Every member of our Diocese is a missionary in North America because God has called us to salvation and sent us to proclaim his word. This is urgent partly because our culture is no longer Christian, in fact it is openly hostile to the Christian Faith. Our goal is to tell the good news of the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus to our pagan relatives, friends, colleagues and society with gentleness and respect so that they might repent of sin, believe in Christ and be saved. That is the mission of our Diocese. This entails sacrifice and shame and suffering. The CMS missionaries suffered and many died to give the gospel to Africa. Let us be willing to suffer to give this gospel to our nations again. We are not here to spread our version or your version of Anglicanism as wonderful as you may think it is. Rather we are here to spread the gospel primarily and hopefully in the process teach a godly expression of Anglicanism.
Since we are Anglican missionaries sent by God to evangelize North America, it is perhaps wise to ask how Anglicanism understands evangelism. The Primates of the Anglican Communion defined evangelism in this way:
“To evangelize is to make known by word and deed the love of the crucified and risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that people will repent, believe, and receive Christ as their Savior and obediently serve him as their Lord in the fellowship of his Church." That’s not bad! And as C S Lewis put it, “Christianity is a story of how the righteous king has landed and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” So join the glorious sabotage!!!!
“To evangelize is to make known by word and deed the love of the crucified and risen Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit so that people will repent, believe, and receive Christ as their Savior and obediently serve him as their Lord in the fellowship of his Church." That’s not bad! And as C S Lewis put it, “Christianity is a story of how the righteous king has landed and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” So join the glorious sabotage!!!!
As we celebrate this anniversary we pray for God’s power to preach the gospel with passion and compassion and establish churches as the Church Missionary Society did and hopefully still does
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