An Anglican Moment: Come Let Us Arise and Build

Bishop Julian Dobbs, who oversees leadership development for Anglican 1000, recently preached a sermon, “Come Let Us Arise and Build: An Anglican Moment.” He even breaks into French a few times!

The first two minutes of video are missing (though the audio works). The full transcript follows:

Votregrâce,l’archevêque, mes frèresen Christrwandais, brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Journey with me in your mind back to the glittering court of the Imperial Palace at Susa in ancient Persia [modern day Iran], 450 years before the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. God’s People were a long way from the Promised Land as they had broken their promises to Almighty God; straying far from His will and commandments, and, as a punishment for their disobedience, had been defeated and deported from Judaea at the hands of their enemies. By the time we join them in Susa, most of the Chosen People had been living in exile for over seven decades years. By God’s grace, however, Nehemiah, a young Jewish aristocrat of tremendous faith and great vision, gained appointment as the cup-bearer to Artaxerxes, the Shahanshah, King of Kings, Ruler of the Persian Empire and most powerful man alive the world at that time.  It was not, however, a very nice job… tasting wine for poison, but it was a very responsible position that brought Nehemiah into daily contact with the monarch and into the King’s intimate confidence.

While serving (literally) at the right-hand of the King, Nehemiah receives the very disturbing news that the remnant of God’s people back in Jerusalem are in great trouble; the walls surrounding the once great City of David are broken down; her gates destroyed by fire; her public places desolated.

In an act of amazing courage for an exile risen to the intimate circle of a king, Nehemiah requests permission to leave his post and, in an incredible display of Almighty God’s loving goodness and favor, the Lord moves the heart of Artaxerxes to release this faithful young patriot from service and grants him authority to rebuild the ruined walls of Jerusalem.  Nehemiah receives letters of personal introduction from the hands of the King and all the necessary materials to successfully complete his mission and departs for a homeland he has never seen.

He journeys on foot to Jerusalem.  A distance of about 500 miles as the dove flies, but the only passable route detours around the forbidding Arabian Desert and follows the Euphrates River to the ancient city of Haran in modern-day Turkey [the same route taken by Abraham as he left Ur of the Chaldeans in the Book of Genesis bound for the Promised Land], before turning southwest towards the Promised Land. Using this route, the distance is almost doubled and includes deserts, swamps, mountains, wide rivers and other obstacles to challenge those of lesser commitment than faithful Nehemiah.

Upon arrival in Jerusalem, Nehemiah surveys the city by night. He walks up the cobbled high street of Jerusalem – where the women draw water during the day, he looks around and what he sees shocks him! Only a small percentage of the houses are inhabited. The remaining houses are lying empty, their roofs caved in, timber of the gates charred with fire, windows smashed, lying in rubble and ruins…

Having been raised faithful to the promises of God, he must have echoed the words of the prophet Jeremiah that night ‘“Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?” (Lamentations 2:15)and yet, amidst all this destruction, Nehemiah never wavers in his determination to rebuild the walls, to reconstruct the defenses, to re-establish or ‘replant’ the walls that surrounded the City of Jerusalem.

For, as a man of God, he sees with the eyes of faith and beyond the destruction and ruin sees Jerusalem once again as ‘the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth.’

He immediately encounters great opposition both from within and from without.

The biblical account tells us the Samaritans – distant relatives of God’s Covenant People -  come to the worksite to belittle and berate the people of God, taunting their cousins with insults such as ‘a fox could push that wall over…’ and when they realize that mockery will not work, they descend to threats! They even plan a conspiracy in an attempt to lure Nehemiah way from the job.

“Let’s negotiate they say…  Come away with us Nehemiah and we will negotiate!” [Does this not sound eerily familiar to Anglican ears? “Let’s go talk about it”…”come away from the work and have a discussion…”form a committee” to avoid seeing the real work of God being done in our midst]. 

Yet resolutely Nehemiah says:  “No, I am building the wall! That is my mission that my vision.”

While external opposition pulled at the foundations Nehemiah, by God’s grace, was building, within the walls, even among the People of God, the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer.  Rather than uniting behind common goals and purposes for the glory of Almighty God, people were looking out solely for themselves.  Nehemiah had to deal with misappropriated funds; with businessmen who returned from Babylon and turned the Holy Days into secular sales events; and above all, with priests neglecting their ministries in the Temple. With a cement trowel in one hand and sword in the other, ‘Nehemiah the Reformer’ is faced with the daunting responsibility of cleaning-up civil corruption and restoring the sacredness of divine worship while defending his people against imminent armed attack….yet, none of these circumstances deter his vision of rebuilding the City of Jerusalem and thus honor the Living God whose mighty works were recorded in the books of the Old Covenant.

