Archbishop's Charge to Provincial Synod 2019

Review, Renew and Restore: Reconnecting Faith to Daily Life Inside and Outside the Stained Glass Windows
 

Charge of the Archbishop and Metropolitan, the Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba to Provincial Synod 2019 


A PDF version of this Charge is available here >>

Readings: Esther 5:1-14; Psalm 124 and Luke 8:19-21

Greetings and Appreciation

May I speak in the name of God who creates, redeems and sustains us. Amen.

'Cathedrals as Institutions of Education'

An address delivered to the Conference of Deans and Senior Priests, held in the Diocese of Swaziland:

Anglican Church Prioritises Education

This Media release from Provincial Synod was issued on 4 October 2013

Anglican Church Prioritises Education

Anglican congregations are taking imaginative initiatives to support education, the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa heard this week.

Mr Vernon Hammond of Pietermaritzburg told how his church had decided to run a homework club every afternoon from 2 to 6pm, after it found local children studying in a bus shelter, under a streetlight.

Almost two years on, their church is open daily for what it calls its ‘B-sharp’ club, providing a safe space for homework and music studies.

Noting that the children’s marks had improved radically, and that they and their families had become church members, Mr Hammond challenged other congregations to open their doors to children who have nowhere else to go between schools closing and parents returning from work.

Education – in schools and tertiary institutions, and theological learning – was at the heart of the four-day meeting of the Synod held in Benoni, South Africa, and of its commitment for future work.

The Rt Revd Peter Lee, Bishop of the Diocese of Christ the King, who heads ACSA’s education work, reported on other current initiatives.

These range from parishes funding shoes or uniforms for learners, equipping playgrounds and setting up bursary funds, through to Anglican schools providing training days, internships, and other partnerships for educators in their local areas.

Dioceses and parishes are also setting up schools, often on church-owned land. In Gauteng, the Archbishop Thabo Makgoba Boys’ School will be built in partnership with Vuleka Schools.

Bishop Lee reported the registration of the Anglican Board of Education in Southern Africa, ABESA, which he chairs, as an NPO (Non-Profit Organisation). This responds to the Archbishop’s 2012 initiative challenging the church to renew its historic commitment to education.

Under the Archbishop’s initiative, the church has committed itself:
• to strengthen what our Province is already doing in education;
• to encouraging parishes in the ongoing upliftment of communities through partnership with local public schools; and
• to create more excellent church schools for all.

The Synod was helped in its reflections by Professor Mary Metcalfe of the Development Bank of Southern Africa, whose presentation highlighted some of the complexities of, and huge disparities across education in Southern Africa.

She challenged ACSA to dig more deeply into questions of why, where, and how the church should be involved in education – calling for specific and practical responses to local situations. Homework clubs were just one example of what could and should be done.

Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman, 021 763 1320 (office hours)
The Revd Canon Dr Sarah Rowland Jones, 082 856 2082 (during Synod)

The Text of the motion follows below:

This Synod

1. Welcomes the report of the Archbishop’s Initiative in Education as set out in the 1st Agenda Book, page 33.

2. Supports the incoming Board of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa Schools Trust in pursuing the objectives set out by PSC 2012, and in communicating the vision, nurturing relationships, accessing resources and progressing the activities set out in the draft plan for 2014 (see item 9A following this Resolution).

3. Authorises the Board to appoint necessary staff on the proviso that no cost shall accrue to the Common Provincial Fund, and in light of the minimal use of the grant of R120,000 from the Pan Anglican Fund for education made by PSC 2012, renews that grant for the 12 months to PSC 2014 to a total of R120,000 after payment of the expenses to date, for use on interim expenses.

9A Action plan to 2014
Description:
• Develop action plan to 2014 September (To be finalised by board and director)
• Support the development of the Archbishop Thabo Boys’ School
• Continue conversation around initiative with the Communion and wider face to face interactions
• Investigate starting a new school
• Interact with government and other independent bodies around public policy and curriculum
• Research and develop appropriate Christian curriculum for independent schools
• Promote education initiative activities around Gauteng
• Identify schools where partnerships can be cultivated
• Support government schools on church property
• Monitor activity by the Anglican church in schools across the province
• Institutional development
o Build a team
o Build networks (eg. universities)
• Dependencies
o The constitution of a board
Deadlines: To be confirmed as each action is initiated

Charge to Provincial Synod - "A Vision for Education – Education for a Vision"

Here is the full text of the Charge delivered to Provincial Synod this afternoon, 1 October 2013

"A Vision for Education – Education for a Vision"

Zechariah 8:20-23, Luke 9:51-56

May I speak in the name of God – Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, members of Synod, distinguished guests, I greet you in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and welcome you to the thirty-third session of the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

I extend a particular welcome to our guests – especially my dear brother from the Episcopal Church of Sudan, Archbishop Daniel Deng Bull. May your time with us be one of growing and deepening communion within the Anglican / Episcopal family. A warm welcome also to Revd Dr James Cooper and Revd Canon Benjamin Museka Lubega, of Trinity Wall Street, a longstanding partner in the gospel to our Province. I also greet our ecumenical guests, our brothers and sisters within the Body of Christ.

A special welcome to Synod first-timers. I hope you will quickly feel at home among our processes and procedures, and make a full contribution.

Let me thank everyone who has helped prepare this Synod and this Charge, and who supports my ministry as Archbishop more generally. First, as always, my thanks go to Lungi (who is currently representing our Province at a USPG consultation in India) and my children, who have come to expect that in the run-up to Synods, while I am present in body, there is no guarantee that I am present in mind or spirit!

Thank you also to the staff at Bishopscourt and in the Provincial Treasurer’s office; to the Synod Advisory Committee, particularly Mr Henry Bennett; to the Dean of the Province; to the Bishop of Table Bay and the Cape Town Diocesan staff; and to everyone else who has contributed to this Synod.

We record particular thanks to Gail Allen, who has ensured the smooth running of more Synods than we can count, and who rightly is awarded the Order of Simon of Cyrene. This year has brought a particularly weighty responsibility, after Revd Canon Allan Kannemeyer stepped down as PEO to return to the Diocese of Pretoria where he is now Dean. We therefore thank Revd Keith Griffiths for returning from retirement to act as Synod Manager.

I give thanks to God for the support of the Dean of the Province and the Synod of Bishops, for the collegiality we share, and for the responsibilities each bishop shoulders through the year as they lead various portfolios.

Collegiality is also shared with Bishops and Archbishops of the past, and in thanking God for them, I particularly want to pay tribute to Archbishop Philip Russell, who died in July. Last month we interred his ashes in Greytown, in a quiet but moving service, at which Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu preached, with Natal bishops, current and retired, present. Let us observe a moment’s silence as we thank God for all this passionate, compassionate, unsung hero meant to, and did for, our Province.

I also need to add that, since we went to print, a member of our Synod who should have been with us today, Mr James Thomas, a church-warden in the Diocese of Cape Town, was murdered in the terrorist attacks in Nairobi. We pray for his wife Colleen and family, as they hold his funeral tomorrow.

It is always a delight to welcome new bishops to Synod – eight in all! Those of you who were here three years ago will remember me admitting I dreamed of consecrating a woman bishop for our Province – by the grace of God, we now have two! This is also the last Synod for several bishops, and we thank God for them and their ministry.

I’d also like to express gratitude to the Revd Canon Dr Sarah Rowland Jones. She came to South Africa 11 years ago to marry Bishop Justus Marcus, and, since his death the following year, has spent a decade as Researcher to two Archbishops. Later this month she returns to Wales to take over Cardiff’s city centre parish. We give thanks for her unstinting enthusiasm and hard work in serving our Province, as well as for all she continues to do for the worldwide Anglican Communion and global ecumenism. We pray God’s blessing on her and her husband in their new life.

It is the hard work of these, and many others, which allows us to say, in the words of Zechariah, ‘Come, let us go to entreat the favour of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts.’

So let me turn now to the substance of my Charge, for which we are blessed with two pertinent lectionary readings. Our primary purpose is indeed to meet the Lord: to seek his face, and seek his guidance. We come because the Lord calls us to be his people, whom he loves, and whom he calls to return his love, and to share his love.

