for those who will be attending in Lusaka, what picture of discipleship will they be getting? Among the list of resources provided on the ACNS website is a book available as a downloadable document of around 140 pages, entitled Intentional Discipleship and Disciple-Making: An Anglican Guide for Christian Life and Formation. It’s worth looking at this in some detail. It is described by Archbishop Justin Welby as “the best document I have read on the subject”
the TEC report (p103ff) says that now that we are in “post-Christendom”, Christian life consists of “reimagining” the faith and developing “new narratives”.
The inclusion of this section by TEC, advocating the replacement of historic doctrine and practice of the Christian life with something new (although this is not specified), jars with and even contradicts the majority of the document. It is a good illustration, if we needed further evidence, of the problem that will be the elephant in the room when the document is discussed in Lusaka. A nice report will be produced after the event, but if the Anglican Communion really wants to work in unity for renewal of discipleship, the constituent churches must at least agree on the basics of the Christian faith. This document shows that the majority of Anglicans, mostly in the global south (whether or not explicitly aligned with GAFCON) have an orthodox understanding of faith and are seeking to get on with evangelism, church planting, discipleship and discipling according to the Scriptures. Increasingly, Anglicans in the north and West have developed a very different understanding of faith and therefore of what it means to follow Christ. As we all know, different understandings of sex and marriage are just the surface ”˜presenting issue’. Underneath we find the difference between discipleship and apostasy.