'To glorify God by proclaiming our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ in prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit, so that everyone will hear his call to repent, trust and serve Christ in love, and be established in the fellowship of his disciples while they await his return.'

That is the Mission Statement suggested by our Archbishop in his address to Synod. In the following extract from his speech he talks of what it means in practice:

"Paul told the people of Athens 'God commands all people everywhere to repent' (Acts 17:3; also Mk 1:14,15). The gospel is universal, it does not discriminate between races or language groups or any other human diversities. If we wish to be involved in God's gospel ministry, we too need to be universal in our outlook and not restricted to people of our own kind, race or class. We cannot be satisfied with the penetration achieved by the gospel in this Diocese. There are too few people; we are too restricted to the professional and middle class; we are too limited to European and English speaking tribed. A commitment by us to this mission is a commitment to all people that they will at least hear the gospel in its true form. The repentance that Paul and Jesus speak of first in these texts is the repentance of faith. That is, its first action is to put trust and confidence in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and humankind.

One of the most important theological truths to get right is the connection between saving faith and obedience. We are not saved by good works, by obedience. But salvation leads to good works; faith is the mother of obedience. The rest of the mission statement tells us of the powerful effects of the gospel of Jesus. By receiving him as Lord, we commit ourselves to walking with him by faith and in love. On hearing of the mission statement a number of people have expressed concern lest the good works that we do as individuals and in churches and organisations such as Anglicare and Retirement Villages are omitted. Nothing can be further from the truth. We are to serve Christ in love; this means that we are to love our neighbours and to be involved in works of love in the community in which our lives are set. Indeed holy living itself attracts people to the Lord.

But the holiness is a fruit of the gospel, and if we fail to get the order right, we will confuse the means of salvation with its consequences. If we wish our lives to be productive with the good works of God, we must give the proclamation of the gospel a priority of place and a uniqueness of effect. That done, we must serve Christ in the community and in the home and in the church with all our hearts. Our goals as churches and Christians are multiple not single. If we fail to get this right our good works will be done for the wrong reason, they will be the wrong good works, and unregenerate people will be doing them. The very soul of our denomination is at stake in getting this matter right.

The church is not incidental to salvation. God saves individuals, but he adds them to his people and he often saves them in the midst of his people. We cannot be content to see individuals won to Christ without also seeing them established in the Christian fellowship. In the future, that fellowship may not look much like the standard Sunday church which we may be used to. Its timing, form, location, size and membership may be very different. But the fact of fellowship around the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be different; in particular, like Him, we are looking for fellowships made up of disciples, of learners who seek to obey him and walk in love. I am saying that as a missionary strategy the mission statement is calling on us to multiply Christian fellowships, not to be content with a parish-based Anglicanism alone, but to insist on a spiritually based Anglicanism in which the reality of the church is more important than its outward shape. I am saying that the quality of our churches as nurturing communities must be string if we are to survive and grow.

The fellowship of Christ's disciples will be marked by faith and they will be marked by love. They will also be fellowships of hope. They will not be caught up in this world as to forget the world to come and the coming Saviour. When Paul spoke of his early converts in Thessalonica, he praised them for their faith and for their love and then he refers to the fact that 'you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath' (1 Thess 1:9:10). This will be one of the chief ways in which these Anglican fellowships are going to differ from the world around, for the sake of the world around.

Archbishop Peter Jensen (to be continued)
18 November 2001