Alison Morgan, of ReSource, a Church of England charity dedicated to serving the church in renewal and mission, gave this challenging and inspiring talk at Anglicans Ablaze on 4 October 2012
Committed to God’s mission - Living as disciples of Jesus
Good morning! This is my first visit to South Africa, and I am very glad to be with you.
About 10 years ago I did something which changed my life. I prayed a prayer. I had been a university lecturer and I had been ordained as an Anglican minister, but then I had had three children, and my daily life was about being a wife and mother. And as the children became more independent I was feeling I wanted to do more than I was doing. So I prayed the prayer of Jabez. Jabez was a descendent of Jacob, and all we know about him is that he prayed this prayer. Nothing else. It’s in 1 Chronicles 4 and it goes like this: “Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!” I prayed that prayer each day for several months. And then one day God spoke to me. He showed me an eagle in the sky, and he said You are down there on the ground. Are you ready to fly up here with me? I’d no idea what he meant, but I remembered my prayer and so I said yes I was. It turned out he meant two things – was I willing to try and see the world as he sees it, to help him speak his word to his people; and was I willing to be sent to new places in order to do that. Well, I’ve now been to so many places and crossed so many borders that I need extra pages in my passport, and here I am in South Africa! You have to be careful what you pray…
I start with that because we are talking this morning about mission. The word mission isn’t actually a word we find much in the Bible. We use it as a kind of summary word, a word which sums up a concept which we do find there. It’s a Latin word, and it just means being sent.
When a person meets Jesus, two things happen. First of all we are called to come to him and to be with him. This is what happened to the first disciples, recruited one by one to leave their normal occupations and travel with Jesus. But for each one of them there was then a second moment, a moment not of calling but of sending. The same is true today. For us, commitment to Jesus means both being called and being sent. Calling, and sending. Coming, and going.
We can watch this pattern unfold in Luke’s gospel. In Luke chapter 5 we see Jesus calling the first 12 disciples, inviting them to come. By chapter 9 he is sending them out, telling them to go. In chapter 10 he calls 70 more disciples, and then he sends them too. Come; go. Come; go. It’s the beginning of a constant process. By the end, in chapter 20, he explains that although he is now going to be with the Father, nothing has changed: 's the Father has sent me, so I send you.' And then he said one more thing. He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ So we are called, we are sent, and we are equipped. And these are the three elements of the ACSA vision statement.
So we are sent. That begs the question, sent to do what? What was Jesus sending these first disciples to do? Well, he was sending them to do exactly the same things that they had seen him doing. So mission isn’t just about going, it’s not just about having the bus ticket or the dusty shoes or the border stamps in your passport, it’s about what you do when you get there. This is how Jesus understood what he was sent to do: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ And this is what he was sending them to do too. He was sending them to do the works that he had done.
So if we are committed to mission, this is what we are committed to. The Anglican Consultative Council has summarised it like this. These are the Five Marks of Mission, five things which we are supposed to do as people who have been sent by Jesus:
1. To proclaim the good news of the kingdom
2. To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
3. To respond to human need by loving service
4. To seek to transform unjust structures of society
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain the life of the earth
This list is helpful, because it reminds us not to fall into a narrow and incomplete understanding of what it is that Jesus is sending us to do; it helps us maintain the same whole-life understanding of mission that he had. But when Jesus wanted to explain what it was he was sending us to do, he used a different word. We’ve already mentioned it. The word he used was disciple. A disciple is someone who is called by Jesus and then sent to do these things in the name of Jesus – just as the first disciples were. Discipleship is the key to mission; if we get our discipleship right, we will find ourselves doing all these things. They are the natural outcomes of a life of discipleship.
We actually find that this link between discipleship and mission is made in another biblical word. The New Testament usually refers to the followers of Jesus as disciples, but sometimes it refers to them, as Jesus himself did, as apostles. And the word apostle means guess what? It means sent. Mission is what disciples of Jesus do. Let me share with you something said by Bishop Graham Cray, who will be speaking to us later this morning: “Mission will never be effective without authentic discipleship. Discipleship will never be taken seriously unless we engage in mission.”
What is discipleship?
So let’s think a bit more about what it actually means to be a disciple of Jesus. Let’s turn to Matthew 28, and the words of the Great Commission. This is what Jesus said to his disciples as he prepared to return to the Father:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
He actually said make disciples of all people groups, which is especially helpful here in Africa I think – Jesus is looking for disciples not just in every nation, but in every people, every tribe and every community. We are sent to the other side of the world, and we are sent to the people next door.
Now often we tend to see mission and discipleship as different things, different aspects of what we do as followers of Jesus. But I want to challenge that. I think words are a bit like clothes. I come to Africa each year, and people are very kind, and sometimes they give me a shirt made from beautiful Tanzanian or Zambian cotton. Like this one. And I take it home, and I wear it, and I wash it. And often I wear it and I wash it so much that the shirt shrinks or it fades. And gradually it stops looking as good as it did.
Now I think that happens with words too – we wear them and we wash them so many times that they shrink and they fade. And because it happens gradually we don’t even notice. I want to suggest to you that this has happened with the word disciple. When Jesus said go and make disciples, he was talking about something new and big and radical, something profound, something that had never been seen before. And yet often what we are left with after we’ve worn this word disciple, and washed it and passed it down from one generation to another, is something more like this, something shrunk and faded. And what happens? People look at us, and they see this small and faded shirt, and they are not impressed, and they do not come running to join us. Our new clothes have become old clothes. Our discipleship has become less than it should be. Instead of being the core of our identity as people called and sent by the living God, it has become just one of the things we do.
So what is discipleship? What did Jesus mean when he said, go and make disciples? If this word has shrunk and faded, what have we lost? I think two things.
1. Apprenticeship
First of all, when we think about discipleship today we tend to think about some form of study. The English word disciple comes from the Latin, disco, which just means to learn. And we know all about learning – for most of us, certainly in the global North but I think here in Africa too, learning means classrooms and colleges. Learning is about understanding, it’s about what we know. So we help people to become disciples of Jesus by inviting them on a study course – perhaps a Bible study programme to start with, then maybe a certificate or diploma in theology.
And yet this is not what Jesus meant by discipleship at all. The biblical word for disciple is not Latin but Greek, and it’s mathetes. Mathetes is not a classroom kind of word – it doesn’t mean student, it means something more like apprentice. Something like this. Christian discipleship is not theoretical, it’s practical. Jesus did not teach his disciples in a classroom, and he did not teach them to engage in theological debate. He taught them, apprenticeship style, to do the things which he did; he taught them how to live and how to minister. And then he told them to teach others to do these things too. So we see him not so much teaching them as training them, in the same practical way he’d been trained to be a carpenter. “Watch me,” he said as he healed the sick, freed the oppressed and offered good news to the poor. Then he said, “You go out now in pairs, try it yourselves, and we’ll go through it when you get back.” Then finally, “I’m off now, and you are to keep on doing this, and teach others to do it too.” Jesus wasn’t training theologians; he was training practitioners. It seems that for Jesus you can’t get to be a disciple by going on a study course. In fact I want to suggest to you that discipleship is not about what you know at all. It’s much bigger than what’s in your head – it’s about your whole life, everything that you are and everything that you do.
So what about our Bible study programmes? Bible study is very important, of course it is; but it is not enough. If we are to make disciples, we must do more than help people study the Word of God. Our task is to get it off the page and into their lives. Like this.
The Bible itself often tells us this. “Don’t read it, eat it,” God said to Ezekiel. “Don’t speak it, live it,” he said to Hosea. “You know what it says, but you have no understanding of its power,” Jesus said to the Pharisees. “The Word of God is living and active,” said the writer to the Hebrews; it is meant to change us and change the people around us. American theologian Dallas Willard puts it like this: ‘there is absolutely no suggestion in the NT that being a disciple consists of reading your Bible and praying regularly.’ It’s much, much bigger than that.
Let me tell you a story, told to me by Isaiah Chambala, now the Bishop of Kiteto in Tanzania. A Christian was living in a village near Arusha – she was the only Christian in the village. She was known for her faith, and one night some people came to her house with a sick girl. No treatment had worked, and they had been told that Christians know how to pray for healing. This woman was an Anglican, a churchgoer, baptised and confirmed – but she had absolutely no idea how to pray for healing. Desperate to help, she did the only thing she knew how to do. She recited the 10 Commandments. Nothing happened. She prayed the Lord’s Prayer. No result. She said the Creed. Still nothing. She reviewed the sacraments, she confessed her sins, she said the grace. The girl was as sick as ever. In frustration she burst into tears; what use was her faith? When eventually she raised her head, the girl had been healed. This experience changed her life. Determined to make her faith effective in practice, the woman joined a discipleship group. Soon she had led the whole family to Christ.
The point, Isaiah says, is this: discipleship is like football – knowing the theory is all very well, but it’s not enough to know the theory, you are supposed to win the game. It’s no use us just knowing stuff in our heads; being a disciple of Jesus was never meant to be about that. It’s about whether we can put it into practice, whether we can live it. Discipleship is not about information. It’s about transformation.
2. Community
But there’s a second thing I think we have lost too, and this is not the shrinking but the fading. We tend to see discipleship as an individual thing – particularly in the global North, but I think increasingly here too. I have a son and two daughters. They are all at college or university. They chose what to study according to their own interests – Ed is studying engineering, Bethy is studying dance and Katy is studying classical literature. This is good for earning your living, but it is not the right model for discipleship. For Jesus, discipleship was not an individual process but a community one. His disciples didn’t choose a subject or a syllabus, they chose a person; and they learned not as individuals attending classes but as part of a new, living community. Their discipleship was embedded in relationships. For them, discipleship was about leaving their families in order to travel together in community with Jesus. It was about loving one another, learning to recognise one another as brothers and sisters irrespective of background or status. It was about learning not to compete with one another or judge one another. It meant thinking we instead of thinking me. Jesus told them they were meant to be like branches of a vine, people who were conspicuous for the fact that they loved one another. Paul told the Romans, Corinthians and Ephesians that they were no longer individuals but members of one body, the body of Christ. We cannot be disciples alone. We can only be disciples if we are disciples together.
