Essentials
The Great Collapse
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- Written by: Stephen Hale
One of the challenges we are all living with is the reality that many churches will close in the next decade. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but it is a reality that is upon us. Every diocese in Australia has a cohort of churches with very small numbers and mainly elderly parishioners.
Sooner or later these churches reach a point of unviability. In saying this I’m not stating anything new. We’re all familiar with these situations. The ramp up of multiple compliance requirements in the past decade and the two years of pandemic have accelerated the situation.
The thing that is new will be the scale of the problem. Many of these churches have been clinging on for many years and it’s remarkable that they have gone on for as long as they have. Most of these churches are within the Anglo Catholic/Traditional side of the Anglican Church but it isn’t confined to this tradition. As a clear sign of the challenge of our reality it was reported at the most recent Melbourne Synod that over 50% of parishes have no children in attendance!
In God’s providence the counter to this is that many new churches have started in the past decade and there will be many more new churches in the years ahead. More especially we are being greatly blessed by the birth of many language-specific (non-English speaking) faith communities which often see significant growth. At the most recent ordination in Melbourne the number of ordinands was 10 to 5 in this direction!
I believe that it is easier to start a new church than to renew an existing church. Existing churches have many challenges and ministers who are appointed to them are often seeking to achieve twin outcomes. They are seeking to sustain a traditional service with a group with high pastoral needs, while simultaneously birthing something new. It can be done, but it’s a tough gig. While there are lots of great examples where this has led to the birth of something new, there are also many ministers who have been burned along the way in places where it has been too hard, and it hasn’t happened.
So, what should we do? Is this a disaster or is it an amazing opportunity? The comments in this article are more applicable to our metropolitan and provincial cities.
The challenges in remote rural areas are great and I don’t claim to be an expert in that area. I give thanks for and pray for BCA and the remote rural bishops regularly.
The worst-case scenario is that we do nothing intentional and allow church after church to die with nothing to replace them. This would be tragic. There needs to be an intentional diocesan strategy. Without a strategy, more often than not the Assistant Bishops in the larger dioceses are put into an impossible position. They are left to deal with church after church facing similar scenarios and burning huge numbers of hours with no clear framework for addressing it. Bishops are often obligated to find clergy for too many unviable churches and it is proving to be increasingly challenging to find them. A growing number of parishes have had a rolling series of locums for years.
In broad terms I would suggest we are asking too many clergy to go to too many Parishes that are too far gone, and the consequences aren’t great for anyone! While church renewals can and do happen, it is unrealistic to expect them to happen in multiple places simultaneously.
Another scenario is the cobbling together of churches that are within some proximity to create a basis for a fulltime minister. This model can work, but only if there is clear intentionality about how it might work. Without that this is often a recipe for significant tension and conflict.
It’s not much fun leading two or three centres all of which are in a similar scenario and all of whom want the minister between 9am and 11am on a Sunday morning.
Another worst-case scenario in all of this is that progressively over time properties are sold and dioceses build up their central reserves to buffer against abuse payouts. The diocese is an organising entity not the church and the role of the diocese is to support the church to grow, not to protect itself.
The closure of churches does free up assets that can be used to:
- create a church planting fund to assist in the planting of new churches.
- more fully support the birth of many more culturally-diverse (non-English speaking) congregations.
- intentionally partner with the medium size and larger churches to invite them to take over dying churches with a view to planting new congregations. The church planter is then a part of a team as well as having the back-up of a stronger church.
- facilitate the closure of a few churches within proximity with a view to the sale of one or more of the sites and the building of a new centre with contemporary facilities. I spoke at a Uniting Church last year where 5 churches had agreed to close and amalgamate and come together on an existing site with all sorts of allied activities happening with several Sunday congregations.
- buy land for new outer suburban and inner urban plants.
To navigate these and many other changes bishops need to be honest about the reality of where we are at. Alongside of that they need to offer a fresh vision of what is possible and actively support those who are seeking to make that a reality.
Bishop Stephen Hale is Chair, EFAC Australia and EFAC Global.
Editorial Autumn 2023
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- Written by: Mark Simon
The 2021 Australian Census revealed a marked decline in Anglican affiliation in the national population, from 3.1 million in 2016 to 2.5 million in 2021. This was the largest drop in number of all religious denominations. The census also revealed the average age of an Anglican in Australia was 56 (verses the average of 47 for all Christian denominations). These statistics brutally illustrate the challenge the Anglican church is facing. If we don’t revitalise existing churches as well as plant new churches, we will have an ever-diminishing presence in our community, with a consequent diminished capacity to engage in our mission of proclaiming the gospel and equipping believers to grow in faith and in service. I know from personal experience some of the challenges church leaders face when endeavouring to revitalise their church: overstretched volunteers, budget limits, uncertainty as to which program or strategy to adopt, and ever-increasing administrative and compliance demands on clergy and lay leaders. Despite these obstacles, God is at work renewing his church, and this edition of Essentials brings together wisdom and experience from around Australia to reflect on church revitalisation.
