Sermon at Anglicans Ablaze Conference 2025

 ARCHBISHOP THABO MAKGOBA

PRIMATE and METROPOLITAN OF THE ACSA

Anglicans Ablaze Conference 2025

St Agnes Parish, Kloof, Diocese of Natal

9 October 2025

Readings: Malachi 3: 13 -4:2a; Psalm 1; Luke 11: 5 -13

”WALKING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JESUS“

Bishop Dalcy Dlamini, Liaison Bishop for Growing the Church,

The Revd Bruce Woolley, Director of GtC, 

Bishop Nkosinathi Ndwandwe – our host,

Visiting Bishops,

Participants in this International Conference, 

Invited guests and visitors,

Fellow clergy,

Young people and

Ladies and gentlemen:

May I speak in the name of God, who is Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, thank you so much for inviting me to Anglicans Ablaze, and allow me to join the organisers in welcoming the visitors and guests who have come to be with us. Please feel at home. 

Thank you so much for your warm welcome on our arrival today. Thank you to Bishop Nkosinathi, the Diocesan Bishop, for hosting us in your diocese. Thank you, Revd Sizwe Ngcobo and your leadership team for opening the doors of this beautiful church. Many thanks, Revd Bruce Woolley, Director of Growing the Church, and your team for your efforts in preparing for this year’s Conference – our evangelical outreach in the Province. And a special welcome to distinguished guests, fellow clergy, young people, and to all of you, the whole wonderful family from all corners of this Diocese, Province and beyond. 

It is an honour and privilege to stand here today as the Patron of the Growing the Church and to preside at this Service for this Conference, the last Anglicans Ablaze I will attend before my retirement as your Archbishop. I am thrilled at the wide representation of participants and guests from different dioceses of our Province and beyond. This is indeed a sign that God is growing this church, using Growing the Church to enable us to reach out to all communities of our Province. Your record of witness, service, ministry and mission through God’s love and grace is inspiring, especially during these challenging times in our country and the world. You are indeed one of the leading institutions of our Province in living out faithfully ACSA’s Vision statement as part of your ministry and mission.

Bishop Dalcy and Revd Bruce, thank you for your leadership. Thank you mostly for your openness to learn and grow in the knowledge and love of God, as witnessed in your experiences amidst the challenges you face every day. We wish you well for your plans beyond this conference – and we also pray for God’s blessing and strength as you continue to spread the Gospel message. Let me also thank the whole GtC Provincial leadership team for all you have done for our Province. 

I would like to begin today by sharing my thoughts on how those who serve God are called and sent.

Yesterday, the speakers laid a solid biblical and theological foundation. They reminded us that as the baptised, beloved in Christ, we are taken, broken, moulded, and refined, and are called to participate in what God is already doing in the world. This understanding reflects the missiological dimension of our sent-ness, which emphasises what the priesthood of believers is called to be and do by virtue of our baptism. Revd Catherine highlighted the significance of the sacramental element for those who are sent, stating, “We go not only as broken individuals who are now healed but as the body of Christ, with a variety of skills and capabilities, warts and all.” We become the visible manifestation of the inwardly invisible grace, illustrating the essence of the sacraments.

In a Pauline context, we indeed become the body of Christ, broken for the good of the world. Conversely, Bishop Darcy focused on the Christological elements of our sent-ness. She emphasised that in everything we do and say, we are called to imitate Christ, take on the mind of Christ, and put on the full armour of Christ. Canon Bob from Zambia reinforced this idea by reminding us that as we adorn ourselves with the armour of Christ, we are also called to heal, reconcile, and remember those who may have lost their connection to the body of Christ or have not yet heard the Gospel preached. He underlined that our primary mandate as the harvesters for God is missiological, urging us to make disciples of Christ in all corners of the earth.

