Faithful brothers and sisters abroad need support

‘Ven. Ifeanyi Akunna asks for prayer as students travel back to the Abuja Diocesan Training College (Nigeria) for the beginning of term. The roads can be very dangerous, with armed robbers and kidnappers. Pray for divine protection.’

This was the featured prayer request on the GAFCON website for 8 January 2024. This section of the site– found at gafcon.org/ prayer – is a particularly helpful resource, especially for many Anglicans living in the UK. It opens our eyes and hearts to needs in different parts of the world, and provides a challenge to us by illustrating problems faced by fellow Christians which most of us in the affluent and comfortable West would find intolerable.

This prayer request from Nigeria reminds us of the contexts of violence and instability around the world in which Christians and churches have to manage, and yet somehow thrive and grow as they put their trust in the Lord. It also shows how our faithful brothers and sisters in faraway lands take seriously the need for good training of their future leaders.

The snapshot from Nigeria shows that those called to ministry are not expecting everything to be provided for them on a plate. It may be that an overseas partner is helping with fees, but major sacrifices are being made just to get to the training centre. For every high-profile Global South church leader who is supported to do a Masters or PhD in a Western country, there are hundreds of ordinary men and women accessing more basic but no less vital training at the grassroots.

Why this commitment to invest in ministry training when just getting the basics of life can’t be taken for granted? It’s mainly because of a passion for evangelism and mission, a culture of regular establishment of new churches, and a concern for provision of God’s word and pastoral care for future generations. It can’t be assumed that ‘someone else’, the Diocese or the national church, will provide ready-made leaders. Rather, congregations have to raise up and train their own, and this will include contributing sacrificially to costs.

Also, among Anglicans around the world committed to Biblical truth, there is an awareness of how easy it is for leaders to be led astray by temptations of money, sex and power, and by corruptions of gospel truth. False and spiritually destructive teaching, which deviates from the Bible’s reliable and life-giving message of salvation and godly living, is not only found in Western secular revisionist theology, but also in versions of ‘prosperity teaching’ and occultic influences in some forms of Global South Christianity. Good training to counteract this is needed!

The leadership of Anglican Network in Europe sees our fledgling movement, outside the historic structures of Canterbury, as privileged to be part of what God is doing all over the world in re-establishing ‘a reformed and renewed Anglican future with Bible at its heart’ (from GAFCON website). We can’t rely on inherited buildings or centrally funded systems of theological education – and in fact, as many are finding, these things do not always help the advance of the gospel but can even undermine and hinder it.

As we seek to plant and grow churches and train gospel workers of the future in Britain and the continent of Europe, we are learning not just from our British church traditions, but we’re also encouraged and challenged by the methods and ministries of churches in the Global South.

For example, the Anglican Church of Brazil is a Province recognised by GAFCON, separate from the official Canterbury-aligned, theologically liberal Episcopal Church. With very few resources, they focused on evangelism and church planting, and also prioritised the formation of an online theological seminary. Find out more (using Google translate!) at sat.anglicananobrasil.com .

As ‘nonconformist’ Anglicans, of necessity pioneering, counter-cultural and evangelical, we’re looking to make use of similar creative training initiatives in our region.