Bishops Present: Nazir Ali - President of the Oxford Center for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue.
Bishop Bill Godfrey of the Diocese of Peru
Bishop Michael Chapman Suffragan Bishop, Peru
Bishop Frank Lyons - Diocese of Bolivia
Bishop Eric Menees - San Joaquin, California
Bishop Oscar Rojas Quinto - Huancayo, Peru
Bishop Oswaldo - Lima, Peru

The occasion was the First Annual Inaugural John H. Heidt Memorial series of addresses, the purpose of which is to facilitate the relationship between theology and mission and to stimulate, think and reflect on that connection.

Heidt was a friend of the diocese and came to teach in this seminary, promote biblical orthodoxy and inspire us to higher educational standards, said Allen Hill, president of Sts. Augustine Seminary. Heidt was Canon theologian for the Diocese of Ft. Worth. He visited the diocese and taught in Peru for over 7 years.

"This event has been a seminal moment for us as we gather together as Latin America and North Americans to discuss our missionary calling in light of our theological understanding of who God is," Hill added.

"Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali has challenged us in new ways to reflect on our missionary practice so that we can be more effective in our ministries together," Hill told VOL.

In his address Bishop Godfrey highlighted the central issues:

* Mission and theology are bound together
* God is searching for us to bring us back, that is the mission of God.
* God is looking for the lost sheep. The last thing we have from Holy Scripture is us as lost sheep responding to Him. We hear an 'Amen' come Lord Jesus.
* We see God searching for us and us coming back to God.
* We belong to God in order to find a lost humanity
* On the side of theology all theology is biblical. Jesus said man shall not live by bread alone but from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We know then the importance of the Word of God.
* The writer to the Hebrews...says the Word of God is living and active.
* In our Anglican Communion the Scriptures have the most important place in our following Jesus. In our diocese every priest, bishop and layperson must affirm and declare that our faith is revealed in sacred scriptures.
* St. Vincent said catholic truth is found in Scripture. Only if we can't be sure of what it says, we go to what the church has said everywhere, what it has always said and received with the consent of the counsels.
* Biblical theology and mission are at the heart of the church. We need more dialogue between these two disciplines of the church's life. John Heidt said, "We need to unite our corporate spiritual forces and to learn from one another the insights which each have brought to the table.
* Biblical theologians and missionaries must get together and dialogue and listen to each other.
* Academic biblical scholars need pastoral biblical scholars. This is where I find myself challenged.
* We don't do theology in the air to entertain ourselves but to serve the church and missionaries who need biblically trained missionaries. We need theologians to help us clarify some of the things we base it on.
* Missionaries must bring to biblical theologians the way they are seeing God work in what they are doing. We must bring together these two aspects of the church's life.
* Orthodoxy - correct opinion - demands orthopraxis - correct behavior - and must be in agreement with the opinion expressed. I see it as a two-way dialogue. My commitment is to both these things.

Godfrey said that when he arrived in Montevideo in 1986 he had one question, what should I do, where do I begin, how do I do mission. Now I have seen the way God is working over the last 25 years.

The bishop noted with sadness how The Episcopal Church has changed some important things. "In the Book of Common Prayer the confession is optional and it doesn't happen on certain occasions. I believe we must always have confession before we proceed to Holy Communion. As Anglicans we must have general confession and general absolution every time.

"In the end we say we don't simply believe in compassion for the sick, because confession is the only thing we have, said Godfrey. "I don't think the lord is too deaf to hear you or his arm is too short, it is your sins that separate you from God. You have got to deal with sin.

"In the Book of Common Prayer we renew covenant, but we only renew the last second part. Conversion and turning to Christ, the Creed - Part II, commitment to the way we are going to live. Confirmation to Christ and rejection of evil is left out. We constantly need to renew our commitment to Jesus Christ and reject evil. This commitment to Christ is and rejection of evil is the basis of it all.

"In this diocese we teach people three things by heart; they must learn the Lord's Prayer, (our relationship with God represented by 'Our Father'); the Apostles Creed (the content of our salvation and the content of our faith) and the 10 commandments (how we are going to behave.)

