As participants in the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) began their gathering, a number of conference organizers and others sought to correct several published reports about the direction and purpose of the conference .
 
Approximately 1,000 attendees, including nearly 300 bishops, have registered for the conference, including a number of current and former Episcopalians.
 
“I’m not hearing anything about breaking up the Anglican Communion, or anything of the sort,” Bishop Martyn Minns told The Living Church. Bishop Minns, formerly rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., is the founding Missionary Bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an outreach of the Anglican Church of Nigeria.
 
“We are not focusing all of our attention on human sexuality,” he added. “The workshops are designed to get us moving forward with emphasis on evangelism, church planting, the Bible, family and marriage, and also on developing a better understanding of our Anglican identity.”
 
Bishop Minns said a booklet titled “The Way, The Truth and the Life: Theological Resources for a Pilgrimage to a Global Anglican Future,” released by GAFCON organizers at a press conference June 19, has been mischaracterized in some reports as conference planners’ declaration of independence from the Anglican Communion. He noted that the booklet is a historical summary of the recent past, and does not contain specific recommendations for the future.
 
“The purpose of the conference is not to call people away from either the Lambeth Conference or the Anglican Communion,” he said. “Certain things of monumental importance have changed about Anglicanism within the past 10 years. Those things have irreversibly reshaped the landscape. We must get together and work out what to do about our future in light of the facts that have occurred.”
 
Helping the Anglican Communion achieve financial independence from numerically small but influential western churches such as The Episcopal Church is also an important goal, he added.
 
A conference spokesman said that contrary to some reports, Jordanian authorities did not bar two archbishops from entering the kingdom from Israel to participate in a pre-meeting planning session. The Rev. Arne Fjeldstad told the Jordan Times that Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria was not denied entry into Jordan on June 18, but that Archbishop Akinola gave up and returned to Jerusalem after remaining in bureaucratic limbo for several hours at the border.
 
“They claimed that, as a diplomatic passport holder, he had to give advance warning that he was coming,” Fr. Fjeldstad said, as quoted by Reuters.
 
Because of the densely-packed agenda, leaders decided not to delay the start of the meeting until all participants were cleared to enter Jordan, but decided to move the planning meeting to Jerusalem after they learned that additional rooms had become available there.
 
Peter Frank, director of communications for the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said that Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh is one of several members of the GAFCON leadership team who chose to remain in Jordan. Bishop Duncan and a handful of other participants to the Jordan portion of the meeting have decided to remain in Jordan until the scheduled end of that meeting on June 22.
 
“This was really not a big deal,” Mr. Frank said. “For most it meant that they went on a five-hour bus ride on one day rather than on another.”
 
Presiding Bishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone also did not attend the planning session in Jordan because he was remaining with his wife after her recent surgery. He is hoping to join the conference later in Jerusalem, Mr. Frank said.
 
Steve Waring
 
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