was important is that there was transformation that they talked a lot about uh that they're committing themselves to work for the transformation of society through the gospel a lot of them are dealing with violence violence against women and children violence against people who are vulnerable uh they're also dealing with economic deprivation and so they're talking about uh wanting to be able to address those things and then finally to be a voice for persecuted christians which was a real theme because these guys were experiencing a lot of them incredible suffering because of the gospel and then finally they committed themselves to continuing this global fellowship of confessing anglicans and to actually put membership and staffing and financing on a new basis so that they can really work as a very effective instrument for the anglican union to renew it and to reform it and that's what they want to do they want to renew anglicanism and they have a huge base to

[50:20] do it with because they have many people going to church they have good leadership wonderful leadership and they have a real commitment to the gospel and then they committed to meet again at the next gaff con which they are um hoping will be much earlier than five years they felt five years was much too long okay so i'm going to put that up here and i'm going to show you a few slides um okay okay so as you can as you can tell um okay i'm going to do an abbreviated version of this and hopefully it'll show up here but you can you can hear from what i'm saying about that jerusalem declaration that it's first of all it's confessional and uh you know because of what it says it believes it's very missional secondly and uh it's transformational transformation in society and it's spiritual it's not a political structure um this is different okay so here's nairobi um a view from my window this is the uh kenyan supreme court there but it's a very odd looking city as you can see and uh that took place there's the cathedral uh where we were and you can see how it's beautiful and um and i want to just play something for you because this gives you a sense of what what um hmm that won't work i'll have to go on uh these are the anic delegates uh as well so there were and uh spouses as well were part of that so that's the group from canada it was actually a fairly big big contingent uh there's the inside of the cathedral that's our communion service beginning uh there's there's the side of it as well of the cathedral and uh you know there's buildings it's a it's a huge uh area i mean it's really uniquely situated to be able to do this they had a coffee house in the premises as well i thought this might be a good idea for us if we're building a church and there's the inside of it and here's our um this is the our security and security was an issue there you know we all had to go through metal detectors and everybody had to id and we felt very safe there um now unfortunately whoops no i wonder is the is the sound on at all is the sound on over there jason can you is the and here's uh you know here's here's at the uh uh i'll have to look play it through here i thought i'd give you a little taste of what some of the music was and uh so this is uh the some of the music leaders from the cathedral i'm going to start doing that in front of our church he was very uh and uh there's a little surprise at the end of this that you may recognize as well

[54:26] this uh this just lasts another minute or so i'm sorry i have no sound i don't know why that sound doesn't work but it's all it's all very it just comes out very naturally whereas i think us from north america it's more of a learned uh and the great thing was there was a real mix of uh of music there were there um english hymns and african songs all mixed together and all sung very loudly you can see uh bishop dawn is over there yeah this is uh this is part of anglican worship and the uh the uh song readers they had something different on every day that sort of matched it was almost like the so that's the conference center that they had and seats about 2 000 people and it was pretty full every day oh okay it didn't show the end of it anyway there was a good yeah i was doing a close-up of the drums because i wanted to show felix

[56:47] I didn't start this over, did I?

[57:05] Oh, I did. Okay. Sorry. I'll move on. At the end of it, they had Felix was there. So here's a picture of him. This is Felix in his very retiring outfit that he's got, being very subdued.

[57:24] So it was good to see him there. There was one of the little boys who was the, you know, there was poverty there, too. He was the son of the caretaker. But look at his toys there.

[57:36] I showed my boys that, but that's their toy. That's his only toy. It was great to see him. Have anybody ever heard of Janani Lawum before? Archbishop of Uganda, who was martyred in the 70s when Idi Amin was in.

[57:54] Anyway, that's his daughter. She was only two years old when he was martyred. But he's a very well-known person in Africa, her dad was. And this is one of the archdeacons from Nigeria, who we're friends with.

[58:10] This is an archbishop from Nigeria. These archbishops are sometimes targeted. And another archbishop, they have 13 of them, it's so big, and his friend, was kidnapped for seven days, just two months ago.