Zechariah writes that when our lives clearly demonstrate that we are God’s people – that God is with us, and guides us – then others will be drawn to us, so they may also find God, and God’s ways, and God’s blessing.

Zechariah was writing at the time of the Babylonian Empire, which spanned many peoples, languages, cultures, and faiths. The Jewish people had returned to Jerusalem from exile, some 18 or 19 years earlier. 19 years ago, Southern Africa returned from the exile of apartheid’s hold on South Africa and dire impact on its neighbours. In our region of many peoples, languages, cultures, and faiths, there is – as there was in Zechariah’s time – a yearning for a deeper sense of identity, purpose and blessing in their lives.

We are to reflect the hope they seek – being those in whom others can recognise God’s presence, and therefore say, ‘let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’ We too seek God’s clarity for our identity and purpose, so we may be a channel of blessing, through our Vision: ‘Anglicans ACT – Anchored in the love of Christ, Committed to God’s Mission, and Transformed by the Holy Spirit.’

Our gospel reading, in contrast, points out that not everyone will respond in this way. Some will reject Jesus Christ’s messengers, and the good news of his gospel. Today too, some of Christ’s messengers also respond inappropriately, wanting to ‘command fire to come down and consume’ those who reject him and us. Yet we are not to reject them in turn, says Jesus – for the love of God rejects no-one. And even if we are rejected or rebuked, we are to continue walking with Jesus, who ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem.’

This is not his journey to his crucifixion, but an earlier visit to the place where the Jewish people celebrated their calling from God, and found nourishment for their faith journeys. We too must be focussed on what nurtures and sustains our pilgrimage of faith. Our capacity to be God’s people, for the sake of God’s world – rooted in our baptism, and affirmed at confirmation – must be diligently fed throughout our lives. Regular, deepening, prayer, Bible-study, worship, and receiving the sacraments – none are optional if we are serious about witness and service; if we are serious about the re-evangelisation of the Anglican communities of Southern Africa; and if we are serious about truly being salt and light in God’s world.

This is why, for me, education in all its forms is so central. This is why I have chosen as Synod’s theme ‘A Vision for Education – Education for a Vision’, and invited three distinguished speakers to address us. We also have a special session led by Mr Henry Bennett, Provincial Registrar, to educate us in better understanding and use of our Canons, to help us live out the identity and purpose to which God calls us. Godly education can help form, inform and transform us and our church, so we – like those whom Zechariah addressed – can walking together confidently, knowing that God is with us, promising his good favour, and that therefore we need not fear whatever obstacles come our way.

Last year Provincial Standing Committee decided that 2013 should be our ‘Year of Theological Education’. Well-trained leaders, clergy and laity, will help us grapple more deeply with our faith – and not merely with our heads, but inwardly digesting, so we are better able to hear and respond to God’s call to us in our own contexts, within and beyond the walls of the church.

I am grateful to Revd Canon Professor Barney Pityana, Rector of the College of the Transfiguration, and to his staff, for spearheading this work. I commend to you all their ‘From Root to Branch’ study series. Thank you also to Bishop Raphael Hess, HOPE Africa, and all who worked on our special Theological Education Sunday in August; and thank you to everyone who gave generously.

Prof Pityana will be our keynote speaker on how investing in theological education is a vital step towards ensuring our Church’s future. We congratulate him on moving COTT towards registration of courses with the South African Qualifications Authority. My dream is to go further, and to have an Anglican owned and run university campus, focussed on theology and the liberal arts, launched from the COTT campus. Please join me in exploring how this vision might find concrete expression.

Good education – theological and otherwise – is at the heart of our capacity to grow into our Provincial Vision, ‘Anglicans Act’. This is why I am asking Synod to look particularly not only at what we hope to achieve in each priority area, but how we aim to educate our Province to what we are doing. For work at Synod is just the beginning: our responsibility is to ensure that what we do here makes a difference when we go home. As you debate and decide, keep asking yourself ‘What do I want to happen, as a result of seeking God at Synod?’

From liturgy and worship to the environment, from health to young people, from leadership development to public advocacy, from finance to gender issues – in all these areas, we want to see our Lord more clearly, love him more dearly, and follow his lead more nearly – and help the rest of our Province to do the same. We thank all who are involved in media and communications, for the contribution they make to this task.

I’d also like to highlight the work underway to revise our Prayer Book. I cannot overestimate the importance of the centrality of worship that draws us ever closer to our Lord and Saviour. To this end, I want to thank Revd Bruce Jenneker and the Liturgical Committee as they lead this task. May God guide and strengthen you in your work.

Earlier this year, I followed a 30-day retreat, which brought me profound new insights into how to listen to God speaking through Scripture directly into today’s challenges of mission and ministry. Five years into my Archiepiscopate, it was a tremendous privilege to step back, and take stock with the Lord, and find fresh perspectives, and deeper insights. There was a new level of encounter with God, beyond what I had expected. My hope is that through theological education, we will encourage all our people to take risks in faith. We need to let ourselves be led beyond our comfort zones into places of unexpected grace and rich encounter.

Last year’s Anglicans Ablaze conference was such a place, for me and many others. It was the largest gathering from across our whole Province anyone could remember. Everyone was there – all races; all languages; all ages; all sexes and sexualities; high church and low church; Anglo-Catholics (or Afro-Catholics!), Evangelicals and Charismatics. We all felt God’s presence among us; and recognised how, in Christ, we all belonged to one another. We learnt that our common life was not threatened, but enriched, by our diversity. It was the most amazing celebration of God’s life pouring through us all! It was a time of renewal, and let me stress I mean renewal in its broadest sense: we felt God breathing freshness into a holistic life of evangelism and discipleship and integral mission and social justice. I found myself confronted by a vision of the breath-taking beauty of Anglicanism, when we allow God’s inspiring love to weave a gloriously colourful cloth from our different threads! This has stayed with me: finding new vibrancy in reading my prayer book, new freedom in celebrating the sacraments, and a new liberty in speaking with honest confidence about the realities of our diversity – and the riches, as well as the challenges, this brings.

It delights me to announce there will be a second Anglicans Ablaze Conference from 2 to 5 July, next year. Furthermore, Archbishop Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, will be one of our speakers!

Both at Anglicans Ablaze, and in international meetings, I am increasingly appreciating that Anglicanism is a precious gift, as well as a challenge. At our best we can show the world what it means to live in creative, enriching, harmony, across diversity and difference – daring to make ourselves accountable to one another, committed to pursuing a common life that is not an ‘obligation’ but a ‘choice’ that sets us free to deepen the charism of being members together of the body of Christ. This is why I am promoting the ratification of the Anglican Covenant, which we provisionally adopted three years ago. ACSA belongs at the very heart of Anglicanism, offering our own experience of deepen bonds of affection across difference, to those who share this commitment.

That we live by grace and covenant, and not by law, is at the heart of the rejuvenation of the Canon Law Society. This, like the Anglican Covenant, is not about placing legalistic and legislative burdens upon us. Rather, it is for helping us to use Canon Law better: as our good servant, not bad master. This is also an educative task.

Both our readings spoke of God’s people within wider contexts. In today’s world far too often the immediate response to disagreement is to rush to litigation as the first, not last, resort: whether in politics, business, or even running football clubs! Alas, Christians often follow the same path. The amount of time and money our church has spent in the last five years in secular legal processes is shocking. It pains me deeply that legal cases have consumed significant resources that should be devoted to mission and ministry. It also distresses me to see the church falling into ungodly practices of lobbying and putting on pressure, to get our own way, or to get our own back when we can’t get what we want through proper processes.

God calls us instead to wrestle with one another within the body of Christ, and together to wrestle with him, so we may discern his will in the complexities of our relationships in this complex world. Better understandings of Canon Law should help resource us to deal with difficult issues in more holy ways.