So I’d like to unshrink and unfade our concept of discipleship, and offer you a new definition. Here it is: Discipleship is a form of apprenticeship undertaken in community. To recognise this changes everything. It means that the focus of our discipleship will be not on what we know but on who we are becoming. And we aren’t becoming engineers or dancers or teachers, though all those are good things to be. We are becoming like Jesus, the Son of God, growing into his likeness day by day as we learn to obey him. This is why the first Christian disciples were called Followers of the Way. They were following Jesus. They were going on a journey that no one had ever been on before; and they were going on it together. They were so good at going on it together that people rushed to join them, and the church was born.
In the 2nd century a Roman Christian called Minucius Felix explained it like this: ‘Beauty of life causes strangers to join our ranks; we do not talk about great things; we live them.’ You will be pleased to know that Minucius was African.
So that is why people want to join us. Because we are living in a different way from those around us. Because we have been baptised in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and because Jesus is with us and ministers through us as we commit ourselves to obeying him. Just as Matthew said he would.
I am the Director of a discipleship programme for Africa called Rooted in Jesus. It’s a programme which gathers people into small groups and helps them to become apprentices of Jesus. Group members learn to apply their faith to their whole lives, and to live it out in practical ways, supporting and helping one another as they do so. Intellectually it is not a difficult course – group members do not even need to be able to read. But spiritually it is very challenging, and it leads to radical change in the lives of those who take part. This is what one group leader in Zambia wrote to me recently, and it’s fairly typical: “Many people have been healed, demons are cast out, broken marriages are brought together, lost items are being recovered. Therefore the group is encouraged on how Jesus Christ is answering our prayer requests and people are changing in their lives.”
The plural of disciple is church
Some time ago the Bishop of Carlisle in the UK invited me to speak to a gathering of archdeacons and rural deans about discipleship. As part of my preparation I decided to do a Bible study. I found that in the Old Testament the word disciple is used only once. In the New Testament it is used a lot in the Gospels, and sometimes in Acts, where it describes the followers of Jesus. But to my astonishment I found that the word disciple does not appear at all in the Epistles. Peter, Paul, James and John do not use the word disciple. Not even once.
Now I was very surprised by this, and I began to think about what the explanation could be. It could not be that only these first followers of Jesus were to be called disciples, because according to Matthew Jesus was quite clear that he wanted them to go and make other disciples, and he said that this was a task which would last until the end of the age. Discipleship did not stop with Jesus.
I thought some more. The first thing I concluded was that it is absolutely clear that when we are thinking about discipleship we are thinking about Jesus, and only Jesus. If it’s not focussed on Jesus, it isn’t discipleship.
But then I realised something else. The word disciple is not used by Peter, Paul, James and John, but there is another word which they use in their letters all the time, and which we don’t find in the gospels. Anyone guess what it is? It’s church. What does that tell us? I think it tells us this: the plural of disciple is church. A church is nothing more or less than a community of disciples, a gathering of people who have been called into relationship with God. The English word ‘church’ in fact carries this meaning beautifully: it derives from the Greek kurios, or ‘Lord’.
This is how Archbishop Rowan Williams defines church:
“Church is what happens when people encounter the Risen Jesus and commit themselves to sustaining and deepening that encounter in their encounter with each other.”
So I find it helpful to remind myself that a church is not a building, or an event, or an institution. A church is a group of people who are helping one another to deepen their relationship with Jesus. A church is, or should be, a community of disciples. If discipleship is not at the heart of what we do, then we are not a church. And that means that the health of the church depends on the depth of our discipleship.
This is what Tanzanian Gaspar Kassanda writes about the church in East Africa:
“If the church would revisit the biblical teachings on discipleship it would revive its life and many of its problems would be rectified. Note that simply teaching the Word is not all there is to discipleship. There must be personal involvement, practical training, practical experience and positive role modelling.”
In my view this can be done only in the way that Jesus did it: by gathering people together into small groups and training them to live a different way. It’s how Paul did it too, gathering little groups of people together in different places, helping them to learn what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus in the context of their daily lives and in the midst of their communities. These were the first churches, formed all over the Roman empire. We know the names of their leaders, we know they met together in homes – we know in fact that there were no church buildings for 250 years. It was all about small groups of disciples meeting together, learning to love Jesus and love one another. Apprentices of Jesus, gathering together in community, learning to live in a different way.
Community with a purpose
So a church is a community of disciples of Jesus, committed to him and committed to one another. But is that enough? If we get our relationships with Jesus and our relationships with each other right, have we done all that Jesus is asking us to do?
This is what Peter wrote to the churches in Asia Minor:
Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…
Peter is talking about the church, and he is comparing it to a temple. The cornerstone of the temple, the stone which holds the whole building up, is Jesus. The stones from which the temple is built are the believers. They are living stones because they have been made alive through Jesus, and they have been built together into a spiritual house. But a temple is not built just to stand there and look good, it has a purpose. So the believers are to be not just a spiritual house, but a holy priesthood – they are to do something. They have a purpose. Peter explains what this purpose is:
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.
Their purpose is to proclaim the gospel to others. They have a job to do. So first we come to Jesus, and we are changed from dead stones to living stones. Then we are formed together into new communities, spiritual houses which we call churches. Finally we are given a job to do; we are sent to proclaim the gospel to those who are still in darkness.
And this is the third point I want to offer you this morning. We began by defining discipleship as a form of apprenticeship in community. It starts there, but it doesn’t stop there. The community has a purpose which reaches beyond itself. This comes as no surprise – right from the beginning Jesus taught his disciples to minister to others, to do what he himself said he had come to do: to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. What is our purpose? It is to do the things that Jesus did, to minister to those around us. Our purpose is mission; we are sent to share with others what we ourselves have received.
So as disciples we are apprenticed to Jesus, we are formed into communities and we are sent to reach out to others. Discipleship is about apprenticeship, about community and about mission. It’s about being salt and light to the people among whom we live; it’s about making a difference. One church in the United States summed it up like this: our mission is to offer living proof of a loving God to a watching world.
Now if we embrace this fully, if we unshrink and unfade our understanding of discipleship and we restore it to its rightful place as the centre of everything we are and do, we begin to see some remarkable things happening. We begin to see lives being changed, churches being renewed and communities being transformed. We begin to see the kingdom of God coming among us.
We’ve already heard some testimonies of what God is doing in the Diocese of Niassa. Niassa is a diocese where they intentionally place discipleship at the heart of everything they do, a diocese where discipleship is neither shrunk nor faded, a diocese where discipleship is at the core of their understanding of mission. They are experiencing extraordinary spiritual and numerical growth as a result.
But it seems Jesus is prepared to work with little groups of disciples even in places where there is no strategic support from the diocese. This is a group in Mansa, Zambia. They meet daily, and twice a week they go out to pray for people in the community. Their leader is a lay man called Robert. He’s using Rooted in Jesus, and he has been sending me reports as they travel together through the various books. This is what he wrote after the group had completed a module on prayer for healing: “The group gives spiritual support to individuals, families and groups depending on their requests. The group gives counselling, healing prayers, casts out demons and encourages those who are spiritually weak and have stopped attending church meetings. The group has received people from far villages for healing. The group is very much encouraged by the people’s response and how they are with the power of prayers.” More recently, after the group had completed the modules on evangelism and prayer for the community, he wrote this: “I am proud in Jesus name to inform you and your team that our group has started charity work in the community after learning the word of God on ‘Salt and Light.’ After the lesson, members of the group contributed financially and materially. The group raised 24kg of maize grain, 6 bars of soap, salt, and second hand clothes.” Keen to reach out to others, they travelled to a village 35 km from Mansa to teach about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This is what happened: “I am proud that many Christians surrendered their lives to Jesus as Lord, and demons, evil spirits were cast out in many people during the altar call healing prayer time. I thank the power of God by releasing many people from the power of darkness to light.” They are now planning to plant groups in 8 new places by the end of the year. Discipleship makes a difference, and these ordinary group members are being to sent to places both spiritually and geographically in a way they never dreamed possible.
Rooted in Jesus
So we have three threads. Discipleship is about apprenticeship to Jesus. It is about the formation of small groups where people can grow together. And it is about mission, about bringing something completely new to the communities in which those groups are set.
I’d like to close by telling you a little of what I have seen in one of the places where discipleship is understood like this. Rooted in Jesus was developed 10 years ago now, with and for the Diocese of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, with whom our diocese in Leicester was linked. When the first generation of groups completed the course, we went to ask them how they had got on. We hoped to hear they’d found it very helpful. What we actually did hear took us completely by surprise.
Firstly, we noticed a change in the group leaders themselves. Being with them was like being with a completely different bunch of people from the nervous and shy ones we’d met with 4 years earlier. They looked taller, stronger, more determined. Here they are. One after another they said they now had great confidence in God, that he was now with them and working powerfully through them. Many said they used to read the Bible ‘like a newspaper or magazine’, but now read it and pray over it daily and find that it speaks to them. Some said that they had lost their fear; that they feel power in preaching; that they feel a love for their group members. Several said their churches are now full. They were keen to share their experiences, keen that we should use their testimony to encourage people in other places.
Then they began to tell us about the changing lives of group members. A man called Simon, known for his quarrelsome nature, had turned to God and been released dramatically from his anger; astonished to see him transformed by inner peace, his wives (he had 12) had all joined the group. Abraham had been freed from his overwhelming fear of the local witchdoctor, who he thought would destroy his animals. Leah, barren, had discovered you can pray to Jesus about your personal needs; the group had prayed, and she had conceived. A man who had left his wife and children for another woman had repented and returned home.