[58:26] And they didn't know whether he'd be killed. He was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists. And these guys, these bishops, especially the ones who have been there for a while, they have all experienced horrific sorts of suffering.

[58:39] So people in his province, I talked to one of his clergy, and three times this happened where they're in a church service, and suddenly Muslim fundamentalists come into the building and start, well, they can see them coming, and they all flee.

[58:58] And they hide in the bush, and they watch as these guys come into the building and light it on fire, and it burns in front of them. And that was not an uncommon story in central and northern Nigeria.

[59:15] There was a safari as well. Right within, almost within the city limits of Nairobi, in fact, you can see some buildings here, there's an incredible national park.

[59:26] So we went for two or three hours one afternoon at the end of the day, all 1,400 delegates and buses, and went driving through this park. And it's extraordinary.

[59:37] You know, you can see, you can see the houses up there, but all these wild zebras, and it's remarkable. Yes, big water buffalo, rhino, you know, everything there.

[59:48] And there's the Rift Valley, which is not far from Nairobi. I mean, it's a beautiful country. And it was a real honor to be having this Gafcon gathering in Kenya.

[60:04] It was an honor for the Africans, but it was also an honor for us to be there as well and to be received in. These are some of the themes of Gafcon, that discipleship was a really big theme, to talk about how do we grow in Christ.

[60:19] And repentance, our own repentance as Christian leaders and as Christians. There was a lot of talk about the East African revival and how massive an effect that had on Christians in Africa.

[60:35] And this started in the 1920s, and it really, it would sort of ebb and flow right into the 70s. And many, many Africans that were there were directly or indirectly affected by that revival.

[60:50] And the focus of that revival was really, it was repentance. It was confession of sin. It was a focus on the cross of Jesus Christ. And it's remarkable how many leaders came from that, how the church grew.

[61:02] There was a real emphasis on suffering. I'll tell you one more story about suffering. One of the things that happened there is that I met a bishop who said, who talked about a dilemma that he had.

[61:17] In that in his, in his diocese, which has lots of Muslims, Muslims were getting converted all of the time. It was growing. And what happened was that it became a target for militant Muslims.

[61:33] And so, in this one parish he was talking about, every rector that he sent there was killed. You know, it might be after a year or two or within months, but he had, I think, three rectors that were killed.

[61:47] And so his dilemma was, do I send another rector in there? And it's a dilemma because the Christians want a Christian leader there.

[61:59] And the Muslims who are living there are responding to the gospel. But does he send somebody there knowing that he and his family will suffer and perhaps die? And that's not an unusual thing for these bishops to be dealing with.

[62:14] So, and along with that is this deep sense of mission. You know, the privilege of having the gospel and bringing it, bringing it into people's lives. And as I said, training was a real emphasis too.

[62:25] That's a real need in a growing church. And I think that this is something that we, you know, I think of all of these things. And marriage and family, I think these are, these are themes at St. John's as well.

[62:38] These are things that we want to be about and are about as well. And so what they did was they had a mini conference and they had a variety of different themes on that too.

[62:53] Now I want to, okay, I have about 15 minutes. So I think I just want to, yeah, here's a, here's one more.

[63:09] I'll just show 10 seconds of this. That means Jesus is Lord. That means Jesus is Lord. So that's their music director there at the cathedral.

[63:34] So, but I wanted, I wanted to, I really, I'm going to, I'm going to pray this prayer at the end of the time that we have.

[63:48] We have about 10 more minutes left. But this is a, this is a prayer that really, I think is, is, speaks very closely.

[63:59] It's interesting because it's a prayer that's been around in the prayer book for a while. And, and liberals have used it, have misused it. But it is a prayer that I found really, really applicable to, to GAPCOM.

[64:11] And it says this, it says, Oh God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery by the effectual working of your providence.

[64:26] Carry out in tranquility, the plan of salvation. And, you know, this is a prayer that we have for a number of these places that are experiencing violence. We're praying for peace so that the plan of salvation will be worked out.

