The Challenge EFAC Exists to Address
(Presidential address at the 2024 EFAC National Conference)
What a joy it is to be together in this way. As President of EFAC Australia it’s my privilege and pleasure to welcome you to Sydney, and to this National EFAC Conference – Recharge Refresh Renew
I have been asked to welcome you, which I am most happy to do, and to speak about something close to my heart. I think the program says something like ‘ministry challenges and opportunities in Sydney’, which is close to my heart indeed, but I have chosen instead to speak about the challenge that EFAC exists to address. Having served outside of the diocese of Sydney in local church ministry for twenty years, I can testify to the crucial significance of gospel fellowship – or ‘Evangelical Fellowship’ – in sustaining, encouraging and equipping me for the ministry to which God had called me.
In the early 1960s John Stott was convicted about the necessity of an international fellowship of Evangelical Anglicans because his global travels alerted him to the threat to ministry that was posed by the widespread experience of isolation.
In Australia, this includes geographical isolation which is not inconsiderable - and we have gathered from the four corners of our island continent - but in particular no doubt, Stott had in mind the reality then as now that convictions about the trustworthiness and authority of Scripture, the centrality of the Cross, the urgency of evangelism and the necessity of personal Spirit-empowered
growth in godly living were essential and everywhere evident in the Bible, but frequently peripheral or absent from Anglican ministry in some places. Added to this ‘theological isolation’ was a pattern of excluding or marginalising such perspectives from the institutional structures of diocesan life in ways that discouraged or opposed evangelical ministry.
Faithful Anglican ministry can be found just about anywhere and everywhere, but often those who are preaching the gospel, winning the lost, building up believers, equipping the saints for works of ministry are doing so in circumstances where they have little encouragement from the local leadership and often little fellowship with likeminded others. EFAC was established to connect gospel-minded Anglicans; to provide mutual encouragement and foster gospel partnership. And we ought to see clearly that such evangelical or ‘gospel’ fellowship is a means of grace. And I think it can be said that it finds its origins in the very beginnings of global, gospel mission.
I’ve read to you from the end of Colossians because these lists of names and greetings give us a window on the fellowship that is formed by the gospel. The community that is formed around the Jesus whom this letter proclaims: Jesus – the image of the invisible God, firstborn in creation, firstborn from the dead so that he might have the supremacy in everything, the Head of his body which is the church. The gospel that is proclaimed to every creature under heaven, proclaims this Jesus, and as people believe in Him, a fellowship is formed around him.
So I want to consider three aspects of the fellowship formed around Christ that we can glean from these closing, personal greetings.
First, the fellowship of Christ is a fellowship without barriers.
In 3:11 Paul had said, ‘here - that is, in the church - there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.’
(As you know, Paul says something similar elsewhere including ‘male and female’.) And to this day, this remains the most stunning affirmation of inclusivity the world has ever known.
Those whom Paul mentions in these closing verses are Jews like Aristarchus, Mark and Justus; and there are gentiles like Tychicus, Onesimus and Epaphras. But Paul regards them all with the same affection. He calls Tychicus ‘faithful minister and fellow servant’, Onesimus a ‘dear brother’, Epaphras, a ‘fellow servant’; Aristarchus, Mark and Justus he calls ‘fellow workers’ who ‘brought him comfort’.
The gospel has come into the lives of these people with very different backgrounds - ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds - and they were not only different, but their backgrounds required that they had nothing to do with one another. Whole communities of people who avoided, mistrusted and despised each other. But these are people who have received Christ Jesus as Lord. He is Lord of all and reconciler of all; and as he has reconciled them to himself and God the Father, he has reconciled them to each other as well.
Now there is a new community - there is a community of Christ in which the barriers count for nothing; because Christ has united what was divided. Paul seemingly makes a few casual introductions and conveys some courteous greetings - but he reveals the power of the gospel to break down barriers between people.
Paul sends greetings from Luke the Gentile doctor, and Paul greets a wealthy woman and landholder Nympha who offers hospitality to one of the churches in the area.
These greetings are not just Paul tidying up his letter. He is continuing to minister to this new and immature congregation and he is continuing to minister to us, as God applies these words to our own situation today.
I hope as we draw aside for these few days you will be renewed and refreshed in this powerful truth of the gospel that breaks down barriers and unites people to Christ and to each other.
The church that receives Christ Jesus as Lord is one where ethnic, economic, social and personal barriers take second place to unity in Christ. Christ is all and Christ is in all.
Second, these greetings and personal remarks show us a fellowship of Christ that serves Christ.
Paul describes himself at the beginning of the letter as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. Later, as a servant of the gospel. Apostle and servant. But what we learn from these greetings is that the gospel draws people into a fellowship around Jesus who entrusts and commissions and enlists all those who are his, into his mission.
The work of the gospel is carried on by a great partnership of co-workers who are not seeking to promote themselves but to serve others and proclaim Jesus. Paul says that he is sending Tychicus and Onesimus so that they may ‘encourage their hearts’ and ‘tell them everything that is happening’.
