Sydney Synod overwhelmingly endorses GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration
Tonight a packed meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney very strongly supported the Jerusalem Declaration.
Read the Media Release by Russell Powell. See also this story.
Related: The Jerusalem Declaration.
Reform pledges support for GAFCON movement
Reform, the 1,700-strong conservative evangelical network, has pledged support for the initiatives of GAFCON at its annual conference in London.
Revd Rod Thomas, Reform’s chairman, welcomed the clear Biblical leadership given by the GAFCON Primates at the Jerusalem meeting in June 2008, saying that there “we saw what an Anglicanism united in the Gospel and dedicated to mission could look like.”…
– Read the full Reform statement here.
Update: The Anglican Mainstream steering committee has released a statement of support for the Jerusalem Declaration.
Bp David Mulready’s Presidential Address to the Synod of North West Australia
Bishop David Mulready’s Presidential Address to the Synod of the Diocese of North West Australia last weekend has now been made available.
“Our Diocese is committed to the Bible as The Word of God. We are committed to teaching God’s Word and obeying it, living it out in our lives. As the Bible is taught during sermons and at Bible Studies, our teachers consistently seek to bring God’s Word to impact on every area of our lives.
One of the most important exhortations in the Scriptures is for God’s people to make God known to those who do not know Him. So we know that God is a ‘missional God’ and we are to be ‘a missional church’. At every opportunity and in a great variety of ways our churches are to be reaching out with the Good News of Salvation found only in Jesus Christ and His atoning death. …
There are many worthy causes to which our Church could turn our attention: climate control, improving the environment, justice for refugees to name just three. These are important matters and I hope that some members of our Churches are involved with a Christian voice. However, they are not the ‘core business’ of the church.
We must keep our minds and our energies on the main event: The Gospel. It is by proclaiming the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and repentance and faith in Him as the means by which people are rescued from hell and come into friendship with God. This is the main event. This is our core business. This is why we exist. Let’s do all that we can in our local Churches to be calling people from darkness into God’s wonderful light.…”
If only every Anglican bishop could affirm these things!
Download Bishop Mulready’s full text as a PDF file. (Photo: Russell Powell.)
Sydney Synod set to support GAFCON
This evening, Sydney’s Synod will vote on whether or not to endorse the Jerusalem Declaration, a statement overwhelmingly supported by those who attended GAFCON in June. …
This week, as some GAFCON churches continue to be targeted by the liberal dioceses in which they find themselves, Sydney Synod is likely to uphold the historic communiqué…
– Report by Nathasha Percy at SydneyAnglicans.net. (GAFCON photo: Russell Powell.)
Got an iPhone? Get this.
If you have an iPhone – or an iPod Touch – the people at Desiring God have now formatted John Piper’s book Don’t Waste Your Life for your device. Of greater eternal significance than playing Cro-Mag Rally on the way into work.
You can get Don’t Waste Your Life for iPhone at Desiring God. (Hat tip: Justin Taylor.)
And if you don’t have an iPhone, you can still read the book online.
From the book:
For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone’s amazement he came and took my father’s hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face – and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears – “I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!”
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…