It’s hard to know exactly what will emerge from the receipt of the GAFCON Jerusalem Statement. It could just be another of those rousing rallying cries that falls on deaf ears. I hope not. But evangelicalism is pretty broad in the Church of England. And, regrettably it’s pretty soft. Like a dozing man when the alarm clock goes off many will just hit the snooze button and return to their slumbers. We’re better at concession and compromise than confessing and contending. But I’m hopeful for more. I suspect that the persecution of evangelicals like Professor J.I. Packer in the Diocese of New Westminster has woken some to the dangers that lie ahead. I think it was Os Guinness who at GAFCON used the illustration of a nuclear explosion having taken place and the fallout from which is heading our way. He applied it to the influence of western secularism but he could have easily applied it to its religious form, liberal revisionism. Dr Packer’s treatment highlights what happens to faithful, godly men when they stand up to the liberal agenda. The liberals have the power and they’ll wield it when they’re threatened. And we’ve seen that in our own Diocese.

The meeting at All Souls last Tuesday will be instrumental in Evangelical Anglicans deciding what to do. This was attended by nearly 800 Church leaders in the day and a similar number of lay leaders in the evening. Many of the Evangelical ‘tribes’ were represented. They need to unite together, take counsel and prayerfully consider what action to take in the light of GAFCON.

Whilst there is an unpredictability about how the some things than be predicted with unwavering confidence.

1.     We’re going to get a pasting in the secular media

It’s naive to think it will play any other way. With very few exceptions the western secular media will mock the statement, vilify the proponents and give a disproportionate amount of airtime to the revisionists. The argument will be presented as the bigoted ranting of schismatic homophobic militants at the lunatic fringe of mainstream Christianity. I may be wrong, but I suspect not. Those may not be their words but those will be the categories they think of. This is not going to play out well in the press. But why would we expect it to? That‘s hopelessly naive. On the presenting issue of unrepentant homosexual sex and on the underlying issue of biblical authority, Christians disagree with the world’s thinking. But we need to listen to the Lord and stand firm on His word. That’s what believers do. We’re not free to reinvent what we find there because we it’s out of kilter with prevailing social opinion. 

2.     We’re going to be opposed by the church authorities

It may well be that at some stage down the line we’ll be opposed by the same church authorities that are supposed to be resourcing our gospel ministry. At the moment the worst it gets is angry letters and hostile meetings. But this will probably end up in court. Faithful Anglican leaders and their congregations will probably get thrown out of their buildings, have their licences revoked, their wages withdrawn and their pensions frozen, but so what. We’re there already! And we’ve not lost the gospel and the Lord has not deserted us. Though we may not feel very significant, our little church is proof that there’s life in Anglicanism outside the structures! 

But what we face will be nothing compared to what the leaders of our theological constituency will face. The wives and children often feel it worst. We should pray for them and offer them our unwavering support.

3.     We’re going to realise who our friends are

Not everyone will be with us. Evangelicals will be divided. Already the Bishop of Durham, a self professed evangelical leader, has lambasted the statement on the BBC. Some will disapprove of the mechanisms and tactics employed to bring the church back to the Bible and they won’t back us. It was said that after the Co-Mission irregular ordination three years ago we were more hated than we’d ever been but more loved than we’d ever been. It was a divisive move. It forced people to choose. In that sense it was polarising. It wasn’t meant to be. We just thought it was the right thing to do in the circumstances. It was intended to be an act of principled disobedience given that we were in temporarily impaired communion with our Diocesan Bishop. But people were forced to choose one side or the other. We received vitriolic letters but also overwhelming support. True friends really stuck with us through thick and thin. Some didn’t feel able to support us and that was a great shame.

Throughout the continual process of reforming the Church of England God will provide us with friends who stand with us and contend as one man for the faith of the gospel. We have to decide which side of the argument we stand on. And we’ll look around at others who stand with us. They’ll need us and we’ll need them. In the kindness of God, we may experience a quality of fellowship that we’ve never previously known.

Conclusion

I don’t know what will happen on the ground as a result of GAFCON. I’m not in the room where it gets decided. I pray that the leaders of our constituency decide to act. As one young delegate said at a meeting in Jerusalem, ‘I’m not that bothered what you decide to do, I just want you to do something!’ Surely we can’t let the current situation persist for another decade as the liberals gleefully watch our appetite for contention wane and the biblical gospel pass into history.

