The Rt. Rev. Michael Nazir-Ali: Jesus, Lord of His Church and of the Church’s Mission

Bishop Michael Nazir Ali’s address to the Leaders’ Conference of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in London last month on 25 April 2012
posted May 10, 2012

Excerpt:
But then of course there is the will to discipline, which arises out of the common decision-making and the common teaching that the church is able to declare in the world. There was a big debate at the time of the Reformation about what place discipline should have in the church, and the Reformers were rightly wary of the excessive discipline of the medieval church. But the Anglican Reformers, as is well set out in the Second Book of Homilies [Book 2, Homily 16 for Whitsunday], make it quite clear that the Anglican tradition is for effective discipline in the Church. It is not that the church cannot exist without discipline, but that the church’s good, the church’s spiritual good, comes about through effective discipline in the Body. I mean this ought to be obvious: you know, any institution, even human institutions, cannot function without discipline. How do we expect the church of God, so diverse, with people from so many different backgrounds and issues and gifts, to function without discipline?

Well, if that’s the case, brothers and sisters, what could we be saying about our Anglican Communion today? It has been said already that the so-called Instruments of Communion that have developed over the last fifty years or so have all failed in one way or another. Even the Lambeth Conference that has existed for a much longer period than that, has been found not to be effective in setting forth the teaching of God’s Word as we understand it in the situation that men and women face in their particular context. Now in this I don’t think the Instruments can be given artificial respiration and somehow revived. I mean it’s been tried, and it may even be worth trying, but it hasn’t worked. I am sad about that, but I think we do need to find new ways of association, of coming together, not just to be warm and well-filled, but to do the essential tasks. It was successive Lambeth Conferences up to 2008, but excluding 2008, that said that the heads of the church, the Primates, have a particular role in maintaining the unity of the Church. Now both Lambeth 2008, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the progressive watering down of the Covenant have reduced, almost eliminated, the Primates from this particular role that other Lambeth Conferences were saying it was necessary for them to fulfill. I think that is a tragedy, because at one stroke it has made decision-making impossible. But I do feel that in addition to the Primates’ meeting – in a way the Primates’ meeting arises from what I am going to say next – I feel that what we need to be doing is to have a meeting of bishops, clergy and laypeople that comes together for consultation, for prayer, for identifying the issues and the opportunities that we have in our world, it comes together synodally – I’m not saying “synodically,” – synodally, let’s just say with the intention of walking together, walking in the way of the Lord. I hope that GAFCON 2 will be very much that, walking together in God’s way for God’s work according to God’s Word.

But within such a synodal and missional gathering, there must be a gathering of those who have oversight. I’m purposely avoiding the word bishops here, because it would be easy for me to say such a gathering should be a gathering of bishops. Bishops should certainly be included, but I think we’ve got to move beyond that to a gathering of people beside the bishop, in addition to the bishops, who also exercise one kind of oversight or another. That may be in the formation of people for Christian ministry; it may be people who are rectors of churches that are crucial to the future of our Communion. (I mean, rectors of churches like this one exercise enormous oversight and have very large staff which can be quite well compared to what happens in a diocese. Why should they be excluded from such a gathering?). It may be leaders in church planting ministries. This will certainly need a reform of, episcope in the Church, perhaps even of the episcopate. Now I know what I am saying is radical, and there will be natural Anglican resistance to it, even in my own mind some resistance, but I think in all fairness I must say it. I believe that in associating in these ways will make us more attuned to what actually God is saying to the churches - the local churches, the clusters of churches, you can call them if you want, not always that - and how God wants to glorify his church, the church as she is in his eternal plan and eternal sovereignty.

How do we go about it? I think it is here that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans has a splendid opportunity to model this in our own life together as it emerges. That is to say, we do not to wait forever for non-existent Instruments of decision-making to make decisions that they will never make [applause]. You know, I’m tired of waiting. And you can’t say I haven’t had patience. But how long will this carry on? We have got to start doing this in our own life. So I’m hoping that the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will begin to show us how the Church is to gather, how to pray together, how to decide together, what to teach and also how we include people and also sometimes sadly have to exclude people, for the sake of discipline. Exclusion, by the way, is real in the New Testament but always for the sake of restoration, always for the sake of restoration. Full address