This is also the aim of revising disciplinary Canons: that these should bring us greater confidence and freedom in following our calling, just as the introduction of Pastoral Standards has done. God calls us to offer models of good and holy practice to the world – for those who long to find the Lord’s favour, as in our first reading; and even to those who think they know better, as in our second. We must follow good governance and best practice in all that we do, where necessary revising both structures and practices. We must be good stewards of our resources, for example asking whether the expense of meetings could be better handled through having our own Anglican conference centre.

As we live before the watching world, we should not fear difference, or even disagreement, because it is through wrestling together – as brothers and sisters who know our unity in Christ is greater than anything that can divide us – that we can be like rough stones polishing each other to become beautiful smooth gems. It is a demanding calling, but I am sure it is one to which God especially calls Anglicans, in Southern Africa and around the world.

Turning now to a subject very near to my heart, the education of our young people, I want to pay a particular tribute to Bishop Peter Lee and his team; and to STEP Consulting, a Christian-based company who have deployed some bright young Anglicans to help us develop our strategy for education. Bishop Lee has taken PSC’s resolution on the Archbishop’s Initiative in Education, and breathed vibrant life into it.

We made three commitments then:
• to strengthen what our Province is already doing in education;
• to encouraging parishes in the on-going upliftment of communities through partnership with local public schools; and
• to create more excellent church schools for all.
We shall hear how all three have seen wonderful growth and development. Let me just mention that our Province now has a fully registered NPO, ‘ABESA’, the Anglican Board for Education in Southern Africa, working across ACSA’s countries. Great educationalists on the board are bringing synergy between private and public schools. Through this initiative, and in partnership with Vuleka schools, the Archbishop Thabo Makgoba Boys’ School will soon be built in Gauteng.

I am delighted to welcome Professor Mary Metcalfe as our keynote speaker on the theme of education. Ours is a continent of young people. We thank God for the work of AYSA and ASF, and all our programmes with children and youth. Within our schools, colleges and universities we aim to form fully rounded individuals, capable of analysing critically the world around us, and acting compassionately.

Indeed, our Vision priority of leadership development is designed to promote this among all our people. As Zechariah said, God’s people should be those who lead communities to walk in the ways that lead to blessing. Revd Professor Bev Haddad will give our keynote address on ‘Transformational leadership: building redemptive communities’.

Our world needs the combination of critical analysis and compassionate hearts. We need it in Syria, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, Kenya and Pakistan. There are rarely easy answers to finding lasting peace with justice. Any attempts to find solutions through simplistic military engagement are almost certain to lead to greater violence. Prayer is the best route to wise action. Sudan and South Sudan also need this. We look forward to hearing more from you, Archbishop Daniel, about how we can best support you and your Province.

We all need to know how God’s timeless principles apply in our own context – in each of our own countries, as we pray for our political leaders. This is especially true where, as in South Africa, we are headed towards elections next year. We must also, as individuals and local congregations, learn what it means to live out the gospel within our own communities, in our work, in family life, wherever we find ourselves.

We continue to give thanks for the life of Nelson Mandela, Madiba, who helped us find a way forward based on gospel values. His example has been a pillar of strength to me, and to so many of us in church leadership, and to all who continue to strive for social justice. Gospel values, wisdom and compassion, living within us by the power of God’s Holy Spirit, will guide our lives and direct our energies. His Spirit will help us, whether in pursuing the deepening of democracy, or countering corruption in all its forms, or opposing such brute force as we saw at Marikana, or working for peace and reconciliation, or tackling gender-violence.

There is so much that we can do – and I commend the work done by the Anglican AIDS and Healthcare Trust, and by HOPE Africa, working with various partners, including Tearfund and USAID on the 16 days of Global Activism, and others.

There are a great range of topics addressed in our draft motions, and I invite you to wrestle with them as fully as you can, asking God to give you holy wisdom and insight.

Let me just mention that we continue to work towards finalising guidelines for pastoral ministry in response to Civil Unions. We all know that the matter of same gender loving has created great anguish both for those who feel called by God to this state, and those who oppose this. I long for the day when faith leaders can apologise authentically for the pain we have caused through our inept handling of pastoral realities, and our theological reflection on them. I want to add my own small voice of apology that, in our sensitivities and fears of upsetting one another, we are still at such an undeveloped state; and I pray that we may dare to engage together more deeply in critical theological praxis and move forward together as a Church.

Yet as we look at the breadth of issues before us, it is important to remember that none of us are called to do everything. Each of us must attend to our own particular calling – as I find myself putting the spotlight on education, on water and sanitation, and on the environment. I am honoured to chair the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, and proud when Anglicans lead the world, as the Diocese of Auckland did last month, becoming the first New Zealand institution to divest from fossil fuels.

Whether in specific public walks of witness, or by the witness of our daily lives, we are to be living testaments to the Good News of Jesus Christ – and it is the Church’s task to equip our people to be such leaders in the world. Education can, and should, be an evangelistic tool. We cannot nurture our children, our people, in mind, and heart, and body, without also nurturing their souls.

As I travel around our Province, I find my soul lifted by meeting Anglicans in every imaginable walk of life. It can be a tremendous joy to leave behind Synods and meetings, and the complexities of institutional life; and to spend time with people who have such pride in being Anglicans, and such joy in the Lord, in their own contexts. It teaches me that ‘revelation is on-going’. God’s eternal unchanging truths find fresh expression in every new circumstance. And here let me commend to you the on-going work of Growing the Church, in developing authentically Southern African ‘Fresh Expressions’. These draw on our sacramental and theological traditions and our concern for social justice in finding ways to promote new congregations. Christ is indeed born anew in us, day by day by day – the living Word of God, active among us, challenging our staleness, and surprising us by springing up where we had not expected it.

Jesus himself, the greatest teacher of all, calls each of us to follow him, wherever we find ourselves. Our two new members of the Order of Simon of Cyrene illustrate how broadly Christ’s call can come – whether to faithful years of service in the structures of the church; or, equally, to be salt and light in a life that has gone from Robben Island to the South African Council of Churches and then to the highest echelons of our country’s movers and shakers.

I come to Synod conscious of a spirit of deep thankfulness within me, for all God is and for all God does for us. For I know that, whatever our weaknesses, the fragrant aroma of God’s Spirit among us continues to attract people to himself, and to his mission and ministry. We know, in our heads, our hearts, our deepest selves, that God is faithful and he will do this. Day by day he sends forth faithful people, men and women, young and old, who give their time, their money, their gifts and their resources, to take forward the work to which God calls the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and to enable my own ministry, and the ministry of so many others within it.

For all our benefactors, for our ordained and lay leaders and their families, for our fellow pilgrims on the road, for all our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the ages, we give thanks to God.

Like the people of Zechariah’s time, our journeying to Jerusalem to seek the Lord and entreat his favour may be difficult and daunting, with complex challenges. But let us go forward in faithfulness and confidence, sure of our identity in the one who gives us life, so we may share this life with the peoples of all the races and nations among which we find ourselves.

And to God, the source of all blessing, be the glory, now and in all eternity. Amen.

Synod of Bishops and Provincial Synod

Please pray for Synod of Bishops and Provincial Synod, meeting this week

Media Advisory - Anglican Church of Southern Africa's Provincial Synod to Meet October 1 to 4

25 September 2013

The highest decision-making body of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), its Provincial Synod, will meet at the Kopanong Conference Centre, Benoni from Tuesday October 1 to Friday October 4.

During the opening service of the Synod on Tuesday afternoon, the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Dr Thabo Makgoba will deliver his Charge, the address in which he summarises the life of the Church and the challenges before it.

The theme of the Synod will be "A Vision for Education - Education for a Vision". Prof Mary Metcalfe, formerly of the University of the Witwatersrand and now with the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA), will make a presentation on Education to the Synod.

A special guest at the Synod will be the Most Revd Dr Daniel Deng Bul Yak, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan and Bishop of Juba. The Revd Dr J Cooper of Trinity Wall Street, Washington, a long time partner of ACSA, will also join part of Synod.