Many of them said that their whole group had changed as they had met together. One said that on the 4th lesson he had taught his group the memory verse John 1.12, which says ‘to all who received him he gave power to become children of God’. He said they hadn’t known that. They were just churchgoers, and they’d not heard of the Holy Spirit or realised any act of commitment was necessary. He explained the verse and the whole group was filled with the Holy Spirit. Other leaders said their people had stopped worshipping the wrong god, had stopped using drugs and smoking, and were no longer getting drunk. They were only beating their wives occasionally (!). They were now praying for the sick and seeing healings. Some had been inspired to learn to read and write so they could read the Bible. All the leaders said their churches had stopped being impersonal Sunday gatherings and become active fellowships of people committed to God and to one another.
Finally, they told us about the impact the groups were having on the local community. Prayer was becoming normal in the villages; in one Masai village the elders were still meeting under the tree to take decisions, but they were now praying over those decisions. People were sharing their faith and others were coming to Christ; illiterate people were teaching others from the memory verses. People in the community were being prayed for and many had been healed; the sick were being cared for. An evangelist called Japhet told how one day as his group was meeting in the church a passing Muslim rushed in, overcome by the sudden sensation that his feet were ‘on fire’, and saying he had no idea what they were doing but could he join in? Everywhere group members were speaking out against witchcraft and had stopped putting ‘medicines’ on crops, and many witchdoctors had been saved. A woman who had been bitten by a snake came to the group for prayer instead of visiting the witchdoctor; and was healed. A child who used to fall down all the time had been prayed for until he too was healed, with the result that the whole family came to Christ and joined the group. Teachers were now teaching about Jesus in the primary school. One leader said his whole village had been transformed, another that his village had changed dramatically. The testimonies were extraordinary and unexpected; I was so overwhelmed that I cried.
Well, that was a long time ago. Since then we have worked in many other places. We have never advertised Rooted in Jesus, but everywhere the Lord seems to be speaking to his people about discipleship, and it has spread from one place to another, including of course here in South Africa where it was first adopted in the Diocese of St Mark the Evangelist. It is now in use in 43 dioceses in 14 countries, and we have learned so much through our partnerships with these dioceses that we have actually adapted Rooted in Jesus for use in more Western contexts as well, under the title The God Who is There. I think this is probably the first time that a programme developed in Africa has been adapted for use in the UK. I suspect it will not be the last!
Tomorrow afternoon I will be leading a workshop with Bishop Martin Breytenbach on making disciples who make disciples. This talk has been quite theoretical – in the workshop we will be very practical. We will look at Rooted in Jesus as a tool for whole life disciplemaking, and Bishop Martin will talk about what that they have been learning as they have tried to place discipleship at the centre of what they are doing in the Diocese of St Mark’s.
But for now I will leave you with a quote from Bishop Graham Cray, who will be speaking to us later this morning: ‘Mission will never be effective without authentic discipleship. Discipleship will never be taken seriously unless we engage in mission.’
God bless you.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Diocese of Pretoria
This Statement on behalf of the Synod of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa was issued on 4 October 2012
At its meeting last week, the Synod of Bishops received the report of the Task Team which was appointed in terms of Canon 21.3 by the Archbishop on the recommendation of the Synod of Bishops.
The report was thoroughly discussed and a committee of Bishops was established to follow up the decisions reached by the Synod of Bishops, and to communicate the Synod’s response to the Task Team’s report to the parties concerned.
Members of the team have met this week with the Diocesan Executive of the Diocese of Pretoria, and with the Parish Council of St Alban’s Cathedral. These discussions are continuing.
The Task Team’s report states clearly that allegations that the Bishop of Pretoria, Dr Jo Seoka, had acted improperly in regard to a loan for housing are groundless. The Bishops call upon those making these unfounded allegations to desist.
The search for a resolution of other matters which are in dispute continues. Consideration will be given to making additional information available, as appropriate, when this process had continued further.
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
At its meeting last week, the Synod of Bishops received the report of the Task Team which was appointed in terms of Canon 21.3 by the Archbishop on the recommendation of the Synod of Bishops.
The report was thoroughly discussed and a committee of Bishops was established to follow up the decisions reached by the Synod of Bishops, and to communicate the Synod’s response to the Task Team’s report to the parties concerned.
Members of the team have met this week with the Diocesan Executive of the Diocese of Pretoria, and with the Parish Council of St Alban’s Cathedral. These discussions are continuing.
The Task Team’s report states clearly that allegations that the Bishop of Pretoria, Dr Jo Seoka, had acted improperly in regard to a loan for housing are groundless. The Bishops call upon those making these unfounded allegations to desist.
The search for a resolution of other matters which are in dispute continues. Consideration will be given to making additional information available, as appropriate, when this process had continued further.
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Anchored in the Love of Christ - Anglicans Ablaze
This is the keynote address, 'Anchored in the Love of Christ', given at the Anglicans Ablaze Conference on 3 October 2012.
Dear Brothers and sisters in Christ, I greet you in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Bishop Martin, thank you for nurturing me on this journey. Thank you for bringing the challenge of Anglicans Ablaze before the Synod of Bishops and for making sure that I made it here today. Thank you to you and your team, to Trevor and everyone else: not only for inviting me to speak today, but for all you have done in organising this conference! At the heart of thanksgiving is an attitude of gratitude – I am very proud of your team and all they have done in preparing for today, and, I hope, for beyond.
It brings me enormous joy that so many of us have gathered here today. [Acknowledgements of guests and particular people present.] Indeed, this is one of the largest – if not THE largest – gathering of Anglicans from across Southern Africa that anyone can remember! This delights my heart – because one of the things for which I have prayed since becoming Archbishop, is that we should rediscover one another, in Christ, in a new and fresh way – and discover together God’s calling to us all, to be his people across the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
We know we live with huge diversity – from big cities to tiny villages; from rich suburbs to poor informal settlements; from lush veldt to dry Karoo; from seaside to mountains. We also live with great human diversity, in our languages, our cultures, our contexts. And yet we all have something in common – the most important thing of all.
God loves us.
This is the glue that binds us together, as Anglicans, as Christians, as members together of the body of Christ. And as St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, if we belong to Christ, we are members of his body, and it doesn’t matter how different we are – whether we are a foot or a hand or an eye or an ear. If we belong to Christ, we belong to each other. And so God in Jesus Christ calls us to live in his love – to be anchored in his love – and to share his love, and the salvation and redemption it brings, with those around us.
The call to be anchored in the love of God is the starting point of all Christian life; and the starting point for all that the Church is, and is called to be. So it should not come as a surprise to find that it is the starting point of our Vision and Mission Statement. This evening, I want to start by speaking about how we came to have our Vision, and how God’s love became its foundation stone.
The Story of the Vision
As soon as I was elected Archbishop, I began to feel, echoing inside me, this call to live together in God’s love, and sharing God’s love – a call not only to me, but to all of us. It also felt like a call to begin a fresh chapter in our lives, as the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, acknowledging our past, but now facing the new challenges of the twenty-first century.
Let’s face it. Our church, and all the countries of Southern Africa, have been through enormous turmoil and strain in the last fifty years or more. Conflict, strife, oppression – we have all known them in many ways; and some of us have lived with full-blown civil war. The task of the church was to preach and model and share the good news of Jesus Christ in these terrible circumstances. And so we did: proclaiming the Scriptures, speaking up for God’s truth, standing for righteousness, opposing oppression, burying the dead, comforting the sorrowing, and – no matter how dark our darkest hours – always holding up the light of Christ, always sharing the hope of the gospel.
But all our lives were distorted by the horrors of apartheid, and its impact within and beyond South Africa. When democracy and peace finally came, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu then famously said ‘Now we can get back to truly being church!’
Well, what does it mean for us to be truly church, in our new circumstances? This, it seemed to me, was the key question that God was asking of me, and all of us, as I prepared to take up the responsibility of being Archbishop. And so it became the starting point of the Charge which I preached at my Installation at St George’s Cathedral in 2008. Right at the beginning, I said to all of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa ‘Thank you that you are partners with me in the gospel.’ And then also I spoke our need to ‘seek afresh to discover what it is to be the body of Christ in our time, and who God is in Jesus Christ, for us here and now’.
These words became a signpost for going forward:
• first, as partners in the gospel;
• and second, in discovering what this actually means for us in today’s Southern Africa – with contexts so very different from our recent past.
What does it mean to be the body of Christ in our time? Who is God in Jesus Christ, for us, today, in Angola, in Lesotho, in Mozambique, in Namibia, in South Africa, in Swaziland, even in St Helena and Tristan da Cunha? What is God’s desire for our church, and for our world? What is his message, of judgement, yes, but also of redemptive hope, for all of us and our nations?
Well, I knew these were questions we needed to tackle – and to wrestle with as widely as possible. So you may remember that very soon after my installation, I began a consultative process, with a standing committee led by Ms Glenda Wildschut. We asked Dioceses and Parishes and other bodies to send in their visions and their mission statements. We held consultations for Provincial organisations, from Hope Africa and the Health Care Trust through to the Mothers Union and AWF and Bernard Mizeki and the Provincial Youth Council, and other networks. In my monthly letter To the Laos, I invited anyone who was interested to send in their comments – and asked everyone to pray for the process.
Then I brought together a team from across the Province, to sift and discuss all that we had received, through a number of meetings. Our first reflections were presented to Provincial Standing Committee in 2009. They made some recommendations for further work; and the Synod of Bishops also gave their input.
Finally, the work was complete. It was presented to Provincial Synod in 2010, and the Vision and Mission Statement were endorsed. Let me just remind you of them again. Our Vision is that the Anglican community in Southern Africa seeks to be:
• Anchored in the love of Christ
• Committed to God's Mission
• Transformed by the Holy Spirit
Anchored, Committed, Transformed: A, C, T – so we are Anglicans who ACT!
And our Mission Statement is that, across our diverse countries and cultures, we seek:
• To honour God in worship that feeds and empowers us for faithful witness and service
• To embody and proclaim the message of God’s redemptive hope and healing for people and creation
• To grow communities of faith that form, inform, and transform those who follow Christ
We also identified 8 priorities for action at Provincial level.
