Anglican Church of Canada slashes budget
Directors at the General Synod office have been asked to slash $1.3 million from the 2009 budget, a move designed to break a recurring pattern in recent years of huge budget deficits. …
Archbishop Hiltz … cautioned against looking at the situation negatively, saying, “The ship is not sinking; rather it’s moving in another direction…”
– Report from The Anglican Journal of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Preach what’s True and Precious
“A word to preachers. Truth and falsehood is a good pair of categories to use when deciding what to preach. Speak truth not falsehood.
But there is another crucial pair of categories. God tells Jeremiah that he must use this pair if he would be faithful…”
– Brief advice to preachers from John Piper.
The Seinfeld Conference: A Reflection on Lambeth 2008
“Lambeth 2008 was about nothing, said nothing, and achieved nothing, and by its inaction, the Anglican Communion was left in a worse place than if it had never taken place at all, Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda said…”
– George Conger writes for the Institute on Religion & Democracy. (Photo: Lambeth Conference media.)
Tibetan monks at Louisville cathedral
“Visiting Tibetan Buddhist Monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in South India are once again at Christ Church Cathedral to create a Sacred Sand Mandala for Compassion and World Peace…”
– from the Diocese of Kentucky.
(Hat tip to Greg Griffith at Stand Firm.)
The Oxford Movement
“It is likely that we will see a growing interest in the Oxford Movement in the wake of proposals by Roman Catholics to declare one of its founders a saint…”
– David Phillips, General Secretary of Church Society, points out that “many of the practices that were opposed by our evangelical forebears are common within the Church of England” today.
Read his article from Crossway as a PDF file at Church Society.
The Jerusalem Declaration: Available for download
Last night, Sydney Synod enthusiastically endorsed GAFCON’s Jerusalem Declaration.
During the debate, it was suggested that the Declaration could be made available for churches – either to give copies to members or to display one in your church.
For your convenience, you can now download the Declaration as a PDF file – it’s formatted to fit two A4 pages – an 80kb download.
Create Conference to help churches communicate
Learn about the Create Conference being held in Sydney on November 15 – to help churches in effectively communicating with our culture.
Website at createconference.org.au
Dr Martin Dudley responds
The Rector of The Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, the Rev Dr Martin Dudley, has responded to the statement, made last week, by members of the Diocese of London Deanery. Read it at Anglican Mainstream.
And then read a critque of his response – “Martin Dudley mishandles Donatism” – by Peter Ould:
Is he arguing that we should simply ignore sin in the church? Or is he arguing that we shouldn’t discipline him, “because we’re all sinners”?
(Photo: Church of St Bartholomew the Great.)
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!”
Anglican TV interviews J I Packer
Kevin Kallsen at Anglican TV has posted an interview with Dr J I Packer.
Topics include the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the problems in the Anglican Communion; the ‘episcopal autocracy’ in the Canadian dioceses; and the so-called ‘Instruments of Unity’.
Recorded at the Anglican District of Virginia second annual Synod Council earlier this month. The video interview runs for 16 minutes and is available at Anglican TV.
The Essential Jesus – a preview
As part of Connect09, The Essential Jesus, a translation of the Gospel of Luke, will be mass produced for distribution throughout Sydney.
The Connect09 website now has a preview as a 412kb PDF file (direct link). Sydney parishes want to have their orders in by the end of October.
What we believe
The message at the heart of Christianity is really quite simple…