In fact, despite all the opposition, all the destruction of the city, the opposition from internal and external forces, Nehemiah says to the remnant of his nation [2.20] Come let us arise and build, the God of heaven will give us success.
Does any of this sound familiar to life in the Anglican Church today?

Just like the Chosen People of the Old Covenant, we too were forced into exile by the actions of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada which have systematically and purposefully destroyed the foundations of Anglican Christianity within the United States and Canada, shredding the fabric of the Anglican Communion with apostasy and immorality; tearing down the walls of biblical authority and moral certainty; burning the gates leading to the sure Way to Eternal Life with murky forms universalism and reducing our duty to worship the Universal King of Kings in majesty and holiness into little more than parody and caricature. 

God, however, never changes.  The same Almighty and Living God who showed His loving and gracious Hand to Nehemiah lives and reigns today and, like the exiles in Persia, we were enabled to return.In our Convocation of Anglicans in North America,  The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), continues to give North American Anglicans an incredible gift.  By sending our missionary Bishop back into this great land to rebuild and replant biblical Anglicanism, this great evangelical Province expresses its commitment to the Apostolic mandate that the Gospel must be preached everywhere…where it has never been heard and where it is voice has been diluted, side-tracked or even silenced by those who falsely claim to speak in its name. The Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda – la Province de l’Eglise Anglicane du Rwanda -  is offering this same, Spirit-filled, Gospel-centered, Apostolically commanded, and, incredible gift to you.

We too have faced opposition from those that refused to leave.  We have faced opposition from those who compromised with evil and think that they have a right to deny our rebuilding because it threatens their security. We have faced opposition from those that have a political or personal agenda and think that they can ‘pass it off’ as being ‘the best interest of the Church.’  And yet, and yet as we read the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah faithful Anglican Christians like you and me can only be challenged to continue the struggle, to fight the good fight, to stand fast in the faith and to trim the sails, head up to a close-hauled course and run with the wind!  Come let us arise and build, the God of heaven will give us success.

The following are five (5) insights that we humbly believe will help enable us to accomplish this task:  to continue the struggle as we replant biblical Anglicanism across North America.

A Confident Commitment to biblical Truth

Today, more than ever before, we as orthodox Christians must settle in our mind the unchanging and unchangeable principles by which we live. At no time in the history of the Church has this been more important.

Scholars tell us that we have moved from a modern age into a post-modern age [and perhaps into a post-post-modern era].  Why does this matter?  In the so-called ‘modern era’ Truth was discussed, debated and even fought over; in this new millennium, however, many – including it appears most of the leadership of the Episcopal Church – do not believe that there is such a thing as ‘Truth.’

We are already seeing that in our culture today and in the church.

To such arrogant relativism, however, the inspired and inerrant Word of God could not offer a more stirring rebuke:“ Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” (Jude 3)

This is the central truth of this New Testament verse:there is a faith once entrusted to the saints (vs.3). That once does not mean once upon a time.  It means once and for all.  It is the same once that Peter uses when he is talking about the death of Jesus.  It is something that occurred once.  There is a Gospel which is unique, Apostolic, unchanging, and unchangeable.  There are a set of truths about God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Church and human beings that are essential to the life of Christianity, and if they are lost or distorted the result will not merely be wrong ideas, but misplaced trust…and eventually broken walls, burned gates, utter destruction.

Brothers and sisters: when doctrine ‘goes bad’, so to do hearts, minds, and eternal destinies.  That is why all this matters.  The unique truth about Jesus Christ leads to salvation and without this Truth there would be no salvation for Christians to share.  Contrary to the conceits of those claiming to speak for current trends in theology, these Truths were not invented by the Church.  These Eternal Truths were entrusted or delivered to the saints by the Apostles from God Himself through Jesus Christ His Son once and for all.

The canon of Holy Scripture closed with the final stroke of St. John’s pen on the island of Patmos and from then down to the present day, every claim to Truth is measured by the standard of that Faith, contained therein, once and for all, delivered to the Saints.

The ultimate responsibility for the Gospel lies, therefore, with the Living God, which is why it is such a terrible thing to presuppose to change it, and almost every contemporary problem in the church comes about when people try to add to or subtract from the Apostolic Gospel.  We have no liberty to go behind the New Testament or to try to get beyond it – to add to it or to take from it, to think we have the right to ‘correct it’ instead of submitting to it.

