GAFCON Secrets

Unfortunately St. Onuphrius’ bid to become the global center of an international Stytlite Revival has taken a bit of a tumble, since we’ve had to bring Evangelical Eric down from his ladder in the Manse garden.

Following the very good advice from our virtual parishioner Two Cents, Brother Richthofen and his friends from Seminary decided to help him through the yesterday evening’s chill by lighting a gentle warming fire at the base of his ladder, but being relatively inexperienced in such matters the lads neglected to see that Eric’s ladder was itself wooden, and the spreading flames begun causing our pioneer evangelical pillar-saint some distress. Things could still have been resolved with a garden hose at this point, but instead Bishop Quinine attempted to douse the flames by casting the contents of his drinking flask upon them. Regrettably moonshine is a far from optimal substance when it comes to extinguishing fires.

All well that end’s well, however, since the resulting fireball simply burned through one of the legs of our Curate’s ladder, causing it to collapse, and in so doing catapult him far from harm’s way. In the aftermath of all this excitement I instructed Brother Richthofen and his friends to give him a good bath, haircut and shave, and then tuck him into bed to sleep off the shock. Naturally the cost of replacing our parish ladder will have to be deducted from Eric's stipend, but this shouldn’t take him more than a few months to pay off.

If only sorting out exactly what’s going on with the other GAFCON was just as simple. Their site at www.gafcon.org was down for most of the past week, and has only reapeared within the last few hours. Perhaps it was just being transferred it to a new home on little Peter Jensen’s servers, but if this is the case they certainly made no attempt while they were effecting the change to update the site to inform readers of the latest exciting GAFCON developments.

Which is a shame, because if the Ugandan government-owned newspaper New Vision can be trusted (and I recognize that’s a big if) 39 GAFCON bishops wound up a key planning meeting on September 30 - an event you currently won’t find a mention of on the GAFCON site.

Held in Mukono Uganda, the meeting allegedly attracted clergy from around the world, including North America, Great Britain, Australia, and (of course) Nigeria, the latter whom would have found the event conveniently timed as a follow-on to their own synod. My reports are that it was held as part of a growing campaign to strengthen pan-African control of GAFCON, since it’s no secret that the on-going success of Bishop Venables' North America expansion is beginning to leave ++Akinola and his Lambeth-boycotting followers nervous, and more than a little resentful.

Certainly it doesn’t appear any big names were among those westerners attending – and it is unlikely proceedings could have been kept so secretive if there had been – but neither was there any reason to invite them, since the official GAFCON vision for an “alternative” North American diocese has never included a plan to give the top-job to a faux-latin Englishman. How on earth could that occurring possibly help the vital missional imperative of channelling funds, green-cards and a near-infinite number of frequent-flyer points back to one’s extended family, cronies and pretty young “sisters” in the Lord?

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.