GAFCON: Dawn in Jerusalem

It’s amazing how a group of Christians can get into small groups and listen to each other! This must be driving +Schori and her followers nuts. I am hopeful that a Communion will come out of this. It will not be as it was but that is a good thing. I do believe that whatever emerges is better than what we had a week ago and stronger. I will continue to pray for those going to Lambeth. Their small groups wont be as amazing and full of the Holy Spirit. They will be tense.

I hope somebody, at some point, can make some comparisons between the small groups here and at Lambeth. There could be some very pointed differences—but we simply have to see.

It will make such a difference if those in the US can find and understand something a little more concrete in this GAFCON Communique.  There have been so many conversations and waiting parties.
I would also hope that somewhere in the communique it states that by virtue of how TEC is operating, it is that body (TEC) that has left the Communion and would appear to wish not to have a relationship with most of the rest of the provinces in the Communion.  This must be the reason they are defrocking priests for abandoning The “Episcopal” Communion.
I offer prayers for courage and strength as the GAFCON participants forge ahead with a new direction and future for our Anglican identity.

+Matt’s last paragraph describes a healthy holy Communion structure and we can pray and hope this will come about. 

It can only happen if the GAFCON leaders and participants are sincere in their desire to allow Christ to be Lord, to rule and reign over them and their flocks.  (John 15:5)

No Church entity, small or large, should be governed as we have seen in the last 5 years with liars, unrepentant, unbelievers and people with unscriptural agendas in places of influence and authority.  Other churches are so infected.  Nearly half of the UMC and the Presbyterian CUSA organizations are so populated as we have seen by their conferences’ votes. 

The last 5 years are the culmination of a century of compromising the Gospel and the structures of the organizations:
- to haute theologians’ theories,
- for the sake of false peace in the parishes and organizations
- by installing compromised and unbelieving clergy and bishops.

A Church in which compromise and votes affect doctrine and pastoral practice will rot away at its core and cannot be a true Church.  Grace and mercy must be accompanied and governed by Truth and doctrine.

In the last century in Christ’s Church has the culture to invade, influence, to erode and devalue the Scriptural definitions of marriage, man, woman, love, truth and even life itself. 

But, thanks be to God, He is forgiving and will wash us when we are truly repentant.  GAFCON is an opportunity for Anglican leaders to repent and start over afresh hearing the Lord, making Him King and Head of HIS Church.

GAFCON participants - Thank you for being willing to be vessels, servants, builders. 
Listen and Heed The Word of The Lord.  Be filled to overflowing with His Spirit and His Word. 

Through Him and for Him - build a good seaworthy Boat. 

May the Holy Ship Anglican, built in the beginning, to accomodate and facilitate the Second Great Reformation and Revival of the 21st Century, be as sturdy, commodious, seaworthy, storm resistant, water-tight as Noah’s Ark and as Holy and untouchable, pure, sure, true and powerful as the Ark of the Covenant.  May She be beautiful, capable, wonderful, well able to navigate the waters of this earth until Her Lord returns.  In His Name and for His sake, Amen

#2, As to a comparison of these small groups and the Indaba groups planned for Lambeth, I think there are several key issues.

1) The groups at GAFCON start with a basic shared theological perspective and commitment.  There is a unity of belief among the participants in the small groups at GAFCON that is not going to be true of Lambeth.

2) The overall idea may be the same.  As someone else commented elswhere (T19?) These could be REAL “indaba groups” in action.

3) The crucial questions though concern how the groups are constituted, the facilitation of the groups, and the process of gathering and reporting on feedback from the groups.  (See the analysis by BabyBlue posted here as an entry on SF earlier in the week.)  Unfortunately, the Anglican Communion Office doesn’t have a good track record on these things.  It is easy to be cynical about the groups at Lambeth, that they will look more like what we’ve come to see in the US at HoB meetings or General Conventions.

Clearly, the Indaba method CAN work.  But it can also apparently be subverted as well.  It looks like it all depends on what the goals are of the organizers.  If the organizers truly want honest feedback and a true group decision, perhaps Indaba really works.  (Note: No one has actually publicly called the GAFCON groups Indaba groups.)  But I don’t think there’s a problem with such small groups if the leadership is sound.