It was easy for me. I was invited. And what could I do? The leaders of the world wide Anglican Communion wanted my opinion. What was I to say?  It would have been impolite to refuse! Actually, I was there to carry Richard Coekin’s bags. I did it poorly but fortunately he travels light.

But what about us? I suspect that some of us struggle to get excited by the ecclesiastical events of the last few days. Some may have described the Global Anglican Futures Conference in Jerusalem as momentous but perhaps we don’t share the enthusiasm. Perhaps we’re totally unconvinced that anything significant has taken place. An initial response to that would be to note that the BBC and all the major newspapers have been reporting on this conference. Church leaders from this country are clearly rattled and have come out strongly against it. Peter Tatchell, the Gay Rights campaigner, was at All Souls Church on Tuesday to protest about GAFCON’s reassertion of biblical sexual ethics. Some major players clearly think that something happened that’s worth reporting, commenting on and opposing.

However, even if others are engaged with this issue we may feel disconnected for a number of reasons. Chief amongst them are probably these four.

1.     We may feel that the issues are too confusing to understand

The media keeps saying that the evangelicals [or traditionalists as they call us] are being schismatic and it’s about gay sex. But evangelicals keep saying we’re not leaving and it’s about the authority of the Bible. Who shoudl we believe? The world of Ecclesiastical Politics, Canon Law and the Formulary Documents of the Church of England is not something with which we’re overly familiar! It’s all so bewildering. But in essence it’s very simple. There are two churches in the Church of England. On the one hand, there’s the faithful church of the Bible and on the other hand, there’s the revisionist church of the culture. Those represented by the GAFCON movement want to live by the Bible and change their lives. The Liberal Revisionists want to live by the culture and change the Bible. No one really disputes that despite the Bishop of Southwark’s best attempt in the Guardian this week. The question is who does the Church of England belong to? A week of seminars on Anglican Identity established well beyond reasonable doubt that the foundational documents of the Church of England say that it’s a biblical church. So it belongs to the orthodox and not the heterodox. And so it’s ours! The trouble is that the revisionists rule the roost and they won’t give it back. They’re like a cuckoo that’s flown into our nest and is pushing the rightful owners out. Of course, we could just walk away. Some have. But it’s our nest. Our faithful Anglican forefathers gave it to us. It’s a nest with money, buildings and opportunities to preach the gospel tied up in it. The Jerusalem Statement says in effect, ‘it’s ours and we’re not going anywhere’.

2.     We may feel that GAFCON is an irrelevance to our own church life

Many of our congregation don’t count themselves as Anglicans. They may not even realise that in attending CCB they belong to a Church of England church! This is probably for the following three reasons.

We’re financially independent from the Church of England. Though our staff team has had their theological education paid for by the Denomination, we now receive no money for staff housing, pay or pensions. Our church buildings and ministry costs are borne entirely by the congregations and the Co-Mission Initiative.  Though we’d like and value their support, we don’t look to the Church of England for the wherewithal to resource gospel ministry.

We’re structurally independent from the Diocese of Southwark. There have been recent attempts made to ‘regularise’ Dundonald as a Fresh Expression [even though it’s 16 years old!]. But the Diocese seems in no great hurry to progress things. I have not been invited to the Deanery Chapter meeting of local clergy. I have not been ordained as a Presbyter by the Church of England though I have been ordained as a Deacon by the Church of England in South Africa. I have not received a Bishop’s Licence to exercise ministry in his Diocese. We live in hope that our new Assistant Pastor’s situation will be different. But we’re not holding our breath. And so, we don’t really look to the Diocese to legitimate our gospel ministry. We just get on with it.

We’re spiritually independent of the Bishop of Southwark. As a result of Tom Butler’s refusal to distance himself from the House of Bishops’ Statement on Civil Partnerships, the churches of the Co-Mission Initiative in the Diocese of Southwark are in temporarily impaired communion with our Diocesan Bishop. We are awaiting his repentance, his removal or his retirement. I’d prefer the first but I pray for all three! And so we don’t look to our Bishop for the spiritual leadership we’d like to receive to encourage us to keep going in our gospel ministry. 

