In the heart of vibrant Rwanda, amidst rolling hills and a spirit of renewal, over 1,000 delegates from over 50 nations gathered for GAFCON IV to assess the opportunities and challenges for the Gospel in 21st-century culture, plan for the future, and enjoy fellowship. ADOTS was proud to have 20 delegates in attendance, many of whom came back to America eager to share their unique and impactful experience at GAFCON.
CANDACE CHAMPNESS – DIOCESAN ADMINISTRATOR
I was honored to be a part of GAFCON. Joining fellow Christians worldwide was a fantastic experience that refreshed my soul immensely. To be in a place where you feel the Holy Spirit so firmly is such a gift. I will always be grateful for this experience. The opportunity to network, share ideas, and support fellow Anglicans is essential to growing the Anglican Church. I came away refreshed and ready to work for HIS Kingdom.
CANON SEAN GEORGE – CANON TO THE ORDINARY
Being part of the diocesan delegation to GAFCON was an honor and blessing. I enjoyed meeting people from various countries, worshiping, and praying with them. What an unforgettable, wonderful, and historic moment in the life of the Anglican Communion. I am thankful to our Lord that the Anglican Church still has solid leaders that do not conform to the standards of this world.
FR. AARON WRIGHT – RECTOR OF OLD NORTH ABBEY AND DEAN OF KNOXVILLE DEANERY
The Kigali Gafcon 2023 was an authentic expression of the Anglican spirit at its finest. It was encouraging to come together with Anglicans from across the globe, gather to worship God, be faithful to the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church, and give a vision for a renewed direction of the Anglican Communion. Everything surrounding those five days testified to the presence of the Lord’s Spirit, and everyone spoke of how greatly blessed they were to have participated. Thanks be to God!
SANDI HARDING – ARCHDEACON
I was excited to return to the country I had lived in for two years; 5 of the pastors I had worked with were now Bishops in Rwanda! Our flight was delayed as we had a flat tire on the airplane in Tanzania. 4 hours behind time getting into Kigali at 3 am, Archbishop Mbanda and Chantelle were there to welcome us; buses were ready to take us to our hotel! Two days later, they learned of the death of their 33-year-old son, who did not awaken in the morning. Grief struck their family and the family of God that surrounded them. GAFCON was to continue, and so it did! Sound teaching, great music, and praise; teaching from Colossians represented what GAFCON was about ……LOVE. Love the Gospel; Love God’s people; Love the World…. not to let anyone perish! Our Source is within Jesus our LORD! Devote Time for Prayer! Pray for hearts to be opened; Pray for preachers to get the message across; Pray for the power of Jesus Christ our Lord!
COLLIN ALEXANDER – ADOTS YOUTH DELEGATE
At GAFCON IV, I was the youth delegate from the ACNA’s Diocese of the South, representing 53 churches. To serve this end, I made it my top priority to learn all that I could from fellow global Christians in order to bring this learning back with me. I can say that what took place at GAFCON far exceeded my expectations. I had an idea in my mind, but the reality of global fellowship was awe-inspiring. Though we did not all know each other, being in the same building with 1300 dedicated Christians created a sense of home and belonging. It was easy for people to introduce themselves to one another because we were all gathered as family, brothers, and sisters in Christ. I met and created connections with Christians from all over the globe, as did many, many of our fellow attendees.
For me personally, as I think it was for the whole conference, the Lord was working every day. Discussions with fellow attendees and scheduled seminars provided me with a deeper, richer, and more mature understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The Rev. Canon Dr. Ashley Null, one of the speakers there, introduced me to a verse of Scripture that has become my personal favorite, John 15:2, during a discussion we had. He, like everyone there, was not attending as a person acting as lofty as his credentials. GAFCON was where we all, laity to leadership, came together and joined in fellowship. I am immensely grateful to have been invited as a delegate, and I know that for me, as it was for everyone there, GAFCON IV was a true blessing.
CANON REV. CHIMA K. EKEKE – ARCHBISHOPS CHAPLAIN
GAFCON IV – Kigali 2023 Conference was well organized. It was empowering and encouraging to be among over 1300 delegates from over 40 countries that gathered in Kigali, Rwanda to hear the Word of God, network, and meet fellow Bible-believing Anglicans from other parts of the world. The Kigali Commitment document was a strong rebuke to those who have fallen away from orthodox biblical teaching and a call to repentance.