This is not the same as saying they are the priorities for all of the Province – for we know that each Diocese, each Parish, must preach and live the gospel in its own context; and so must set its own priorities.
But in order to equip, and resource, and strengthen, and support, the Dioceses and Parishes in whatever they are called to be and do, there are some things that are best tackled at a Provincial level.
And we identified the following key priorities:
1. Liturgical renewal for transformative worship
2. Theological education and formation
3. Leadership development
4. Health, including HIV and AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis
5. The environment
6. Women and gender
7. Protection and nurture of children and the young
8. Public advocacy
In addition to these, there are two further priorities – two absolutely vital, critical, themes. They are
• transformation (that is, transforming all the legacies of apartheid), and
• a holistic mission rooted in a full commitment to evangelism.
These two themes must run through all the 8 priorities – they cannot be handled separately.
So now we are moving ahead with all of this. Last week at Provincial Standing Committee we worked hard at ‘putting legs’ on the eight priorities – taking forward specific actions in all these various areas. If you want to find out more about what we discussed and decided, have a look at the press release, which is on the ACSA website, and on my blog and Facebook page – or to complicate your life further, just check my twitter feed – I blame all these on my son and my staff!
I was intrigued this morning when I addressed the Anglican Provincial Youth Council this morning in Benoni. I was humbled and excited, as they said ‘We are going to put on feet and legs and meat and sinew on this Vision.’ I hope we will hear from them further during this conference – we have challenges, but the energy of the youth shows we are truly alive!
But we must not jump the gun and get involved with all these detailed issues of implementation, without first ensuring that we start with love.
Starting with Love
As +Martin said, if this Vision, these priorities are only on paper or in our heads, they are not alive. We need God’s for this.
St Paul reminds us of this, of course, in the famous thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. He wrote ‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.’
Today we might say, ‘If I have an inspiring Vision and Mission statement, but do not have love, I am no better than a noisy vuvuzela. If I carefully analyse all my priorities, but I do not have love, they are worth nothing. If we have an exciting conference, with rousing speakers, but we are not rooted and grounded in love, we are no better than a night-club in Sandton!’
We have to start with love. We start with love, because we start with God. Everything in all creation starts with God, and God is love! Because of love, God creates. Without God’s love, nothing would exist. Because of love, God redeems. Without God’s love, we would all be lost in our sins, in death and destruction.
But God IS love. And ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn 3:16-17). Above all else, God is in the business of loving. And he calls us to be also.
The first letter of St John has much to say about this – and I commend it to you for private study and reflection. I invite you to soak yourself in it, just as it calls you to soak yourself in the love of God. ‘God is love’ it tells us. ‘And in this is love, not that we love God – but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Again and again he reminds us that love starts with God. ‘We love’ he says ‘because God first loved us.’
God’s love for us
We are to abide in this love. And St John also tells us this ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love’ (1 Jn 4:18).
How do you feel about this verse? It is very challenging to most of us, I expect. Perhaps it makes you feel a little uncomfortable. Well, let’s try an experiment – some of you may have done this before, but never mind! Let’s all stand up (it is about time everyone had a chance to stretch their legs!). Now, turn to someone close to you, and tell them ‘God loves you!’
[Pause for this to happen.]
This is great, isn’t it – it is lovely to tell others about the love of God! Now, try something different. Turn to someone near to you and say ‘God loves me!’
[Pause for this to happen, and for everyone to sit down again.]
Saying ‘God loves me’ feels very different, doesn’t it? It is odd, and sometimes embarrassing, and difficult, and stirs up strange undercurrents inside us. It shows us how hard we sometimes find it to believe that God truly does love us. Perhaps we fear that we are not really lovable. Perhaps we are afraid that God doesn’t really love us, or only loves us a bit, but has a great long list of complaints and criticisms about us.
Such fear does not come from God – it comes from the brokenness and failings of the world. Such fear distances us from God – while instead God himself invites us to draw close, and to abide inside the embrace of his love. God’s challenge to us is to let him love us. God’s challenge to us is to let him overcome our fears that we are not loveable – with his love that is stronger than fear, stronger than death; with his love that conquered everything upon the cross.
Perhaps when you were a child, you were told you always had to try harder – and you somehow got the message that you were not good enough. Parents don’t mean it – but they are only human, and sometimes they hurt us without intending to. Or perhaps others told you that you are not good enough, or that your place is in the wrong, because of your skin colour, or your gender, or some other reason.
God’s love is for you – if you dare to let him to reach his tender loving touch into your vulnerable, hurting places, it will be like sunshine that brings new life to a cold and frozen ground. It can be hard to do this, especially if you have built up barriers over many years to protect you from getting hurt – but God gently asks you to take those barriers down, so his love can reach you, and warm your heart!
If this is you, then make time this week to sit quietly in the presence of God, and just let him show you his love, more than you have ever dared feel it before. Or perhaps you will be helped by talking with someone, and having them pray with you. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!
But what if your problem is different? Perhaps you are burdened by having done something wrong, so you feel that God can’t love you? The truth of the matter is that there is nothing that can stop God loving us. In fact, there is nothing we can do to make him love us less – or make him love us more.
Perhaps you feel like saying ‘I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself.’ What you are actually saying, is that your sins are bigger than the power of Christ’s death on the cross! It is as if you have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's – and that idol is your own pride!
Listen again to these words from St John’s first letter. They are for you. ‘God loved you, and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins.’ Jesus Christ has dealt with them, once and for all, upon the cross. They are done with. Over. Gone. Jesus Christ has destroyed them, and they cannot be a barrier any more, between his love and you. His love is greater.
And therefore, if you are still battling with this – again, I say, find someone to pray with you. Even if it is not your tradition, sometimes it helps to go to a priest, and make a confession – and you will know that God hears, and then you will hear the priest declare God’s words of absolution, that your sins are forgiven and that he gives you new life, in the fullness of his love.
Yes, we need to be anchored in God’s love. And, I suspect, it will take all of us our whole lives to work out what this means, and to grow in accepting more and more of God’s immeasurable love for us. It is the work of a lifetime!
God’s love for others
Yet this love is not just about us. It is love to be shared with others, as St John repeatedly insists in his letter. ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 Jn 4:7,8)
He also writes, ‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action’ (1 Jn 3:16-17).
Our Vision statement therefore is about letting God love us – and about showing God’s love to others. Even in the hardest circumstances, we must anchor all we say and do in God’s love.
I always knew this in my head – but I just want to share a little story from my own life. When I became a Bishop, I quickly discovered that rooting all our actions in love is a far more radical calling than I had realised! And it matters most, in the hardest circumstances. For God’s love can break open the most difficult situations, if only we are prepared to let it.
I learnt this lesson very soon after becoming the suffragan Bishop in Queenstown, in the Diocese of Grahamstown. 3 months into this vast new task, the challenge came.
In one parish there was a priest who was very much larger than life. He wasn’t the rector, but he was the driving force. With his big, charismatic, personality, he had turned around that ailing parish, and brought lots of new people into the church. He did it through some very straight talking. Perhaps, you might say, he spoke a language that the people understood. But it was a rough language – even a crude language, some called it. And many of the original parishioners did not like it, and did not like him, and, frankly, probably didn’t care very much for the sort of people he was bringing into what they thought of as their respectable church.
All sorts of complaints and accusations came through to the Bishop’s office – to my office. The priest had to be suspended, while investigations and evaluations were made. He was cleared of them all – and so it was right that he should be fully reinstated. But some of those people still they did not like him, and they did not want him back.
I went to that church to do the reinstatement, and also to do a confirmation service at the same time. I went with real trepidation, as I knew I would get a rough ride. And I got it! There was a big picket outside, with sticks and no doubt worse.
But I put on a brave face, and processed into the church. As is normal, I began by saying ‘The Lord be with you!’ – and in response, uproar broke out, with whistling and toyi-toying and shouting. One chap, the leader of this group, came up to the front, pointing and pointing at me. I was worried – my vestments were very new, and I wondered ‘can’t he smell the starch?!’
I swallowed hard, and said to him ‘I need to tell you how I feel about you.’ I am sure he wondered what I was going to say to him. But I took refuge in the only thing I dared to say ‘God loves you. You are his beloved child, and he loves you more than you can imagine.’
Well, that man just melted! And he agreed to come with me to talk in the vestry – but I won’t tell you what I said in the vestry! Meanwhile, others in the congregation had called the police – but I said that no, they must stay outside, and let us deal with all this through the love of God. To cut a long story short, 2 hours later the service finally went ahead, and I confirmed the candidates. The priest did not get re-licenced then – there needed to be another 18 months of walking with that congregation. But somehow, we walked together – in vulnerability made safe by knowing we were all held in the love of God – and lives and relationships were transformed. I’m happy to say that on Monday I went back to Queenstown for a funeral – and found that some of those ringleaders are now clergy!
I was way, way, way outside my comfort zone. But I knew that while laying down the law might have got me my own way for a short time, it would have achieved nothing of true value and probably made matters worse in the long run. Instead God’s love provided a solution when there were no human answers. And, even though I was outside my comfort zone, I felt God’s love enfold me, and encourage me, and give me the bravery I needed to live with this radical openness and vulnerability – so that God’s love could flow through me to those who needed to feel it through the institution of the church.
In this way, we found a redemptive path to walk into the future. It was a very stretching lesson to learn. It was not easy to dare to live like this. But it was a lesson I needed to learn, for all that lay ahead in Grahamstown and now in Cape Town.
We get some pretty intractable problems arriving in Bishopscourt, as you might imagine! Yet, whatever we need to do, especially when we get involved with Diocesan legal procedures and Canon Law – I always try to remember this: Above all else, my approach, and the approach of the church, must always be anchored in the love of God. This must provide the context for everything else we say and do. Sometimes this is very hard indeed – but it is the only way to find God’s redemptive answers.
And I could tell you many more stories, of dealing with difficult situations outside the church; and engaging with the politics around us. In my visits to Marikana, it is not in human strength, but in God’s love, in which I stand as my protection.