We shall see what emerges from GAFCON…, and eventually from Lambeth.

VGR will be participating in a sexual agenda-sponsored conference in Wales, says The Archbishop of Wales:

“The archbishop met the bishop at a conference in New Orleans.  He added: “He’s a very warm, holy, individual. I had lunch with him one day.”
Dr Morgan also accepted that as Archbishop of Wales he is able to take part in events that his predecessor Dr Rowan Williams - now Archbishop of Canterbury - cannot.

He said: “I’m sure that’s the case. You can do things as Archbishop of Wales you can’t do as Archbishop of Canterbury.”

Dr Morgan did not fear that his participation in the conference in Hertfordshire with the US bishop, organised by the Modern Churchpeople’s Union, would cause a split in the Church in Wales. He said: “We haven’t got the extremes of opinion in Wales that are present even in the Church of England.”

The problem is not that VGR will be there, it is that the Archbishop of Wales will be and has expressed the sentiments above.

6.  +Morgan showed how much he had his finger on the pulse of the Church in Wales with his failed attempt to railroad through women bishops without protection for traditionalists.  My heart goes out the Church in Wales; they deserve better archbishops.

Matt,
It is something of an answer to a prayer to read you and other correspondents from Jerusalem this morning.  Things seem much more positive in the light of dawn.  Hope, in many ways, is the central characteristic of Christianity.  It is a good sign to see it shining forth this morning.

“And not by easlern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light; ln front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright”

Pageantmaster, where is that quote from?  It is beautiful and speaks volumes.

Matt,
  help me out here. Explain the diff between Fed & con??

There would have to be a central location other than cyberspace. where do you think that would be, Jerusalem, Africa, Sydney? As long as it is not here in US. Too much chance for corruption here.

#11,

For the definitions that you seek, I think this will help.  It’s good to review them once in a while, and I enjoyed the refresher myself.  Grace & peace, AR

#10 Bill C
From ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth’, Arthur Hugh Clough published in The Crayon, New York and subsequently used in part by Churchill I believe, having thanked the States for coming to aid Europe.

That conference that the +Robinson and the ARC of Wales is going to, is sponsored by the Modern Church People’s Union. Griswold will also be there. Jonathan Clatworthy the Union’s secretary wrote this: ” If there is one principal which can, and should hold the Anglican Communion together, it is that none of us has all the answers, each of us may be wrong, however strongly we feel.”

#15 - Jonathan Clatworthy sounds like an agnostic, not a Christian.  Another proof that Captain Yips was right in saying a lot of Anglican leaders are catechumenates and unable to make a mature profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Mr Clatworthy—being right or wrong has nothing to do with how strongly you feel about it.  If the Anglican Church is only about play nice & get along then may it die-sooner than later- for the well being of those still caught up in it.

On their website beiefs their is no mention of Jesus Christ, only God is infallible. Which begs the question ... what does it mean when you call yourself a Christian? I always believed it was because I am a follower of Christ. I believe he is the Divine, the only WAY etc. However, the liberal theology seems to believe that you can call yourself a Christian and at the same time question his Divinity, his teachings etc. With all this swirling around us, I am so grateful for all those at GAFCON and their supporters.

“ If there is one principal which can, and should hold the Anglican Communion together, it is that none of us has all the answers, each of us may be wrong, however strongly we feel.”

So, Griswold, Robinson, Jefferts Schori, et al, if they hold to Clatworthy’s principal (and by past history they each seem to), then as observed by Floridian above, their position is agnostic.  We cannot possibly know what Scripture, tradition, and reason have flat-out told us for a V E R Y long time.

Thank you again, Matt+ for your faithful commitment to guarding the good deposit
entrusted to you.  Thank you also for bringing us closer to those in Jerusalem for whom we have been in prayer.  May God continue to refresh your spirit and strengthen you to do His work.

Thank you, Pageantmaster.

