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Network Requests Daily Prayer for September Meetings
Canon Daryl Fenton, chief operating officer of the Anglican Communion Network, has called for disciplined daily prayer during September for the outcomes of three important meetings.
Two of the meetings involve Network bishops and other bishops of the Episcopal Church. The third is the gathering of Global South Anglican leaders in Rwanda.
The first meeting, beginning on September 11, brings together Network bishops, “moderate” Episcopal bishops, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori and Canon Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion Office. Called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the meeting is a critical opportunity for an agreement to be reached within the Episcopal Church on how to honor the requests for Alternative Primatial Oversight made by seven Network dioceses.
Network bishops will also be joining a much broader group of “Windsor-affirming” bishops at Camp Allen in Texas Sept. 19–22. Called by Bishop Don Wimberly of Texas, the group is made up of an estimated two dozen bishops who believe the Windsor Report marks the “way ahead” for the Communion and accept the Primate’s Communiqué from Dromantine, as well as recognize that General Convention’s response to the report was not sufficient and that Lambeth 1.10 is the teaching of the Anglican Communion on sexuality. During their meeting, they will be working “to arrive at a common response to the current circumstances of the Episcopal Church – one that will ensure an unimpaired relationship with the Anglican Communion.”
Finally, the primates of 20 or so provinces of the Global South will be meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, Sept. 19–22. “When these leaders meet, as they regularly do, they bring together many different languages, different cultural contexts for the purpose of working together for the advancement of the Gospel,” said The Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, newly consecrated missionary bishop for the Convocation for Anglicans in North America (CANA) who will attend the meeting as part of the secretariat under The Most Rev. John Chew, secretary of the Global South Primates. “Please pray that they will be faithful to keep their eyes clearly on making the Gospel real as they deal with the difficult issues of war, poverty, the spread of militant Islam, and building an Anglican covenant in the midst of it all.”
Rose Marie Edwards, a parishioner of St. Luke’s in Akron, Ohio, who leads the Network’s intercessory prayer team, offered some advice to those who decide to offer daily prayers for these meetings and their outcomes. Intercessory prayer, she said, is simply the process of bringing people, places or situations before God and listening to his will for them. Edwards also advised those praying to make a point to pray for, and not against, those involved. “We become what we hate, don’t we? It occupies our mind and spirit. So stay in the positive vein of blessing instead of cursing,” she said, “Our hope should not be in the people who are in these meetings, our hope is in the Lord. The question is not what will these people produce, but will these men and women allow Christ to move in them. That is the cry of our hearts, that the Lord would be present in these meetings,” she concluded.