Other items on the agenda include:
1. Matters of Canon Law (the rules by which the Church lives);
2. A presentation on transformational leadership by Prof Bev Haddad of the University of Kwazulu-Natal;
3. A presentation on human sexuality by Bishop Martin Breytenbach of the Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist.
4. A presentation on theological education by Prof Barney Pityana, Rector of the College of the Transfiguration.
5. The consideration of resolutions on matters including Church action on alcohol and drug abuse, the protection of the environment and pastoral guidelines for ministry to couples who enter same-sex civil unions.

Dioceses in Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, the island of St. Helena and Swaziland will be represented by their bishops as well as clergy and lay members of the Church.

The meeting will be preceded by a closed meeting of the Church's Synod of Bishops.

Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman, 021 763 1320 (office hours)
The Revd Canon Dr Sarah Rowland Jones, 082 856 2082 (during Synod)

To the Laos - To the People of God, August 2013 - and July 2013

Here is this month's To the Laos letter, and below it follows the letter for July 2013, which, though sent out, did not make it onto the blog, in what was a very busy month.

Dear People of God

As August comes to an end, many of us have been reflecting on the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous speech, ‘I have a dream’.

On 28 August 1963, he stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and addressed over a quarter of a million civil rights supporters who had joined in the ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’. He was the last speaker at the end of a long rally, and the crowd was tired. Prompted by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson saying ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin!’ he departed from his prepared text and launched into the passionate words that are now so well remembered. I do encourage you to read them again, as he speaks of the self-evident truth that everyone is created equal, of the call to sit together at one table of fellowship, of freedom – God’s freedom – ringing loud and clear. Many churches, in the USA and around the world, commemorated the day with peals of bells.

Martin Luther King stirred the crowds as he said, ‘Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.’

These words are an inspiration for all of us, when we look at all the challenges and problems that face our societies and our churches. They are also inspiring words to direct us towards Provincial Synod, in the first week of October. Every three years, the full representative body of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa meets – and this year, now with 28 Dioceses, will be our largest Synod ever, with some 180 episcopal, clerical and lay delegates, as well as representatives of the Youth and various Provincial organisations, invited guests and staff.

Our theme is ‘A Vision for Education – Education for a Vision’. When we met three years ago, we affirmed and celebrated our new Vision and Mission Statement – that Anglicans ACT, Anchored in the love of Christ, Committed to God’s Mission, and Transformed by the Holy Spirit’. Our work now to take forward our Vision, including through the priority areas for action at Provincial level, inevitably must include an educative element, in order to ensure that all we do is communicated across our Province, so it can be accessed as ‘user friendly resources’ for dioceses, parishes and people.

Anyone who has been reading my recent letters will know that we have been prioritising Theological Education this year, as we establish an endowment fund for the College of the Transfiguration. Ensuring we can produce, and keep producing, well-trained ordained and lay leaders, is an essential foundation stone for the church’s future. I want to say a huge ‘thank you’ to everyone who has made donations, including on Theological Education Sunday. We have received some remarkably generous gifts – though, as I write, the money is still coming in so I cannot tell you yet how much we have raised. At Synod, we will hear a keynote address from Revd Canon Professor Barney Pityana, Rector of COTT.

Education is also a vital part of moving forward in all other areas. Therefore, looking at what needs to be done from this perspective will be a major task of our group discussions around our Vision and how we support the whole life of ACSA. This is part of the leadership that we, as Synod members, are called upon to offer to the rest of our Province. Another of our keynote speakers, Revd Professor Bev Haddad, will address us about leadership – both within the church, and in how we encourage and equip Anglicans to be good and confident leaders in whatever walks of life God calls each one to serve.

Education should be a life-long task. None of us ever reach a point where we can stop learning! That said, education is especially rooted in how we bring up our children, nurturing them in mind, heart, soul, and body. Professor Mary Metcalfe will be our third keynote speaker, helping us get to grips better with this vital theme. Since we last met, we have made great strides in taking forward the Archbishop’s Initiative in Education, including through the registration of the Anglican Board of Education in Southern Africa as an NPO, thanks particularly to the hard work of Bishop Peter Lee and his team – and, as I have written about in previous letters, there are many other exciting initiatives developing across the Province.

Another important area of our work relates to the rejuvenation of the Canon Law Society, and the work we are doing particularly to update our disciplinary canons. Though at first glance this might appear to indicate that we are becoming more ‘legalistic’, in fact the reverse is our true aim! We live in a world where increasingly people rush to litigation as the first solution in any disagreement – whereas we want to show that our rules and regulations, properly understood, can provide far more effective frameworks for handling differences and disagreements among us. This is the same approach that underlay our Pastoral Standards: having clear, well-understood, guidelines actually gives us greater freedom in living as the people of God in this area. Without such education in how canon law can be such a good servant, but poor master, we risk going further down the road of spending far too much of our parishioners’ generous giving on legal action over issues that should have been handled in far more godly, Christian, ways.

Alongside this, we shall conduct our usual business, from looking at the place of the church in the wider world, through to the details of our own administration and finances. The Second Agenda book also gives notice of a wide range of motions, on everything from the alcohol and drug abuse through to eco-congregations and sustainable energy, from the structure of Synod to the election and retirement age of Bishops, from a provincial conference centre to the Anglican Covenant, and more besides. If you can, I encourage you to find out who your Diocesan representatives are, and to engage with them on these issues.

And whatever else, please pray for them, and for all of us as we prepare to meet in Kopanong in October. Below you will find the Collect, written to guide us.

Meanwhile, I am sure you are keeping the traumas of the world in your prayers – especially Syria and Egypt. At home we continue to hold Madiba before the throne of grace. May God’s peace flow like a mighty river, wherever it is needed.

Yours in the service of Christ

+Thabo Cape Town

Lord of all wisdom, you led your people through the wilderness
in the cloud by day and the fire by night:
grant to all who gather in Provincial Synod
the grace to listen to your direction
the assurance of the inspiration of your Spirit,
and the joy to celebrate your presence in prayer and praise
that all may be done to your honour and glory;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour
who reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever. Amen


To the Laos – July 2013

Dear People of God

Last week, Nelson Mandela celebrated his 95th birthday – to the great relief of so very many of us. We thank God for the continuing life of South Africa’s former President, and pray that in his frailty he may know God’s strength and comfort, in body, mind, heart and soul.

And we also dare to ask, in the ancient words of those prayers used as evening falls, that God will grant dear Madiba ‘a peaceful night and a perfect end’, in God’s own perfect timing. At the end of this long life of faithful service, we pray that he may know the assurance of God’s compassionate presence, and know that Jesus Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life, has opened the gates of paradise to all who hear his voice and follow his call. We pray also that Me Graça, Madiba’s children and grandchildren, and all who love him, may know God’s strengthening in this long time of watching and waiting – that his peace may enfold them, and help them to find a good and holy way forward, through all the struggles with which they have battled in recent weeks.

This year, more than most, as Madiba’s birthday approached, I found myself giving thought to how best to celebrate this remarkable man and most appropriately honour his legacy. How should I spend 67 minutes serving others, in order to honour the 67 years of service of his life?

What I did was to join in a ‘human chain’ stretching along the Klipfontein Road, through the Rondebosch, Athlone and Gugulethu areas of Cape Town – several thousand of us waving flags and singing joyfully, despite drizzle! Yet I must admit that when I first heard the idea, I thought twice. Was this just ‘gesture politics’ and an easy way out of doing something more tangible with my 67 minutes?

But when I thought about it, I reached a different conclusion. For on Mandela Day we are asked to spend some time taking action that will help change the world, in ways that honour Nelson Mandela’s own example, in his life of service for the good of South Africa and its people. And Madiba’s example is that of a man with a servant heart, whose words and actions were driven by his dream – the dream of a united, democratic, non-racial, South Africa.

It struck me that if we do not make this dream our own vision, if this is not the foundation stone on which we base our lives and build our future, then all our other 67 minutes of service risk being undermined or diminished. For we need to tackle not only the symptoms of our wounded society, but their causes. And the persistence of past divisions – exacerbated now by growing new economic fault-lines – are amongst our most fundamental problems.