Finally, our programme director from the Diocese of Johannesburg consistently reminded the attendees after each keynote speaker to pray for one another. This sentiment echoes the importance of remaining connected to God, as Christ did with the Heavenly Father, ensuring that everything flows from our relationship with the Triune God. At the end of yesterday, we prayed together and engaged in a ministry of healing. We laid hands on one another, fostering spiritual connections through prayer. The Bishop of Matlosane, our Dean of the Province, beautifully closed that day of worship by presenting all of us before God.

Today, I intend to weave one additional element into this already colourful mosaic and tapestry, which I refer to as the pastoral and prophetic lens. I will apply this lens to specific situations and share the lessons I have learned in the public space regarding the National Dialogue. I hope to bring forth a report from the Synod of Bishops on the pastoral and prophetic ministry challenges. 

Today's reading from Malachi (3: 13ff) tells us how those who have served God, who have truly feared the Lord in a time of great cynicism, will be spared. The prophet compares their attitude with that of those who have been defiant; of those who have thought that it was evil-doers who prospered and thus questioned whether serving God loyally is of any value. Malachi invites us as the faithful to refuse to be moved by the arguments of cynics and instead seek to deepen our fellowship with each other and to reassure ourselves of God’s justice. In that way we can emulate those in Malachi's time who helped to restore the moral order which prevailed in the days before God's people were exiled to Babylon.

The Psalmist in today's reading has a similar message for us, likening those who trust in the Lord to trees that yield a distinctive harvest, drawing life from a river. If we delight in the law of the Lord, then we too can be fruitful and prosper, since God watches over the righteous and guarantees their destiny.

In the last few words of the Malachi reading, we are given an image of the consequences of acting upon the prophet's message, painting as it does a picture of the joyful, vigorous life that will be ours if we follow righteousness. But let us be clear: deepening our fellowship with one another, and being reassured that God's justice will prevail in the world, does not mean that we can treat this Conference as a comfortable cocoon into which we can retreat to escape from the world.

In the here and now of Southern Africa, Anglicans Ablaze gives us a chance to follow the example of those who listened to what Malachi was urging them to do. This Conference, in helping us to deepen our fellowship with one another, to share one another's burdens as well as joys, and to reassure ourselves of God's justice, enables us to take a step further and to use this opportunity of worship, fellowship and praise to work out what God's justice means in practical terms in our context today, and what we need to do to achieve it in practice. 

At the last meeting of the Synod of Bishops a few weeks ago, we heard of the multiple social crises being faced in just about every Diocese of our Province, whether caused by human failings or natural disasters. The bishops reported on children of migrant workers being left alone in Lesotho; kidnappings in the Diocese of Port Elizabeth; corruption over oil exploration in Namibia; illegal mining in Matlosane; youth crime in Mzimvubu; young people harming themselves, even committing suicide, in Eswatini, Pretoria and the Diocese of Grahamstown; xenophobia in the Diocese of Christ the King; the prevalence of taxi violence in False Bay and of drugs and absent fathers in the Highveld. St Helena suffers low wages, unaffordable land and housing, and emigration. Gender-based violence (GBV) was reported by many Dioceses. The Eastern Cape Dioceses of Mbashe and Mthatha, as well as the Diocese of Natal, reported on the effects of devastating floods. And that is not to speak of the crisis of corruption and incompetence found at just about every level of governance in South Africa, and of the societal crises brought about by inequality of opportunity, the yawning gap between rich and poor and the frightening lack of jobs, particularly for the young.

In that context, please allow me to address a few words to the South Africans among us on our National Dialogue. Given the cynicism that we hear about the dialogue, it was striking to hear at Synod of Bishops of how widespread the support for the dialogue is in our church. Most of our Dioceses are either rural or have significant numbers of rural parishes, and in my experience it is there, and in marginalised urban townships, that we are seeing support for the dialogue. People in better-off urban areas have the resources to overcome service delivery challenges themselves and can afford to be cynical. As I am saying everywhere I go, the levels of discontent in the country are so high that I don't believe politicians will be able to manipulate the dialogues at local level, and so I urge all of you to attend one of the 14,000 local gatherings that will be held around the country, and to help communities take control of the process themselves.