I also learned a lot about Rwanda. I visited the Kigali genocide memorial, where the history of Rwanda and the events that led to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi tribe were succinctly and compassionately explained. Before leaving Kigali to travel back to the United States, we went to the market in downtown Kigali, where we mingled with the people, and took pictures with young girls selling bananas. Overall, GAFCON IV Kigali 2023 was an incredible experience.
FR. AL ALLISON – LEAD PASTOR AT MISSION RED BANK
Heather and I experienced the presence of God’s Spirit in so many ways In Kigali. We knew our trip was threefold:
- Meet with a young man I’ve been discipling at a distance for over two years, coordinating (with his family and his Bishop) his coming to the USA to attend the Mission School of Ministry (study in a different culture) and be discipled up close.
- Attend this remarkably important conference, discerning and participating in the future of the Anglican experience.
- Love on one of our supported missionary families as they navigate a difficult immigration issue.
This was what was planned. The Lord had more in mind.
H and I were truly delighted and blessed by the hospitality of the Rwandan people. In that lovely context, we were touched by the pervasive spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood we experienced at GAFCON, and the discipleship and pastoral work we went to do went very well. But the Lord had more in mind.
The young man I’ve been discipling is the son of an Anglican priest in Rwanda, and on April 23, I was able to preach in one of the congregations he shepherds. It was in a village about an hour outside of Kigali. The people were so full of life and energy. The love of Jesus, a beautiful spirit of repentance, and the joy of the Lord was rich in their midst. Didier (the young man I disciple) translated my “Mzungu” (means white person) tongue into Kinyarwandan beautifully and effectively, and the Spirit of the Lord led a number of the people attending to repentance, especially regarding following Jesus actively in reconciliation.
Then there was “Teddy.”
While there, we went out to dinner with our friends and met a young woman named Teddy. She served our table in the restaurant.
Then we met her again when around 18 of us returned to that same restaurant a few evenings later. She was on a team that served us that evening and remembered H and me from before.
At one point, we asked her her Rwandan name, and she wrote it out for us on my phone: Igihozo Mary Teresa. Then she explained her name.
All of Teddy’s siblings were killed in the 1994 genocide, and she was the first child born to her family after. “Igihozo” is a Kinyarwandan expression used when tears are wiped away from the face of one who’s been weeping. Mary and Teresa were the names of two of her sisters killed in the genocide. H and I were stunned at the candor of this young woman, and we’ll never get over her story. Then she asked, “You are Christian?” We said we were, and she told us that she was also Christian. We all delighted in this, then she stunned us again: “Maybe next time you are here, you can baptize me.” What an arresting moment. “I’d be honored to Teddy.” and she was delighted.
We returned to that restaurant four more times while in Kigali, hoping to reconnect with Teddy. We did, and what we learned next took the story to another level.
She’d been baptized as a child but had always struggled with it because she knew of priests who contributed to the murder of many thousands of their parishioners in the genocide. “I thought to myself,” she said, “What these men did was deplorable! How can my baptism be real, and how can I be associated with that?!” But all the while, she wrestled with that; she couldn’t escape longing to know God, so she read the Bible, prayed, and sought to follow Jesus on her own. I let her know that I believed her baptism WAS real, that God had marked and pursued her all these years, creating a hunger and allegiance stronger than being stuck in unforgiveness and hatred of the Church. She understood, so I told her that I thought she was hungering for confirmation, fellowship, and discipleship. She received this eagerly and wanted this to begin that day. So there, sitting outside the restaurant under a canopy, Igihoze Mary Teresa was confirmed as a follower of Jesus and our sister, and she came to know that we belong to her just as she belongs to us… in King Jesus!
We’ve connected Teddy with our Rwandan friends, and H has kept in active contact with her. She’s no longer following Jesus on her own but now knows she’s part of a family that stands with Jesus for the healing of creation and against deplorable acts.
We went to Kigali, planning for three things, but open to more. Jesus did more, and the experience has marked us forever.