"These three develop into five. Our relationship with God is to love God. We pray to God to learn from Him and treasure the presence of Christ with us. We are to be filled with the Holy Spirit and be temples of the Holy Spirit.

"On the Church. The Church has lots of faults. We are not perfect. We must remember that Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. We must love God and love the people of God. We must love and treasure the church Eph. 5: 23.

"Spirituality. Classical Anglican spirituality has been the common prayer of the offices and the Eucharist and private prayer when you speak to your father in heaven. St. Benedict said that in our daily living our way of living must be different from the world's. There must be an impact of living holy lives. We must be the fragrance of Christ. Our way of living must be salt and light and yeast.

"Service. Good works. We must search them out. God has prepared us for them we must run to do them. How we can say we follow Christ who washed feet, preached a sermon on the Good Samaritan and preacher on the parable of the sheep and goats and the said he had not come to serve but to serve as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah. We must be people of service. We must go out of our way to be servants. We should encourage and develop outside of our life. We need to be converted to Christ deal with sin to confess our sin and more important than confessing our sin, receive the absolution of God

PARISHES AND MISSIONS

"Teaching and Christian formation. We have to be about teaching and forming people in the church and pastoring the flock of God. We need fellowship and the community of saints.

"Mission: Social outreach. There is no such thing as holistic mission all mission is holistic...we need to care about justice. The parish priest is responsible for all these things to be done.

"One of the most effective ways of church planting especially in Peru is called the Spider parish. One church like the body and little mission churches like the legs. There are practical advantages to this approach."

Bishop Godfrey commended the work of Bishop Michael Chapman. "Instead of going in and putting in a church we want to put in a mission center from which mission and churches can be planted. We need to build up what we have and train them and send them out to plant churches.

"My philosophy of training is that people need academic training and to think theologically. We need to be doing ministry."

Godfrey added three adult strands:
1. Development of the person, family and morals.
2. Faithfulness to the community especially our Anglican Communion.
3. We are training servants. The parable of the sower. Everybody hears. What the parable is about how and what you do with the word you hear.

BISHOP NAZIR ALI SPEAKS

* Mission as presence has been ascribed to St. Francis, to take the gospel to different places and use words where necessary. Be present itself is mission in some sense.

* In the Anglican world we also have mission as presence arising in two ways.

There has been an Anglican thinking on the incarnation. For the church has to be the presence of the church in different places and people. There is a theological commitment that is incarnational. Secondly and practically it arises from the parish system as it emerged in England. Two men Theodare of Tarsus in Asia and Augustine the man who became the ABC created the parish system. Also his companion Adrian the Afrikcano created the parish system of the CofE that has now existed for several hundreds of years.

* Both Roman and Celtic missionaries worked at the same time and we have much to learn from the Celtic aspect of Christianity in England. They had both freedom and spontaneity.

* What the mission of Augustine and Adrian was a structure that gave the presence of the church in every community. Christian presence not limited to the Anglican Communion.

* Anglican chaplaincies in different parts of the world. "I am familiar with the gulf. When oil was found in Gulf States Anglican chaplaincies got a new lease on life. They became a hot bed of Christian activity.

* In Abu Dhabi more than 24 congregations worship in the same building from Pentecostals to Oriental Orthodox. People had to share vestments. Chalcedon and non-Chalcedon churches who had been out of communion for over 1500 years found themselves sharing a cover. They participated in one universal church, which St. Paul described at Jerusalem.

* This is receptor-oriented revelation - revelation designed for those to receive it. When people hear the Good News of Jesus Christ there is always in their experience the belief to which the gospel latches on.

* How is this identification? The answer is dialogue. The theological basis of dialogue must be Trinitarian. We can engage with any people in dialogue because all people are made in God's image although that image has been obscured and damaged by original sin it has not been destroyed by sin. It is still possible to evoke something in people by the evangelist engaging in dialogue with him.

