Sitting in the paris airport

While I have an hour between flights I wanted to post some brief comments. First of all I want oto thank all of you who are praying for me. The last couple of days prior to leaving were very demanding and I was even concerned that I might be losing my voice. That would have been a laugh: leading worship and not being able to sing into the michrophone! Thankfully, even will little sleep, I sense God's rejuvinating power. Truly, His strenght is made perfect in our weakness.

On the flight over, I was reading an article in Books and Culture magazine. In it Philip Jenkins writes, "Christianity is rapidly reverting to its normal and proper place in the world. After some curious centuries in which the faith was largly the preserve of Europeans and their offspring overseas, Christianity is once more returning to its ancient homelands, in Africa and Asia, as well as latin America and Oceania." Indeed, Jenkins and others have chronicled the enormous growth of Christianity in what is known as the "global south" during the latter half of the 2oth century.

It takes some getting used to, doesn't it? The center of Christianity in 2008 is not in either the United States or Europe. It is in the Global South. Numerically Christians in the U.S. are only a very small fraction of the world's Christian population. It is because of this huge numeric increase that many of the emerging leaders in world Christianity are African, Asian and Latin American. This upcoming Anglican Consultation and the GAFCON conference in Jerusalem is an acknowledgement of that fact. Even the locations- not in New York or London, but Amman and Jerusalem indicate locations that are both closer to our common Biblical center as well as more geographically proximate to most of the world's Christians- especially Anglican Christians.

American Anglicans/Episcopalians have to get used to the fact that as "constituent members of the Anglican Communion" we are a part of a global body to which we are both accountable and subsurvient to its' global authority. Americans are not used to being accountable to anyone outside their own borders. We take it as an affront to our historic independence that we should be answerable to anyone who does not share our national citizenship, and yet this is our 21st century reality. Painful as it may be, global Anglicanism is asking us to learn from and submit its' authority. They may love us dearly and pray for us mightily. They will "dialogue" with us and wrestle with our American realities. We can certainly influence and they will hear our case, but for the sake of Anglicanism's own global integrity, Anglicanism must remain beyond any effort of any national church (including the Episcopal Church) to control it.

Pray that God would guide this international body of leaders. Pray, too, that we would have ears to hear what they say.