Archbishop Davies, hit back at his comments, saying the diocese would “stay true to the bible’s teachings on sexuality” and reject the “revisionist theology” propagated by progressive archbishops in Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Bishop Davies has been the dominant force in the conservative wing of the Anglican Church for nearly a decade, leading the Sydney diocese from 2013 to last year, and was a leading campaigner against same-sex marriage during the 2017 postal survey.

Australia’s Anglican Church has split, with a group of conservative bishops and lay people forming a new diocese.  The breakaway group, led by the former Archbishop of Sydney, Most Rev Glenn Davies, has encouraged those Anglicans who are unhappy with progressive bishops to join the new diocese. It follows the Australian Anglican Church’s decision to leave it up to each diocese to decide whether to bless same-sex unions. So far, three dioceses have decided to allow same-sex weddings. Since then, conservative voices have threatened to leave the Church as they felt it had drifted away from Bible teachings on same-sex marriage. The group started drafting plans to create the new diocese early in 2021 and registered with the charities commission in October 2021. Archbishop Davies announced the newly formed Diocese of the Southern Cross during the Global Anglican Future Conference in Canberra.
It will operate under the umbrella of GAFCON, a conservative Anglican movement, and will not be “in communion” with Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby and will cover all of Australia. “I think you’ll see the Diocese of the Southern Cross will have a significant impact,” Archbishop Davies said during the event. “It will send shivers down the spines of some bishops in the Anglican Church of Australia.” According to the charity register, Archbishop Davies, Tasmanian minister Susan Willis, and lawyer David Baker from St Jude’s Anglican Church in Melbourne are the three board members. “For those who cannot live under the liberal regime of a bishop, they can come and be thoroughly Anglican under a bishop,” Archbishop Davies continued. Archbishop Davies will be commissioned as head of the breakaway church. At least seven provinces within the Anglican Communion allow same-sex marriage.
Geoffrey Smith, the Primate of the Anglican Church in Australia, issued a stinging rebuke of the “Diocese of the Southern Cross”. Archbishop Smith described the move as “unfortunate”, and one that would make it difficult to hold the church together. “It is always easier to gather with those we agree with. But in a tragically divided world, God’s call, and therefore the church’s role, includes showing how to live together with difference. Not merely showing tolerance, but receiving the other as a gift from God,” he said. The schism comes after discussions between church progressives and conservatives broke down at the General Synod in May, when the country’s bishops voted down a motion to oppose same-sex marriage blessings. It created an atmosphere of revolt among conservative churchgoers, who accused the bishops of departing from the church’s theological roots.
Archbishop Smith said other voices at the Synod were sympathetic to the conservative’s motion. “It is perplexing that the leaders of this breakaway movement cite the reason for this new denomination as the failure of General Synod to explicitly express an opinion against the blessing of same-sex marriages,” he said. Archbishop Davies, hit back at his comments, saying the diocese would “stay true to the bible’s teachings on sexuality” and reject the “revisionist theology” propagated by progressive archbishops in Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Bishop Davies has been the dominant force in the conservative wing of the Anglican Church for nearly a decade, leading the Sydney diocese from 2013 to last year, and was a leading campaigner against same-sex marriage during the 2017 postal survey.
He insisted the diocese would provide a “more authentic home” for congregants at odds with the views of “the revisionist bishops” after years of bitter infighting between senior clergy. “We signalled these issues roughly two years ago and the revisionist bishops did nothing to back-pedal on their views. “They kept saying, ‘Oh, no the evangelicals will capitulate’. “And we have decided not to capitulate,” Archbishop Davies said. “We believe in the authority of scripture. I realise we won’t have the glorious Gothic buildings that other Anglican Church dioceses have, but that doesn’t worry me.” Its approach to same-sex marriage has led to comparable splits in Canada, the US, Brazil and New Zealand, often involving protracted legal disputes over property rights. Sydney Archbishop Kanishka Raffel, the leader of the country’s most powerful conservative dioceses, shocked moderate church leaders when he offered support for the new diocese.
“The Diocese of the Southern Cross is for the sake of those elsewhere who have been forced to leave their church because they cannot in good conscience accept the authority of those who have departed from the teaching of Christ on marriage and human sexuality,” Archbishop Raffel said in a statement. A trenchant opponent of same-sex marriage blessings, he has otherwise remained silent during the diocese’s launch and refused requests for press interviews. Several sources with knowledge of the church’s split said Archbishop Raffel was avoiding comment on the breakaway to ensure he could vote on future motions relating to same-sex marriage in the General Synod, a national congress comprising ordained and lay Anglicans.
Perth Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy, who is forbidden from officiating services in Sydney’s conservative dioceses because she is a woman, said she was concerned about the diocese’s approach to women and gay people, adding that the breakaway was an “unnecessary move” that could be detrimental for the church. Archbishop Goldsworthy also took issue with the use of the word “revisionist” to describe so-called progressive bishops, noting that the “word could be used at any moment of reform in history”. Brisbane’s Acting Archbishop Jeremy Greaves, a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage blessings, said the breakaway diocese was a “deeply saddening moment” in the Anglican Church’s history.
