Anglican Church of Kenya ? Divine Conference 2012 Report Day 2

Charles Raven in Anglican Mainstream
May 25th, 2012

The day began, as yesterday, with half an hour of worship. These times of worship are musically very well done with a good balance of structure and spontaneity. It has been particularly interesting to see the way that no one person monopolises the role of ?worship leader? and this helps to give a sense that the worship is something we all participate in, rather than something that is done to us or for us.

The following greeting was presented from the FCA (UK and Ireland):

To Archbishop Eliud Wabukala and the Bishops, Clergy and faithful of the Anglican Church of Kenya

Your Grace,

We bring you greetings in the precious name of Jesus from the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in the UK and Ireland as you gather for your 2012 Divine Conference.

We rejoice in our partnership in the gospel with the Anglican Church of Kenya and give thanks to God for Your Grace?s courageous leadership of our Global movement. We hold you all in our prayers asking that God will speak powerfully through his Word and grant you your heart?s desire for the revival and renewal of His work in Church and Nation. May the joyful proclamation of the gospel go forward with fresh urgency and conviction as a result of this time of waiting upon the Lord.

The Rt Revd John Ellison, Chairman FCA UK Panel of Bishops? The Revd Paul Perkin, Chairman, FCA UK Canon Chris Sugden, Executive Secretary, FCA UK

The theme for Archbishop Ben Kwashi?s address, the first of the day, was taken from John 6:68 ?To whom shall we go??? This response to Jesus by Simon Peter on behalf of the twelve when many disciples ?no longer walked with him? (v66) confronts us with the basic challenge of revival. When we find excuses not to fully embrace the truth as it is in Jesus, lies come to rule our lives and if we refuse the offer of life, we are accepting death.? Part of the reason for our lack of urgency is that we have been swayed by the comfortable lie coming from liberal Western theology which downplays or even dissolves the realities of heaven and hell.

The harrowing persecution that is the daily experience of Christians in Jos, and increasingly in Northern Nigeria as a whole, sharpens this choice. ?Every weekend? the Archbishop said ?is a terror weekend? and getting to church is ?a nightmare? of security checks and roadblocks. But persecution in the West is actually more effective because it is so ?subtle and civilised? in the pressures that it brings on Christians to compromise.

The particular force of this teaching is that it comes from someone who, with his wife Gloria and the? many homeless children they have taken in,? has ministered for twenty years in a place of rising violence and danger. The complications of life which can so easily blunt our hunger for God in the West are put in their true perspective and in this man who has learned to hold his life lightly there is an irrepressible delight and trust in God.

The second address of the morning was a further Bible exposition by Bishop Joseph Wasonga based on Ephesians chapters 4 and 5. He impressed on us that true spiritual renewal always leads to right conduct, giving particular attention to the qualities of humility, gentleness and patience (4:2) and the challenge of being ?imitators of God? (5:1), the whole punctuated by short periods of song and sharing of points of application with those seated nearby, the latter being quite a stimulus to paying careful attention.

Every afternoon there are Workshops which last two hours and I chose to join ?Nurturing Tomorrow?s Church? led by the Rev?d Evans Omollo, the Provincial Director of Mission. Although this is a Revival conference,? there is a healthy willingness to attend to hard facts, and the central issue in this session was that although 78% of Kenyans were born between what was described as the early 1980?s and the early 2000?s,? this is the group that the Anglican Church in Kenya is least effective in reaching and which has collectively turned its back on the Christian faith. It came as something as a shock to find that this reflects the fact that the high divorce rates and dysfunctional family life we associate with the West are rapidly becoming normal in Kenya too.

A whole range of creative strategies for engagement were set out, but the most arresting was one of the most simple ? the need to ?Teach gospel truth rather than unleashing emotions? because this is a rootless generation that has lost the sense of anything being objectively true.

The evening Revival Service (at which it was pleasing to note a large number of young people) was led by Kenyan bishop Joseph Kanuku. A passionate preacher and evangelist, he drew on his personal experience of the East African Revival ? and the spiritual debt he owed to former Kenyan Archbishop Manasses Kuria ? to expand upon v6 of Psalm 85 ?Will you not revive us again?.

The burden of his address was very simple and logical ? you can only revive that which has the capacity for life. In other words, revival will mean nothing if you are not born again. He then went on to describe the Spirit filled life. Not only in terms of power and gifting, but also of character and self control with what I guess by the reaction was some fairly direct material on sexual behaviour for which he slipped into Swahili. The service ended with many coming forward for prayer, including some to commit their lives to Christ. What a tragedy that in too many of our churches in the UK, being ?born again? is seen as mildly embarrassing? rather than as the urgent necessity it really is.

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