And therefore given our lack of dependence on the formal structures of the Church of England, we might wonder what on earth a global gathering of Anglican leaders, the vast majority of whom we’ve never met or heard of can offer us.

3.     We may feel that GAFCON is an unnecessary inflammatory action

In the book that accompanied the conference The Way, the Truth and the Life there’s a chapter written by the Archbishop of Nigeria entitled A Most Agonizing Journey Towards Lambeth 2008. It details the repeated neglect of the legitimate concerns of Orthodox believers and the failure to discipline those with a revisionist agenda by the Archbishop of Canterbury. No Jesus following, Bible loving Christian can read that chapter and think that the actions of GAFCON are precipitate.  There’s nothing impulsive or impetuous about the actions of the GAFCON Primates in taking counsel and drafting the Jerusalem Statement. This is a carefully considered response that proposes action entirely consistent with true Anglicanism. It could well be that in the months and years that follow we’ll be turning to these men and asking for their help. And they’ve committed themselves to encouraging and supporting us.

Sometimes we British are reticent to make a fuss or cause a scene. At times that’s wise. Some of the time it’s weakness. This is not a time for weakness. It’s a time to be biblical and contend for the truth. If there’s to be a gospel witness in the Church of England for our children and our grandchildren we need our leaders to defend the gospel, oppose liberal novelties and press on with ministry and cop the flak. That’s what leaders do. They lead from the front and show us the way. We need the GAFCON Bishops because they help us to see clearly that now is the time to act. They remind us that Anglican Evangelicalism is like a frog in a kettle unaware that the temperature is gradually getting hotter and we’re being boiled to death. They put some steel in our backbone and encourage us to recognise that we must repent of our sinful compliance with heterodoxy and contend for the truth.

4.     We may feel that GAFCON is a distraction to our evangelistic ministry

And you’d have a point. People will not be brought to faith in Christ through political statements. They’ll be brought to faith through hearing the gospel of salvation. The Jerusalem Statement will not do the work of evangelism for us. But it has at least defined the true gospel and defended it against false gospels. And so it’s reminded us that the biblical gospel is the news of the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ and transformation through the work of the Spirit. Anglican Statements don’t always do that!

Of course, some of us will need to be involved in this sort of political activity if we think that the Church of England is still worth fighting for. It’s still the best boat to fish from. As congregations therefore we’ll need to encourage, embolden and support those who are involved and stand with them as they get vilified by the press and attacked by the church authorities.

Conclusion

In actual fact GAFCON could be very significant for our own local church ministry. GAFCON will not do it for us. That’s true.  But, it ought to make it possible for us to continue doing one thing that we hold dear. The Jerusalem Statement supports church planting. 

Under the heading The Global Anglican Context the statement argues that to fulfil the mission given to the Church by the Lord Jesus in his Great Commission, ‘will entail the planting of new churches [italics mine] among unreached peoples and also committed action to restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches’. And in articulating the future, in a section entitled The Road Ahead, the statement reads, ‘We recognise the desirability of territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, except in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread [italics mine], and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons’. In other words, Church planting is an inevitable consequence of mission and not even Bishops should oppose it. If they do then the GAFCON Primates Council will endeavour to provide us with the support we ask for.

This is crucial for us because as things stand, it’s problematic for Classical Evangelicals to exercise gospel ministry or to be appointed within the Diocese of Southwark. This means that some parishes have in effect become geographical ‘no-go’ areas for the gospel. If that were true of a country then, for the sake of the glory of God and the salvation of sinners, we’d launch a missionary organisation. The recent rediscovery of church planting across traditional parish boundaries addresses this problem. It means that an Anglican Evangelical church, for example, can provide a gospel presence where the parish church is, say, Liberal Catholic in its theological convictions. Given that authentic Anglicanism is Evangelical we ought to expect the wholehearted support of our leaders. That’s not always been the case. But now it is. It’s just that they’re different leaders. They’re the leaders we’ve been praying for. Though we wouldn’t let some of the Bishops in the Church of England teach in Sunday school, these guys are the real deal. And we need to back them.