The sin of GAFCON? (updated)

Posted on October 22, 2009 
Filed under News

pfj-synod-2009Did Archbishop Peter Jensen wonder out loud if the diocesan financial losses were the Lord’s punishment for going to GAFCON?

From an Anglican Media Melbourne story (22 October 2009):

“The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has admitted questioning whether his diocese’s financial losses were a result of God chastising the Church for unethical behaviour, arrogance in handling its endowment or as punishment for its bishops going to the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem rather than Lambeth.” (emphasis added.)

AMM is not alone in reporting this seemingly out-of-character remark.

So what did Archbishop Jensen really say? From his prepared text:  

“When we ask what God may be teaching us, we must be careful to seek the answer in the right place and in the right way. It would not be right, for example simply to express our own prejudices and guesses and to confuse them with the word of God.

After all, we can think of a number of reason why this has happened and even then all of them may be quite wrong.

Thus, it may be that the Lord is chastising us for our sins – but then some would say that it is the sin of arrogance, others would say it is because your bishops went to GAFCON, others would say it is because of the Diocesan Mission.

But then it may not be our sins at all – it may be that the Lord is simply seeking to test us; or perhaps he is seeking to stop us doing something which is right in itself but not in accordance with his secret will; or perhaps he is challenging our faith, to rely on him more boldly for our finances.

Certainly it is a serious warning to us about what the Scriptures call ‘the uncertainty of riches’.

When we look at our circumstances in the light of God’s word, we have been reminded powerfully that our Diocese cannot and should not depend on its wealth for its Christian life.

We don’t avoid the issue.

Our access to the mind of the Lord is through his word and we must look there for our answers not to speculation.” (emphasis added)

– from page 8 of this PDF file.

Or listen to the audio as delivered (2.5MB / 3:30 mp3 file, starting about 23 minutes into the address. Full audio – 18MB mp3 – here).

Update: To their credit, Anglican Media Melbourne have removed the story from their website. They now have this modified version of the story on Sydney Synod.