The Klipfontein Road in many ways illustrates the core issue: three distinct, separate communities were positioned at a distance from each other along its length. In contrast, our Human Chain was a living demonstration of our commitment to breaking down past divisions and building up a new reality in which we are all connected, all belonging to one another, and joined in the common life of our city and in the shared future which we create together in Cape Town and South Africa.

All this is ‘gospel-shaped work’. For, St Paul wrote, ‘God … has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and given us the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor 5:18). And through Christ ‘God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross’ (Col 1:20).

Wherever there is division, mistrust and suspicion, evil can find a foothold. The spiritual cracks between us become fertile soil for other divisions to flourish, bearing destructive fruit in every part of life. When we dare to step into these breaches with prayer, God will pour in his healing compassion, reaching out and drawing others closer to himself in redeeming love. We are called to be channels of this love, so others may come to know God in Jesus Christ by his Spirit, for themselves.

Sometimes people ask me if I think Madiba is a saint. Well, it depends on what you mean by saint! I don’t agree, if it means we consider his life so miraculous that it is impossible for anyone to follow his example. But the New Testament calls all God’s people ‘saints’, with some translations clearly reflecting this Greek word, as St Paul’s begins his letters with ‘greetings to the saints’ or ‘to those called to be saints’, in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae … Indeed, God calls each one of us – Nelson Mandela, you, me, whoever we are – to let ourselves be used by him, for his purposes in his world. This is the true meaning of being a saint. And while he may not use us in spectacular ways, he will certainly use us in ways that are significant for the building of his kingdom.

So then, let us honour Madiba, not only for 67 minutes once a year, but throughout our lives, by following God’s call, to be his ministers of reconciliation, his channels of love, his saints in his world. We can make every day a Mandela day! We are now looking at whether we can form human chains on some other specific day of the year – perhaps on Heritage Day, with the chain marking our links with the past and our determination to forge a better future, in the way we commit ourselves to breaking down old divisions and building new relationships, which uphold Madiba’s vision of a united, non-racial, equal society.

Human chains can be used as a powerful sign and symbol of commitment to transcend any divisions, past or present. And those who come together can sing, pray, and even dance a little! Then you might do as we did – pray specifically for Madiba, with thanksgiving for all he has achieved, and all he has challenged us to become, as well as praying for his comfort now. Then, after a little silent reflection, we said the pledge together. You will find the text at the end of this letter – please do use it wherever it can help us go forward in reconciliation, hope, and commitment to the shared good, that echoes all that God desires for people everywhere. Then we sang the national anthem.

And please do send in photos of your chains – or post them on Facebook (you can see many photos of what we did on the Klipfontein Road, on the ‘Human Chain - Mandela Day’ FB page). I hope that we might be able to gather some of these pictures together, and send them through to Madiba

In my last letter, I wrote at length about ensuring firm foundations for future training and formation of ordained and lay leaders, including through the Theological Endowment Fund for supporting the College of the Transfiguration. As part of this, I am asking every member of ACSA to make a special donation, on Theological Education Sunday, 18 August, of R10, or R100, or whatever you can manage.

You will be glad to know that I believe that Bishops should offer leadership in this as in all other matters – and therefore I have pledged R1000 out of my own pocket, for the Fund, and am challenging all the other ACSA bishops to match me, or even do better!

This month we congratulate Revd Canon Cynthia Botha, who heads the Publications Committee, on achieving 30 years on the staff of the Province. She started out as secretary to the Provincial Liaison Officer, who was then the future Archbishop, Njongonkulu Ndungane, and then to his successor Bishop John Carter. When he retired, she became secretary part time to both Emma Mashinini, who headed the CPSA’s Department of Justice and Reconciliation and to Publishing, taking on Publishing full time when the departments closed down. We thank you, Cynthia, and we thank God, for your long years of dedicated service!

This month was also the tenth anniversary of the consecrations of Bishops André Soares of Angola and Mark van Koevering of Niassa. There were rather more celebrations in Niassa, where they held their once-every-three-years Diocesan Synod. At the end of this they held a Diocesan Family Day, inaugurated a church dedicated to the first ever Mozambican priest, Yohannah Abdallah, and, as if that were not enough, compounded the joyful celebrations with the ordination of the first two Mozambican women to the diaconate, alongside four other deacons! We thank God for them all, with particular prayers for Reverends Claudina Cabral and Albertina Mucona as they begin this new ministry.

Yours in the service of Christ

+Thabo Cape Town

PLEDGE AT THE HUMAN CHAIN ON MANDELA DAY, THURSDAY 18 JULY, 2013

See http://archbishop.anglicanchurchsa.org/2013/07/more-on-human-chain-for-mandela-day-and.html

New Principal at Bishops, New Head at Herschel

This is an edited version of the sermon preached at the Installation of Mr Guy Pearson as the Principal of Diocesan College, 'Bishops', on 16 January 2013. A similar sermon was preached on 21 January 2013, at the Installation of Mr Stuart West as Head of Herschel Girls' School (recently named the top school in the Western Cape - Congratulations, Herschel!)

1 Kings 3:5-10, Matthew 13:44-52

May I speak in the name of God of all wisdom, who gives us both old and new treasures from his store.

Let me repeat what a great delight it to be installing Mr Guy Pearson as the new Principal of Bishops. Guy, we offer you hearty congratulations on this appointment! Though the weather in Cape Town may not be quite as hot as in Kwa-ZuluNatal at this time of year, be assured that our welcome to you and Marée could not be warmer!

I also want to congratulate Diocesan College on such an excellent choice! We know you come with extensive experience in educational excellence; with business skills; and with a deep, mature, Christian faith. And we look forward to the developing synergy between all that you are and that you bring to us, and our own traditions of pursuing excellence, promoting innovative and entrepreneurial instincts, and, of course, grounding every aspect of life upon the firm foundation-stone that is Jesus Christ.

The task of the school is the development of the boy child – intellectually, socially, spiritually. I know you share our vision, and will work for it: including through leading our gifted and more than able staff team; and through challenging and encouraging parents and guardians in playing their part in the raising of young men. Together, our desire is that each Bishops boy may grow into a contributing member of society: an effective citizen of the world, who can be part of life’s solutions at every level, personal and professional.

This is our shared hope, our shared prayer.

It is very much like the prayer of King Solomon, which we heard in our first reading. Here was a young man, preparing to take on great responsibilities in a changing world. His time was not the time of his father, King David. He inherited a nation at peace, after much war and turbulence. His task was consolidating a divided people and building a nation – rooted in the faith of God and all that this meant: a nation of justice and moral standards; of peace and economic prosperity.

I am sure you see the parallels with the new generation of ‘free-borns’, growing up and coming to adulthood in democratic South Africa.

Solomon knew it was a huge task – and he knew what he needed most: God’s gift of wisdom. The Bible tells us that God’s wisdom, holy wisdom, is not about being brainy. It is far more profound. It is about understanding how the world works and what makes people tick. It is about seeing under the surface of a situation, grasping what needs to be done, and knowing how to achieve it.

The Bible says such wisdom is more valuable than gold or precious jewels – and more to be desired than riches or honour, prosperity or success, fame or fortune! God’s wisdom is at the heart of the ‘buried treasure’ of God’s kingdom, the ‘pearl of great price’ of which Jesus spoke in our second reading. It is worth devoting our lives to.

Godly wisdom comes in as many different forms as there are people – as varied as the fish in the net of Jesus’ parable. For some, it may indeed mean becoming an expert in a particular field, pioneering new knowledge and its constructive use. Or it may come in very practical ways; or in organisational aptitudes; or in leadership abilities; or people skills.

Not everyone can be a straight-A student – but God has a gift of wisdom for each of us to grow in. Every one of you – and I include parents, staff, all of us, at any time – every one of us can pray the same prayer as Solomon, and know that God delights to give us whatever wisdom we need, for the challenges and tasks that come our way in life. God’s wisdom is for everyone – and it is also to be used for everyone, for the good of others, for the well-being of the whole of society – as, indeed, Solomon himself prayed.

