Saturday, October 22, 2011

Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans partnership initiative to support GAFCON Primates Chairman


I am writing to let you know about a major change in my ministry. With my wife, Gillian, I have been invited by Archbishop Eliud Wabukala to take up the post of Programme Director at St Julian's, Limuru, a retreat centre and guesthouse in a rural setting near Nairobi. Essentially, my brief is to develop St Julian's as a key study and training facility for the Province and as a resource to support the Archbishop in his role as Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council.

This invitation is a great honour and also a major challenge as the struggle for the global integrity and faithfulness of the Anglican Communion enters a new phase. The energies of Western liberals are no longer being put so much into the widely discredited 'instruments of unity' but into the development of bilateral and relational links which effectively bracket out doctrinal issues through a lack of transparency and the use of 'indaba' strategies.

This is not the place to go into detail, but it is clear that the focus of their efforts is Africa where the majority of global Anglicans are now to be found. For instance, I am not the only one to notice that the Archbishop of Canterbury's intensive round of visits to African provinces has followed so soon after the unprecedented principled absence of many African Primates from the Dublin Primates' meeting in February.

It is also interesting to note that the Anglican Communion Office in London has recently announced that it is seeking to appoint a Communications Officer in Nairobi so that 'Anglicans everywhere hear about the successes and challenges of fulfilling God's mission in differing contexts'. Given that the funding for this post is coming from Trinity Wall Street, a major funding vehicle for TEC projects around the world, it is very unlikely that false teaching in TEC and the West will be presented as anything other than Anglicanism in a 'differing context' about which we need 'conversation'.

In this climate, it is crucial that orthodox Anglicans are on the front foot. My hope is that the ministry at St Julian's will be a positive contribution to supporting the reform of the Anglican Communion around the biblical gospel, as embodied in the GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration, and enable strategic partnership both in Africa and around the globe. To read more, click here.

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