God’s love is more than enough
And through trying to do this, I have learnt another big lesson.
We might only have a little bit of love in us. Perhaps 10% - while 90% of us wants to take a far tougher route, which saves us from living with vulnerability, generosity of spirit, emotional engagement – that keeps us from living with the same sort of servant heart that Jesus Christ had, as he laid down his life for his friends.
Well, if we dare to use up this 10%, we will find that God fills it up again, with another 10%. And when we use that, we get another 10% - and before very long, we find that all those 10%’s add up to a lot more than the cold-hearted 90%!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ – we live in a difficult world. We are only human, and of ourselves we cannot live in love. But God is love, and his love is without limit, and his love is for us. So, therefore, whether we struggle to receive love within ourselves; or whether we struggle to show love to others – we can be confident that, if we only ask, God will anchor us in his love; and pour it into our lives, and through our lives to others.
Let me end with those famous words from the eighth chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Romans: ‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 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’ (Rom 8:35-39).
Brothers and sisters, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord – so let us now, and always, be anchored in the love of Christ. Amen
Dear Brothers and sisters in Christ, I greet you in the precious name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Bishop Martin, thank you for nurturing me on this journey. Thank you for bringing the challenge of Anglicans Ablaze before the Synod of Bishops and for making sure that I made it here today. Thank you to you and your team, to Trevor and everyone else: not only for inviting me to speak today, but for all you have done in organising this conference! At the heart of thanksgiving is an attitude of gratitude – I am very proud of your team and all they have done in preparing for today, and, I hope, for beyond.
It brings me enormous joy that so many of us have gathered here today. [Acknowledgements of guests and particular people present.] Indeed, this is one of the largest – if not THE largest – gathering of Anglicans from across Southern Africa that anyone can remember! This delights my heart – because one of the things for which I have prayed since becoming Archbishop, is that we should rediscover one another, in Christ, in a new and fresh way – and discover together God’s calling to us all, to be his people across the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
We know we live with huge diversity – from big cities to tiny villages; from rich suburbs to poor informal settlements; from lush veldt to dry Karoo; from seaside to mountains. We also live with great human diversity, in our languages, our cultures, our contexts. And yet we all have something in common – the most important thing of all.
God loves us.
This is the glue that binds us together, as Anglicans, as Christians, as members together of the body of Christ. And as St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, if we belong to Christ, we are members of his body, and it doesn’t matter how different we are – whether we are a foot or a hand or an eye or an ear. If we belong to Christ, we belong to each other. And so God in Jesus Christ calls us to live in his love – to be anchored in his love – and to share his love, and the salvation and redemption it brings, with those around us.
The call to be anchored in the love of God is the starting point of all Christian life; and the starting point for all that the Church is, and is called to be. So it should not come as a surprise to find that it is the starting point of our Vision and Mission Statement. This evening, I want to start by speaking about how we came to have our Vision, and how God’s love became its foundation stone.
The Story of the Vision
As soon as I was elected Archbishop, I began to feel, echoing inside me, this call to live together in God’s love, and sharing God’s love – a call not only to me, but to all of us. It also felt like a call to begin a fresh chapter in our lives, as the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, acknowledging our past, but now facing the new challenges of the twenty-first century.
Let’s face it. Our church, and all the countries of Southern Africa, have been through enormous turmoil and strain in the last fifty years or more. Conflict, strife, oppression – we have all known them in many ways; and some of us have lived with full-blown civil war. The task of the church was to preach and model and share the good news of Jesus Christ in these terrible circumstances. And so we did: proclaiming the Scriptures, speaking up for God’s truth, standing for righteousness, opposing oppression, burying the dead, comforting the sorrowing, and – no matter how dark our darkest hours – always holding up the light of Christ, always sharing the hope of the gospel.
But all our lives were distorted by the horrors of apartheid, and its impact within and beyond South Africa. When democracy and peace finally came, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu then famously said ‘Now we can get back to truly being church!’
Well, what does it mean for us to be truly church, in our new circumstances? This, it seemed to me, was the key question that God was asking of me, and all of us, as I prepared to take up the responsibility of being Archbishop. And so it became the starting point of the Charge which I preached at my Installation at St George’s Cathedral in 2008. Right at the beginning, I said to all of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa ‘Thank you that you are partners with me in the gospel.’ And then also I spoke our need to ‘seek afresh to discover what it is to be the body of Christ in our time, and who God is in Jesus Christ, for us here and now’.
These words became a signpost for going forward:
• first, as partners in the gospel;
• and second, in discovering what this actually means for us in today’s Southern Africa – with contexts so very different from our recent past.
What does it mean to be the body of Christ in our time? Who is God in Jesus Christ, for us, today, in Angola, in Lesotho, in Mozambique, in Namibia, in South Africa, in Swaziland, even in St Helena and Tristan da Cunha? What is God’s desire for our church, and for our world? What is his message, of judgement, yes, but also of redemptive hope, for all of us and our nations?
Well, I knew these were questions we needed to tackle – and to wrestle with as widely as possible. So you may remember that very soon after my installation, I began a consultative process, with a standing committee led by Ms Glenda Wildschut. We asked Dioceses and Parishes and other bodies to send in their visions and their mission statements. We held consultations for Provincial organisations, from Hope Africa and the Health Care Trust through to the Mothers Union and AWF and Bernard Mizeki and the Provincial Youth Council, and other networks. In my monthly letter To the Laos, I invited anyone who was interested to send in their comments – and asked everyone to pray for the process.
Then I brought together a team from across the Province, to sift and discuss all that we had received, through a number of meetings. Our first reflections were presented to Provincial Standing Committee in 2009. They made some recommendations for further work; and the Synod of Bishops also gave their input.
Finally, the work was complete. It was presented to Provincial Synod in 2010, and the Vision and Mission Statement were endorsed. Let me just remind you of them again. Our Vision is that the Anglican community in Southern Africa seeks to be:
• Anchored in the love of Christ
• Committed to God's Mission
• Transformed by the Holy Spirit
Anchored, Committed, Transformed: A, C, T – so we are Anglicans who ACT!
And our Mission Statement is that, across our diverse countries and cultures, we seek:
• To honour God in worship that feeds and empowers us for faithful witness and service
• To embody and proclaim the message of God’s redemptive hope and healing for people and creation
• To grow communities of faith that form, inform, and transform those who follow Christ
We also identified 8 priorities for action at Provincial level.
This is not the same as saying they are the priorities for all of the Province – for we know that each Diocese, each Parish, must preach and live the gospel in its own context; and so must set its own priorities.
But in order to equip, and resource, and strengthen, and support, the Dioceses and Parishes in whatever they are called to be and do, there are some things that are best tackled at a Provincial level.
And we identified the following key priorities:
1. Liturgical renewal for transformative worship
2. Theological education and formation
3. Leadership development
4. Health, including HIV and AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis
5. The environment
6. Women and gender
7. Protection and nurture of children and the young
8. Public advocacy
In addition to these, there are two further priorities – two absolutely vital, critical, themes. They are
• transformation (that is, transforming all the legacies of apartheid), and
• a holistic mission rooted in a full commitment to evangelism.
These two themes must run through all the 8 priorities – they cannot be handled separately.
So now we are moving ahead with all of this. Last week at Provincial Standing Committee we worked hard at ‘putting legs’ on the eight priorities – taking forward specific actions in all these various areas. If you want to find out more about what we discussed and decided, have a look at the press release, which is on the ACSA website, and on my blog and Facebook page – or to complicate your life further, just check my twitter feed – I blame all these on my son and my staff!
I was intrigued this morning when I addressed the Anglican Provincial Youth Council this morning in Benoni. I was humbled and excited, as they said ‘We are going to put on feet and legs and meat and sinew on this Vision.’ I hope we will hear from them further during this conference – we have challenges, but the energy of the youth shows we are truly alive!
But we must not jump the gun and get involved with all these detailed issues of implementation, without first ensuring that we start with love.
Starting with Love
As +Martin said, if this Vision, these priorities are only on paper or in our heads, they are not alive. We need God’s for this.
St Paul reminds us of this, of course, in the famous thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. He wrote ‘If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.’
Today we might say, ‘If I have an inspiring Vision and Mission statement, but do not have love, I am no better than a noisy vuvuzela. If I carefully analyse all my priorities, but I do not have love, they are worth nothing. If we have an exciting conference, with rousing speakers, but we are not rooted and grounded in love, we are no better than a night-club in Sandton!’
We have to start with love. We start with love, because we start with God. Everything in all creation starts with God, and God is love! Because of love, God creates. Without God’s love, nothing would exist. Because of love, God redeems. Without God’s love, we would all be lost in our sins, in death and destruction.
But God IS love. And ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn 3:16-17). Above all else, God is in the business of loving. And he calls us to be also.
The first letter of St John has much to say about this – and I commend it to you for private study and reflection. I invite you to soak yourself in it, just as it calls you to soak yourself in the love of God. ‘God is love’ it tells us. ‘And in this is love, not that we love God – but that he loved us, and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Again and again he reminds us that love starts with God. ‘We love’ he says ‘because God first loved us.’
God’s love for us
We are to abide in this love. And St John also tells us this ‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love’ (1 Jn 4:18).
How do you feel about this verse? It is very challenging to most of us, I expect. Perhaps it makes you feel a little uncomfortable. Well, let’s try an experiment – some of you may have done this before, but never mind! Let’s all stand up (it is about time everyone had a chance to stretch their legs!). Now, turn to someone close to you, and tell them ‘God loves you!’
[Pause for this to happen.]
This is great, isn’t it – it is lovely to tell others about the love of God! Now, try something different. Turn to someone near to you and say ‘God loves me!’
[Pause for this to happen, and for everyone to sit down again.]
