GAFCON: largest since Lambeth
Chris Sugden
Date posted: 1 Dec 2013
GAFCON 2013, which met at the Conference Centre and Cathedral at All Saints Nairobi, can legitimately claim to be the largest worldwide gathering of Anglicans since Lambeth 1998 which was attended by all Anglican bishops and their wives.
331 bishops and archbishops and 1,358 delegates, including over 300 women, met together, among whom 120 were from England, Ireland and Wales.
World: changes at OM
Daniel Bullock
Date posted: 1 Oct 2013
On September 1, Lawrence Tong took over
as
the new
international director
of
Operation Mobilisation (OM). He succeeded Peter Maiden who retired from the role
after serving
for
ten years and George
Verwer who founded OM in 1957.
Everyone expects big changes when a new
leader takes the reins. So what can we expect
from Lawrence? For the first time the position of international director will be filled
with a non-Westerner, Lawrence
is
from
Singapore and with that he brings his own
certain Global South
flavour. Another
noticeable change, as Lawrence puts it, is
that there will be ‘an intentional emphasis on
the globalisation of OM — to make OM
more user-friendly for non-Westerners’.
Faithful in South Africa
Dave Doveton and Gavin Mitchell
Date posted: 1 Sep 2013
The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans
(Southern Africa) was born after the
GAFCON 1 meeting in Jerusalem in 2008,
with the aim of standing for biblical orthodoxy. FCA has two constituent parties,
members of the Church of England in South
Africa (CESA) and members of the Anglican
Church of Southern Africa (ACSA).
Among the Dioceses of the ACSA, Port
Elizabeth Diocese, the Diocese of St. Mark
the Evangelist, Zululand and Niassa
Dioceses would count themselves as evangelical. So are clusters of parishes in Kwazulu
Natal. In the Western Cape about 4-5
parishes, including the very big St. John’s
Wynberg, a conglomerate of seven churches,
are evangelical and charismatic in varying
degrees. A good strong parish within the diocese of Cape Town is St. Martin’s Bergvliet.
In Johannesburg there are 4-5 strongly evangelical parishes, generally the larger ones.
Zambia: OM training centre
Operation Mobilisation (OM) is currently
working in ten African countries, one of
which is Zambia.
Zambia is a beautiful country filled with
wonderful people and is well known for its
copper mineral wealth and the mighty
Victoria Falls. It is bordered by eight other
countries, is politically stable and has
declared itself a Christian country.
Syria: please do something for the body of Christ
Barnabas Fund
Date posted: 1 Sep 2013
On July 30, Barnabas Fund received a report from one of its Christian partners, a doctor in Aleppo, a devastated city that has been forgotten as the world stands by and fails to intervene on behalf of its traumatised citizens.
He chose to stay to help those in need of medical care and is also heavily involved in co-ordinating Barnabas Fund’s aid to Christians, whose plight is worsening as the fighting rages on.
news in brief
Algeria: protest
Around 200 people ate together at a public
lunch in the town of Tizi Ouzou on August
3 to protest against the ‘persecution of non-fasters and creeping Islamisation’ in the
Kabylie region in northern Algeria.
Another picnic was held simultaneously in
the town of Aokas in the neighbouring
Béjaïa province, which attracted over 100
people. In Algeria, where Islam is the state
religion, breaking the Ramadan fast in public is punishable by fine and imprisonment.
JOY AT IRANIAN BAPTISMS
JEB / Elam Ministries
Date posted: 1 Aug 2013
Elam Ministries reports that 246 people were baptised as Christians at a service on April 17.
Those baptised included 228 Iranians, 17 Afghans and one person from Pakistan. The service took place in a swimming pool at a secret location in a country bordering Iran to avoid interference from the Iranian authorities.