Dorothy Lee
27 June 2023
The executive director of Australia’s Anglican Board of Mission has received the Cross of St Augustine for Services to the Anglican Communion.
The Reverend Dr John Deane was recently awarded the Lambeth Award from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
This merit award is given by the Archbishop of Canterbury for major contributions to the life and work of the international Anglican Communion.
The award’s formal citation describes Dr Deane’s outstanding leadership in the Communion in the area of holistic mission, including leading the Anglican Board of Mission for more than 20 years and playing a leading catalytic role in the formation of the Anglican Alliance.
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Dr Deane has been the executive direction of ABM in Australia since 2008. Although he is now based in Sydney, Dr Deane has close associations with Melbourne where he was ordained in 1990.
Before he moved to Sydney in 1997 to work for ABM, he ministered in several Melbourne parishes and was Registrar of Trinity College Theological School, where he had studied for the priesthood.
In 2020 he gained a PhD from the University of Divinity for his thesis on the Book of Revelation and its missiology, titled The New Song, the New Creation and the New City: The Missional Perspective of Revelation.
Dr Deane’s work at ABM is grounded in the Five Marks of Mission of the Anglican Communion, first released in 1984 by the Anglican Consultative Council. These include evangelism (proclaiming the kingdom and nurturing new believers), loving service, the transformation of unjust social structures and the renewal of the earth.
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John is both a fine New Testament scholar with a broad understanding of mission in Scripture and a practitioner of mission in his daily life through his work with ABM.
Australian Primate Archbishop Geoffrey Smith said of his award: “I join with many others in congratulating John on the award of the Cross of St Augustine. In his more than 25 years working with ABM John has demonstrated a consistent commitment to the mission of God.”
The Cross of St Augustine award was created by Archbishop Michael Ramsay in 1965. The award is named after St Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who evangelised England in the late sixth and early seventh centuries.
Another associate of Melbourne, the Reverend Canon John Kafwanka Kaoma also received the Cross of St Augustine, for his outstanding leadership in the Anglican Communion. Canon Kafwanka is a former director for mission of the Anglican Consultative Council. He studied in Melbourne at both Ridley and Trinity Colleges as part of his theological education and now ministers in London.
More information on John Deane and the ABM is available online.
Information on the Anglican Alliance is available at anglicanalliance.org.
The Reverend Professor Dorothy Lee was co-supervisor of Dr Deane’s PhD, with the Reverend Dr Fergus King, both of Trinity College, University of Divinity.