Saying ‘God loves me’ feels very different, doesn’t it? It is odd, and sometimes embarrassing, and difficult, and stirs up strange undercurrents inside us. It shows us how hard we sometimes find it to believe that God truly does love us. Perhaps we fear that we are not really lovable. Perhaps we are afraid that God doesn’t really love us, or only loves us a bit, but has a great long list of complaints and criticisms about us.
Such fear does not come from God – it comes from the brokenness and failings of the world. Such fear distances us from God – while instead God himself invites us to draw close, and to abide inside the embrace of his love. God’s challenge to us is to let him love us. God’s challenge to us is to let him overcome our fears that we are not loveable – with his love that is stronger than fear, stronger than death; with his love that conquered everything upon the cross.
Perhaps when you were a child, you were told you always had to try harder – and you somehow got the message that you were not good enough. Parents don’t mean it – but they are only human, and sometimes they hurt us without intending to. Or perhaps others told you that you are not good enough, or that your place is in the wrong, because of your skin colour, or your gender, or some other reason.
God’s love is for you – if you dare to let him to reach his tender loving touch into your vulnerable, hurting places, it will be like sunshine that brings new life to a cold and frozen ground. It can be hard to do this, especially if you have built up barriers over many years to protect you from getting hurt – but God gently asks you to take those barriers down, so his love can reach you, and warm your heart!
If this is you, then make time this week to sit quietly in the presence of God, and just let him show you his love, more than you have ever dared feel it before. Or perhaps you will be helped by talking with someone, and having them pray with you. Don’t miss this wonderful opportunity!
But what if your problem is different? Perhaps you are burdened by having done something wrong, so you feel that God can’t love you? The truth of the matter is that there is nothing that can stop God loving us. In fact, there is nothing we can do to make him love us less – or make him love us more.
Perhaps you feel like saying ‘I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself.’ What you are actually saying, is that your sins are bigger than the power of Christ’s death on the cross! It is as if you have failed an idol, whose approval is more important than God's – and that idol is your own pride!
Listen again to these words from St John’s first letter. They are for you. ‘God loved you, and sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins.’ Jesus Christ has dealt with them, once and for all, upon the cross. They are done with. Over. Gone. Jesus Christ has destroyed them, and they cannot be a barrier any more, between his love and you. His love is greater.
And therefore, if you are still battling with this – again, I say, find someone to pray with you. Even if it is not your tradition, sometimes it helps to go to a priest, and make a confession – and you will know that God hears, and then you will hear the priest declare God’s words of absolution, that your sins are forgiven and that he gives you new life, in the fullness of his love.
Yes, we need to be anchored in God’s love. And, I suspect, it will take all of us our whole lives to work out what this means, and to grow in accepting more and more of God’s immeasurable love for us. It is the work of a lifetime!
God’s love for others
Yet this love is not just about us. It is love to be shared with others, as St John repeatedly insists in his letter. ‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love’ (1 Jn 4:7,8)
He also writes, ‘We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action’ (1 Jn 3:16-17).
Our Vision statement therefore is about letting God love us – and about showing God’s love to others. Even in the hardest circumstances, we must anchor all we say and do in God’s love.
I always knew this in my head – but I just want to share a little story from my own life. When I became a Bishop, I quickly discovered that rooting all our actions in love is a far more radical calling than I had realised! And it matters most, in the hardest circumstances. For God’s love can break open the most difficult situations, if only we are prepared to let it.
I learnt this lesson very soon after becoming the suffragan Bishop in Queenstown, in the Diocese of Grahamstown. 3 months into this vast new task, the challenge came.
In one parish there was a priest who was very much larger than life. He wasn’t the rector, but he was the driving force. With his big, charismatic, personality, he had turned around that ailing parish, and brought lots of new people into the church. He did it through some very straight talking. Perhaps, you might say, he spoke a language that the people understood. But it was a rough language – even a crude language, some called it. And many of the original parishioners did not like it, and did not like him, and, frankly, probably didn’t care very much for the sort of people he was bringing into what they thought of as their respectable church.
All sorts of complaints and accusations came through to the Bishop’s office – to my office. The priest had to be suspended, while investigations and evaluations were made. He was cleared of them all – and so it was right that he should be fully reinstated. But some of those people still they did not like him, and they did not want him back.
I went to that church to do the reinstatement, and also to do a confirmation service at the same time. I went with real trepidation, as I knew I would get a rough ride. And I got it! There was a big picket outside, with sticks and no doubt worse.
But I put on a brave face, and processed into the church. As is normal, I began by saying ‘The Lord be with you!’ – and in response, uproar broke out, with whistling and toyi-toying and shouting. One chap, the leader of this group, came up to the front, pointing and pointing at me. I was worried – my vestments were very new, and I wondered ‘can’t he smell the starch?!’
I swallowed hard, and said to him ‘I need to tell you how I feel about you.’ I am sure he wondered what I was going to say to him. But I took refuge in the only thing I dared to say ‘God loves you. You are his beloved child, and he loves you more than you can imagine.’
Well, that man just melted! And he agreed to come with me to talk in the vestry – but I won’t tell you what I said in the vestry! Meanwhile, others in the congregation had called the police – but I said that no, they must stay outside, and let us deal with all this through the love of God. To cut a long story short, 2 hours later the service finally went ahead, and I confirmed the candidates. The priest did not get re-licenced then – there needed to be another 18 months of walking with that congregation. But somehow, we walked together – in vulnerability made safe by knowing we were all held in the love of God – and lives and relationships were transformed. I’m happy to say that on Monday I went back to Queenstown for a funeral – and found that some of those ringleaders are now clergy!
I was way, way, way outside my comfort zone. But I knew that while laying down the law might have got me my own way for a short time, it would have achieved nothing of true value and probably made matters worse in the long run. Instead God’s love provided a solution when there were no human answers. And, even though I was outside my comfort zone, I felt God’s love enfold me, and encourage me, and give me the bravery I needed to live with this radical openness and vulnerability – so that God’s love could flow through me to those who needed to feel it through the institution of the church.
In this way, we found a redemptive path to walk into the future. It was a very stretching lesson to learn. It was not easy to dare to live like this. But it was a lesson I needed to learn, for all that lay ahead in Grahamstown and now in Cape Town.
We get some pretty intractable problems arriving in Bishopscourt, as you might imagine! Yet, whatever we need to do, especially when we get involved with Diocesan legal procedures and Canon Law – I always try to remember this: Above all else, my approach, and the approach of the church, must always be anchored in the love of God. This must provide the context for everything else we say and do. Sometimes this is very hard indeed – but it is the only way to find God’s redemptive answers.
And I could tell you many more stories, of dealing with difficult situations outside the church; and engaging with the politics around us. In my visits to Marikana, it is not in human strength, but in God’s love, in which I stand as my protection.
God’s love is more than enough
And through trying to do this, I have learnt another big lesson.
We might only have a little bit of love in us. Perhaps 10% - while 90% of us wants to take a far tougher route, which saves us from living with vulnerability, generosity of spirit, emotional engagement – that keeps us from living with the same sort of servant heart that Jesus Christ had, as he laid down his life for his friends.
Well, if we dare to use up this 10%, we will find that God fills it up again, with another 10%. And when we use that, we get another 10% - and before very long, we find that all those 10%’s add up to a lot more than the cold-hearted 90%!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ – we live in a difficult world. We are only human, and of ourselves we cannot live in love. But God is love, and his love is without limit, and his love is for us. So, therefore, whether we struggle to receive love within ourselves; or whether we struggle to show love to others – we can be confident that, if we only ask, God will anchor us in his love; and pour it into our lives, and through our lives to others.
Let me end with those famous words from the eighth chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Romans: ‘Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 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’ (Rom 8:35-39).
Brothers and sisters, NOTHING can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord – so let us now, and always, be anchored in the love of Christ. Amen
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Marikana Inquiry - Call for Government to Fund Families' Legal Representation
This letter to President Zuma was released to the media on 2 October 2012.
Dear Mr President
Earlier this month, you spoke warmly at the funeral of Sr Bernard Ncube of the role of the religious sector in Marikana. As you will know, in various ways we continue that involvement, according to the unfolding needs of the situation. One of these ways is through encouraging as far as we are able every assistance to be accorded to Judge Ian Farlam and the Commission of Inquiry he chairs. I am sure all agree that it is of vital importance that this Commission should be able to provide the fullest and fairest account possible of those tragic events and all that gave rise to them.
It is on this matter that I am writing to you. For, as far as I understand, the Government, in addition to financing the costs of the Commission itself, is also funding the legal representation of Evidence Leaders, and of those members of SAPS who will appear before it. However, it seems that similar legal support is not being equally extended to the miners themselves nor to the families of those who lost their lives – who, though they may not have been at the mine at the time of the tragedy, nonetheless lived with the reality of the financial circumstances of their dear ones, which is a material consideration in respect of the relationship between employees and employer, a key area within the terms of reference of the Inquiry.
The Commission must be seen to be acting justly, with a level playing field accorded to all concerned parties, and I am therefore deeply troubled at the message of apparent inequality this decision can be seen as conveying. I therefore strongly urge you to reconsider, and to make state funded legal representation available here also.
Please be assured that you remain always in my own prayers, and those of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, that God will bless you with his wisdom and grace to follow his best paths in all you do, so that you might be a blessing to this nation, and to all its people.
Yours in the service of Christ
+Thabo Cape Town
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
Dear Mr President
Earlier this month, you spoke warmly at the funeral of Sr Bernard Ncube of the role of the religious sector in Marikana. As you will know, in various ways we continue that involvement, according to the unfolding needs of the situation. One of these ways is through encouraging as far as we are able every assistance to be accorded to Judge Ian Farlam and the Commission of Inquiry he chairs. I am sure all agree that it is of vital importance that this Commission should be able to provide the fullest and fairest account possible of those tragic events and all that gave rise to them.
