Anglican Communion News Service

Evangelist Brian McLaren has praised the Lambeth Conference for highlighting the issue of evangelism or disciple formation saying this was a vital priority for the 21st Century. He was addressing a plenary session on Monday night on the subject of Changing contexts; breaking open our models for evangelism.

In his challenge to the bishops the American speaker who had been invited by the Archbishop of Canterbury urged them to get away from institutional maintenance and internal debate and concentrate on forming disciples. He said there was no need for committees and programmes but just a passion of example of bishops and spouses who really care about this issue.

He stressed the importance of the Church’s outward focus such as campaigning for social justice. On Thursday the bishops and spouses will march across London in support of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (to halve world poverty by 2015) part of the Conference agenda.

Using different examples from around the world he told the bishops there were many reasons to compare their churches to an old male tortoise. He described how an orphaned baby hippo had been washed up on a Kenyan beach after the Tsunami. It was placed in a zoo with an old male tortoise who refused to bond; every time the hippo came near the tortoise walked away. He compared the hippo to the emerging global culture and the tortoise to the church but added there was great hope as the tortoise eventually recognized the importance of the hippo.

When addressing the question of what the exclusion of Bishop Gene Robinson from the Conference said to young people he urged the bishops to try and understand that the issue of human sexuality in some areas of the world is very different from others. He encouraged delegates to consider human sexuality as a missiological issue for a year or two and be sensitive to the different culture settings of their brothers and sisters across the Communion. He called on the bishops to imagine being a priest in San Francisco or what it was like to be a Christian in a Muslim country; this he said made the issue much more personal.

But he said most importantly young people wanted to know how Christians loved one another when they disagreed.

He also talked about the “hurricane of change” going on in modern society and the need for the Church to catch up. He used the illustration of a bridge in Honduras which survived Hurricane Mitch in 1998 but the riverbed moved so the bridge was redundant and for many years was a tourist attraction.

Church going in the UK is on the decline while in Africa there has been a massive increase, he commented but questioned would this be the case if Africa’s standard of living caught up with the developing world?

“Our call has to remind us it’s not simply to make converts or churchgoers but to make actual disciples of Jesus Christ, people who actually do life in the way Jesus did. We want everyone to get on the side of peace, reconciliation not just to get a ticket to heaven. Those from the West must realise that the gospel we brought to Africa showed people how to get to heaven but not how to live on earth. We need to rediscover what it truly means for people called to be disciples.”

Concluding Mr McLaren challenged everyone to create spaces in their life for people to become authentic followers of Jesus Christ. Addressing the bishops “on behalf of people who never show up in church” he encouraged them by saying every Christian community had its special problems but the Anglican community is a global community and had a vital job to do.

www.brianmclaren.net

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