The Gafcon communique, “the Future has arrived,” establishing the “Global Anglican Communion” and encouraging Anglicans to abandon the old structures of the Communion, came from Sydney and people have been very curious why. (Gafcon, a network of conservative Anglican churches, dioceses and local branches is named for the Global Anglican Future Conferences it formed around.)
“We went to Sydney because we wanted to get Peter Jensen involved as the first General Secretary.” Paul Donison, the current Gafcon General Secretary disclosed in an interview on a US podcast, Stand Firm. The Other Cheek understands that Jensen was unable to travel to Africa, so the Gafcon leaders came to Sydney. Another “father” of Gafcon, Peter Jasper Akinola, former Primate of Nigeria was able to make the trip.
The Other Cheek can fill in the question of who was in Sydney. It began with a consultation that pulled together some of the current and former leaders of Gafcon.
• The Most Revd Dr Laurent Mbanda (Gafcon Primates Council Chairman, Guarantor, and Trustee)
• The Most Revd Dr Miguel Uchoa Cavalcanti (Gafcon Primates Council Vice Chairman, and Guarantor)
• The Most Revd Dr Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba (Gafcon Primates’ Council)
• The Most Revd Steve Wood (Gafcon Primates’ Council)
• The Rt Revd Paul Donison (Gafcon General Secretary, and Trustee)
• The Rt Revd Julian Dobbs (Gafcon Regional Secretary, North America)
• The Rt Revd Dr Peter Jensen
• The Most Revd Dr Peter Jasper Akinola (Gafcon Guarantor Chairman)
• The Rt Revd Dr Glenn Davies (Gafcon Primates’ Council Advisor, and Guarantor)
• Mr Olayinka Fisher (Gafcon Guarantor, and Trustee)
• Mr Emmanuel Kampouris (Gafcon Guarantor, and Trustee) who was on zoom
• The Revd Canon Jodie McNeill (Gafcon Global Operations Manager)
The meeting was not held in a Sydney Anglican facility but at the Lakeside Hotel and Conference Centre in Macquarie Park, Sydney, from Tuesday 14th to Thursday 16th October 2025. Archbishop Kanishka Raffel was not present as he was on leave, although he is lasted as a Primate Advisor for the Gafcon Primates council.
Donison details how the consultation meeting moved towards a desire to make a statement. “A lot of the start of the meeting was as often within the global church. It’s kind of like, let’s wind back the clock and tell the story again … I mean, can you imagine having Peter Jensen, Peter Akinola in the room along with others, rehashing exactly what happened in ’98 and what happened in ’97 beforehand, and it was just really cool to lay that out. And as we did, there was a growing sense of clarity. You could see through lines of this call for repentance and this call for a future.”
“Part of what happened was already we started to articulate that Gafcon has said a lot of things very clearly over the years, but maybe it’s time to say those things in one document with even more clarity and almost a bit of application. In other words, nothing in the statement that finally emerged really organically, and I would say under the power of the Holy Spirit guiding us is there was nothing new, nothing new under the sun in an Ecclesiastes sense, but there’s also nothing new in Gafcon. We’ve said it all in multiple statements, but this was a way to say, wow, we actually have said a lot about what a relationship with the instruments of communion should be. We said a lot about the A, B, C, we’ve said a lot about where scripture stands. We said a lot about how we sort of organise ourselves as a primates council and how we go forward.
“And so it was just an opportunity to lay those in prayerfully sentence by sentence, word by word. As you can imagine, try and articulate this clear statement. And by the end of it, I mean, I’ll tell you, it felt like when we finally read what became the final communica, there was a most profound sense of God’s presence, the Holy Spirit in that room.”
It became apparent that they needed to include the other Gafcon primates (leaders of national churches) who were not present in Sydney. So they called a zoom meeting. All 12 were invited, The Other Cheek was told by a source at the meeting. But two of them tend not to attend meetings, possibly because they have their hands full in troubled parts of the world. The Other Cheek was told “The primates meeting on Zoom at 11pm on the Thursday night was a separate meeting. Some were in the room. Others were on Zoom. All 12 were invited. A quorum was reached. The statement was discussed and the motion was approved unanimously.”
“Seven Primates attended, which achieves the official quorum, and together they discussed, prayed and ratified the statement unanimously. One more Primate gave his consent the next day (bringing the number to 8 out of 12). “Two of the 12 Primates never attend the meetings, so we have effectively 8 out of the 10 Gafcon Primates in agreement. Those who were not present have yet to share their feedback.”
Donison makes it clear that the Global Anglican Communion is still in formation. There are other Provinces (national churches) or Primates who may join in. “I’ve had lots of great questions that have come up. I think the statement answers most of them that have come my way.
“But I mean, one of them is this whole question of, well, how do people who are not in Gafcon provinces or dioceses relate? We didn’t directly put that in the statement. I put that in my Gospel Coalition article that came out afterwards, when the Gospel Coalition reached out and said, ‘Hey, could you, something big happened in the Anglican world, can you kind of explain this to non Anglicans?’
“And so I wrote that sitting in the Sydney airport quickly before I got on a plane. And in there I specifically did start answering one of the questions that had really not been fully addressed, which was branches: Gafcon has always had branches where we go into regions where if there’s not a diocese or a province that’s specifically able to sign onto the [Jerusalem Declaration] that we can say, ‘Hey, there’s a local branch,’ and I would love to set up 50 more branches around the world.”
Donison is indicating that whole Provinces, individual dioceses and even people can join the Global Anglican Communion.
The Gafcon consultation was planned two months earlier – well before the announcement of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop-designate for Canterbury. An earlier Gafcon announcement expressed concern at her appointment but the “Future is here” comminique did not address her personal status. Gafcon includes provinces which have women bishops, clergy and others which do not.