The Five Marks of Mission: Five – to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth

Green Anglicans from Southern and Central Africa

In the sixth, and final, article in our series of features looking at the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission, The Revd Canon Dr Rachel Mash, Environmental Coordinator for Green Anglicans, from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, unpacks the fifth Mark of Mission: To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

---

“Elderly men lost the will to survive when they were forced to slaughter their cattle”.

In northern Namibia, many people don’t have bank accounts. Their treasured cattle are their savings for their old age.

“Please give us small tents so that we can live as families, not the huge refugee tents.”

Beira, in Mozambique, was completely devastated by climate change. Super-charged by warming oceans, Hurricane Idai dumped a year’s worth of rain in just days, forming an inland sea. Floods rushed across a land denuded by decades of deforestation.

“Climate change is loading the dice by intensifying storms and making rain patterns less predictable. Climate change is the human thumb on the scale, pushing us toward disaster. It is not a distant danger – it is already with us. As we continue to burn fossil fuels, its effects will only grow”, Archbishop Justin Welby said.

The Anglican Communion’s fifth Mark of Mission calls us to “Strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the Earth“

“Strive to safeguard the integrity of creation”

We have failed. In Genesis 2:15, God gave the care of this beautiful garden planet into our hands saying: “work the earth and look after it”.

We failed God’s call to be guardians of the Earth.

The bonds that hold nature together are unravelling due to overfishing, pollution, climate change and deforestation. In my generation, we have pushed one million species to the brink of extinction. Environmental degradation and climate change are striking hardest against the poor and vulnerable.

“Sustain and renew the life of Earth”

Having failed as guardians of Creation, we are being called now to renew the life of the Earth. How can we do so?

Firstly, this mission must impact our theology and worship: God’s love extends to all of God’s creatures, not just humans. Salvation is for the whole Earth. Jesus died on the cross for the whole of creation “in order to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20).

Around the Communion, churches and dioceses are embracing worship, which includes our care for creation.

Churches are using Lent as a time to abstain from the damage we are doing to God’s earth. The Church of England has Green Lent, dedicating this year’s season to caring for creation. The Anglican Communion Environmental Network is encouraging people to #Fast4Earth. In other provinces, they are having a “Plastic-Free Lent”.

The Season of Creation has been embraced widely as an ecumenical movement globally, as well as by the Anglican Consultative Council as a time dedicated to learning about God the Creator, from 1 September to 4 October.

World Water Week, Earth Day and harvest festivals among others give us many opportunities to focus on God the Creator, and what the Bible teaches about our mission to renew the earth.

This mission calls us to action. It is inspiring to see how across the Communion churches are responding in challenging and prophetic ways:

• The Church of England passed a motion to go to net carbon zero by 2030. Transport and heating of buildings must be drastically reduced to meet this prophetic target
• The Church of South India has been nominated for a UNESCO prize for their inspiring Green Schools programme
• The Anglican Province of Burundi set itself the target of planting 10 million trees in five years

Installing small scale solar farms in Mozambique, water harvesting in India, organic farming in Zimbabwe, in these and countless ways churches are responding to the call to heal this planet.

We must be led now by the voices of those who have lost the most – young people. As the older generation we have failed to be guardians of the Earth, and now the young people are rising to protect their home – half of the world’s population is young. One hundred per cent of the world’s future is young.

Young Anglicans are rising up. The movement of Green Anglicans which started in Southern Africa has spread to central, east Africa and even to Portugal and Brazil.

Follow Leah Namugerwa our own 16-year-old “Greta” from Uganda on social media.  Across the globe, young people are rising in Fridays for Future and other campaigns, let us support them.

We are asking for the voices of young people to be heard at the Lambeth Conference, and are encouraging them to challenge the bishops by writing “Letters for Creation”.

We must learn to be led by the voices of indigenous communities, for their relationship with creation remains integral to their spirituality. They are guardians of some of the most vulnerable lands which are now most under threat from the extractive industries.

In the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury: “the climate emergency is the greatest challenge that we and future generations face. . . It is absolutely clear that following Jesus must include standing alongside those that are on the frontline of this unfolding catastrophe.”

Our mission is clear: “Go now and preach the good news to  the whole of creation” (Mark 16:15).

The Five Marks of Mission: Four – to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation

Archbishop Justin Badi Arama briefs journalists on his return to Juba Airport in South Sudan after leading peace talks in Addis Ababa in May 2018.

In this fifth article in our series of features looking at the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission, Kate Brankin, the International Coordinator for the Office of the Primate in South Sudan, looks at that church’s approach to the fourth Mark of Mission: To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation.