Bishops shares this wider perspective. Boys are not here to pursue narrow goals of self-advancement, but to learn to make a positive difference in the world around. This begins at school – through the vision in the Bishops Partnership, through the Outreach programmes and Special Projects, through networks with other Anglican schools, and in many other ways.

As I’m sure you know, spreading educational opportunity and excellence to all South Africans is very close to my heart – and this is why I have launched the Archbishop’s Education Initiative; and am promoting the Vuleka School network, which, I am delighted and honoured to say, is now building a new ‘Archbishop Thabo Boys’ School’ in Johannesburg.

Mr Pearson, we are delighted that you are becoming part of Bishops’ life. Together we can build on what we each bring, of tradition and experience. Together, by God’s grace, we can also create new initiatives.

In other words, to quote our second reading again, together we can discover and use the old and the new treasures which God has in his storeroom for us.

So may he bless us all, in the new chapter that lies before us. Amen

Sermon at the Requiem Mass for Dr Deane Yates

This sermon was preached at the Requiem Mass for Dr Deane Yates, at St John's College, Johannesburg, on 21 July 2012

Ps 139: 1-11, Rom 8: 31- 39, John 6:37-40

May I speak in the name of God, from whose love, nothing in life nor death can ever separate us.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, dear friends, let me say again what a privilege it is to preside at this Requiem Mass for such a remarkable man. Let me especially welcome Deane Yates’ sister, Margaret Smith, and the wider family. Our love and prayers are with you. I also wish to thank you, Headmaster Roger Cameron, for hosting us today, as we honour your illustrious predecessor. I am also glad to acknowledge the presence of past chairs of Council, including those I worked with when I was myself a member of Council: Dru Gnodde , Stuart Morris, and Michael Spicer. I also welcome the clergy who are present, including the Dean of St George’s Cathedral in Windhoek – the Very Revd Michael Yates, no relation, who was a pupil here when Deane was head. And of course we welcome the wider circle of St John’s friends and family.

Two years ago, it was my great privilege and honour to speak at the funeral of Dot Yates – and it is an equal privilege and honour to speak of Deane today. When I look back on Deane’s life, perhaps the phrase that most springs to mind is ‘Holy courage’. He would have stood shoulder to shoulder with St Paul (and Dot would of course have stood with them), in saying, as we heard in our first reading, ‘If God is for us, who is against us?’

Deane lived that message through and through – he could not be daunted. When he knew what was the right thing to do, he went ahead and did it. We have heard so many examples of this Holy Courage in the tributes. And such energy too! For most of us, retirement means the prospect of putting our feet up and relaxing. But not for Deane and Dot. After a distinguished teaching career, culminating with 15 years as headmaster here, relaxing was the last thing on their mind! In full maturity, their response to God was the same as that of the young prophet Isaiah, ‘Here am I, Lord! Send me!’

It is a reminder to all of us that we are never to young nor too old to become a precious instrument in the hand of the Lord, to be used for his good purposes. Perhaps some of you here today are facing a cross-roads in your life, and wondering what turn your lives should take next. Well, the example of Deane and Dot is to put yourself into the hands of the living God, and let him guide you. And their advice would be to remember the words of St Paul: ‘If God is for you, who can be against you?’

Of course, this is no guarantee that life will be easy. There were many challenges in moving to Botswana and setting up Maru a Pula. We have heard how, in order to get the school built on time, Deane and Dot had to live in a tent on site. There was even the prospect of failure, when at first so few pupils enrolled. But they were not daunted. They did not give up. They knew that, whatever it was to which God called them, he was the one who would see it through, and who would make their efforts count in the eternal balance. For even when we appear to fail in the eyes of the world, God takes our faithful obedience and uses it as a solid stone in building his kingdom, in ways that earthly eyes cannot always see. And Deane’s heroic determination paid off – Maru a Pula became a success. It was a living testimony to another verse from St Paul, by which we should be encouraged when the challenges before us seem great: ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Phil 4:13).

In remembering Deane and Dot, it is not just what they did, but how they did it, and why they did it, that sticks with me. We remember Dot’s individual care for boys who battled, at St Johns – some with learning or hearing problems; or for lonely staff for overseas. We remember her support for the Community of the Resurrection, and her Wednesdays distributing peanut butter sandwiches in Alexandra. And, I need to add, my wife Lungi – here today – still claims that she has yet to meet the equal of Dot’s pecan pie.

We remember Deane for his great selflessness; for the way he was so appreciative of everyone, and everything. We remember him as such a clear communicator. We remember him not only as a mentor, but someone with a gift of radical hospitality. For example, after retiring from Maru a Pula, he and Dot lived in his successor David Matthews’ house in Houghton. It was a time of great tensions in the townships, and they made that home a refuge, where young men like me could go and stay, and read banned or censored material, and talk with others, in ways that were otherwise not open to us. It was a real sanctuary – a safe place, a place where God was honoured and his spirit dwelt.

For God is always with us, and for us, and working through us for others, above all so that we might truly come to know his love; and grow in experiencing that love and in sharing it with others. It was the love of God that motivated Deane and Dot. For Deane knew, as all the best teachers know, that education is about far, far more than filling heads with knowledge. Real education – the sort that helps produce maturing individuals, who can engage with the world with true wisdom, and become part of life’s solutions, societies’ solutions – this real education is of the whole human person. It is about our hearts, and about our innermost beings – it is about those parts of us which the love of God touches most profoundly.

We see how Deane understood this, in the way he set up Maru a Pula, and, even more clearly, in his formation of the New Era Schools Trust. For his desire was to transform our nation, through transforming young people – by letting them encounter one another as equals, on neutral ground. By creating new schools, where none had been before, in places that provided equal access to all pupils from all backgrounds. His dream was for everyone to find this new way of relating to one another – his desire that no child of Southern Africa should be, to echo the words of our gospel reading, ‘lost’ to the destructive system of the past. It was as though he was in a small way creating a space that could be a model for the new South Africa – which, at that point, still remained just a dream. Yet he knew it was a dream worth working to create. As he said then ‘It is only by growing up together in their formative years that the boys and girls of the emerging South Africa will remove apartheid from their hearts.’

I thank God that Deane and Dot lived to see the dawn of the New South Africa. Yet the task of removing the malign influence of apartheid remains a challenge. It is our hearts, our innermost beings, that must be touched, that must be changed. And working with the new generations of girls and boys is the most urgent and necessary part of that task – for we cannot afford to let the impact of apartheid continue to fester within our societies.

The challenge is vast and daunting – but we too should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by it. We must not let fear take us over. Instead we should hear the words of God that Deane recalls for us today: ‘If God is for us, who is against us?’ And God will help us, as he helped Deane, to work for to provide quality education for all, especially those who are the inheritors of historic exclusion, and those who are excluded by the circumstances of today.

So today we say thank you – to Deane, for all he was (and especially for all he was, with Dot by his side). We give thanks to God for all that he enabled Deane to do and to be. And we give thanks that Deane, with Dot, has now gone to that place of rest and peace and joy which is for all God’s faithful ones.

We comfort ourselves, in the face of the mystery – the daunting, fearful mystery – of death, with those words Deane chose for our service today: ‘In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

Nothing in life, nothing in death, can separate us from God’s love. It is the same message as the words of Jesus, from our Gospel: that all who believe in him will have eternal life; and he will raise them up, he will raise us up, on the last day. And so, with great confidence, in this Mass we commend Deane into the eternal arms of our loving God, believing that he will be raised up on the last day: and hear those words of his beloved Lord saying ‘Well done, good and faithful servant … enter now into the joy of your master.’ May it indeed be so.

Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord – and let light perpetual shine upon him. May he rest in peace – and rise in glory. Amen

Diocese of Johannesburg 90th Anniversary

The following sermon was delivered on 24 June 2012 at a service to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Diocese of Johannesburg.

2 Sam 5:1-12; 2 Cor 5:18-6:2; Mk 4:35-41

‘We are ambassadors for Christ.’

Dear Bishop Brian, dear People of God of the Diocese of Johannesburg, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, what a delight it is to share in today’s celebration! Thank you for your invitation to preach and preside today.

