“The faithful pastor will offend—not out of any love for controversy, but because preaching Christ crucified is an offense (1 Cor. 1:23 and 1 Pet. 2:8). Yet how many pastors are determined to avoid “controversial issues?” How many have measured their success by how few people they have offended with their preaching, as if it were a virtue to be more conciliatory than Jesus? Pastors who ignore biblical truth on “controversial issues” may think they serve kindness and unity, but fear may be their lord.” (From “Cowards need not apply (Jer. 1:17)” in The Kairos Journal 29 January 2015) 

Yes, I’ve known a few pastors and church leaders who have needlessly offended—myself included—by thought, word and deed, by personalizing conflict, by leading change at a pace that is insensitive and even deaf to the cries of the people we serve.  More especially, I am aware how often we can offend by leading change in ways that are deaf to God’s word (the Bible), and deaf to the leadings of the Holy Spirit which will always, always be in keeping with God’s word written. These are exactly the issues we raise around conflict in our American Anglican Council Leadership Institutes.

But the quote above from the Kairos Journal yesterday reminded me that there is a time when faithful pastors and church leaders must offend for the sake of the Gospel. It is not at all a matter of seeking controversy.  It is a matter of preserving and rightly applying biblical truth to the challenges we face in proclaiming Jesus Christ.

That’s why I wish to commend the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates in their most recent communications—their pastoral letter to the Chairman of CAPA and the GAFCON Chairman’s January 2015 Pastoral Letter.  I strongly encourage you to read both letters, and the contexts they address, if you have not already.

With regards to the first letter addressed to the Chairman of CAPA (the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa), the GAFCON Primates did not seek controversy.  Instead, in the spirit and letter of Matthew 18, they wrote to the Chair of CAPA, the Most Rev. Bernard Ntahouri (++Burundi) privately and asked him why he had signed a communique of friendship with The Episcopal Church—and by extension, friendship with its unbiblical teachings and unilateral violation of biblical and Communion teaching on sexuality and holy orders.  They asked him why he had signed as Chairman of CAPA, thereby misrepresenting the majority of African Anglicans who reject TEC’s teaching and actions, and many of whom are not in communion now with TEC as a result.  As a matter of standing for biblical truth, they challenged both Archbishop Ntahouri and the other signatories to the “Friendship Communique” for

• Seeking to effect reconciliation without repentance (“peace, peace when there is no peace”)
• Advancing “Indaba” as a fiction of “human desires not informed by Gospel truth”;
• Proposing “Mission” as a basis for Anglican relationships without any theological agreement on the Biblical grounds and purpose of mission;
• Allowing theological revisionists in TEC and elsewhere to capitalize on the “economic vulnerability” of African Anglicans to advance unbiblical agendas

These are certainly hard words—but never was biblical truth spoken so clearly and specifically to the crisis of Gospel truth within the Anglican Communion, and specifically to the spiritual and material needs of Anglicans not only in Africa but throughout the Anglican Communion.

But it was not only the content of their letter that demonstrates how these GAFCON Primates are faithful shepherds of Christ’s flock—it is the process they followed. They met in Nairobi to pray and carefully consider their response. This is exactly the conciliar approach we would wish to see our leaders observe as a matter of biblical decision making, and in keeping with the first such example of this in Acts 15. Through prayer, reflection and discussion, they came to a united consensus on what to do.  They sent a letter privately to ++Ntahouri and copied it to each of the other signatories. They gave him time to respond, and the others as well. All of this is what we would expect biblically faithful leaders to do to stay in step with the process Jesus himself asked us to follow in Matthew 18. And when neither ++Ntahouri, as Chair of CAPA, nor the other signatories, responded, then and only then they made the matter known “to the whole church.” (Matthew 18:17). Even at this point, they have left the door open for ++Ntahouri and the others to listen and repent. (Matthew 18:18).

Likewise, in Chairman ++Eliud Wabukala’s January 2015 Pastoral Letter from GAFCON, he makes the plea we would expect of faithful pastors and church leaders that the greatest needs of Anglicans today are to become “mature disciples of Jesus Christ.” And then, in that context, to agree with Pope Francis that faithful Christians must reject “ideological colonization”—the practice of “tying aid and development resources to the promotion of alien understandings of gender, the family and sexual behavior.” Alien means “non-biblical.” Again, we have the example of a faithful pastor and church leader, speaking on behalf of a great reformed and reforming movement within Anglicanism (GAFCON), speaking and applying Biblical truth to refute the incursions of Western, secular, and even false gospels within the Anglican Communion.  AND he is doing so in such a way that promotes the kind of ecumenical unity with Roman Catholics on a matter of Biblical truth that we share, in keeping with both the spirit and the truth in Jesus’ great prayer in John 17.

Anglican theologian Paul Avis recently observed that Anglicans today are divided between those who define themselves on the basis of content (the Bible, the Thirty-Nine Articles, the 1662 BCP and Ordinal, etc.), and those who define themselves on the basis of “Spirit and ethos” (Anglicanism is simply a way of thinking and being)[1].  If Anglicanism is simply a matter of “spirit, ethos, and way of thinking,” it is utterly vulnerable to ideological colonization and worse.  It is open to the very same things that the GAFCON Primates identified in their letter to the Chair of CAPA—reconciliation without repentance, relationships and dialogue as an end in themselves shaped by human desires without biblical content, greatly weakened mission without any shared biblical moorings as to the nature and purpose of mission, and manipulation of the church into unbiblical and unfaithful positions with regards to gender, family and sexual behavior tied to economic aid and development.

Thank God for faithful pastors and church leaders like the GAFCON Primates, who are willing to face controversy by promoting Biblical truth as the basis for genuine human flourishing in every dimension. Thank God for these faithful pastors and church leaders who remind us continually that our identity as Anglicans is not found in the way we think or our spirit and ethos– “blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4: 14) Thank God for these faithful pastors and church leaders who constantly point us back to a content based identity as Anglicans, rooted in the faith of the apostles “once delivered.”

The Rev Canon Phil Ashey is Chief Executive Officer of the American Anglican Council.