Just my two cents for future visitors who have this problem.
This is the correct syntax for PHP 5.3, for example if you call static method from the class name:
MyClassName::getConfig($key);
If you previously assign the ClassName to the $cnf variable, you can call the static method from it (we are talking about PHP 5.3):
$cnf = MyClassName;
$cnf::getConfig($key);
However, this sintax doesn't work on PHP 5.2 or lower, and you need to use the following:
$cnf = MyClassName;
call_user_func(array($cnf, "getConfig", $key, ...otherposibleadditionalparameters... ));
Hope this helps people having this error in 5.2 version (don't know if this was openfrog's version).