In other words any gospel in which human merit is advanced, any gospel which is confuses salvation with this worldly political goals, any gospel which does not seek for a transformed life though repentance, any gospel in which all are saved, any gospel which denies the reality of hell and judgment, any gospel which sees humanity as fundamentally sound, any gospel in which other beliefs and religions offer a way to God is repugnant to the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.

This is the Faith we hold.  This is Faith for which our martyrs died and continue to die.  This is the Faith for which believing Anglicans are being forced from their churches across America as we meet this morning.  This is the Faith unchanging and unchangeable; ‘the Faith once delivered to the Saints for all.’

Votregrâce,l’archevêque : Nous croyons dans la foi chrétienne immuable et inaltérable ; «la foi qui a été transmise aux saints une fois pour toutes.»C’est ce que nous défendons

Almighty God has given us a Gospel, and He is not going to give us another one.  This Gospel is extraordinarily precious and we must be committed with to it without wavering, without vacillation, without hesitation.

While it is difficult to choose the most despicable action of the Episcopal Church amongst their catalogue of deplorable activities and depravities, the use of American dollars as leverage, well, let us call it what it is, bribery -  to entice Anglican Provinces to support their cavalier abandonment of biblical orthodoxy surely tops the list.  We give praise to Almighty God that the Rwandan Church has withstood the diabolical financial incentives of the Episcopal Church and together with Primates from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, West Africa and Nigeria unreservedly endorsed GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration that included the affirmation:  “We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation.  The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading…”

As we rebuild the walls of biblical, missionary Anglicanism across North America, we need a confident commitment to biblical Truth. The Gospel of the Jerusalem Declaration is the Gospel of the Bible, the Prayer Book and the Articles of Religion. This is one of many incredible gifts given to North American Anglicanism by the faithful and fearless Primates of the Anglican Communion in Africa.  We awed by their courage. We inspired by their faith.  We are humbled to be counted amongst their flock.

May Almighty God bless and strengthened their witness!

Dieu tout-puissant bénisse et renforcer leur témoignage de l’Evangile!

A Determined Dedication to Evangelism

A determined dedication to evangelism is not an occasional chat about Christ with your buddy in local golf club or the brief mention of church with the local walking group.  We must be committed to a revolutionary dissemination and proclamation of the Good News of Jesus Christ across North America and, in fact across the globe. The Lausanne Covenant, a declaration agreed upon by more than 2300 evangelicals said evangelism is…“the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ, as savior and Lord with a view to persuading people to come to him personally, and so to be reconciled to God.”

As we come into this second decade of the new millennium, however, even amongst traditional evangelicals, the Church is often more comfortable preaching ethics, emphasizing ‘the family,’ championing the poor and working for justice.  While all these things are important and carry biblical imperatives, if at the same time we neglect to tell people that God loves them, that Christ died for them, that they can be and need to be saved, justified, reconciled to God, then the Church ceases to be missionary and when the Church ceases to be missionary, it ceases to be Christian – for ‘Christian’ means ‘bearer of Christ.’

The faithful proclamation of the Gospel message is not an activity dreamt up by a planning committee.  It is an expression of the very heart and character of God Himself.  It is central to His plan for humanity and for the planet.  It is indivisibly linked with Christian discipleship and it is one of the primary reasons why the church exists at all, and yet, and yet, the fact is the vast segments of the Church (perhaps even some of you here today) appear to be less than enthusiastic about regularly and faithfully declaring the Gospel which has been entrusted to us!  [When do you last share the Gospel message with someone at the grocery store, or your non church relatives and friends?]

A noted American evangelist has said, In spite of the difficulties, the twenty-first century could mark the greatest evangelistic advance in the history of the Christian church. In order for this to happen, however, the church (in all of its diversity) must embrace the challenges it faces and must mobilize every possible spiritual and physical resource to declare the gospel that has been committed to us.

In John 17 Jesus said, “Father the hour has come, glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all people to give eternal life to all whom you have given, and this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”Jesus uses that lovely phrase, the only true God. When Jesus says that his Father is the only true God, then we must recognize that Jesus infers that there are other gods who are false. No matter how sincere the worshippers of other gods are, there is only one true God. The God of the Holy Bible, is Almighty God who was and is and is to come, He is the One true God.”