* The eternal word becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ and he is the one to which every knee will bow. John 1:9 is the burden of the 4th chapter of what John is saying. Even if people are turning away from Him it can be the basis of dialogue. That the HS is at work is also Johanine...it is convincing the world of sin and righteousness and judgment. Note I said convince not convict because the word use by John in Chapter 16 has a long background in Greek. It is used in the platonic dialogue. The master brings the student to truth. Presence, identification and dialogue go together. That aspect of mission is to affirm and be positive to people.

* The prophetic aspect of mission is that all share in the fallenness of human kind.

* Those who think of mission think of Christ in culture who sees man as fallen in culture. Others see Christ as beyond culture and others transcending cultural limitations. Another view is Christ who is against culture.

* Archbishop Gitari (Kenya) said at the 1988 Lambeth Conference that when gospel came to his people there was something the gospel upheld and celebrated. People's commitment was to community to celebrate together, to support one another in adversity.

* Another example was more controversial. Polygamy. The early missionaries in Africa compelled them to give up all but one of their wives in order to be baptized. The result was the destitution of the women who were left. Some fell into prostitution. So Gitari suggested that for one-generation only polygamous men along with wives and children lived together and gradually as the gospel work took hold monogamy became the Christian standard.

* What the gospel would not tolerate was cattle rustling and the practice of killing twins. Twins were regarded as a curse and had to be killed.

* In East Africa the custom of the local ruler to use young boys for homosexual acts. The Gospel could not allow the continuation of such a practice and many of the Christian young men who refused to be used this way were among the first martyrs of the church. This gives us the background of why the African church has responded to what has happened in the US.

* Alongside the affirmation as to what is God given in nature, the gospel always is able to resist what is of sin and human rebellion and greed and the desire to satisfy our appetites.

* Another aspect of Christian mission is Christian service. The son of man came not to serve but to give his life a ransom for many. Christianity is about a self-emptying way of life. Self-giving is to the point of self-emptying. Alongside service there is also action. We have to act on behalf of people who cannot act for themselves. My work of advocacy is for the persecuted church and I speak to the governments in their own country and in international bodies in the media. Acting on behalf of them is basic to our understanding of what is mission.

* We must speak to the injustice to indigenous people of Latin America. I speak of my work with Christians in Pakistan. Without advocacy of those who suffer injustice, without working for justice without making sure that the alienation we cannot say or mission is hope. Presence, identification, dialogue as service, as action and evangelism.

* Why should we engage in evangelism? The gospel begins in remembrance about what we are supposed to be. Jesus is looking for the lost sheep. There is amnesia we don't know who we are and where we are. The opposite of amnesia is anamuesis. It has to do with remembering who we are, what God wants us to be and to remind God of his mercies.

* Remembrance leads to repentance. Dr. Kenneth Bailey, who is an expert in this in its Middle East understanding, has the son coming to himself, but that is not full repentance. The remembering leads to the repenting and the repentance is complete when the father goes out to meet him. He wants to be a servant but the father invests in him the sonship he had lost. The gospel leads to fulfillment of authentic aspirations all human beings have. When we come to Christ all God's purposes come to be fulfilled. I have met many who have come to Christ from many ideologies and capitulation and reassurance is basic to the gospel. When we put our trust in Christ we can be sure God will fulfill his will for us.

* Jesus said all that the father has given me, I have lost nothing We can have confidence in Christ for our final destiny. This is unique to the gospel.

* Other religions have no such assurance. I had an uncle who became a pious Muslim. He had been a distinguished civil servant. I asked him what the practice of his religion was leading too. All he could say is I hope God accepts me. That is not so with us. We know in putting our trust in Christ and what he has done for us he has opened the way of friendship with God and how in Christ we find God in Christ finds us and we find ourselves.

* Anglicans always try to escape intentional evangelism. Just because we have a service there is no sharing the gospel in words and we need to find ways to invite them to put their trust in Jesus Christ. The evangelistic dimension should not be used as an excuse to duck out of personal witness and also ecclesial witness.

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