We have just finished a meeting with our American Anglican Council (AAC) Board of Trustees. It was a great time of assessing the Canterbury gathering of Anglican Primates just a few weeks ago, our work there with the GAFCON Primates, a group representing the majority of the world’s Anglicans, and the possibilities and challenges before us.
Most people don’t know this, but the AAC has supported and worked with GAFCON’s leaders since the movement began in 2008. Our Board of Trustees has reaffirmed its support for the GAFCON movement. We see in its leaders the hope for a future Anglican Communion that finds its identity in Jesus Christ and Biblical faithfulness rather than institutional loyalty. Regretfully, we do not believe the next three years of sanctions on The Episcopal Church (TEC) (or “relational consequences,” as the Archbishop of Canterbury defines it) will produce the results for which most of the Primates hoped and prayed. Will the flood of false teaching from North America (TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada) continue to sweep into other Churches and regions of the Anglican Communion? Whatever the future may hold, we believe we have three years to build an ark.
Our vision supports that commitment. We reaffirmed the vision of the American Anglican Council:
Locally: to help Anglican Churches in North America become transformed by the Holy Spirit, with leaders and congregations who are Biblically inspired, united, confessing, and passionately committed to fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission
Globally: to help Anglican leaders and national churches return Anglicanism to its biblical and apostolic roots, to prevail over all false gospels, to unite with other biblical and apostolic Christians and, together, to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) in the world.
We do this by Developing Faithful leaders, Equipping the Church for Mission, and Renewing Biblically faithful Anglicanism worldwide. That’s our mission.
In today’s Weekly Update, (sign up here if you don’t receive it) we are including an article by Dwight Longenecker on “Twelve Reasons why ‘progressive’ Christianity will die out.” “Progressive Christianity” is a term he uses to describe Christianity as a mere form without power; a “Christianity” that is shaped and driven by culture and political correctness rather than the Bible. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:13), if salt loses its saltiness—that which distinguishes it from the world—it is good for nothing. If Christianity loses its “saltiness”—its power to prevent moral and spiritual decay in the culture around us, and to add spiritual “flavor” and depth all around—it has no other use than to be trampled underfoot.
I hope you will read Fr. Longenecker’s article carefully—it is worth your while! I believe it brings us hope that the very values for which we stand, the very vision of Biblical faithfulness and missional commitment to Christ’s Great Commission, are the hope of the future. These are the values that shape the vision and mission of the growing and missional Anglican Churches of GAFCON and the Global South (which Longenecker mentions in his article). And these are the same values that shape the vision and mission of the American Anglican Council. Please pray for us, and support us financially, as we continue to develop faithful leaders, equip churches to fulfill the Great Commission, renew Biblically faithful Anglicanism in North America and beyond… and build that ark in the next three years!
The Rev. Canon Phil Ashey is President and CEO of the American Anglican Council.