[64:40] Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down, and I think a lot of that is the Anglican church, are being raised up. And things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

[65:05] And this is, this is, this is, I think, a prayer for the whole church. And, you know, Harvey asked the question about our relationship with Catholics and Orthodox as well.

[65:16] And the situation is, is this is a prayer for the whole church, not just the Anglican church. And the relationships between Gafcon churches and the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, are very, very good.

[65:33] They have good relationships. And there are, of course, differences that take place within countries. But there is a real, often a very cooperative relationship in these places because the gospel is going out into places that are difficult.

[65:46] Very difficult. They're, they're, they're suffering together. So anyway, I'm going to pray that prayer. If you guys can read it, pray it with me at the end of our time.

[65:57] And I just want to put up there so you're thinking about it before we pray it as well. So, now, does anybody have any questions, more questions about, about, about, about Gafcon?

[66:12] There's one, there's one more thing I wanted to talk about. And that is what it means for us now. What does it mean for us? And maybe what I'll do is I'll, whoops, now I've got to go all through it.

[66:28] Okay. Okay.

[66:41] Okay. Okay. So, what does Gafcon mean for us?

[66:53] And thinking about St. John's as well. Well, and I thought of a few things, but the first thing I think of is strong and, strong encouragement and hope for Anglican ministry.

[67:05] Really strong encouragement and hope. Because we tend to see our immediate context. And it's not, it's not very pleasant to look at. You see the real destruction of liberal thinking.

[67:17] But strong encouragement and hope for Anglicanism as a whole. Because the, the, the vast majority of Anglicanism love the Lord Jesus and are about the mission of the gospel.

[67:29] So, we, we're part of that. And the second thing is, is that it means that we are integrated into a deep and worldwide fellowship of Anglicans. It's amazing still how many people know about St. John's even, particularly in our situation.

[67:44] But there is a real sense of being welcomed into their fellowship and knowing that we have been made orphans because of what has happened in North America. It's a wonderful thing to have that connection worldwide.

[67:56] And the third thing is, is that we're part of an Anglican movement of the gospel. And I think we can be affirmed that the gospel work that St. John's is about and wants to have as a priority is exactly what the priorities of the, the vast majority of Anglicanism is.

[68:13] And we're, and there's some implications of that too. Fourthly, it means we're accountable to this fellowship of brothers and sisters to guard and share the gospel of Jesus from the Bible.

[68:26] We're actually accountable to them to do that. Which is a very important thing. And that, and fourth and fifthly, that discipleship is a priority that we share with Anglicans.

[68:39] This is something that we want to be about at St. John's and have been about as well. And the last three things I wanted to just, they're more, they're action. It means for us that we have an opportunity to join the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans.

[68:54] And these are, these, this is the organization of churches that have signed on to the Jerusalem Declaration and want to work together for the gospel. And secondly, there's a need for us to pray and work for the aid of the persecuted church.

[69:08] This is important for us to pray and somehow to be involved in the work of, of the suffering church. We suffer in different ways, but there's a real deprivation that families, clergy, lay people in churches are experiencing.

[69:27] I mean, I, I heard dozens, dozens of stories of a real deprived life. And a guy named Ben Quash, he said, he was asked the question, well, doesn't living in an area where you're persecuted, doesn't suffering make it more difficult to share the gospel?

[69:46] He said, no, it doesn't, he says, suffering makes life more difficult, doesn't make evangelism more difficult, is the way that he put it.

[69:57] But we need to pray for the persecuted church to be aware. And then finally, there's a, there's a call here to be active partners in mission worldwide, which St. John's has been committed to.

[70:08] But there is a real, you know, it is, it is a real mission partnership that we can be part of, that GAFCON is, is, has presented us with.

[70:21] And there's lots and lots of opportunities, and we just really have to choose what those are. The guys in Malawi are very much sympathetic to GAFCON too.

[70:32] And we will send them to the next GAFCON as well. It was expensive for them to go to. So anyway, so that's, that's, that's some of the implications for this today.

[70:46] And certainly the trustees have looked at the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in the Jerusalem Declaration and have affirmed that as well. So.