FR. CHRIS FINDLEY – RECTOR AT ST. PATRICK’S AND DEAN OF TENNESSEE DEANERY
The very first thing that comes to mind about GAFCON is joy—a real, authentic, vibrant joy. This conference was full of real joy. It was not a gathering of angry church people who wanted to put their finger in the eye of the Archbishop of Canterbury. There were no angry tirades or sarcasm or vitriol. It had the feeling of a family reunion, a homecoming. There was no tension between various groups or styles of worship or historical emphases. There was no quibbling over what Prayer Books people used or what version of the Bible they preferred, or what style of music they liked. To me, it was the type of gathering I had hoped to be a part of all my life. Our times of worship were simply amazing. Over 50 nations were worshipping as one. Revelation 7:9-10 says, “After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
Jesus was absolutely the focus. Because of this, I came back so grateful to God for what he is doing within GAFCON and the ACNA and us because only this Christ-focus can carry the Church forward –be it internationally, nationally, or locally. The other thing to consider is that joy is a principal gift of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). So the presence of this kind of joy speaks to the presence of the Holy Spirit in this gathering. This is remarkable because many of the GAFCON members live under persecution. A number of them have seen friends or family killed for simply being Christian. But there was real joy! Many of them live and minister in austere circumstances and under very difficult conditions. But there was real joy! We would do well to learn from our Anglican brothers and sisters– how to walk in joy through this life, with all its stresses and hardships, with all the ups and downs and uncertainties we face. I believe this comes from a place of great trust in and great love for Jesus. So joy really stood out to me at GAFCON IV.
The 2nd thing that really stood out to me during our time in Kigali was conviction. There was a real sense of determination to stand in the truthfulness of the Gospel, a resolve to affirm the authority of the scriptures, and a commitment to trust God as we seek to live out the Christian life. This was clear from Archbishop Beach’s opening address on Monday night, where he said, “We Anglicans can go on playing church, being religious, and even making statements that make no spiritual impact on our world.” However, the desire of Christians today is to see “revival break out and spread to every part of the world” Archbishop Ben Kwashi, General Secretary of GAFCON, said, “The world around us is falling into a growing state of confusion and, in some cases, disintegration, but it is the power of the Gospel which can turn things round: the Gospel of Jesus Christ carries the power of God.”
Underlying all of this, and central to it, is the conviction of the primacy of the Word of God. This is made clear in the Kigali Commitment, which says, “God’s good Word is the rule of our lives as disciples of Jesus and is the final authority in the Church. It grounds, energizes, and directs our mission in the world. The fellowship we enjoy with our risen and ascended Lord is nourished as we trust God’s Word, obey it, and encourage each other to allow it to shape each area of our lives.” This is not new, of course. It is one of the principles of the Reformation itself and is part of the foundational documents of Anglicanism, the 39 Articles. The loss of this conviction and teaching led many of us to separate from the Episcopal Church and to the current fracturing of the Anglican Communion. It sometimes seems that issues of sexuality take center stage, but the root issue is the authority of Scripture. This has manifested itself along a whole host of topics. Because of this, GAFCON said, “We call upon those provinces, dioceses, and leaders who have departed from biblical orthodoxy to repent of their failure to uphold the Bible’s teaching. This includes matters such as human sexuality and marriage, the uniqueness and divinity of Christ, his bodily resurrection, his promised return, the summons to faith and repentance, and the final judgment.” So the sense of conviction, particularly regarding the authority and primacy of Holy Scripture, stood out to me.
The final thing I’d say that stood out to me was the emphasis placed on missions and evangelism. GAFCON is not a bureaucracy; it is a movement. It is a movement of like-minded Anglicans from around the world who seek to follow Jesus with Joy, are committed to the Bible, and are also focused on missions and evangelism. Near the end of the Kigali Commitment, you will find seven priorities endorsed by the Archbishops, the leaders of GAFCON. The very first one is a commitment to focus intensely for the next decade on discipleship, evangelism, and mission. This is significant because what we see here is that this worldwide Anglican movement is not focused on typical church politics or structure or lesser issues. Leadership at the highest levels of our Church sees the Great Commission in Matthew 28 as our highest priority.
The statement says, “We commit ourselves afresh to the gospel mission of proclaiming the crucified, risen and ascended Christ, calling on all to acknowledge him as Lord in repentance and faith, and living out a joyful, faithful obedience to his Word in all areas of our lives.”
What emerged at GAFCON was not so much a statement of position as it was a call to action. Truthfully, we didn’t need another position paper or another petition. What the Anglican world needed, and what GAFCON provided, was a clear vision and call for the Anglican Church to be the Church, in both word and deed.