On October 19, 2010, the Most Rev. Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America addressed the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism, held in Capetown, South Africa. The full text of his speech is available at the Welcome Center. Echoing Luke 1:51-52, Archbishop Duncan discussed the decline of the Episcopal Church in terms of the Lord “scattering the proud and lifting up the lowly.” He then turned to lessons applicable to the whole church:
Four lessons are foremost. This session is not primarily about Anglicanism, but about the whole Christian Church…
Standing in God’s Truth raises God’s Allies. First, when any of us stand for God’s Truth in first order issues, where the salvation of souls rather than condemnation of opponents is our goal, it brings unity in the Church, true unity. The whole Church throughout the world is also challenged to stand with you….Allies emerge from countless unexpected places. Both ethnic division and denominationalism fade away.
Humility Builds God’s Partnerships. Humility and charity – as well as forgiveness and reconciliation – among those partnering are essential for God to work in situations where social, economic colonial and ecclesiastical inequalities have heretofore operated. New learning abounds. We in the US and Canada have learned a great deal about ways churches can be planted, about the necessity of ending our silence concerning resurgent Islam, about evangelism and discipleship, and even about how ancient structures might serve mission once again.
The rich have to become poor in the things they previously judged to be their riches, and the poor have to see themselves as God sees them: perhaps from the “weakest of the tribes” but “mighty men of valor” nonetheless. [Judges 6:11-16]
God does lift up the lowly. Global South Anglicanism is now majority Anglicanism. The average Anglican is now a woman, an African, a mother, and under the age of 20. We are not the Church of England anymore. God speaks to us of previously unimaginable possibility. In ACNA we believe God has set us to planting 1000 new churches in our first five years of life. I met with 20 eager Wheaton College students in August. None of them were raised Anglican. All believe themselves called to some kind of missionary life as committed disciples of Jesus. They want not only to tell about Jesus, but to do what Jesus did. From the ruins of the heretical and wayward denominations that marginalized, exiled and expelled the faithful of an earlier generation, a new generation is clearly being drawn to believing and serving in the humbled and renewed Anglican Church that is emerging.
Personal Conversion deepens with Gospel suffering and sacrifice. We have learned that the cross of Jesus is the way of life. We have firsthand evidence that those who are prepared to give up buildings and endowments and pensions and relationships and respectability, for the sake of the gospel, are far more committed disciples than they were before their trials and their struggles. Deciding for Jesus changes people, not only at the first but every time the cross is embraced. Among those already facing challenges of poverty, war, disease and famine – but who nevertheless act to help other suffering brothers and sisters, perhaps even on a faraway continent – for these God also deepens the conversion, often also bringing new friends and new hope, renewing godly self-image, and opening lines of provision for their original needs.
Scattering the Proud and Lifting Up the Lowly I speak to you with all humility. Ours is no North American triumph. Ours is a rescue story in a global Church. It is not necessarily an Anglican story. It is a story of the whole Christian Church at its best.