Commentary on the Gafcon 2018 Letter to the Churches Part Five: Reforming God’s Church

Jul 25, 2018 by

by Stephen Noll, Contending Anglican:

This is the fifth of seven posts explaining the Gafcon “Letter to the Churches.” The first four posts can be found here and here and here and here.

The second main section of the Letter is titled “Reforming God’s Church.” It should come as no surprise that “Reforming God’s Church” should be the longest section of the Letter to the Churches from a Conference held as a result of a “tear in the fabric” of the church catholic and of the Anglican Communion. For this reason, I shall devote two posts to this section under the headings “Reforming God’s Church” and “Reordering the Anglican Communion.”

Global Anglicans are Great Commission Christians, proclaiming Christ faithfully to the nations in the power of the Spirit (Jerusalem Declaration, clause 1 and 9); they are catholic Christians, committed to the historic creeds, councils and order of the Church (clauses 3 and 7); and they are Reformation Christians, upholding and building on the confessional heritage of the 16th-17th century Church of England (Canon A5, clauses 2,4, 5, and 6). The recent conflict in the churches of the Communion has brought all these aspects of our Anglican identity into play.

The first draft of the Letter to the Churches, presented on the penultimate day of the Conference, began by recalling the two decades of turmoil between Lambeth 1998 and the present. The thought was that many new attendees needed an explanation, an apologia for how we came to Jerusalem in 2008 and again in 2018. Front-loading this corporate history, however, made the Letter seem defensive and sharp-edged and took one’s eyes off the goal of “Proclaiming Christ to the Nations.” So in response to comments from the regional meetings after the first reading, the Statement Group condensed and rearranged the material about Gafcon’s history and identity. It did not, however, step back from its call to reform the church and reorder the Communion.

The gospel of God creates the church of God. Through the invitation of the gospel, God calls all people into fellowship with his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. As the word of the gospel goes forth in the power of the Holy Spirit, they respond through the work of the Holy Spirit to repent, believe and be baptised, and are thereby joined to Christ’s body which is his church (Acts 2:37-44; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13). As members of Christ’s body, they are sanctified in him, called to live lives of holiness and to be salt and light in the world.

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