Adapted from a post by the Rev. Robert S. Heaney on Virginia Theological Seminary’s Podium weblog:
As part of Virginia Theological Seminary’s presence at General Convention, the Center for Anglican Communion Studies and the Compass Rose Society hosted packed event reflecting on “The Mission of God and the Future of the Anglican Communion.”
The Rt. Rev. Graham Kings, the new mission theologian in the Anglican Communion, was the keynote speaker. Mission begins with God, Kings said, and “we are drawn into this astonishing movement from God and towards God.”
The Anglican Communion’s future is “in the hands of God,” who calls us to be “Catholic, Evangelical, and Ecumenical.” That calling is, by theological definition and necessity, intercultural.
The Primates of South Korea, Pakistan, and Brazil offered formal responses to the bishop’s address.
For Archbishop Paul Kim of Korea, numbers are not important to the mission of God. What is of importance in Episcopal traditions is that we depend upon and make manifest the grace of God in the world.
Archbishop Francisco De Assis Da Silva of Brazil called for an incarnational understanding of Anglicanism. Such an understanding, he argued, grounds the gospel socially, economically, and politically.
In the context of a persecuted church, said Archbishop Samuel Robert Azariah of Pakistan, “The mission of God is the cross of Christ.”
Image by Matt Townsend
