The General Secretary of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon), Bishop Paul Donison, has embarked on a speaking tour of Australia, with stops in capital cities including Sydney.
"Sydney's really been part of the Gafcon story right from the beginning," said Bishop Donison in a brief call from Melbourne Airpport during his whirlwind tour. "One of the opportunities for coming out to Australia is to help Australians realize how much love there is for Australia and how Australia can be such a key part of Gafcon moving forward."
Bishop Donison has already spoken in Melbourne and Hobart and is on his way around the rest of the country before the Sydney meeting at Moore College on November 26.
"What we're trying to achieve fundamentally is to get people excited about GAFCON afresh and make sure that folks have an opportunity to hear the accurate story of what the 16th October Martyrs day statement is all about."
The Gafcon Primates Council announced last month that it was reordering the Anglican Communion around scripture, a revival from within. The eight-point plan for the Anglican Future was symbolically released on the day of commemoration of the martyrdom of bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.
Above: Bishop Donison speaks in Hobart
Bishop Donison said he hoped people would take away from the meeting “an accurate picture of what's going on with the statement, excitement about genuine opportunities with a global update, and stirring people up to say what Gafcon's been doing from the very beginning is continuing today."
Our whole history has been about reformation, making sure we stand with the Bible at the center of who we are
After a handful of meetings, Bishop Donison said the reception has been "honest and warm”. "I say those together. Honest in the sense people are asking good questions, some of them even hard questions, raising honest concerns but it's ultimately been a very warm conversation. I just pray the Lord to keep our energy up during these visits. We have nine flights in two weeks."
The Gafcon secretary says a lot of the questions are about how people now relate to the global Anglican communion.
"This question hasn't really been raised by most of the meetings we've been in, but I've certainly raised that others within the Western Church have said - is this schism? I've reminded people that schism is always thrown at reformers. It happened during the reformation in England when Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and the whole English Church moved away from Rome. It was reformation but of course what did Rome say? Schism. It wasn't schism. Our whole history has been about reformation, making sure we stand with the Bible at the center of who we are. So in the same way this global Anglican communion moment is again a moment of reformation and reordering. It's not schism. We're leaving Canterbury and we're leaving the Church of England behind but what we're not doing is leaving Anglicanism behind. We are the Anglican communion.