It is on this matter that I am writing to you. For, as far as I understand, the Government, in addition to financing the costs of the Commission itself, is also funding the legal representation of Evidence Leaders, and of those members of SAPS who will appear before it. However, it seems that similar legal support is not being equally extended to the miners themselves nor to the families of those who lost their lives – who, though they may not have been at the mine at the time of the tragedy, nonetheless lived with the reality of the financial circumstances of their dear ones, which is a material consideration in respect of the relationship between employees and employer, a key area within the terms of reference of the Inquiry.
The Commission must be seen to be acting justly, with a level playing field accorded to all concerned parties, and I am therefore deeply troubled at the message of apparent inequality this decision can be seen as conveying. I therefore strongly urge you to reconsider, and to make state funded legal representation available here also.
Please be assured that you remain always in my own prayers, and those of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, that God will bless you with his wisdom and grace to follow his best paths in all you do, so that you might be a blessing to this nation, and to all its people.
Yours in the service of Christ
+Thabo Cape Town
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
News from Provincial Standing Committee
This media release was issued on 2 October 2012
‘This was a wonderful meeting for giving legs to our discussions’ said Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Friday. ‘We’ve talked the talk about vision, mission, and priorities; we’ve talked about theology and serving God’s world. Now we’re getting on with walking the walk.’
Dr Makgoba was speaking at the end of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Provincial Standing Committee (PSC). Nearly ninety bishops, clergy and lay people, representing ACSA’s 28 Dioceses, gathered to implement and take forward decisions of the church’s triennial Provincial Synod. They met, with invited guests, at the St George Hotel and Conference Centre near Pretoria, from 26 to 28 September.
‘Our focus was making our vision and mission statement concrete’ said the Archbishop of Cape Town. ‘To help us, we sought theological input and practical wisdom about the state of our world. We were delighted to hear Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops’ Missioner in the Church of England talk about “Fresh Expressions”, imaginative initiatives for developing authentically Anglican congregations for those who do not connect with traditional ways of worshipping. South African Minister in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, presenting the National Development Plan 2030, provided a stimulating framework for understanding the economic and socio-political challenges of our region.’ Dr Makgoba said that the church shared many of the Plan’s ethical assumptions, as well as its objectives to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality.
The meeting also evaluated many existing activities. Dr Makgoba stressed ‘Education is one of our top priorities, both within the church, and for transforming our nations,’ which include Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and St Helena alongside South Africa. A panel of church leaders discussed developments in theological education, promoting the ‘People of the Way’ bible studies, and strengthening initiatives with schools. ‘I am delighted we affirmed support for developing the Vuleka school network in northern Johannesburg’ said Dr Makgoba. He recalled that the church has declared 2013 the ‘Year of Theological Education’ with special focus on redeveloping its theological training at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown.
Retired Bishop Geoff Davies gave a challenging presentation on ‘The Spirituality of the Environment’. Bishop Martin Breytenbach spoke about how the ‘Anglicans Ablaze’ celebration in the first week of October, would be the largest gathering of Southern African Anglicans in living memory. Group discussions on these and other key priority areas brought broad policy objectives into debate with the breadth of delegates’ experiences on the ground. A number of resolutions followed, from the meeting, including on youth, women and gender, environment, public advocacy, health, inter-Church relations and liturgy. Other resolutions addressed the budget and practical matters, including keeping down escalating meeting and travel costs, for example through better use of technology.
The Bishops presented their continuing reflections around providing pastoral guidelines to the church in relation to same-gender civil unions. Noting the broad a range of views within the church, Bishop Martin Breytenbach urged delegates ‘Let us continue to journey together’, and Bishop Peter Lee called for deeper, more reflective, listening and debate. Delegates were asked to promote thoughtful consultations in dioceses and parishes, and to bring feedback to Provincial Synod in 2013.
‘One of the great highlights of our meeting was the celebration of twenty years of women’s ordination to the priesthood’ said Dr Makgoba with a broad smile. ‘We were delighted to have Bishop Barbara Harris, the first woman Bishop in the Anglican Communion, to preach at our opening Eucharist. She may be 82 years old, but she powerfully stirred us up to follow the risen Jesus Christ!’ He noted that, while PSC had been preceded by a meeting of the all-male Synod of Bishops, there had simultaneously been a conference of women clergy. This was attended both by Bishop Barbara and Revd Ellinah Wamukoya, who will become the first female Anglican Bishop on the whole African continent, when she is consecrated Bishop of Swaziland on 17 November. Two other bishops-elect, Ven Steve Moreo, of the Diocese of Johannesburg, and Revd Steven Letloenyane, of the Diocese of the Free State were also welcomed at PSC.
Worship and prayer, as well as times of fellowship over coffee breaks and meals, were an essential element of the meeting, said the Archbishop. ‘All of these enable us to grow closer to God and closer to one another, as we together to be faithful and obedient to our Christian calling.’ After adding his own tribute to the meeting’s retirement wishes to Bishops Brian Germond of Johannesburg and Merwyn Castle of False Bay, Dr Makgoba ended by saying. ‘We give thanks to God for a meeting full of joy and encouragement, hosted by Bishop Jo Seoka and the Diocese of Pretoria, and held in the beautiful surroundings of St George’s, with the blessing of both sunshine and refreshing rain.’
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
‘This was a wonderful meeting for giving legs to our discussions’ said Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Friday. ‘We’ve talked the talk about vision, mission, and priorities; we’ve talked about theology and serving God’s world. Now we’re getting on with walking the walk.’
Dr Makgoba was speaking at the end of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Provincial Standing Committee (PSC). Nearly ninety bishops, clergy and lay people, representing ACSA’s 28 Dioceses, gathered to implement and take forward decisions of the church’s triennial Provincial Synod. They met, with invited guests, at the St George Hotel and Conference Centre near Pretoria, from 26 to 28 September.
‘Our focus was making our vision and mission statement concrete’ said the Archbishop of Cape Town. ‘To help us, we sought theological input and practical wisdom about the state of our world. We were delighted to hear Bishop Graham Cray, Archbishops’ Missioner in the Church of England talk about “Fresh Expressions”, imaginative initiatives for developing authentically Anglican congregations for those who do not connect with traditional ways of worshipping. South African Minister in the Presidency, Trevor Manuel, presenting the National Development Plan 2030, provided a stimulating framework for understanding the economic and socio-political challenges of our region.’ Dr Makgoba said that the church shared many of the Plan’s ethical assumptions, as well as its objectives to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality.
The meeting also evaluated many existing activities. Dr Makgoba stressed ‘Education is one of our top priorities, both within the church, and for transforming our nations,’ which include Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and St Helena alongside South Africa. A panel of church leaders discussed developments in theological education, promoting the ‘People of the Way’ bible studies, and strengthening initiatives with schools. ‘I am delighted we affirmed support for developing the Vuleka school network in northern Johannesburg’ said Dr Makgoba. He recalled that the church has declared 2013 the ‘Year of Theological Education’ with special focus on redeveloping its theological training at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown.
Retired Bishop Geoff Davies gave a challenging presentation on ‘The Spirituality of the Environment’. Bishop Martin Breytenbach spoke about how the ‘Anglicans Ablaze’ celebration in the first week of October, would be the largest gathering of Southern African Anglicans in living memory. Group discussions on these and other key priority areas brought broad policy objectives into debate with the breadth of delegates’ experiences on the ground. A number of resolutions followed, from the meeting, including on youth, women and gender, environment, public advocacy, health, inter-Church relations and liturgy. Other resolutions addressed the budget and practical matters, including keeping down escalating meeting and travel costs, for example through better use of technology.
The Bishops presented their continuing reflections around providing pastoral guidelines to the church in relation to same-gender civil unions. Noting the broad a range of views within the church, Bishop Martin Breytenbach urged delegates ‘Let us continue to journey together’, and Bishop Peter Lee called for deeper, more reflective, listening and debate. Delegates were asked to promote thoughtful consultations in dioceses and parishes, and to bring feedback to Provincial Synod in 2013.
‘One of the great highlights of our meeting was the celebration of twenty years of women’s ordination to the priesthood’ said Dr Makgoba with a broad smile. ‘We were delighted to have Bishop Barbara Harris, the first woman Bishop in the Anglican Communion, to preach at our opening Eucharist. She may be 82 years old, but she powerfully stirred us up to follow the risen Jesus Christ!’ He noted that, while PSC had been preceded by a meeting of the all-male Synod of Bishops, there had simultaneously been a conference of women clergy. This was attended both by Bishop Barbara and Revd Ellinah Wamukoya, who will become the first female Anglican Bishop on the whole African continent, when she is consecrated Bishop of Swaziland on 17 November. Two other bishops-elect, Ven Steve Moreo, of the Diocese of Johannesburg, and Revd Steven Letloenyane, of the Diocese of the Free State were also welcomed at PSC.
Worship and prayer, as well as times of fellowship over coffee breaks and meals, were an essential element of the meeting, said the Archbishop. ‘All of these enable us to grow closer to God and closer to one another, as we together to be faithful and obedient to our Christian calling.’ After adding his own tribute to the meeting’s retirement wishes to Bishops Brian Germond of Johannesburg and Merwyn Castle of False Bay, Dr Makgoba ended by saying. ‘We give thanks to God for a meeting full of joy and encouragement, hosted by Bishop Jo Seoka and the Diocese of Pretoria, and held in the beautiful surroundings of St George’s, with the blessing of both sunshine and refreshing rain.’
Issued by the Office of the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town
Inquiries: Ms Wendy Kelderman 021 763 1320 (office hours)
Thursday, 27 September 2012
Synod of Bishops' Statement: 'For such a time as this'
This statement was issued by the Synod of Bishops on 26 September 2012.
"For such a time as this" (Esther 4:14)
The Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) met together in Synod at the St George’s Hotel and Conference Centre in Centurion, Pretoria from 23rd to 26th September 2012. It was a joyous reunion and a time of deep fellowship for all. Our time was spent in an alternating rhythm of worship (both the Eucharist and Daily Offices) and work, with each informing and being informed by the other.