Not everybody will appreciate the message you proclaim.  I received an email from a gentleman clearly distributed by the Gospel message I was proclaiming, he wrote:  “Idiots like you with a message such as the one you have… offend, hurt, cause hatred, fear, loathing ..... How is that part of your calling? You (and whoever the bishop is that has allowed you to run your uneducated mouth) should be thrown in jail and have the key thrown away.”

If the Episcopal Church and its associates are correct and there are “many ways to God” we do not need to go and tell anybody, if tolerance is enough then you can leave your neighbor alone, you do not have to be burdened for them in any way!  If some day somehow everybody will land in heaven (that the popular thinking of Universalism) then there is no need to evangelize, if the god of Islam and the One True Living God of the Bible are the same God and if bowing down to Buddha is enough to save a person’s soul, then let’s just enjoy our church and come along and sing nice hymns and songs.  But if Jesus is the only way to the only God there is, if it is exclusive as that, then we must be inclusive as wide as the whole world and preach the Good News to every person.

The Anglican Church of Nigeria is taking this challenge very seriously.  At a three day meeting of the Church 18 new missionary dioceses and one fully fledged diocese were created, 20 new bishops were elected to serve these new jurisdictions. All of the resources to start these new dioceses—a Cathedral for the people, and a car, house, and the first year’s stipend for the bishop and his family—were already in the bank. Members of the Church of Nigeria and their friends gave all of it because they have a fearless commitment to share the Gospel.  All of this is happening while Boko Haram Islamic terrorist militia, are murdering our fellow believers and have issued an ultimatum giving all Christians just days to vacate the entire North of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  Our response in the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), in humility quoting God the Holy Spirit speaking through the Apostle Paul: For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. (Philippians 2:21)

Votregrâce,l’archevêque, nous croyons avec l’apôtre Paul,  car Christ est ma vie, et la mort m’est un gain.

As we rebuild the walls of biblical missionary Anglicanism across North America, we need this same confident commitment to biblical Truth and an equally determined dedication to evangelism and fearless proclamation of the Gospel.

A Radical Investment In Church Planting

Why plant Churches? In many other places across our country, there are empty church buildings, small congregations and struggling ministries.  Why plant new churches?  Dr. Tim Keller, pastor of the thriving, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York has said, the vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for 1) the numerical growth of the Body of Christ in any city, and 2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else—not crusades, outreach programs, para-church ministries, growing mega-churches, congregational consulting, nor church renewal processes—will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow raising statement. But to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.

There has been immense energy and enthusiasm around the United States and Canada invested in the vision of laying a new foundation of biblical, missionary Anglicanism that reaches North America with the love of Jesus Christ. We have seen about 200 new works started in the past two years.  The task is moving forward into the Lord’s fields white for harvest, but now we need to trim the sails, head up to a close-hauled course and run with the wind.

On the greatest strengths of the Anglican Mission in America has been the energy and dedication devoted to church planting.  God the Holy Spirit has moved through willing, gifted vessels in extraordinary ways to expand biblical, missionary Anglicanism across the South and throughout the United States from place like Raleigh, North Carolina.  It is appropriate that as we come together to discuss the future of the Mission on our continent that we return to the Apostolic call at the Church of the Apostles where the fire of Pentecost has burned so brightly and the people of God have made church planting practically a way of life.  This must be our model as we move into our future.  A confident commitment to biblical Truth; a dedicated determination to evangelism; A radical investment in church planting.

A Conduit For New Leaders

As a new bishop with standing the Anglican Communion,I firmly believe that one of my highest priorities must be the immediate recruiting of young clergy called by Almighty God to ministry and gifted by the Holy Spirit with the sacrificial willingness to live bi-vocationally as church planters to establish missions and grow existing, young congregations and missions.

We need hundreds and hundreds of new leaders. We need more effective ways of screening, assessing, training, and deploying some of our existing leaders. We need to be recruiting and calling students, seminarians, clergy (from our tradition and others), probably some parachurch leaders, to consider planting new Anglican churches.

In 1 Peter 4:10 we read these words “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received”.  Each one of us must ask: What gift have we received?  Each one of us has received a gift, serve, serve like good stewards using those gifts and we must consider church planting as one of our highest priorities.

And so we’re rebuilding biblical Anglicanism across North America, we are building upon:

An Anglican Moment

Nehemiah demonstrated remarkable steadfastness and faithfulness in rebuilding the ruined walls of Jerusalem despite the risks and opposition.  He seized upon the place where God positioned him at the time of the Lord’s choosing to do that which the Living God in His sovereignty desired of him.