Thank you Fr. Kennedy for your reporting and your work.  It is interesting to me, in reading other folks’ “take” on GAFCON, that all sorts of rumors such as “it was a done deal months ago” are reported with great confidence.  It is good to hear from someone who is actually THERE.

Thank you for all of your work from Jerusalem.  As I have stated on other threads, I do though feel the urgency of planting orthodox Anglican parishes throughout parts of the West without such a presence, even when this involves crossing diocesan boundaries.  This may necessitate nothing short of separation.

Floridian (#16),

Pardon me for a nitpicky refinement of your comment.  I agree with the basic point I think you and Captian Yips are trying to make, i.e., that many ordained Anglican leaders unfortunately don’t even rise to the level of an ordinary lay Christian, but are at best comparable to a Christian-in-training or catechumen.  And the nitpicky part is that the correct word is indeed “catechumen,” or apprentice disciple.  “Catechumenate” refers to the whole system by which adult converts were prepared for baptism in the early patristic period.

I bring it up not to embarrass you or Captain Yips, but because I am so convinced that the ancient catechumenate is a very important model for how to make disciples of Jesus Christ in a non-Christian world, or least a non-Constantinian one.  And we do indeed live in such a world, albeit a POST-Christendom world.

Alas, I think things are even worse than the analogy of Captian Yips implies.  Catechumens are seekers and would-be Christians in the process of becoming fully initiated into the Christian faith and life.  Sadly, so many of our Anglican leaders are actually moving the OPPOSITE direction, away from true discipleship and ever further away from the authentic Christian faith and life.  Rather than being would-be Christians, they are ex-Christians.  Which is infinitely worse.

David Handy+
Passionate adovcate for the recovery of the ancient catechumenate as the classic model for disciple-making, as well as for the New Reformation.

David+ #24, Thank you very much for the correction and for sharing your thoughts as well.
Though I knew the difference, I wrote it wrong anyway. 
There are two necessities in discipling, cognitive and experiential.  Assenting to marriage, reading and studying marriage is not the same thing as marriage.  One cannot truly know God completely intellectually or cognitively without actually entering into an authentic real relationship of love, trust and awe with Him.  Perhaps this is why we have theologians and clerics who do not know Him though they have a great deal of knowledge of Him or time with Him.

Floridian (#25),

You’re welcome.  Thanks yourself for taking the correction so graciously.  We all make mistakes, and the more we post, the more times we’ll probably make little slips.  For instance, in that last post of mine, I misspelled Captain Yips TWICE, my flying fingers somehow coming out with “Captian Yips.”  Yikes.

But you are quite right about the importance of the whole experiential side of becoming Christian.  And that was one of the crucial strengths of the ancient catechumenate, it was thoroughly experiential in approach. Very different from our typical western classroom model of education and training, that is so heavily cognitive. 

For those interested in reading up on that fascinating ancient catechumenal model of disciple-making, the standard scholarly textbook now is a fine, comprehensive, but long and detailed study by Maxwell Johnson called “The Rites of Christian Initiation.”  It’s over 300 pages long, published by The Liturgical Press (Roman Catholic).  Maxwell Johnson teaches liturgics at Notre Dame and is one of the growing number of orthodox Lutheran theologians who have converted to Catholicism.  Johnson cites a wealth of historical data as he goes along, including the key patristic texts within his work, so that it becomes a great, single-volume introduction to this vast and complicated but fascinating topic. 

If I had the power, it is one of several books that I’d make compulsory reading for all seminarians.  But alas, I don’t have that power.

David Handy+

PageantMaster,
Thank you so VERY much for the link above—truly beautiful.

David+, More correction needed (writing pre-morning coffee) I meant to say, “Perhaps that is why we have theologians…who have a great deal of knowledge of him, *yet not* spent a lot of time with Him.
Conversion is a gift, a mystery and a miracle; it is an act of God…we could never say, Jesus is Lord or the Nicene Creed with conviction, rather dying than renouncing Jesus Christ.  This gift enables the mature confession of faith that Captain Yips is talking about and the critical component that unites the GAFCON attendees and irreconcilably separates us from the revisionists.