Paul has just said to them that they should pray with devotion and watchfulness and thanksgiving and it’s clear that Paul wants the Colossians to be informed about everything happening to him so that they can pray about it. He exhorts them to pray, and then he sends them a living prayer letter so that they can pray.
Those whom he sends serve the mission by taking the letter; those who receive the letter serve the mission by praying in response to it. To belong to the fellowship that the gospel of Jesus creates is to serve the mission of that gospel and be enlisted in that work.
Tychicus and Onesimus are going to the Colossians with the letter, but others are remaining with Paul and wrestling in prayer for those who are in Colossae. Epaphras is remaining with Paul and v12 says ‘he is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God mature and fully assured. I vouch for him that he is working hard for you and for those at Laodicea and Hierapolis.’ And I take it, his ‘hard work’ is the work of prayer.
Archippus is described as Paul’s fellow soldier in the letter to Philemon. Possibly, because he is mentioned after the church in Laodicea, he has a ministry in Laodicea. That is all we know about him. Just a name at the end of this part of scripture you might think - but in reality a wonderful work of God. Not an apostle, not an eyewitness of Jesus - just a man who in God’s mercy heard of the Lord and his work on the cross, repented and put his faith in him and became a servant in the Lord’s mission field. An ordinary believer. But that’s so valuable isn’t it? Because we’re ordinary believers.
Though we are distributed across the full breadth of this amazing country – some in cities, some in remote towns and regional centres, some in universities or prisons or hospitals or schools or universities or military bases – we are in fact a vast fellowship of coworkers in the Lord’s harvest field. I think that is both glorious and beautiful. Men and women, lay and ordained, theologically trained and those with a long obedience in the same, Spirit-led direction. Fellow workers and servants of the Lord, at work in the Lord’s harvest field.
It’s worth seeing, isn’t it, what it is like to labour in the Lord’s service. It’s not without its hardship clearly. Paul is in chains. Remember my chains he says in v 18. And even as Paul speaks of three fellow Jewish countrymen who support him, he makes the point that they are the only three - there is for Paul in his service always the sadness that more of his own people have not responded.
So there is physical hardship and emotional hardship in the work. But these greetings are laced with affection aren’t they? There is a great spirit of kindness and mutual support and encouragement and common participation in a common cause.
Tychicus, ‘fellow servant’; Aristarchus, ‘fellow prisoner’, fellow workers in the kingdom of God who have proved a comfort to me; he calls Onesimus, who was a slave, his ‘dear brother’, and the gentile physician Luke, he calls his ‘dear friend’. Bonds of affection, sharing in service and suffering, working hard - the fellowship of Christ that serves the mission of Christ.
Third, Christian fellowship is fellowship in the grace of Christ.
Paul ends his letter with this brief farewell – Grace be with you. He began the letter in the same way – 1:2 Grace and peace be with you. For Paul, there is only one source of grace and peace in the world: ‘the true message of the gospel that has come to you is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world – just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace.’ (1:5) They heard and understood and believed the gospel of God’s grace – they heard it from Epaphras, and the gospel of grace gave birth to this Christian community in Colossae. What is this gospel of grace? ‘God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ and through him to reconcile to himself all things by making peace through his blood shed on the cross’ (1:19), and in v23 ‘This is the gospel that you heard’.
By faith in this gospel they are united with Christ in his death and raised with him in glorious resurrection. By this gospel of God’s grace and peace, they are seated with Christ in heaven and will appear with him when he appears in glory.
By faith in this gospel they are transformed into the likeness of Christ; putting off what is evil; being clothed with compassion, kindness, humility, patience and gentleness.
John Stott said in defending the vision of EFAC, ‘Anglicanism is a largely historical phenomenon. Its death in any particular region or nation is not therefore to be regretted, provided that it is followed by a resurrection in a united church which preserves a Biblical Faith ...
Evangelicalism on the other hand, is a theological heritage. … The Evangelical has no wish to be a party man (sic). He desires, if he is true to his own Evangelical principles, to witness to Biblical truth as unchanging divine revelation.’[i]
We are a fellowship gripped by the divine revelation of the grace and peace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified for sin, raised in victory, ascended to the Father’s right hand, and soon returning to judge the living and the dead. It is a fellowship in Christ; it is a fellowship in the service of Christ, and it is a fellowship in the grace of Christ. Our fellowship is the gospel work of God and our fellowship serves the gospel plan of God; the gospel that all over the world is growing and bearing fruit.
My dear brothers and sisters, as we encourage one another in these short days to persevere with trust and joy in the glorious task which the Lord has entrusted to us – in a world desperate for hope and facing God’s just judgement – may the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus be with you, in every way.
Kanishka Raffel
Archbishop of Sydney and President of EFAC Australia
[i] 1 T Dudley-Smith, John Stott – A Global Ministry, (IVP, London 2001) p 52.