ANGLICANS worldwide are being called on to fulfil the vision of the Lambeth Call on Mission and Evangelism, with each diocese urged to make a new commitment to planting and revitalising churches.
The Call is one of a set of recommendations drawn up at the 2023 Lambeth Conference, and continued in a series of webinars presented to a global audience. The Archbishop of West Malaysia, the Most Revd Moon Hing, recalled the Decade of Evangelism, when, in 1990, evangelism had been put on the agenda and budget of every PCC: “We thought that was simple and we did it,” he said during the latest webinar last week.
“Collating it all ten years later, we found a marked increased in church membership. We had 12,000 new members, which means 1200 per year and 100 per month. For the last three decades, this has carried on. We ask every church to begin to plant a new church in a new area, start a new congregation, train up more people, and equip them to do discipleship. God will do miracles.”
Melissa Theng, a lay church-planting officer in Malaysia, credited the Alpha course not just in churches but in the workplace. “We are seeing everywhere that the workplace is the greatest harvest field and the people in the workplace are hungry and desperate for connection and love,” she said.
“One of the biggest telecoms companies has run courses every year for more than 12 years, reaching well over 500 employees accumulatively. A businessman in Hong Kong started running Alpha in his office building to reach the masses of workers in the area — two years later, he dedicated an entire floor in his building to Planet Church.”
Evidence suggests that evangelism can be successfully run in the digital space — such as the example of volunteers in China running Alpha online, 24 hours a day. “Now you can get to know Jesus any time, anywhere. . . It took us ten years to reach 1.5 million people but, in the last year alone, we’ve already reached more than 500,000.”
A catechist from Mozambique, Fraser Mzungo, spoke of the power of open-air crusades which can demonstrate “the lifestyle of Christ that can attract people so that they can see, ‘This is a Christian, and this is not.’
“When we leave, people ask us to come and open a church in their community. We’ve seen 25 churches born.” He urged: “Be a light on your own. You are an Anglican representative on your own. You start with gathering your own family; that can grow into a bible study group, then into a home cell, and then the church can grow.”
Kemi Bambgose, who is based in London with the Thy Kingdom Come initiative, initiated in 2016 by Archbishop Welby, told the audience: “You can use the resources or pray however you want, as long as you’re praying for more people to know God’s love.
“It’s a privilege to have received many testimonies over the years and seen the impact it is had in people’s lives and in the lives of churches — people coming to faith and others just maybe moving closer to God; churches going deeper in discipleship and growing in confidence. where they struggled in the past.”
The Bishop of Sul-Ocidental in Brazil, the Rt Revd Francisco da Silva, recalled the 2024 floods in Rio Grande, brought about by landslides and dam collapse, and the prayer that ensued. “It gave not just personal strength but challenged people to go out of the temple and on to the streets to help,” he said.
“In my diocese, we had support for indigenous people and families who had to to be moved from houses that were destroyed. Together, we took action to alleviate these things. The capacity to get together and pray is the DNA of the people of God.”
Questions from the global audience included one from the United States, asking whether, in a context of dwindling church congregations, it might be better to revitalise existing ones. Bishop Moon said: “Church-planting doesn’t mean you have to plant new congregations. You could revive your own existing church — plan young people into it. . . Many young people don’t see the relevance of the Church. Our life must be like Christ — it doesn’t show in our life, then it’s useless.”
Another questioner wondered how Anglicans could reconcile with the past when engaging in mission work. Bishop Vincensio said: “We’re not selling a product to someone, but introducing who Christ is. We can’t tell people to do things that we ourselves are not able to do, and we need to acknowledge the past of who we are and where we come from. I think through that, we’re able to distinguish between what missionaries did and what we’re doing in evangelising our church.”
In response to a question on how evangelism was carried out in the Delhi region in the present political situation, Bishop Paul acknowledged that anti-conversion laws meant that a person could be imprisoned if they were found conducting a prayer meeting in their own house, in one particular state.
“At a workshop on the Five Marks of Mission, the first was how to share the gospel. We made people practise sharing their personal testimonies with one another — something to which there’s no challenge,” he said.
“So that’s one key way in which you can evangelise wherever you are. Until now, we’ve not faced too much opposition; so we continue with the traditional way of having a three-day convention — inviting friends of other faiths to come and join us.”