I firmly believe it just so with us…at this moment, in this place, in our circumstances.

Almighty God has given North American Anglicanism ‘a moment in time’ that we may never see again. As we enter the third year of the second decade of the new millennium, in His great mercy the Lord of the Church has given the Anglican Church in North America a holy opportunity to reexamine our mission, our ministry, our structures, our national and global relationships, our transition from what were deep and disturbing days of darkness to our current juncture, poised on the banks of the Jordan as we make our first tentative steps into the promised land of Anglicanism in North America.

We must pose this question:  will we together as Anglicans, ‘forgetting what is behind and straining forward to what awaits us,’ embrace the difficult challenge of our Lord, rise up and embrace the opportunity that is before us, or will we be more content to replicate the patterns and structures of our former days in Egypt?

Egypt is the place that provided respite for the Holy Family when they faced persecution. Egypt is the place from which God led his people through the Red Sea to the land of promise. Egypt is the place where God took his people out of slavery into freedom. Egypt is a reminder that time after time God met His people at the point of their need. And yet, Egypt is also a reminder that God’s people often have very short memories. It was only a brief time after their deliverance that they began to complain about the lack of variety of their provisions in the wilderness “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost - also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic, they grumbled. Once they were safely established in the Land of Promise they also quickly forgot the bondage under which they had suffered in Egypt and began to embrace the very same pattern of life that they had escaped.

The journey of the children of Israel out of Egypt into the Land of Promise presents a warning that is timeless and always contemporary because if our profession of faith is not matched with actions of faithfulness we will also find ourselves back in the land of bondage where our message has no meaning for a sick and spiritually bankrupt world and our lives with no transforming power. We can have all the seemingly godly heritage, all of the historical and religious symbols but if we fail to obey God’s call to a holy, faithful lives we will be like withering grass that is simply blown out by the devastating wind of the age.

Our risk, even at this very early stage of our development, is that as we establish this new expression of biblical missionary Anglicism it becomes so much an expression of the former structures that it is very difficult to observe the difference between the past and the present.  Hierarchical structures, infighting, power struggles, committees, attorneys, insecurities, leaders who say one thing and do another while some take care to secure their own positions at the expense of others.  Let us never forget that Moses discovered that not everyone who departed Egypt with him was united with him in his unwavering commitment to obey the commandments and guidance of Almighty God; should we be surprised to discover that we are not immune from these same trials and challenges?

Crucial to the rebuilding process is refurbishing and refining, as the prophet Malachi writes: ‘And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. (Malachi 3:3)

Part of any true work of God is the refiners’ fire.  No one looks forward to the searing heat and the burning away of the dross; personal and communal…but the Word of God promises us that the result is heavenly gold.

In our refurbishing process, we must also recognize that used bricks are very attractive and sought-after for walkways and fireplaces in new suburbs across America and Canada, but, we must remember that not everything in building materials ages well.

In his book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman explains how our world has shrunk. Thanks to instant information and rapid transportation, hierarchical structures have been flattened.  One global organization that should be ideally positioned for this transformation is the Christian Church.  Its Divine founder designed it to be “flat;” small groups with a common vision, a common language of faith, and international networks that crossed national boundaries. As often happens, initial flexibility was soon lost and replaced by more predictable and controllable structures and the early vision forgotten while waiting for another fresh wave of inspiration and creativity.

We are witnessing such a new wave.  A prime example is the Anglican Communion - an international community of more than 75 million in 164 countries, ordered into 38 separate provinces.

In the good old days mandates, money and missionaries flowed from the traditional power base of London and, more recently, New York to their grateful recipients in the developing world.

In a nutshell, the flattening of hierarchical structures is a way to be as big as a dinosaur and as nimble as a cat at the same time. Consider a swarm of bees: it can effectively be an animal twenty feet wide, a hundred feet long, with a thousand eyes and sophisticated complex behavior—bigger and smarter than most dinosaurs—but it can turn on a dime (in several directions at once, no less!) and is unburdened by the metabolic overhead of a single huge body.

