In broad terms liberal bishops and groups like The Episcopal Church's Lesbitransgays (LGBT) Integrity community and Via Media, understand mission in socio-political terms with the end result, in the words of Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, "To restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. God's work, is global in scope and embraces the whole creation." This does not include any mention of The Great Commission as a way to achieve those goals.

To that end The Episcopal Church pours millions of dollars into having a presence at the United Nations, supports every crazy and not so crazy effort to promote world peace while not mentioning ever once, the Prince of Peace.

Behind all this high expenditure is the fundamental belief that we can change the world through resolutions, endless conversation (lots of small groups) and, above all, compromise for the long term benefit of peace on earth and goodwill to (wo)men.

So it is not without its significance that when incoming Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori was asked what the Episcopal Church stood for, she replied, "the United Nations Millennium Development Goals...", and every piece of social legislation (read "justice") that can be dragged out of the closet or bedroom or UN sub-committee, even if it means death to the unborn.

When one fed up family finally left their local Episcopal church after hearing a 30-minute sermon on the evils of nuclear war (a point of view that is better covered in the New York Times) the father told the rector as he walked out, "I don't own a nuclear bomb, thank you. I'd like to hear, just once, something about how we should live from the words of Jesus."

The truth must be stated: The Episcopal Church is ashamed of Jesus and any talk of the salvation he offers. When he is mentioned, it is never as Savior and Lord, rather as one messianic option among others, and under no circumstances are we to mention Jesus' exclusive claims for Himself , "I and the Father are One", his deity, his death on the cross as the sole means of access to heaven.

To do so, is to violate God's all embracive, all inclusive love for all peoples, without such messy talk of personal sin, just stick to corporate or political sin, and doctrines such as Jesus' bodily resurrection (He rose for our justification), but that is no longer necessary to preach or believe, unless you water it down to mean that Jesus is now to be found in his body the church, which is here in the world for the purpose of incarnating God's love by affirming people in their present state without the need for personal transformation. Scrap too, any talk of the Last Judgment.

So a doctrine like substitutionary atonement, is now labeled by John Shelby Spong as little more than child abuse, with modern science having dealt a fatal blow to classic doctrines of the faith

So homosexual activity, and various other forms of sexual deviancy (lesbianism, bi-sexuality, transgender) are viewed not as disordered behaviors, as the Roman Catholic Church asserts, but as "justice" issues that need affirming and not moral ones that ought to be abandoned.

So when a bevy of moderate to liberal ECUSA bishops came to Africa last year to assert that the TEC had not lost its mission, it was met with stubborn resistance by African Evangelical archbishops and other provincial leaders.

Basically what the African leaders said was that homosexuality was a bridge too far that needed repenting of, and not affirming. The American Episcopal bishops argued that these differences needed to be set aside and focus should be on the church's mission.

No, said African leaders I spoke with; the church's mission is precisely in sharing the liberating message of Jesus Christ who confronts us in our sinful state, calls us to repentance and faith and then to go and sin no more.

The American bishops got hammered and left with their tails between their legs, among them John Lipscomb, Bishop of Southwest Florida.

Now you must understand that hospitality is generously offered by Africans and they are reluctant to withhold it for anyone, it violates their own cultural understanding of welcome and generosity. Hospitality is understood to be a means of practicing and preparing for Christ's own Second Coming, so it is not taken lightly, it has profound ecclesiological and theological meaning.

At a deeper level they know that when Christ returns, He will come as King and Judge and they don't want to be found wanting, so while breaking hospitality is painful, their first allegiance is to the gospel.

So it was not surprising that when Church of England Bishop John Gladwin came to East Africa to do "mission" in the Anglican province of Kenya they found his views on sexuality contrary to Christ's teaching and therefore unacceptable and so had to refuse him hospitality - a painful but necessary act of faithfulness.

Western understandings of sexuality separated from Scripture are anathema to Africans who have been weaned on Scripture brought to them by western missionaries.

As one African missionary observed, the choice The Episcopal Church is faced with right now, is whose mission are they going to follow, the United Nations charter for world peace or Christ Jesus' mission to 'set the captives free'?

For African bishops and leaders to compromise in this one area of human sexual behavior is in fact to compromise on the very nature of mission itself, because mission cannot be compartmentalized into accepting some aspects of the gospel's declaratory truth and not others.

So when American liberal and revisionist bishops and leading ECUSA lay pansexualists tell orthodox ECUSA clergy and African bishops to "just get over it", African church leaders reply that they cannot do that. It is a gospel imperative to declare the whole counsel of God which includes how we behave with out bodies. Despite the Episcopal Church's acceptance of heterosexual fornication with the passage of D039, the only unacceptable sexual sins are now adultery and bestiality. In fact this writer knows of pro-gay bishops who allow serial homosexual relationships, but will fire a heterosexual priest caught in adultery.

As evangelical ECUSA priest canon Dr. Bill Atwood of Ekklesia wrote ere he departed the Episcopal Church, The Episcopal Church's mission and the mission of Christ are now at odds and can never be reconciled.

So when your parish priest or bishops tells you to "move on" or "move forward in mission" they are exactly correct, but the question is, whose mission, and the answer to that may well determine if there will be a church.

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