Gafcon is a movement in search of a mission, George Conger reports from Nairobi on the first day of the Second Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon).

Gafcon II began on a different key than its first assembly in 2008. The anger-tinged passion that drove the Jerusalem conference is absent from Nairobi and there is a confidence in the vigor of the global reform movement.

Yet, for its successes – playing midwife to the birth of the Anglican Church in North America, expanding the circle of supporters across the globe, garnering acknowledgement from Canterbury  — the movement is in the midst of a reimagining of its identity.  

“Who are we” asked Dr. Peter Jensen, the Gafcon General Secretary in the opening address to the 1352 delegates from 40 countries representing 28 provinces. Will we be here in five years, he mused.

The 21-26 October 2013 conference is expected to give direction to the movement – but to where remains unclear.  Some hope to see it become an alternate to the existing communion structures, others a fellowship with no structure – while many believe that if it does not lead the reform movement within the communion but seeks to follow, it may be time to wind down Gafcon.

The competing visions (and cultures) were on display on the first day of the conference. Gafcon I began with a series of speeches by the archbishops and key bishops laying out the problems of the Anglican Communion, and reached a climax of celebration by its close with the Jerusalem Statement.  Gafcon II began on a note of celebration. 

Following an introduction to the conference from Dr. Jensen, the first day focused on the history of the East African revival, with speakers from Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya describing the outpouring of the spirit that began 50 years ago that transformed the churches of East Africa and the Great Lakes.

An African choir led the delegates in singing traditional hymns and African praise-music between presentations from African delegates who offered faith testimonials. The theological recriminations and ecclesiological turmoil that gave birth to Gafcon five years ago were absent.

Speaking to the BBC Sunday programme on 20 October 2013 Archbishop Eliud Wabukala said he believed the crisis within the Communion was over. In a press conference held at the start of the gathering, he explained the issues that sparked the movement remained, but Gafcon was now in a very different place.

“We have moved on from that” Archbishop Wabukala he said.

Yet not all participants shared the Kenyan leaders’ views. The Nigerian church – with 481 delegates the largest delegation in Nairobi — in the person of its primates, Nicholas Okoh and Peter Akinola maintain a hard line on the Episcopal Church, while delegates from North American and the UK were taken aback by suggestions the crisis had passed.

In their opening presentation to the press, the primates of Kenya, Nigeria and the Southern Cone, along with Dr. Jensen emphasized Gafcon’s place within the Anglican Communion. “The churches present are committed to the Anglican Communion,” said Archbishop Wabukala, and “to the reform” of the structures of the Anglican Communion.

Gafcon was not a political lobbying group or a movement that saw itself as being “against” something, the Kenyan archbishop said. Rather it was “a movement within the church to come and worship together.”

To understand Gafcon one needed to understand Anglican ecclesiology, he said. The Anglican Communion had “no pope” nor did it possess a central authority that controlled doctrine and discipline.

“Anglican ecclesiology allows us independence and freedom to worship,” he explained.

What bound Anglicans together was “affection and worship,” he said adding “we worship together and are loyal to what the Bible is saying.”

The Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Rev. Tito Zavala stated “what we seek is a new ways of support and encouragement for one another. We want to keep this humble, simple. Not an institution but a fellowship.”

Asked how Gafcon’s vision differed from that set out by Archbishop Justin Welby in his sermon on 20 October 2013, Dr. Jensen said “nothing could be further from the truth” than to suggest Gafcon was opposed to the archbishop’s call for the church to engage in “ministry, mission, evangelism and a passion for the Holy Spirit.”

“We will work with the Archbishop of Canterbury on those issues,” he said.

“But is vital to get the Bible right,” he added, as there is always a tendency to conform to the culture.”

“We think this has occurred far too much,” Dr. Jensen said, and “will stand by Scripture.”

The Archbishop of the Anglican Church of North America underwent an emergency dental procedure in Nairobi yesterday, relieving pain and inflammation from an abscessed tooth.

A Kenyan dentist opened his office to the archbishop on 21 October 2013 – Kenya’s national holiday “Hereos’ Day” – and an American dentist attending the conference was able to operate.  Sources close to the archbishop had reported before the operation he would by flying back to the U.S. However his dental surgeon, Dr. Glen Petta, told Anglican Ink he did not make such a recommendation.

The procedure is reported to have addressed his immediate needs, but last evening the archbishop was said to be still in pain. However, Archbishop Duncan hoped to continue with the GAFCON conference and there are no immediate plans to return to the US for further treatment.

On 22 Oct 2013 the archbishop attended the morning eucharist, but had to be taken to the hospital and left the cathedral before the group bishops’ photo was taken. Spokesman for the archbishop have declined to comment at this time.

While he attended a pre-Conference meeting in Jordan for the 2008 Jerusalem conference, Archbishop Duncan did not attend the first Gafcon conference, and he has spoken often of the importance of the current gathering to the future of the Communion.

The primate of the Anglican Church in North America, the Most. Rev. Robert Duncan has left the Gafcon conference in Nairobi before the start of the first session to undergo emergency dental surgery in the United States.

Archbishop Duncan attended the Sunday Eucharists at All Saints Cathedral and lunched with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, but he reported being in great pain due to a tooth abcess. Dr. Glen Petta, the director of SOMA and a delagate to the conference and a retired dentist, performed emergency surgery to relieve the fluid build up in the abcess, and recommended the archbishop return home immediately for surgery.

Bishop Bill Atwood, Bishop of the International Diocese of the ACNA, told delegates at the Monday dinner of the archbishop’s condition and asked for prayers for the archbishop — and space to allow him a peaceful recovery. With this unexpected illness, the ACNA archbishop will now have missed both Gafcon meetings.

