Pilgrimage begins with GAFCON seeking healing

Russell Powell | 24 June 2008

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The latest video from GAFCON

Click here to see the GAFCON delegates visit the Mount of Olives

Click here to watch part of Archbishop Henry Orombi's address.

Click here to hear Archbishop Orombi expand on his message at the GAFCON media conference.

The first major outdoor event of the Global Anglican Future Conference has seen 1200 people travel to the Mount of Olives to sing, pray and take advantage of a helicopter photo opportunity.

The site is the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem and the place to which he went just before his arrest.

GAFCON pilgrims massed on the plateau overlooking the city and prayed for Jerusalem and their own home cities or towns.

They then posed for a mass photograph, one from land and the other by helicopter, and then went on a tour of the sites at the bottom of the mount, including an olive garden dating from the time of Christ.

The entire visit went without incident but posed a major challenge for organisers to move that many people and then to distribute water on top of the mount.

The event was filmed by a BBC crew which is making a documentary (see the GAFCON gallery) to be aired worldwide in July.

Reporters from the US, the UK and a BBC news crew were also there.

Archbishop Jensen spoke to the BBC as did Archbishop Kwashi of Nigeria, stressing the symbolic nature of the GAFCON site as the place to renew the biblical roots of the Anglican church.

Anglican communion a paralytic in need of help

Later at a keynote speech at the GAFCON venue, Ugandan Archbishop Henry Orombi said “The Anglican Communion is in need of healing, and the antidote is Jesus Christ.”

Orombi likened the Church, and the individuals who comprise it, to the paralytic in the biblical account in John 5.

“Like that paralytic at the pool, the Church is living but is powerless. That man could see, but he could not recognise Jesus,” he told delegates.

Jesus asked him,”Do you want to get well?” “Friends, in our Anglican Communion, I sense that the Lord is asking us the same question,” said Orombi. “Do you want to be healed?”

The Anglican Communion, Christianity’s third-largest denomination that brings together 82 million believers on all continents, has been increasingly divided as some of its member churches have strayed from mainstream Christian beliefs.

“Many times we beat about the bush, complicating things,” Orombi said.

“But Jesus told the paralytic three simple things: ‘Get up; pick your bed; walk’. As the paralytic obeyed Christ’s word, he was healed. The Word of God is sharper than a double-edged sword. It brings meaning to meaningless situations. Let us be a church that obeys the Word of God. Do know your Healer?”

“Jesus is Lord over the Anglican Communion. He will bring life to our paralysis. His power will be on us when we walk out of GAFCON. This is the time to wait upon God, and be filled with His Spirit. Jesus is saying, ‘rise up and go’.”