Thank you for the invitation to ‘come home’, to the Diocese of my birth and my baptism, of my raising and my confirmation, of my answering the call to ordination, and of my journey into the priesthood, that has now taken me to the far end of the country. I have to say, I love it there – but it is also so very good to come home! Thank you for making me and my family so welcome.

I know that at the end of the service, there will be a formal vote of thanks. But let me also add my own gratitude to the large team, both evident in this service, and in preparations and behind the scenes. And, dear Brian – dear brother Bishop and dear friend – especial thanks to you, for all you have been, for all you have done. May God bless you richly as you prepare to retire, and in all that lies ahead.

Yet, most of all, today, our thanks are to God – for his great faithfulness to us, through 90 long years. This Diocese was formed from the Diocese of Pretoria in 1922. This city, this country, has seen remarkable changes since then. In good times and in bad, our God has been our strength and our hope.

There have been times when we have known all too vividly, the need for great endurance, such as recounted by St Paul: in ‘afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights and hunger’. Yes, this Diocese and its people have seen all of these. There have been times when we felt like those disciples in that storm-tossed boat – when we wanted Jesus to wake up, and focus on our suffering; and to bring us instant and total relief. Perhaps we too worried that he did not really care – that he was content to sleep through all that threatened to overwhelm us.

But today we look back, and we see that Jesus was there for us. We look back and we recognise God’s hand at work. We look back and we give thanks for the courage and strength that he gave us. For all of this, we, the people of the Diocese of Johannesburg, give our grateful thanks.

And now, let me speak not as a son of this Diocese, but as one who now looks in from outside – let me speak from the perspective of the rest of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. On your ninetieth birthday, we too express our deep gratitude. For we also have much to thank God for, as we thank you for all you have been, and for all you have given: to the rest of this Province, and indeed to the Anglican Communion worldwide and to the whole ministry of God’s people to God’s world.

We give thanks for great church leaders – not least those courageous Bishops who travelled from here to Cape Town: Geoffrey Clayton, remembered as Bulldog; and Desmond Tutu, our dear ‘Emeritus’, of whom I am sure all of us still first think when we hear people refer to ‘the Arch’! And of course, other sons and daughters of this Diocese have found their way across our Province, and our Communion, and made a godly difference. Thank you, for them, and for their abilities and gifts which you have nurtured, and then freely shared.

Thank you also, for the many people – raised, and then resourced within our churches – who have gone on to play, and continue to play, significant roles beyond our walls. Thank you also for all those who have been leaders in the struggle, leaders in shaping this new nation, leaders in politics and in business, in academia and the media, in civil society and in every conceivable walk of life. We give thanks to you all; and we give thanks to God for you all.

Yet above all, whether we are from this Diocese or beyond, we give thanks today that God’s word to us remains steadfast and true, for the future as well as for the past. As we look into an unknown future, once again we must hear Jesus’ reassurance that we need not be afraid. He does not turn his back on us or abandon us in times of difficulty. We have achieved so much, and come so far, but we know that the challenges that lie before us remain great, and in many ways are very different from what we faced before.

The hardships of today are both similar and different to those of the past. Under democracy, poverty tragically persists, and is felt in every avenue of life: especially in housing, education, health, sanitation, employment … But today the dynamics of poverty are often different from in the past. Most shocking of all, inequality is worsening; and we seem content to stand by and allow this to happen through the socio-economic systems we are promoting.

Freedom has brought us choice – but the powerful do not always use it wisely or well. Too often narrow self-interest and greed are given free rein; and too many have lost sight – or chosen to ignore – the vision for which so many strove for so long, at such great cost, even at the cost of their lives.

What is our answer? It is that we should all be ‘ambassadors for Christ’.

It does not matter whether we are clergy or laity; whether our lives are mostly lived within the community of faith, or we find ourselves called to be salt and light in the world. Sharing Christ, is our central task, so others may encounter him, and find his answers to all the important questions of life. This is the same ‘ministry of all believers’ in which every Christian shares.

So we need Jesus at the centre of our lives. And as we battle whatever the challenges we face, we also need what St Paul describes as the ‘weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left’. If we are to overcome the evils of poverty in all its forms, the evil of greed and selfishness that result in the exploitation of the poor, the weak, the powerless, the voiceless, the marginalised, the excluded – then we need God’s weapons, of ‘purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God.’ These will help and guide us, wherever God calls us.

Perhaps it will be in initiatives through the churches – such as the Vuleka schools. We can also be partners with others. For example, I have just been in the United States, promoting ‘the Archbishop’s Global Economic Indaba’. Through local and international partners, this aims to foster a global network not only for dialogue on economic emancipation of the poor, but for practical means of empowering them to participate in economic activities, particularly through small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs). We hope this will have a greater social impact, improving health, education, and access to skills, and will be of especial help to young people, who often have such great potential and initiative.

More locally, we have the Y-AGE programme for training and mentoring young entrepreneurs in Gauteng, in which Hope Africa is working with the Department of Economic Development and various private sector partners. (And let me here encourage young people to consider signing up for this!) Or perhaps it will be through the contacts and influences that you already have – through work, in schools and colleges, in communities and neighbourhoods, wherever you happen to find yourselves.

And I hope that all of us will encourage one another in finding effective ways of overcoming the terrible gulf between rich and poor – a gulf which pains me deeply. All Anglicans should also work in whatever ways we can to bridge the gap in practical ways.

Finally, wherever you are, remember, Jesus Christ is Lord of all – wind and waves, and all the universe obey him. Every day is a day of promise – a day when we can share and know and experience his salvation, his redemption, his best answer to the struggles of humanity. So today, we give thanks for all that has been, and we go forward, in confidence, as ambassadors for Christ.

Walking Together for Education

The following Welcome and Introduction was delivered at the 'Walking Together for Education' summit organised by the Citizens Movement for Social Change, at St John's College, Houghton, Johannesburg, on 6 June 2012.

Dr Ramphele – or shall I say, dear friend, Mamphela! – Educators, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends, it is a great pleasure, and considerable privilege to welcome you all here this morning, and to share some opening reflections on the day before us.

Let me begin with some words of thanks. First, on behalf of us all, let me thank Roger Cameron, and everyone at St John’s College, for hosting us today. St John’s, I am glad to underline, is of course an Anglican School, founded in 1898. While honouring the heritage it received from England, it is firmly rooted in the soil of this land, defined by its African identity. It is committed to producing leaders who are ‘rightly trained in body, mind and character’, and ready ‘to serve God in Church and State’. Roger, thank you for providing such a context in which we can meet.

I also want to thank Roger for the wider role he plays in heading the organisation that brings together the Principals of Anglican Schools across South Africa. Last September, I met with this network, and offered a challenge: the challenge to consider how they – with all their expertise, experience and resources – could best ‘walk together’ with the Government education sector. I asked them to look at ways they could constructively engage with National and Provincial education departments. And I asked for their advice on how I personally could use the opportunities that come my way; and how the Anglican Church in this country, from national to local level, could also realistically, and practically, become more fully ‘part of the solution’ that we need in education.

So I am glad to tell you all today, that I am able to thank Roger for taking up this challenge, and beginning this process, with further serious discussion planned for the meeting in KwaZulu Natal later this year. I am sure we send you there, Roger, with our wholehearted encouragement.

But now that these wheels are in motion, let me offer you a further challenge! I would love to see an ‘alumni society’ of retired Principals and Heads of Anglican Schools – and perhaps other senior teachers too – who can come together to ‘give back’ to our nation. We know the needs are great – but we also know that the freshly retired are still so often full of energy, enthusiasm and ideas! So let us release and channel at least some of this potential towards strengthening the educational capabilities of South Africa!

Well, after this, Roger, my friend, you may well be wondering whether being thanked by me is something of a double-edged sword since it comes with so many requests attached! But never fear, because now I shall focus my thanks on Mamphela! Thank you, my friend, for your great energies at a time when others might be beginning to look longingly to the retirement I seem so keen to deny them! I’m am sure I speak for a great many, here today and across our nation, when I voice my gratitude to you for your persistent commitment to promoting a better future for us all; and especially for your initiative in launching the Citizens’ Movement for Social Change.

