Day 1
Council for Mission Urges Prayer for Revival at Home and Overseas
Members of the Church of Ireland have been encouraged to pray for and with the Church’s many mission partners. Proposing the Report of the Council for Mission at General Synod today (Friday May 9), the Revd Jonathan McFarland (Derry & Raphoe) said that prayer has always preceded revival.
The Council for Mission is made up of diocesan representatives from across the Church of Ireland who sit alongside other groups and representatives with an interest in mission. The Council’s report highlights its Mission Matters podcast series of interviews with Daniel Lescano (Diocese of North Argentina), Mulugeta Dejenu–Haile (Tearfund Ireland), Arsène Mafurebe (Church of Burundi), and John Quinn (Alpha Ireland), and includes a full report from Arsène on his visit to Ireland last year, and a list of bursaries provided from committee funds.
Mr McFarland said the Council was a partnership with other mission agencies, and aimed to facilitate and encourage mission alongside these dedicated agencies, within and throughout the Church at home and abroad – building on the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission – to Tell, Teach, Tend, Transform and Treasure.
He spoke of the link between Bishop Andrew and the Diocese of Derry and Raphoe and Bishop Given Guala and the Diocese of Kondoa in Tanzania through CMSI. The Diocese of Kondoa had been undergoing a great revival and Mr McFarland said that the Church of Ireland needed to make revival its prayer and also to connect with the vision that is held by its mission partners.
He added that it was important to find ways to build that connection so that our mission partners are not people thousands of miles away on another continent but rather people in the hearts and prayers of members of the Church of Ireland. As an example he told Synod that Bishop Given had sent a prayer request for the ‘right rain’ in his diocese. Mr McFarland had prayed for the right rain in his parish of Urney on the following Sunday and a parishioner who was a farmer approached him afterwards to say he understood the meaning of the right rain. This helped bridge the gap between the people of his parish in Derry & Raphoe and the people of the Diocese of Kondoa.
Seconding the report, the Revd William Jeffrey (Clogher) agreed with Mr McFarland. “For the Council for Mission to optimise a prayerful call for ‘the right rain’– in relation to its work and the Mission of God (Missio Dei) – it takes every single diocese in our much–loved Church of Ireland to be regularly represented on the Council for Mission,” he said.