The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has said that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a key focus for the churches of the Anglican Communion.

Speaking at the start of the TEAM Conference (Towards Effective Anglican Mission), an international Anglican conference taking place in Boksburg near Johannesburg in South Africa, Dr Williams said that working towards key objectives like the MDGs raised fundamental and positive challenges for the Anglican Church.

Dr Williams will invite delegates at the conference to consider the resources in the Anglican Communion worldwide that could be offered towards the delivery of the MDGs, the better coordination of such contributions, effective relationships with government and voluntary organisations worldwide, and maintaining a keen motivation across the communion to combat scourges of disease.

He said he hoped the conference would give Anglicans a "shared vision and a shared energy" for aid and development, adding that aid and development concerns had produced a common understanding across the Anglican Communion, despite sizeable fissures in some areas: "One of the remarkable things is the willingness of people to work together towards addressing development goals as a sort of basic Christian imperative, even when there is tension or disagreement in other areas."

He said that this willingness was a key motive in launching Anglicans in Development, a web-based resource from Lambeth Palace and the Anglican Communion Office to support church-based programmes in delivering better education, poverty reduction and peace building to local communities in the developing world.

"We do have serious disagreements on some areas of ethics and doctrine, but the fact remains that we're all called by the same Jesus Christ to the same mission in the world, to the mission of reconciliation, mission of justice, mission of caring, and it would be a very grim reflection on our life as a Christian community if we had to put all that on hold while we sorted out other things," he said.

Earlier in the week, Dr Williams said in a pastoral letter sent to the Primates of the Anglican Communion that the challenges faced by the Anglican Communion require 'generosity and patience'.

In his letter, Dr Williams admitted that the recent meeting in Tanzania had been difficult, but said that a number of key issues had been properly aired.

"It was far from being an easy few days, but there was a great deal of honesty in our conversation, and a direct facing of the tensions that we still find in the life of the Communion," he said.

He also said that the Primates' decision to address some questions to the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church shouldn't be understood as bypassing the church's structures.

"To address these requests to the American House of Bishops is not to ignore the polity of the Episcopal Church, but to acknowledge that the bishops have a key role, acknowledged in the constitution of that church, in authorising liturgies within their dioceses and in giving consent to the election of candidates for Episcopal order."

Dr Williams expressed the hope that the proposed Pastoral Council could be developed quickly, as it would help in the development of pastoral provision for those in the Episcopal Church seeking alternative pastoral oversight:

"It is my hope that if such a Pastoral Council ... will be an appropriate body through which the work of healing and reconciliation for which we all look may be robustly carried forward, and an account given to the rest of the communion on the working out of the Windsor Process."

Dr Williams commended the work done in Tanzania in relation to the MDGs and proposals on theological education. He reminded Primates of their commitment to take soundings within their provinces on proposals for a Covenant for the Anglican Communion.

Despite the challenges ahead, he remained confident that the Church would remain focussed on its mission: "I am sure that the next few months will bring further challenges which will need to be faced. If we can approach such challenges with a spirit of generosity and graciousness, however, and always ready to be submissive to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, then I am confident that the Anglican Communion can emerge from our present tensions renewed and strengthened for the mission which Christ has entrusted to us."