Please also allow me to bring to this very important gathering a troubling question concerning the ministry of our church which the Synod of Bishops has failed to resolve. Ten years ago, the Province asked us as the bishops to draw up guidelines for pastoral ministry to those among us who identify themselves as being LGBTQI. We have wrestled with the request for 10 years, but still have no guidance to offer our clergy for that ministry.

To go back to basics, if you go read the Catechism in our Prayer Book—the summary of our doctrine and our guide to faithful living—paragraph 106 of the Catechism says: “The two great sacraments given by Christ to his Church are Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.” We already administer those two sacraments to our LGBTQI sisters and brothers. Then if you read paragraph 120, it spells out “other sacramental rites”, which include Confirmation, Confession and Absolution, the Anointing of the Sick, Christian Marriage and Ordination. We allow for all of those for LGBTQI people, with the exception of Christian Marriage (as well as Ordination in most circumstances).

The bishops have not proposed making any changes to the Catechism. Paragraph 125 of the Catechism says explicitly, as does our Canon on Marriage, that Christian Marriage is the lifelong union of a woman and a man. I want to emphasise that what the bishops have been wrestling with does not involve any departure from our position on administration of any of the sacraments.

What the Province did ask the Synod of Bishops to do 10 years ago was to provide guidelines for how to minister pastorally to all. On that we have consistently failed, for meeting after meeting. The bishops all agree that all people are created in the image of God, and we explicitly said in 2016 that all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ. But we have been unable to reach a common mind on how to give meaning to that declaration in the form of providing pastoral ministry to couples. 

I said at last month's meeting of the Synod of Bishops that I believe we need to take our failure to the wider church, and to ask for your help on the way forward. We need your input and your views, and in that I look especially to the young people in whose hands we are entrusting the future of our church.

Returning to today's readings, in Luke (11:5ff) we are presented with a parable whose purpose is to encourage us to pray. Although in this passage the householder who has bread is asleep and unwilling to get up, yet because of the persistence of the midnight visitor, the visitor's needs will be supplied. This is a parable of contrast; if even a human friend responds to someone in need, how much more will God respond generously? Just as earthly parents do not wilfully deny their children their needs, so God will give the gift of the Spirit to all who ask. With these assurances, we know that we can pray for our needs in confidence that our prayers will be answered by God as is best for us.

This is a matter of critical importance to our faith. For there can be no faith and no Christian works without the constant, daily ongoing conversation with God which prayer assures us of; a conversation in which we learn to listen more than to speak. Prayer does not involve escaping into a luxuriant comfortable little world of our own; truly effective prayer will drive us off our knees and out into the world to give meaning to God's justice and love for all God's creation. 

In conclusion, as you pray, worship, celebrate and work out together what it means to be God's agent of love in our world, and then go out into the world to live out our faith, I invite you to play your full role in addressing the important decisions we face in the many areas of our personal and corporate lives: how we participate in the lives of our nations; how we order our collective life; how we transform our liturgies so that we worship God in ways best suited to the times in which we live; how we respond to the need for sensitive and effective ministry to those in same-sex unions; and how we ensure that our congregations are safe spaces for all our people, especially women, young people and vulnerable children.

I encourage all of you all to continue striving for what is ethically good in our communities. Let us discern and fulfill our call to the best of our ability – by so doing we shall have responded positively to the Gospel message today. 

Finally, let me once again thank Bishop Dalcy, Revd Bruce and your team for the sterling work in growing disciples for Christ, and wish you all the best as you continue to reach out and live lives worthy of your calling, so igniting God’s flame in the world. 

Congratulations on this successful AA2025 conference, and may God bless you, your Dioceses, our Province, our nations and the world. May God bless each one of you richly.

God loves you and so do I. Amen.

 

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