Andrew Lloyd Webber, eat your heart out!

GAFCON is simply too big, layered and multi-faceted to turn into a musical and bring it to Broadway.

The hundred Australians who had the privilege of being among the fourteen hundred in Nairobi just on a year ago will testify to that. You can’t replicate a unique event, even with dramatic, choreographic, poetic and musical license.

After all, how could you fit 400 Nigerian church leaders on a stage? How could you squeeze 40-50 Bible teachers and seminar leaders from every continent into a two hour song and dance routine? And how could you cater for hundreds of Kenyan volunteers who catered so magnificently for the delegates?

As GAFCON brought together Anglican Christian leaders from all over the world to encourage each other to stand firm in orthodox, credal Christianity,  in gospel proclamation and in ministries of Christ-like love and compassion, Anglican Aid is bringing a tiny slice of GAFCON to Broadway. 

That’s Barney’s Broadway right here in the heart of Sydney.

The Saturday Festival of Just Ideas at the end of October brings together the former Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen (whose leadership has been so pivotal in the running and success of both GAFCON 1 in Jerusalem in 2008 and GAFCON 2 in Nairobi in 2013), with the Bishop of the Horn of Africa, Dr Grant LeMarquand and his wife Dr Wendy LeMarquand, and Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo from the Gahini Diocese in the east of Rwanda.

Grant will deliver the first plenary address on Justice and Hope in The Horn of Africa and focus on the Gambella region in the south west of Ethiopia. This is where he and Wendy serve the million multi-generational refugees who have fled across the border from successive waves of civil war in Sudan and South Sudan. 

These people live in an area that can’t really sustain human life. I hesitate to speak of Gambella in such terms because this is where many of our brothers and sisters in Christ call home, boil water (if they can find the wood), cook meals (if they can get the grain), send their children to school (if they have a little income) and dream of a day when disease doesn’t carry off their young like the devil in the dark.

Alexis will deliver the last session of the day on the theme of reconciliation. On the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, when Alexis and his family were remarkably rescued from the slaughter, Alexis’ address will be entitled Reconciliation in Rwanda: Past, Present and Future where he will challenge us all about the critical importance of reconciliation in our own personal and collective histories.

It may not be GAFCON, but it is on Broadway...