I want to prayerfully and carefully caution our new Anglican movement, let us not be complacent and reinvent the less effective structures of the past.  We must be constantly vigilant against an all-too-human temptation to feel that ‘the past was good enough;’ to live in the continual ‘afterglow’ of the great acts of God in past decades.  The constant, forward movement of God the Holy Spirit is ever dynamic. Relationships are new and different and this is to be celebrated and

I am humbled as a native born New Zealander and now a new American to serve as a bishop in the Church of Nigeria, [Anglican Communion] while serving as a bishop of the Anglican Church in North America by right of my standing as a Bishop in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America; a Suffragan to our Missionary Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns. These are unusual relationships, but they are kinship that strengthen our shared mission as Anglican Christians in the world who believe that Jesus still says ‘go and recognize our necessary and shared dependence upon Almighty God and the global Anglican family.’

We firmly believe that our realignment is part of an emerging movement of formerly Episcopal churches and now new congregations, church plants, chaplains which are breaking out of their hierarchical straightjackets and connecting directly with local and global parts of the Anglican Communion. What unites them is a vision for global Christianity; a commitment to a common language of faith and abiding friendships that connect across challenging cultural divides.

Remember, Jesus of Nazareth didn’t give his life for a structure but rather for a vision of a world where every person can know that they are loved by God and given new hope for tomorrow - whether they live in Kaduna or Kansas City, in Bethlehem or Boston, in Darfur or Durham.

For Moses to reach the Promised Land he had to come to a place called Kadesh Barnea; as all biblically-sound Anglicans undoubtedly know the story.  Before the 12 tribes of Israel lay a land flowing with milk and honey; behind them the wildness…but 10 men…just 10 men…sent to check out the land promised to them by God managed to sow such discouragement and then discontent that full-scale rebellion broke out in the camp.  The result of their hesitation, vacillation, and..well…cowardice…was 40 more years in the desert and an entire generation lost. 

I believe we are at Kadesh Barnea in North American Anglicanism.  Remember, there were twelve young men sent into the Promised Land, 10 returned and said ‘it is too hard,’ let those of us entrusted to make decisions for the people of God and those whom we represent hear only the voices of the other two – Joshua and Caleb – who said ‘Do not be afraid, the Lord is with us’ (Numbers 14:9) and let us move forward to lay-hold of that which God is calling us to claim, for,

This is the Anglican Moment,

But, this requires…

A Determined Discipleship - No Matter What the Cost.

In our congregations we should be working to develop a true ‘ mutual company of the committed’ healthy, Gospel-focused place where people are regularly coming to faith, being catechized, worshipping, growing, and serving. We should see this in children’s ministries, youth ministries, adult ministries – we need to be thinking together about campus ministries, we need to be thinking about reaching diverse people groups in different places – city-centers, suburbs, rural areas. Theological training, spiritual formation, vocational assessment, and leadership development should be taking place on the ground in a recognized, growing ‘ mutual company of the committed’ . In other words, we need to be making disciples in our local churches.

A healthy determined discipleship culture is essential as we replant biblical Anglicanism across North America. This is the work of the whole church.  It is not just for some, it is for all of us… together!

Being a determined disciple and following Jesus might cost us everything!  Do you realize that?  As a survivor of the 1950’s Mau Mau crisis in Kenya, once put it, “When they come for you at night and threaten to tie a sack over your head and drop you in the river, then you know whether Jesus Christ means everything to you or whether he means nothing at all.”  To these Christians, Jesus Christ meant everything, He meant everything.

Tertullian, the church leader and author in the 2nd and 3rd century correctly boasted, “The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of the church.  Dying we conquer, the moment we are crushed, that moment, we go forth victorious.”

We are called to a life of dedicated sacrifice.  To leave the palaces behind and follow Almighty God – through desert, swamp, mountains and across the wide rivers.  To stand firm against the scoffers and the enemy. But, foremostly, we are also called to build – or more specifically in our case – to rebuild.

So let us rebuild the walls.  Let us replant biblical Anglicanism across North America. With a Confident Commitment To biblical Truth. A Dedicated Determination To Evangelism. A Radical Investment In Church Planting. A Pipeline For New Leaders and a Determined Discipleship No Matter What The Cost!  Let’s trim the sails, head up to a close-hauled course and run with the wind!
And I am proud to be a Shepherd in this great task as together we continue the struggle, fight the good fight, stand fast in the faith and so…

Votregrâce,l’archevêque, c’est le momentanglicane !

Le Dieu des cieux nous donnera le succès. Nous, ses serviteurs, nous nous lèverons et nous bâtirons

This is the Anglican Moment.

Come let us arise and build, the God of heaven will give us success.

Amen.

Thanks to Kevin Kallsen for his videography!