“Tell me again: why are you going to GAFCON?”

I guess I should have a stock answer by now, given how often the question has been put to me in the last month, including by my wife as we chatted at the airport.

In our office, we took to calling it GAVCON (one of those early mispronunciations that sticks, and then becomes a joke), and then GAVISCON (a well-known indigestion reliever in our part of the world). Is that what GAFCON is? A calmative for the upset stomach of Anglicanism?

Well, hardly. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to describe this year's Lambeth Conference as a dose of Gaviscon—an attempt to calm things down and last through the day, taken in irrational hope by a patient with stomach cancer.

But I digress. Because now, sitting in a hotel lobby in Jerusalem with a registration tag around my neck for the Global Anglican Future Holy Land Conference and Pilgrimage (GAFHOLYCONAGE), I almost feel I know why I'm here.

All around me are bishops, reverends and lay people of all shapes, sizes, colours, cultures and ecclesiastical styles, representing over half of the world's Anglicans. What unites us is a common commitment to historic orthodoxy, to the Bible, to the truth and to the transforming power of the gospel. GAFCON is really an opportunity for this sort of Anglican to get together—the true-blue kind of Anglican, who celebrates rather than repudiates our Reformation roots.

So GAFCON is a place where gospel-loving, Bible-believing Anglicans can make a stand and a statement, can get to know and encourage each other, and can make plans together for future cooperation and growth. I gather it's why Jerusalem was chosen as the venue—a place that symbolizes a return to biblical and historical roots. We are followers of this Jesus, not the pale Galilean of the 19th-century liberals or the skivvy-wearing New Yorker of the 21st-century liberals.

So why am I at GAFCON? For one thing, I was invited, which was fortunate because it's by invitation only. But it's really because there comes a time to say, “They went out from us because they were never really of us”. We are well past that time in the fellowship of churches that is the Anglican communion. It's time to stop the charade of negotiating with those who don't share the core beliefs of Anglicanism, and to move forward positively in fellowship with those who do, encouraging each other, praying for each other, working together for the cause of Christ. Are there a thousand Anglican leaders who want to do this—from every corner of the world?

It's worth being part of, I think.

[Stay tuned for more GAFCON posts from TP as the week goes on.]

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