CofE evangelicals face future head on

Church of England evangelicals have gathered for a major conference in the face of ongoing silence from many evangelical bishops on sexuality and concern about where the Church of England’s ‘Living in Love and Faith’ process is leading.

Hundreds of delegates attended the ReNew event for conservative evangelicals in Leeds with the theme ‘Abide in Me’.

John Dunnett from the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) described it as ‘an inspiring mix of Bible teaching, friendship and strategic thinking. A rich diet of food for the soul, mind and will.’

And retired bishop Keith Sinclair, also from the CEEC, said: ‘This was a first for me and I was impressed especially by the depth of Bible teaching and application from younger and older ministers. I sensed a realism and humility about the challenges and opportunities of contemporary gospel ministry and, as far as I was concerned, the two days were like manna to the soul.’

Kanishka Raffel, the Archbishop of Sydney, told delegates: ‘What we call on others to do we must not neglect to do ourselves – we are not just undershepherds, but sheep ourselves.’ He pointed hearers to Christ through his teaching and his testimony of how he was brought to Christ through reading John’s Gospel and was compelled and overwhelmed by the person of Jesus.

Bishop Jay Behan from New Zealand shared how the Lord taught, sustained, equipped him through the Christchurch earthquake, and prepared him to stand firm for gospel truth in a painful battle. His gentle self-deprecating call to cultivate churches to ‘look back in faith, forward in hope, and up and out in love’ managed to impress on hearers the urgency of the gospel without ever browbeating, one delegate said.

ReNew Trustee Karen Soole said: ‘At the end of the conference we knew there was much work to be done, a gospel to be faithfully held out with challenges and persecutions on the way. But we left with the certainty that nothing can take away the joy we have in Christ.’

Meanwhile, leading evangelical bishops contacted by en have refused to say anything about sexuality or the Living in Love and Faith process prior to a series of deliberations with other bishops this autumn. Only Jill Duff, Bishop of Lancaster, said: ‘I have been clear from outset that I would like to see the Church of England uphold the current teaching on marriage, relationships and sexual ethics. I long for us to both be radically welcoming and radical in commending the teaching of Scripture on marriage. Jesus’s ministry encompassed both challenges. The early church radically followed Jesus in a culture which was much more permissive on sexual ethics than our Western culture today.’

• The CEEC has also just released a new film in which Anglican churches from across the globe who have been through their own processes around the issue of human sexuality have described the pain, hurt and division caused, in addition to the financial burden of litigation cases.

Contributors to the film talk about the hurt, loss, tragedy and pain they felt through the process. The Revd David McCarthy of St Thomas’s Church, Edinburgh, described the period when the Church of Scotland adopted canonical change that allowed for same-sex marriage: ‘It was one of the most difficult and painful experiences of my life. I had given 30 years, more than half of my life, to this church and it felt like the church was abandoning the gospel, abandoning the Bible, and abandoning me. And that hurt.’