Update: 21 Oct 2012 22:00 Nairobi Time — The archbishop’s surgery performed by Dr. Glen Petta at a dentist’s office in Nairobi was succesful and the archbishop feels well enough to continue with the conference.

Nairobi: The Archbishop of Canterbury offered his qualified personal endorsement to Gafcon today, telling the congregation of All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi his vision for the future of the Anglican Communion was of a Bible-based church dedicated to mission and evangelism – goals shared by the Gafcon movement of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA).

While Archbishop Justin Welby stopped short of giving Gafcon his formal imprimatur, he conceded the existing instruments of communion were no longer fit for purpose in ordering the life of the Anglican world.

The archbishop also hinted the Communion may not be able to count upon the Church of England to hold the line on issues close to the heart of the Gafcon movement. Archbishop Welby recounted his strong public opposition to the British government’s same-sex marriage bill, noting it had come at a great “personal cost” to him as the culture and government were hostile to the church. However, he was silent on whether the Church of England would permit the blessing of gay civil unions.

The archbishop’s multi-layered sermon evolved over its two presentations – after being all but silent about Gafcon in his first sermon, in its second reading the archbishop spoke three times about the forthcoming Gafcon conference, set for 21-26 October 2013, at All Saints Cathedral.

His sermons also sparked mixed responses. Following the first presentation, Archbishop Pete Akinola, the former Primate of All-Nigeria, told Anglican Ink Archbishop Welby’s sermon was “outrageous”. The Nigerian leader was incensed that Archbishop Welby had suggested there was a moral equivalence between the normalization of gay bishops and blessings by the Episcopal Church and the violation of ecclesiastical boundaries by church leaders from the Global South. 

“Did you hear what he said? He is saying the sins of the Episcopal Church are as bad as border-crossing,” Archbishop Akinola said.

However, after the second presentation, Archbishop Welby walked back his moral equivalency comments. Dr. Peter Jensen, the former Archbishop of Sydney and the current General Secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans — the sponsor of the Gafcon conference — said he was encouraged by the address. The archbishop’s statement “the old ways are no longer appropriate, the old structures no longer work, given on the eve of Gafcon, give us hope,” he said.

A tired and wan Archbishop Welby spent only 18 hours in Kenya, arriving in the early hours of Sunday. Travelling without his minders, the archbishop stayed at the home of Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Primate of Kenya, before preaching before the 9:30 and 11:30 congregations at the Cathedral. Following his sermons he went into a closed door meeting with the primates’ council.

The archbishop is scheduled to leave Nairobi on Sunday evening and fly to Iceland to chair a meeting of the primates of the Poorvoo Communion on Monday.

Archbishop Welby opened his sermon with a word of thanks to Archbishop Wabukala for having invited him to preach at the cathedral on Mashujaa Day (Heroes’s Day) – Kenya’s national holiday marking its struggle against British colonial rule, before warming to his theme of the centrality of the Bible in the reform of the Anglican way.

He opened his sermon with the historical example of the Church of England’s cool reception to West Indian and African immigrants. “In the 1960s we did not recognize that we belonged to one another,” he said, and by its refusal to welcome immigrants the Church of England “lost the new life brought” to it from the developing world.

Historically the church had failed to recognize the hand of God in people who did not share its cultural roots. In the apartheid era, separation of races was given a Biblical mandate by some churches that saw in the story of Noah’s sons a warrant for political exclusion of Black Africans. “People begin by looking at the Bible through their own eyes,” he said, adding the “misuse of Scripture for our own power.”

 To combat the subordination of the church to the culture of the world, the “Bible must be at the heart of our study, our life, our walk with Jesus” he said, but a “church that only reads but does not act, disgraces the Bible.”

The archbishop then moved into the heart of his sermon, saying “our differences will always exist. How we deal with them is clear from Scripture; but the church seldom follows” Scripture when dealing with conflict.

“There is a need for new structures in the Anglican Communion, “the archbishop said, adding the issues that divide us are “simple and complicated.”

To address them “we need a new way of being in communion, not the colonial structures” of the past, he said. But it was unclear as to what the solution was as each province offered its own solution to the problem, yet “we must find a way to live together, so the world will see” Jesus is Lord.

The Anglican world must be a sign to the world of the power of Christ and must engage in a deliberate program of “witness, worship, evangelism, and a passion for the Holy Spirit.”

“The more seriously we take the Bible” the more effectively we will be able to deal with our divisions, he said.

The archbishop then offered personal vignettes of the power of prayer and the freedom found in God’s word, recounting his experience of being held hostage by bandits in Nigeria, and of his conversion experience as a young man in Kenya.

He then turned to the situation in England, recounting the difficult debate in the House of Lords over the government’s bill to permit same-sex marriage. “In England, we in the church disagree with same-sex marriage because we honor marriage, not out of hate, or fear or anger.”

“I spoke at great personal cost” against the bill and received opprobrium and “hatred” from those who supported changing marriage. But as the Letter to the Hebrews said we must keep “the marriage bed undefiled”, the church could not support this change, just as it could not support “adultery or pornography.”

A “church that flourishes” is a church that is “based on the Bible” he said. “We all fail,” he said, because “we all sin,” but a “Biblically-centered, practically loving” church is what God wants Anglicans to be.

While the Lambeth Palace Press Office had released a statement saying Archbishop Welby was visiting Kenya to stand in solidarity with its people in the wake of the Westgate Mall terror attack, he made no mention of terrorism in his sermons and his time in Nairobi was spent exclusively on Gafcon.

The Video has been posted by AnglicanTV and can be viewed by clicking here

Conference agenda released for Gafcon II