GSFA | EFAC | AOL (!)

So those that went off with heavy hearts will come home laughing with armloads of blessing.

Psalm 126

Our National Director has just returned from an ‘alphabet soup’ of meetings in and around Cairo, Egypt.

The Global South Fellowship of Anglicans brought together about 200 senior leaders and mission agencies from around 40 nations, hosted in a Coptic monastery, and enjoying an audience with the Coptic Pope. This led to some incredible conversation and contacts for SOMA and a real chance to foster cross-cultural understanding across the pond and across the communion. We look forward to much fruit from that and particularly grateful for time with Bishops and mission leaders who are close to SOMA USA, New Wineskins and are within the Anglican Church of North America. Sometimes it is just good to talk face to face, and this was a great joy and the beginning of some real friendships. SOMA was present at the early morning prayer meetings and it was a joy to pray with some Primates I didn’t really know, including at a moving session led by the relatively new Archbishop of Sydney, who led the most moving of prayer times full of tears for the nations. This included a moving time praying for Burundi after Bishop Seth gave an update on the economic crisis there that means drivers can be queuing up to 2 weeks for an allocation of petrol. Archbishop Kanishka Raffel later preached a fabulous sermon from Romans 10 well worth anyone listening to.

The Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion took the opportunity to meet as an executive again with invited guests and it was a privilege for SOMA to be part of that conversation, thinking how we can serve the Global South better together and bring back Olive Branches of hope to the West.. EFAC was birthed in 1961 by John Stott, from the same church where SOMA’s founding leader, Michael Harper, was also based in the early 1960s. While Harper and Stott later parted ways over their responses to the Renewal movement, it was encouraging once again to see that the ‘grandchildren get to play’ with everyone in the room wanting to build on Stott’s inheritance, but many also touched by the renewal Harper and others helped to bring. Maybe time is a healer.

Finally the AOL, a global Orthodox Anglican Leaders, was a second conversation sponsored by the GSFA with invited mission partners. This was a conversation that fostered much more understanding between people who are part of major groupings in the Anglican world (like GSFA/GAFCON) and those who have not yet joined either. As well as hearing inspiring mission stories from around the world they also were able to begin to heal some wounded histories by dialogue and friendship building and consider how the various groupings of Anglican Orthodox leaders who could/would sign up to declarations statements such as the Jerusalem Declaration/Cairo Covenant can work together for mission in the communion. This ended with a great ‘outbreak of unity’ and felt well covered in prayer.

However the highlight of all was preaching in St Michael’s and All Angels, Cairo, and the congregation asking me for an encore in the hall after the service. This led to an impromptu 30 minute SOMA Stories sharing with some SOMA Ministry teaching thrown in.

By the end of the week I have come away with even deeper relationship with a range of senior Anglican leaders including many of the key Primates, some rekindled SOMA contacts around the world, including a wonderful chance to meet key SOMA people from South East Asia such as Bishop Rennis and Keith Chua, some exciting possible breakthroughs in working together globally as we managed to communicate well across the pond and other cultural divides, a possible way for META Youth to grow internationally and numerous nations saying they’d like to have their own SOMA base so that mission can go from everywhere to everywhere.

There is a vast amount of potential great work to do… so glad we have a day of prayer and fasting on 20 June 2024 as SOMA… do join in 7am, 1pm, 7pm London time via our zoom link (email grace@somauk.org to be sent the link).