---

The Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS) is involved in the process of peace making and peace building. ECSS has a unique place in that it has dioceses and parishes throughout the country.  It uses mission and evangelism to reach different communities, telling them how important peace and reconciliation is so that the communities see themselves as brothers and sisters in a family of God.

The archbishop, bishops and priests regularly preach during Sunday services on peace and reconciliation, as well as conducting community meetings to share messages of peace.  As a respected institution in the community, ECSS is often asked to partake in community reconciliation initiatives. It visits the internally displaced and refugee camps to encourage and give hope to the people living there.

The church is using its departments, like the Justice, Peace and Reconciliation department, to reconcile the communities that have been affected by the war. This office makes efforts to aid in the reconciliation of different community groups by bringing communities together to educate, dialogue, and reconcile them. The church has also played an active role in disseminating the details of the revitalised peace agreement amongst different groups of people, such as the youth, women and intellectuals, throughout the country. Where communities and politicians are divided, people turn to the church to provide an impartial voice that helps to reconcile communities, and even parties, to the conflict.

Sometimes the ECSS works, with other Christian denominations under the umbrella of South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC) in reconciling political leaders. An example of this is when the leaders were taken for a retreat at the Vatican to build trust.  Some political parties that have sharp divisions amongst themselves have also been brought together in an attempt to reunite them.

The Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Badi Arama, has been involved in peace talks on behalf of South Sudan Council of Churches. He is able to meet with political leaders to speak on behalf of the South Sudanese people – both within and outside the country.  These meetings also provide an opportunity to pray with the leaders of the country, that they may hear and respond to the will of the Lord.

The church have schools and colleges where Christian values are taught. As children share with their parents the things they've heard at school, whole families can be influenced in the way of peace.

The Episcopal Church of South Sudan also works with other Christian mission agencies and organisations that deal with peace building and healing. Examples of such are Flame International that have an ongoing programme with the Army Chaplains. With the help of the church they travel to different areas within South Sudan to conduct healing workshops and teaching in their barracks and sometimes they bring the chaplains to a church and train them to go back and teach others.

SOMA UK is another example of a mission agency that has been working with the ECSS in helping to equip the youth so that they are not misled by the different warring parties and are able to do something productive with their lives.

The church works through the Mothers’ Union to create awareness and educate women to engage in peace building and to speak against gender based violence and rape.  The Mothers’ Union also reiterate the message of the church against child marriage, to enable more girls to stay in school and get a good education.

The Episcopal Church of South Sudan has a relief and developmental wing that works to transform the lives of those left devastated by the unjust results of war.

The Five Marks of Mission: Three – to respond to human need by loving service

Anna Saidi pumps clean water from a bore well in Tanzania, built by the Diocese of Masasi with funds donated to the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund and the Government of Canada.

In this fourth article in our series of features looking at the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission, the Executive Director of the Anglican Church of Canada’s Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF), Will Postma, unpacks the third Mark of Mission: To respond to human need by loving service.

---

All around the world human need abounds. With 10 years to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the earth and all of its inhabitants seem particularly precarious. In the world’s poorest countries many people can no longer grow enough food to feed their families due to climate change or conflict. Mums and babies die during childbirth at a much higher rate than in other parts of the world because they are without access to quality health care. Women and girls are not given the same rights to education or freedom from violence. And indigenous communities here in Canada and other parts of the world do not live with the same rights of their fellow citizens.

The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund, an agency of the Anglican Church of Canada, seeks to address those deep human needs by working with local partners in countries where the needs are greatest. We listen to organizations who are working directly with families and develop or support programs that are designed for them. For example:

• In Tanzania, the construction of 25 bore wells has brought clean water to many rural communities, improving community health and making it possible for girls to have time to go to school instead of walking kilometres each day to collect water.
• In Bangladesh, communities are growing mangroves in nurseries and transplanting them to low-lying shorelines to protect their homes from devastating floods.
• In Haiti, young people are learning how to recognise and prevent gender-based violence.
• In South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, 1,700 families are getting lifesaving food baskets each month.

People are also comforted and strengthened in knowing that half a world away, their human needs are being met with loving service. Says one partner working with refugees along the Thai-Burmese border: “The people of PWRDF offer love, kindness and friendship, which has been consistent over so many years. It helps the refugees feel valuable,” which in turns helps the program to succeed.

This third mark of mission – to respond to human need with loving service – is lived out not only through our generous donors, but through our vast network of volunteers. In my three and a half years as Executive Director of PWRDF, I have met scores of volunteers responding to need half a world away through loving service in their church community and beyond.