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Good deacons are humble, and sacrificial, and creatively constructive—and they’re also deeply happy. Their humility is a happy humility. Their sacrifices are glad sacrifices. Their initiative is not just willing, but cheerful and eager. They have found, like the Servant they follow, that joy not only fuels ministry to others, but blossoms from that ministry.

As surprised as we might be by divisiveness in the church, and as uncomfortable and maddening as it may feel at times, such cracks in the walls have dogged us from the beginning.
The kinds of cracks have varied from age to age and culture to culture, but give any congregation enough time—even the best of them—and cracks will emerge. They’re side effects of making covenants with fellow sinners—as unpleasant as they are unavoidable. It’s just part of keeping a home in a fallen world.
Many have tried hard to diagnose and treat the current cracks in our walls—politics and elections, mask mandates and rebellions, racial disparity and superiority, men’s and women’s roles in the home and beyond, domestic abuse and other moral failures, and so on—but many of them have overlooked or marginalized a missing ingredient to harmony. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if the wildfires in some pews are as fierce and contagious as they are because this piece seems so small in many of our eyes.
When God planted the first churches, he knew the cracks he’d find. He wrote them into our stories, in fact, because he knew that cracked but loving churches served his purposes better than ones with brand-new walls and pristine floors. He had planned the cracks, and he had plans for the cracks, and one of those plans was called deacons.
Strong Enough to Help
We first encounter deacons during a meal (which, as any normal family knows, is when fights often break out). As the early church began to meet and grow, Greek-speaking Jews who had been scattered outside of Israel (“Hellenists”) returned to Jerusalem to join the church and follow Jesus. After a while, though, they came and complained to the Hebrew-speaking apostles because Greek widows were not receiving the food they needed (Acts 6:1).
Urgent needs like this, as any church knows, require time and attention, pastoral sensitivity, and careful follow-through. This meant the leaders would have less time and attention for teaching and prayer, and they knew the church would suffer even more if that were the case (Acts 6:2). So, the apostles called the church to appoint seven men to make sure all were fed well. And because they did, “the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem” (Acts 6:7).
How much or little we think of diaconal ministry today rests, in significant measure, on what problem we think those first proto-deacons were solving. Was this merely a matter of entrées and sides for some lonely and vulnerable women, or was the church facing a deeper, more sensitive threat?
Matt Smethurst, in his introduction to deacons, draws our attention to the greater dangers hiding beneath the dining tables:
How our churches react to conflict can make all the difference in whether our gospel witness is obstructed or accelerated. Acts 6 is a story of church conflict handled well…The seven weren’t merely deployed to solve a food problem. Food was the occasion, sure, but it wasn’t the deepest problem. The deepest problem was a sudden threat to church unity. (Deacons, 44, 52)
Cracks were suddenly surfacing and spreading. How could the church win the war for souls if there were wars within her walls? How could the word run if its people were mired in swamps of bitterness? The church didn’t merely need better waiters; it needed peace and healing. It needed men strong and wise enough to help mend fractures in the family.
Giants Bowing Low
Many might hear deacon and immediately think of dull or menial tasks that few people want to do—building maintaining, budget crunching, nursery cleaning, furnace repairing, meal serving. They might imagine a sort of junior-varsity team that relieves the pastors of lesser work. When the apostles saw those seven men, however, they saw something different in them—a stronger and more vibrant force for good, a noble and vital ministry.
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The judgment of God on that day will be far more severe than all the plagues against the Egyptians, which means that every person ought to give the best of their attention to discovering whether they are counted among God’s people or not. Again, the Israelites were no less sinners than the Egyptians; they were spared simply because God chose them to be His people. The wrath of God will soon be poured out once for all, so we should strive to dwell in a land greater than Goshen.

Last week we began to study the ten great plagues that the LORD brought upon the land of Egypt in response to Pharaoh’s stubborn refusal to let God’s people go. We continue here with the second set of three plagues, and there is indeed textual evidence for viewing the first nine plagues as three sets of three all leading up to the tenth and final wonder that God would work. Each set follows a similar pattern. Plagues one, four, and seven all have Moses and Aaron going out to meet Pharaoh in the morning. Plagues two, five, and eight all see the prophets going into Pharaoh’s palace. Finally, plagues three, six, and nine are each brought forth with no warning given to the king of Egypt.
There also appears to be themes that connect each set of three plagues. The first three focus upon the Nile and the dust of Egypt being turned from instruments of sustenance to instruments of pestilence, and they also end with Pharaoh’s magicians bowing out of the conflict. The second three seem to be directed at the people and households of Egypt and particularly emphasize the distinction that God made between the Egyptians and the Israelites. The third set of three are each plagues that come from the heavens, while also showing that even Pharaoh’s servants were beginning to protest against him.
