Britain - and not to plan a coup d'etat in the Church of England

ANGLICAN MEDIA SYDNEY

MEDIA RELEASE January 22, 2003

Evangelicals meet in London to discuss evangelising secular Britain - and NOT to plan a coup d'etat in the Church of England

The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen was the main speaker at a packed conference of close to 600 evangelicals in London last Monday that was held to discuss the evangelism of secular Britain. The conference was held at St Helen's, Bishopsgate, one of the largest churches in the Diocese of London. 200 churches were represented with people coming from London, Southwark, Canterbury, Chichester and Chelmsford dioceses.

"The aim of the conference was to strengthen Bible teaching churches and to help think about the challenges of reaching secular Britain with the gospel," said the Rev William Taylor, Vicar of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, London.

Dr Jensen will speak to seven other similar meetings across England over the next 10 days. Mr Taylor who was the chief organiser of the Archbishop's tour anticipates that overall Dr Jensen will meet with some 3,000 people in these conferences.

Local and international media have made much of these meetings, suggesting that Dr Jensen is set to become the bishop with episcopal oversight of around 120 English parishes that are disaffected with their present Archbishop. Both the Rev William Taylor and Archbishop Jensen strongly deny this was the reason for the holding of the conferences.

"I want to make clear that the decision to ask Peter [Jensen] to come was taken long before any of the most recent political issues raised by the appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury," said William Taylor in his opening statement to the London conference.

"Peter was not asked in order to kick-start the ecclesiastical equivalent of a coup d'etat ? and I am eager that the conference does not get hijacked by any single issue raised by the appointment [of Archbishop Rowan Williams]."

Archbishop Jensen was asked to speak in Bournemouth, Oxford, Exeter, Cambridge, Sheffield, Knutsford and Carlisle as well as London by Mr Taylor and the other 99 conference organisers. Mr Taylor commented that the invitation did not come to Dr Jensen from the organisations Reform or the Church Society. Rather the conference organisers represented a far wider group of evangelical leaders.

Archbishop Jensen will also meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams, at Lambeth Palace on the morning of Friday 31 January.

"I am particularly gratified that, in what is a very busy time for him, he had arranged this time for us to meet," Archbishop Jensen said.

Mr Taylor said that the aim of Dr Jensen's visit is "to recognise the remarkable growth in numbers of evangelical churches and church leaders since the 1960s" and to "give us confidence to engage in a more robust and energetic evangelical witness in the United Kingdom" and also to consider whether "the local structures help or hinder us!"

"My hope is that he will help us to think strategically about the kind of structures and networks that we need to develop in order to re-evangelise secular Britain," Mr Taylor said.

Reviewing the St Helen's Conference, William Taylor made the following observation:

"One of the most striking features was the age of those attending. Across the Church of England as a whole the average age of the leadership is increasing. However, the vast majority [at the conference] were under 40! This is representative of the state of evangelicalism in England. There is a new generation of younger church leaders with clear evangelical convictions who need the kind of informal leadership and encouragement that Peter has been able to give.

"The conference far exceeded even our greatest expectations.

"Peter spoke of the 'genius' of evangelical faith and argued graciously and persuasively for its legitimacy within the Anglican denomination and its integrity as a whole system that needs neither addition or subtraction. His analysis of the British situation was spot on. He spoke of Dr Callun Brown's book, The Death of Christian Britain.

"He was gracious in his exposing of the 'liberal gospel' and its failure to present a credible message to the unbelieving world. He was firm in his insistence on the need to preserve the integrity of the evangelical faith and not add to it. He urged us to work at a strategy for the evangelical churches to work together for the re-evangelisation of England. Finally he presented us with the ten per cent vision for Sydney Diocese and talked through some of its implications for its implementation.

"These talks achieved precisely what was intended," he said. "Those who came were given fresh confidence from a renewed courage and greater vision for the task in hand. We need to recognise the progress we have made and think hard about the way ahead as we look to proclaim the glorious gospel of Jesus to an increasingly secular society. This visit has been a huge help," he concluded.

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