Anglican Communion News Service

"I came to tears when I witnessed the suffering yet saw the love and compassion of Jesus in persons living with and dying from HIV/AIDS and in the women who attended them." so said Sister Chandrani Peiris of the Society of St. Margaret in Sri Lanka as she visited Katorus, a township 80 kilometers outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sister Chandrani was in South Africa attending the first meeting of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism from May 7 to May 18.

Twenty members of the Commission from every corner of the Anglican Communion gathered at the Kempton Park Conference Center in the Church of the Province of Southern Africa for ten days of prayer and deliberation on the Communion's engagement with mission and evangelism. The Commission's work was grounded in the context of post-apartheid South Africa where 4.5 million, or one out of every ten, people are HIV positive. In a presentation to the Commission, Lynn Coull of the Diocese of the Highveld's AIDS Coordinating Committee pointed out that last year 250,000 South Africans died from AIDS. This number will double in six years. Children and young adults are especially hard hit by the pandemic and it is estimated that 50%of current 15 year old youth in South Africa will succumb to the disease. These statistics were given a face when the Commissioners accompanied local Home Based Care givers as they ministered to persons living with AIDS in the sprawling townships that ring Johannesburg.

The mandate of the Mission Commission, given by the Anglican Consultative Council, is to oversee and support mission and evangelism across the Anglican Communion. As this was the first meeting of the Commission, significant time was set aside for sharing of stories about the regions each commissioner represented. Additional in-depth discussions were had on: Theological Education, Justice and Peace Imperatives, Religious Pluralism, Affirming Life, New Church/Transformed Anglicanism, and, Money, Power, and Corruption. Committed to the grass-roots of the church, the Commission called on parishes around the Communion to initiate self-studies on local initiatives in mission and evangelism. In frank discussion, honest sharing, centering worship, and life-giving laughter, the Commission began to envision how , over the next five years, it will challenge the Anglican Communion to respond to and participate in God's mission. The next meeting of the Commission will be in Scotland in June 2002. Mauricio Andrade, from Brazil, celebrating the new-found solidarity of the group said: "When we leave we will continue to remember that even though each other's story, context, and realities are different, we are the same family and body in Jesus Christ."

Sister Chandrani concluded: "Having considered mission and evangelism in the midst of HIV/AIDS, I am prepared to go home and challenge my community as to how we will reach out to those with HIV/AIDS strengthened by the love and life we have found here in South Africa."

Ian T. Douglas for the Commission