From the perspective of the Anglican Church – of which I am glad to note you are such a faithful, longstanding, member! – and from the perspective of the Christian faith (as indeed many other faith traditions), it is clear that we can only flourish as individuals, if we are committed to the flourishing of all our neighbours. Jesus’ call to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ is, to a very considerable degree, a charter for active, constructive, engaged, citizenship!

My hope and prayer is that the Citizens’ Movement will be able to make a significant contribution at the cutting edge of change in South Africa. I hope also that this contribution will cut across all the political, religious, cultural, linguistic, class, and other lines that we are too often tempted to draw between us in our rich and diverse nation. In contrast to such lines that can divide, our common citizenship should be a powerful tie that binds us to one another. We should not be afraid to acknowledge, and indeed joyfully affirm, that we share together one over-riding common interest: to bring about a flourishing future for us all, through the flourishing of all the promises our constitutional democracy offers to us.

All of us yearn for a South Africa of which we can be proud: a place in which – to borrow your own words, Mamphela – we ‘lay to rest the ghosts’ of our past! Above all else, we do not want the pressure of these ghosts to fall upon those too young to have any personal experience of those difficult and divisive years. We want them to be free of the heavy and dehumanising hand that lay upon us all, and which demeaned and diminished so many. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that education must be one of our highest priorities. Thank you, Mamphela, for making it so within the Citizens’ Movement.

When Archbishops ponder education, it is not long before their thoughts are drawn, as they were with citizenship, to Jesus! For it is crystal clear that he was a remarkable teacher:
• a teacher who cared for everyone;
• a teacher who educated by walking with humanity in the ups and downs of our lives; and by walking with each individual he encountered, in their own uniqueness;
• a teacher who encourages and delights, with his vivid, thought-provoking parables; and
• a teacher who models by the example of his own life.
And he is a teacher who calls us all to follow in his steps. So I am doubly grateful, Mamphela, that education is one of the key areas on which the Citizens’ Movement for Social Change has chosen to focus.

So let me now, briefly, make some comments about education, as a means of helping set the context of today’s Summit. What is the task of education?

A rather simplistic response is that its role is to disseminate learning. But, more than just communicating information – facts and figures, opinions and arguments, practices and procedures – it must equip us for living in today’s world. And today’s world is complex, pluralist, and multicultural world. For many of the questions that we face, there are no neutral answers to the moral and ethical challenges to which all our contexts give rise. This is true of all of us, young people included: from the choices we make within our families and closest relationships, to the careers young people aspire to pursue, and the influences that all have, in big ways and small, in shaping our nation.

Education must therefore include enabling individuals to become competent and skilled in engaging well with life. It must prepare young people to tackle wisely and well the ethical and moral questions that endlessly arise in every area of human activity; and so to play a constructive role in wider society. Education must help us all become committed, constructively engaged citizens, who understand what it means to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, in South Africa and the wider world.

Questions of good judgement face us at every turn: from how we utilise the finite resources of our planet through to the way we live as spouses, parents, neighbours, colleagues, employers, employees – every choice has consequences, for ourselves, for others. And it is not enough merely to speak broadly of seeking a world of justice and fairness for all, which moves towards overcoming inequalities, and strives to promote conditions in which all may have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. We also need to have sharp mental tools that help us analyse more specifically what it means in practice, so we may discern what is tangibly possible and how we can achieve it.

The task before us is great. Alongside the legacies of the past are new challenges, not least increasing economic disparities and the inequalities that flow from these. Further, as we have seen in vivid ways in the last two weeks, we have not yet learnt enough about how to live with one another’s different and distinctive cultural norms, in ways that affirm all that is good, and that express mutual respect and uphold the dignity of everyone. We do not do ourselves any favours if we pretend these challenges are less significant, less serious, than they are; or that there are simple and easy solutions. But to name the challenges is the first step in facing them, and overcoming them.

Jesus said ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’. And above all else, education is in the business of helping us know what the truth is, and responding with honesty, and justice, and all that is good and right and true. So may God bless you all, richly, in today’s meeting – so that you, and all with whom you engage, through the Citizen’s Movement, and through your hopes for education: so that you may be a blessing to others and to this nation. Thank you.

A Pastoral Letter from the Bishops to the People of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa

We, the Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, have been meeting in synod at Modderpoort 16-19 February 2009.

As teachers of the Church, we have spent a full and joyful day discussing Christian education ‘from baptism to the grave’. We want to develop a training framework for Christians of all ages in our Church. We were pleased to receive baptism training material from the Publishing Committee, which is meant to be the first of a series of aids to theological education in our Church. We note with gratitude many other such initiatives around the Province.

We also welcomed staff from the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown and the Anglican House of Studies in Pietermaritzburg, and received presentations on these and on the TEE College. We were encouraged at the positive reports from each of these as they develop numbers of talented people for ministry and leadership (Ephesians 4:11-14). We gave all of them our support for the future.

The Growing the Church initiative has been very much with us in recent months and is already bearing fruit. It is exciting to know that congregations are growing and some dioceses are contemplating giving birth to new ones; the Diocese of Ukhahlamba will be born out of Grahamstown on 3 October this year.

Our Archbishop has recently returned from the Primates’ Meeting. We were gratified to hear that all the Primates in Africa were present and engaged with the discussions and planning. Following the positive experience of the Lambeth Conference we remain committed to the ongoing process of reconciliation in our Church; because of our historic experience, we have previously said that we may have some insight to share with others in regard to tolerance and reconciliation. In the spirit of the Lambeth Indaba process, we will be glad to offer that – but we know very well that unity begins at home, and we need now to take account of our own life where tensions exist which need to be pro-actively addressed.

We have spent some time discussing the proposed Anglican Covenant, and support it in principle. There is much work still to be done in this regard, including dissemination and discussion in the life of the Church.

As we arrived in the Free State we were disturbed to hear that the provincial Department of Health is discontinuing the provision of anti-retroviral medication to HIV-positive patients for financial reasons; we have issued an urgent statement on this matter.

Naturally for South Africans, the forthcoming elections fill the horizon. We are concerned that voter education should take place, and that voters should be able to turn out in numbers to vote without fear of intimidation. We give our full support to the Independent Electoral Commission and to its Chair, Ms Brigalia Bam. We therefore offer ourselves as mediators in places of conflict and we urge our people to offer themselves as election monitors where this is needed and possible. We hear the cry, ‘where has ubuntu gone?’ This country needs to choose selfless and credible leaders who will use power for the common good.

We remain concerned about democratic processes not only in South Africa but in neighbouring countries, particularly Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The global economic crisis is damaging both the capacity of southern African countries to take care of their citizens, and the work of the Church especially where international funding or the exchange rate are threatened. We note that the battle against malaria is continuing, notably in Mocambique, but there is still much to do.

In 1999 we were among the first to call for a judicial commission of enquiry into the South African arms deal, and to question the levels of spending in that deal when so many other needs persist in our society. We still believe that unanswered questions around the deal will obstruct the way forward in South Africa's public life, and that a full and comprehensive judicial enquiry is essential to the future health of our society.

Now Lent is coming and we turn our minds to the discipline of prayer, reflection and giving which we associate with the coming season. Archbishop Thabo Makgoba has called us to focus in prayer on Zimbabwe on Ash Wednesday and we will want to join with others who are already fasting for that country and its people on that day. We must pray for the country and its new government; for the right treatment of Zimbabweans in neighbouring countries and for fair treatment at the hands of police and officials, especially in South Africa. We must pray and work for tolerance and patience on the part of citizens, so that among other things, xenophobic violence may never happen again. We further urge governments in the region not to act hastily in seeking to repatriate refugees to Zimbabwe.

These are difficult days for many people but we say with St Paul, We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4: 8-10)

The darkness of suffering yields to the light of resurrection, and the hope of Christ transforms all our days of hardship.

May God bless you all.