Jane is a dedicated member of her church and volunteer in Vancouver, British Columbia, She is always looking for ways to support her parish and the work of PWRDF. She welcomes newcomers warmly, organises diocesan celebrations, lugs PWRDF display boards from event to event and writes articles about PWRDF’s partners for the local diocesan newspaper. “It’s just what I do,” she told me at a PWRDF 60th anniversary event last year. “I love to see people connected. I’m happy to do whatever I can.”

I think of Cindy in Acton, Ontario organising euchre tournaments, Sue in Halifax hosting annual talent shows, Cathy in Burnaby, British Columbia, who carries on the tradition set by her grandmother to serve as a parish representative. Peter in Vancouver and Chris in Charlottetown are both quick to offer time and their gifts to organise learning days, captain a cycling team or offer suggestions to make PWRDF better for our partners.

The call to respond to human need with loving kindness is in our DNA. PWRDF began in 1958 when a bump in a coalmine in Nova Scotia caused a collapse and killed 75 miners. Canadians watched the news in horror as men were rescued and recovered from the mine, one of the first such disasters to be televised. Anglicans rallied to support the families, raising the equivalent of $1.2 million in today’s Canadian dollars (approximately £704,200 GBP). A year later, a fund was established at General Synod to formally handle humanitarian relief. Ten years later, the work expanded to include sustainable development.

Why tell people about PWRDF’s work? Telling their stories connects people in the pews to the work being undertaken on behalf of Anglicans in Canada. And it provides them an opportunity to live out our baptismal covenant to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”

Maybe the word “volunteer” does not speak enough to the number of hours, the extent of “loving service” often given in the fray of managing busy family life and pressing work issues. Maybe better to say ambassadors, champions or promoters of justice, walking side by side, shoulder to shoulder with development professionals.

Responding to human need by loving service brings our gifts together. For PWRDF and our partners, it shows so well how we can go further, together. 

The Five Marks of Mission: Two – to teach, baptise and nurture new believers

Archbishop and Primate Justin Badi Arama addresses an Anglican community
in South Sudan

The second Mark of Mission, like the first, flows very directly from Jesus’ Great Commission to all his followers. This is found at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28.19).

There is a clear element of going to proclaim God’s Kingdom required of all Christians: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20.21). Like Jesus, they must demonstrate and be bringers of good news, as Canon Richard Bartlett amply illustrated in his article on the first of the Marks of Mission.

What is captured in the second Mark of Mission is the very deliberate way in which Jesus chose, lived with, taught and trained his own disciples, making them into “fishers of men”. In the Great Commission Christians are asked to do the same: not to make “converts”, but to intentionally make disciples. That task is a joy – to see lives, priorities and character transformed by encounter with and understanding of Jesus Christ. Christians are called to teach, baptise and nurture new believers – none of which happen accidentally!

Furthermore, Jesus did not say “teach them (my future disciples) everything I have commanded you”, though the western academic models and mind-set tend to operate that way.  Instead he says to “teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

This emphasis upon formation and lived out faith is a profound challenge:

• first to academic training institutions, where formation of life is difficult to assess and may end up becoming secondary and
• second, to local churches where intentionality and accountability are vital to truly forming people in Christ’s image and to help that transformation over time.

In 2016 the particular importance of a whole life discipleship that reflects all five Marks of Mission and the need for intentionality in Anglican teaching of new disciples was formally recognised by the Anglican Consultative Council. It called every province, diocese and church to a nine-year Season of Intentional Discipleship, now described as Living and Sharing Jesus Shaped Life.

In Lusaka, Zambia, where the Anglican Consultative Council met in 2016, one Church, St Peter’s, has responded to this call by creating a discipleship tool with four modules each lasting eight weeks conducted in classes of 20-30. The church leader, Robert Sihubwa, explains: “We agreed that it will be a must for all members to attend these courses before baptism, being Godparents, marriage, standing for leadership or being an active minister”.

They have had over 600 members undergoing the process at different levels, according to their involvement in the church.

In the Church of England, Setting God’s People Free is an initiative to enable the whole people of God to live out the Good News of Jesus confidently in all of life, Sunday to Saturday. It aims to facilitate a shift in culture that is seen in the two, new, primary goals my own diocese, Guildford: “that every parish have a plan for making prayerful, confident disciples in everyday life” and “together to increase the number of new Christians of all ages.”

This has shaped the vision of the parish church my wife leads: “To be followers of Jesus Christ, growing in faith and number and serving the community”; and is being worked out through well planned teaching, establishment of new life groups and last year a year-long discipleship course.