We were privileged to have an opportunity to meet with Governor Gill Marcus, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, and to be made aware of the extent of the global financial crisis and the long term implications it has for the nations of the Anglican Province of Southern Africa. Her address was challenging and inspiring. It would seem that the economic downturn will continue for some time, and that economic recovery will be slow, and that, as always, it will be the poor who suffer the most.
As we listened to our own bishops speaking about the national crisis in the South African mining industry, the massive challenges facing our education and health services, rising corruption in all sectors of the community, and the internal crises affecting the life of the people of God in our dioceses (most notably those in the Cathedral of Pretoria and the Diocese of Umzimvubu). We were struck by the fact that we are struggling with not only economic, but also social, collapse. Much of this crisis, we believe, reflects a desperate need both for principled leadership in church and society, and for Christians to live out their faith in community in ways that set the common good of all above the selfish desires of greed and personal self interest.
The readings in our worship have also spoken to us powerfully about anointed leadership. In a reading from the Book of Esther, Mordecai speaks to Queen Esther warning her that her destiny as a Jew is inextricably bound up with that of her people and suggesting that she has “come to royal position for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). For such a time as this, we need Christian leadership that will stand in solidarity with all of God’s people. For such a time as this, we need prophetic voices that will speak God’s word with boldness and set before us the radical vision of God for a world transformed by God’s grace. For a time like this, we need faithful people willing to be conformed to the purposes of God rather than to the ways of the world (Romans 12:1-2).
This has much to say to us about developing and nurturing Christian leaders within the church, for leadership not only within our churches, but also for our world. We have begun discussion on ways in which we could more intentionally promote the spiritual formation of God’s people for this purpose. We are discussing the formation and training of new bishops, and ways in which we could better guide and mentor those experiencing difficulties within their dioceses.
However, we also recognised that the socialisation, training and formation of people for leadership begins in the earliest years of life. In this regard we recognise the need for the church once again to play a prominent role in education, especially amongst the very young. We strongly affirmed the Archbishop’s Initiative in Education and its proposed objectives:
• To strengthen what the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is already doing in the field of education
• To encourage parishes in the ongoing upliftment of all their communities through partnership with local public schools
• To create more excellent church schools for all.
We also affirmed the Lent Course, “People of the Way”, that was produced by the Diocese of Johannesburg and encouraged plans to expand it into a three year discipleship programme for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. In addition, we continued to discuss, in depth, the need for excellence in the theological formation of our clergy and future clergy. We gave thanks for progress made at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown and committed ourselves to support the College as it continues and develops its ministry.
The Synod of Bishops gave thanks for the “Anglicans ACT” Vision and Mission Statement of ACSA and for the way in which they are catching the imagination of our people. In particular we endorsed the forthcoming “Anglicans Ablaze” Conference in Johannesburg and the Bible studies that were produced in preparation for it. We also encouraged Dioceses and Parishes to find ways to participate in the Celebration of “Anglicans ACT” on 25th November this year.
Central to the life of ACSA is a rhythm of daily and weekly prayer and worship. It feeds our common life, theology, ministry and mission. Through this rhythm we and our people engage daily with God and one another through the Scriptures. We therefore welcomed the introduction of the Revised Common Lectionary to guide our Sunday Bible readings and worship as from Advent 2012. This brings us into line with most of the church worldwide. We gave thanks for the wonderful resource, “Word and Worship”, which has been produced by an Ecumenical team based at Ekklesia in Stellenbosch. Arising from this discussion we have asked the Liturgical Committee to investigate the possible revision of the Anglican Prayer Book 1989 or the production of a new Prayer Book.
We welcomed Bishop Graham Cray, Missioner to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, among us. He addressed us on the missionary nature of the church and its implications in our changed and changing cultures. One strategy is to encourage a “mixed economy” of traditional and “fresh expressions” congregations in our dioceses and parishes. In all of this we recognised, once again, that making Christian disciples is the key. We also took note, with great interest, of the “New Monastic Movement” that is emerging worldwide.
The Synod of Bishops gave thanks for the faithful and effective ministries of our bishops who are retiring or have recently retired: Paddy Glover (Free State), Merwyn Castle (False Bay) and Brian Germond (Johannesburg). We prayed for those who have recently been elected to serve as Bishops: Ellinah Wamukoya (Swaziland), Dintoe Stephen Letloenyane (Free State), and Stephen Moreo (Johannesburg), and also for the Diocese of False Bay, preparing for their Elective Assembly in the coming week. We welcomed the appointment of Bishop Rubin Phillip (Natal) as Dean of the Province.
The Synod of Bishops rejoiced with all of ACSA at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood. We gave thanks for the many ways in which the widening ministry of women continues to enrich the life of our church.
The Synod of Bishops gives thanks to God for the loving, wise and godly leadership of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba. In all these things we thank our God of holiness and love for continuing to inspire and guide us as we strive to oversee the life, mission and ministry of the church in such a time as this.
“Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
"For such a time as this" (Esther 4:14)
The Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) met together in Synod at the St George’s Hotel and Conference Centre in Centurion, Pretoria from 23rd to 26th September 2012. It was a joyous reunion and a time of deep fellowship for all. Our time was spent in an alternating rhythm of worship (both the Eucharist and Daily Offices) and work, with each informing and being informed by the other.
We were privileged to have an opportunity to meet with Governor Gill Marcus, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, and to be made aware of the extent of the global financial crisis and the long term implications it has for the nations of the Anglican Province of Southern Africa. Her address was challenging and inspiring. It would seem that the economic downturn will continue for some time, and that economic recovery will be slow, and that, as always, it will be the poor who suffer the most.
As we listened to our own bishops speaking about the national crisis in the South African mining industry, the massive challenges facing our education and health services, rising corruption in all sectors of the community, and the internal crises affecting the life of the people of God in our dioceses (most notably those in the Cathedral of Pretoria and the Diocese of Umzimvubu). We were struck by the fact that we are struggling with not only economic, but also social, collapse. Much of this crisis, we believe, reflects a desperate need both for principled leadership in church and society, and for Christians to live out their faith in community in ways that set the common good of all above the selfish desires of greed and personal self interest.
The readings in our worship have also spoken to us powerfully about anointed leadership. In a reading from the Book of Esther, Mordecai speaks to Queen Esther warning her that her destiny as a Jew is inextricably bound up with that of her people and suggesting that she has “come to royal position for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). For such a time as this, we need Christian leadership that will stand in solidarity with all of God’s people. For such a time as this, we need prophetic voices that will speak God’s word with boldness and set before us the radical vision of God for a world transformed by God’s grace. For a time like this, we need faithful people willing to be conformed to the purposes of God rather than to the ways of the world (Romans 12:1-2).
This has much to say to us about developing and nurturing Christian leaders within the church, for leadership not only within our churches, but also for our world. We have begun discussion on ways in which we could more intentionally promote the spiritual formation of God’s people for this purpose. We are discussing the formation and training of new bishops, and ways in which we could better guide and mentor those experiencing difficulties within their dioceses.
However, we also recognised that the socialisation, training and formation of people for leadership begins in the earliest years of life. In this regard we recognise the need for the church once again to play a prominent role in education, especially amongst the very young. We strongly affirmed the Archbishop’s Initiative in Education and its proposed objectives:
• To strengthen what the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is already doing in the field of education
• To encourage parishes in the ongoing upliftment of all their communities through partnership with local public schools
• To create more excellent church schools for all.
We also affirmed the Lent Course, “People of the Way”, that was produced by the Diocese of Johannesburg and encouraged plans to expand it into a three year discipleship programme for the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. In addition, we continued to discuss, in depth, the need for excellence in the theological formation of our clergy and future clergy. We gave thanks for progress made at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown and committed ourselves to support the College as it continues and develops its ministry.
The Synod of Bishops gave thanks for the “Anglicans ACT” Vision and Mission Statement of ACSA and for the way in which they are catching the imagination of our people. In particular we endorsed the forthcoming “Anglicans Ablaze” Conference in Johannesburg and the Bible studies that were produced in preparation for it. We also encouraged Dioceses and Parishes to find ways to participate in the Celebration of “Anglicans ACT” on 25th November this year.
Central to the life of ACSA is a rhythm of daily and weekly prayer and worship. It feeds our common life, theology, ministry and mission. Through this rhythm we and our people engage daily with God and one another through the Scriptures. We therefore welcomed the introduction of the Revised Common Lectionary to guide our Sunday Bible readings and worship as from Advent 2012. This brings us into line with most of the church worldwide. We gave thanks for the wonderful resource, “Word and Worship”, which has been produced by an Ecumenical team based at Ekklesia in Stellenbosch. Arising from this discussion we have asked the Liturgical Committee to investigate the possible revision of the Anglican Prayer Book 1989 or the production of a new Prayer Book.
We welcomed Bishop Graham Cray, Missioner to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, among us. He addressed us on the missionary nature of the church and its implications in our changed and changing cultures. One strategy is to encourage a “mixed economy” of traditional and “fresh expressions” congregations in our dioceses and parishes. In all of this we recognised, once again, that making Christian disciples is the key. We also took note, with great interest, of the “New Monastic Movement” that is emerging worldwide.
The Synod of Bishops gave thanks for the faithful and effective ministries of our bishops who are retiring or have recently retired: Paddy Glover (Free State), Merwyn Castle (False Bay) and Brian Germond (Johannesburg). We prayed for those who have recently been elected to serve as Bishops: Ellinah Wamukoya (Swaziland), Dintoe Stephen Letloenyane (Free State), and Stephen Moreo (Johannesburg), and also for the Diocese of False Bay, preparing for their Elective Assembly in the coming week. We welcomed the appointment of Bishop Rubin Phillip (Natal) as Dean of the Province.
The Synod of Bishops rejoiced with all of ACSA at the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood. We gave thanks for the many ways in which the widening ministry of women continues to enrich the life of our church.
The Synod of Bishops gives thanks to God for the loving, wise and godly leadership of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba. In all these things we thank our God of holiness and love for continuing to inspire and guide us as we strive to oversee the life, mission and ministry of the church in such a time as this.
“Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
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