I will Set Apart the Land of Goshen // Verses 20-32
The fourth plague begins with Moses and Aaron again going before Pharaoh in the morning as he went out to the Nile. God’s demand is the same: Let my people go, that they may serve me. Of course, the Egyptian king was not yet going to obey the LORD, so a plague of flies was both threatened and enacted.
As with the gnats, the exact insect that God brought upon Egypt is unclear. Perhaps they were the very household flies that we still swat at today. They also could have been some sort of biting fly. Some think that a swarm of scarab beetles is being described. Again, we simply do not know which insect the LORD used here. Both some type of fly and scarabs would have been significant to the Egyptians. If this was a swarm of flies, then perhaps this was the desecration of Uatchit or even of Beelzebub, who was also worshiped by some Egyptians.[1] If this was a swarm of scarabs, then a sacred emblem of Egypt was being cast in full upon them, similar to the plague of frogs. Indeed, we should remember that the text before us is God’s inspired Word, not the historical event itself. Therefore, even if the LORD only brought one kind of insect upon the Egyptians, perhaps the insect is purposely ambiguous as a way of displaying that God could have used either.
A new element is now added to the plague equation.
But on that day I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people dwell, so that no swarms of flies shall be there, that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. Thus I will put a division between my people and your people.
While it seems likely that God also shielded His people from the effects of the first three plagues, the distinction was explicitly pointed out to Pharaoh in this fourth plague. While there is much to say about this division between the Israelites and the Egyptians, it is a theme that runs throughout these three plagues, so we will discuss it more fully toward the end.
Here is another one of God’s ironic reversals. In chapter 1, Pharaoh and the Egyptians set themselves apart from the Israelites that were “swarming” their land by enslaving them and then murdering their infant sons. Here the LORD is only widening the distinction that the Egyptians had already made, and He is showing them what an actual swarm looks like.
In response to the ruining of Egypt with flies, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron to say, Go, sacrifice to your God within the land. Here we see a progression in the language of Pharaoh. In response to the second plague, he said that he would let the people go if Moses and Aaron would plead with the LORD to take away the frogs. Now we find his immediate command for Moses and Aaron to take the Israelites to make their sacrifices to the LORD. How wonderful! Or is it?
Notice the compromise that Pharaoh is demanding. He permitted them to sacrifice so long as they remained in Egypt, yet that was not Yahweh’s demand. The LORD demanded that His people be given leave to go a three-day’s journey into the wilderness to worship Him. Especially given the reality that this would not be Pharaoh’s final attempt at reaching a compromise, we should take time to consider the dangers therein. You see, it would have been all too easy for the fearful Moses to justify going along with this compromise. After all, Pharaoh was going to let them worship the LORD. That was what truly mattered, right?
As time goes on, I come to an ever-greater appreciation of the regulative principle of worship, which argues that the church’s gathered worship should be regulated by what Scripture commands us to do. Those commands would be to pray, to sing, to preach the Word, and to observe the ordinances. While there is certainly a great amount of freedom in how each congregation can practice those elements of worship, virtually everything else is being excluded from the Lord’s Day gathering. I continue to see the benefit of that regulation because within our age of self, it is all too easy for us to turn worshiping God into work of self-actualization.
In other words, we like to individualize worship just as much as we individualize everything else. We see this at play whenever someone claims that doing [insert any given hobby] is more worshipful to them than going to church. We also see it in the lives of Christians who can never settle into a particular congregation because they cannot find their Goldilocks church that is neither too hot nor too cold but just right. The sorrowful reality is that they may have already found membership within the church of Laodicea.
Of course, this mentality is by no means limited to corporate worship because we all are capable of turning to various things for spiritual nourishment instead of reading and meditating upon God’s Word. Scripture is clear, however, that God does not simply demand worship; He also demands to be worshiped in a correct manner, in obedience to His commands. We see this in the First and Second Commandments. The First Commandment demands that we worship God alone, but the Second Commandment (and even the Third and Fourth as well) dictates how God is to be worshiped. The form matters. Indeed, the LORD told His people through the prophet Isaiah that He hated their sacrifices and festivals because of their wicked hearts (see Isaiah 1). They happily worshiped God yet still held onto their sin. They accepted a variation of Pharaoh’s compromise, thinking that they could worship the LORD without ever leaving their own personal Egypts.
Are you likewise compromising? Is their sin that you still cling to, hoping that it is small enough not to negatively impact your worship of the Holy One? More broadly, how do you think of worship in the first place? Is your view of worship rooted in the scriptural commands of God or in your perceived individual needs?
But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the LORD our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the LORD our God as he tells us.”
Take note of Moses’ answer to Pharaoh’s proposed compromise. He began by immediately declaring that it would not be right for them to accept the king’s offer, but he then offered two reasons as to why.
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