In the US-based Episcopal Church (TEC), Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is calling his people into The Way of Love and seven habits that form them in a Jesus Centred Life. This call and teaching is increasingly shaping the liturgical life of TEC, spawning many small groups and a curriculum to serve them and a re-design of their catechesis, for use with new believers especially youth and young adults, so as to emphasise formation and lived out faith.

In South Sudan, a recent consultation on Intentional Discipleship involved 60 bishops & many lay members. Afterwards, the primate, Archbishop Justin Badi Arama, reflected “we discovered that we were not doing enough in the area of discipleship.”

South Sudan is a vibrant Church active in evangelism and growing, yet the archbishop concluded that “It is now a new way for us to go: whole life discipleship, intentional discipleship: all dioceses and all our parishes, we have to go that way. . .”

God is at work across the Anglican Communion as Anglicans seek to live out the second Mark of Mission.

The Five Marks of Mission: One – to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom

Young drummers and dancers take part in a joyous procession through the streets of Nagpur to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the formation of the united Church of North India.

In the second of our series on the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission, Canon Richard Bartlett, Director of Mission Engagement for the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) reflects on the first Mark of Mission: “to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom”.

USPG, one of the oldest of the Anglican mission agencies, was born in 1701 to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. During its 319 years of missionary history the proclamation of the Gospel has been central to its mission; although parts of its history, particularly its involvement in slavery, are shameful, and certainly not of the Kingdom of God.

Christian mission has evolved greatly over the three centuries, and USPG has been called to reimagine what proclaiming the good news might look like in successive generations and in an increasingly large number of contexts. Now, under its three strategic headings: Rethink Mission, Energise Church and Community and Champion Justice, USPG works in partnership with Anglican and united Churches across the world as together we proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. In various places this looks very different:

St John the Evangelist was the first Protestant Church established in Casablanca. Consecrated in 1906, it is the oldest operating church building in Casablanca and one of the few official places of Christian worship in the city.  Over the past seven years, attendance at the church’s Sunday services has grown steadily. Here the Good News of the kingdom is being proclaimed!

New congregation members include migrants from east Asia (especially from the Philippines) and displaced people from sub-Saharan African countries such as Sierra Leone. Last year the church’s new community centre was opened. Here the church is aiming to offer training to help people develop personal skills, to provide a place for social and spiritual activities, to provide a subsidised hot meal twice a week for some of the displaced people, and a library for studies and after-school classes.

The community centre has also been used as a temporary home for the church, because the old church building is now too small to hold its ever-growing congregation. The new, bigger church building will open on 28 March this year. Alleluia!

In Zimbabwe, Bishop Gaul College is the national Anglican theological college in the Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA). It is a place of proclamation, and a place where those who will proclaim the Gospel are trained. Since its establishment, the college has produced bishops and over 100 priests. It caters for students of the five dioceses in Zimbabwe and the Diocese of Botswana.

More recently, the college has opened to students from countries outside CPCA; thus bringing an international flavour and opportunities for students to think beyond their borders. Increasingly students from the laity are now being trained alongside ordinands. The College is committed to the formation, training, and equipping of clergy and laity for Christian ministries: proclaiming the Gospel in word and action.

On 29 November 1970, the Church of North India (CNI) was born when six protestant denominations came together to form one Church. Leaders of the six denominations gathered at All Saints Cathedral in Nagpur for CNI’s inauguration. This year, CNI marks a half century of “unity, witness and service” with a year-long Golden Jubilee celebration. Bishops and representatives of all of CNI’s 27 dioceses came to the celebrations, which involved the proclamation of a joyous procession in the streets of Nagpur and a thanksgiving worship service.

The events to mark the jubilee fall into three phases: “refreshing memory”, “revisiting the mission of the Church” and “celebration”. The first phase involves thanking God for the people who first brought the Gospel to India – going all the way back to St Thomas, who was a missionary to India in the year AD 52.

The second phase involves taking stock of the past 50 years to see how well CNI has upheld its mission of “breaking down the barriers of caste, class, gender, economic inequality and exploitation of nature”.

The third phase started with a huge ceremony in Nagpur last November, and continues throughout 2020 to proclaim the Good News.

USPG, in Britain and Ireland, seeks to relate these, and so many other Good News stories back to churches, communities and individuals. We have a speaker programme where a network of volunteers across the country are willing to share Good News from USPG partner churches around the world. We offer opportunities for individuals to experience the life of the church in a new context, through USPG’s Journey with Us and Expanding Horizons schemes and on returning, inspired and transformed by the experience, their proclamation of the Gospel cannot fail to be enriched.