We hear from Bishop Stephen Hale about ‘The Great Collapse’ – the impending closure of numerous unviable churches across Australia, with some straight-forward suggestions for diocesan action. Rod Morris, a Church Revitalisation Consultant with City to City Australia, shares his learnings from the first year in that role. We read an encouraging case study of church renewal from Tasmania where the parish of Circular Head, led by Joel Nankervis, has gone from 20 regulars to over 70 regular weekly attenders in six years. Brian Holden shares reflections from a group of youth leaders following their road trip to learn from Queensland churches with vibrant youth and children’s ministries. Evan Englezos interviews Jackson King (Robina Anglican Church) to discover how digital technologies enable revitalisation and can expand our ministry reach. Tim Johnson shares a Bible study on Ephesians 2:21-22, highlighting how Paul’s description of the church as temple speaks to our identity, God’s presence and God’s purposes in us. I review a number of books related to church revitalisation – one concerning vision, another on prayer, another that provides an evaluation of which strategies have been most effective in the UK, and a few classic approaches (NCLS, NCD and Mission-Minded). Finally, Graham Stanton recommends two books to strengthen youth and children’s ministry. May you find this edition fruitful reading!
Book Review: Sustainable Youth & Children's Ministry
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- Written by: Graham Stanton
SustainableYouth Ministry
MARK DEVRIES
IVP, 2008
Sustainable Children’s Ministry
MARK DEVRIES AND ANNETTE SAFSTROM
IVP, 2018
Reviewed by Graham Stanton
Good strategies for children’s and youth ministry often fail due to ineffective systems. Mark De Vries uses the metaphor of a dancefloor: it doesn’t matter how good a dancer is, if they have to dance on a rotten stage, their performance is going to end in disaster. In Sustainable Youth Ministry and Sustainable Children’s Ministry, DeVries (together with Annette Safstrom for the children’s ministry version) helps churches ‘attend to the dance floor . . . ensuring that the right systems, priorities and infrastructure are in place before beginning the dance’. Though written from a North American perspective and requiring some ‘transposing’ into an Australian context (and a small church context), there are valuable ideas in these books that will help churches think carefully about the systems that can enable children’s and youth ministries to thrive.
Graham Stanton is Director of the Ridley Centre for Children’s and Youth Ministry. He teaches Introduction to Children’s Ministry and Introduction to Youth Ministry in the Ridley Certificate program: (certificate.ridley.edu.au)
Tools For Revitalisation
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- Written by: Mark Simon
National Church Life Survey
Many Anglican churches in Australia have participated in the NCLS (most recently undertaken in 2021). NCLS has 9 core qualities that measure church vitality: 1 alive and growing faith, 2 vital and nurturing worship, 3 strong and growing sense of belonging (these three are grouped as internal qualities); 4 a clear and owned vision, 5 inspiring and empowering leadership, 6 openness to imaginative and flexible innovation (grouped as inspirational qualities); 7 practical and diverse service, 8 willing and effective faith-sharing, and 9 intentional and welcoming inclusion (grouped as outward qualities). Completing the NCLS gives a church leadership team some quantified measures of health in each of the core qualities.
NCLS provides notes and a suggested planning process for addressing weak core qualities at https:// www.ncls.org.au/articles/act/. This process is based on ‘appreciative inquiry’ and assumes that reflection on the church’s past, combined with a shared new vision, followed by strategy and implementation steps, will yield positive change. I’m not convinced. The NCLS planning materials are fairly thin on biblical priorities for church life and mission, and in trying to appeal to any Australian church from any tradition and any denomination, they feel too openended and theologically vague. Evangelical Anglican churches would likely seek a stronger ecclesiology and missiology (such as that found in Tim Keller’s Center Church, and which is incorporated into City to City Australia’s Church Revitalisation consultancy process).
Natural Church Development
Like NCLS, Christian Schwarz’s Natural Church Development (ncd-australia.org) uses a survey tool filled in by church attenders to produce a report on a church’s health. NCD has eight quality areas: empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship services, holistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, and loving relationships. NCD is better than NCLS at providing resources and strategies to address a church’s ‘minimum factor’ – that is, the area which scores lowest on the 8 health characteristics.
There is a series of books with titles beginning ‘The 3 Colors of…’ which each address gifts, community, spirituality, ministry, etc and provide tools to improve church health in that domain. NCD presupposes a pattern of Sunday services and mid-week small groups as the engine room of church life, and this would be familiar to most evangelical churches. Therefore, it won’t yield revolutionary change in ministry shape or priorities. Notwithstanding its conventionality, NCD has established itself as a reliable tool for church revitalisation.
Mission-Minded
Peter Bolt
Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2000
This brief book (70 pages) is short enough for every parish council member and ministry leader in the church to read and act on in one week. It provides a simple tool (a one page table) that leaders can quickly fill in to evaluate the extent to which the church’s current activities are contributing to evangelism or edification (with 3-4 stages specified under each broad goal). The tool enables a church to quickly see why it is not growing through conversions or not growing in spiritual maturity or in ministry impact. Mission-Minded can help a leader start a revitalisation process with some straight-forward analysis and a clear strategy for improving churches stuck in maintenance mode.
Essentials - Autumn 2023
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- Written by: Chris Porter
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Book Review: Zeal Without Burnout
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- Written by: Chris Porter
Zeal Without Burnout
Christopher Ash
The Good Book Company 2016
One infamous quote on burnout comes from the 19th century Scottish Presbyterian minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne—of the bible in a year reading plan—who wrote of his impending death from typhus: “God gave me a message to deliver and a horse to ride. Alas, I have killed the horse and now I cannot deliver the message.”
While M’Cheyne’s metaphorical aphorism may appear dated, the experience of burnout is far from past. Christopher Ash’s short book draws from a range of personal engagements and examples, including his own experiences of twice coming “to the edge of burnout” (15).
The book is punctuated throughout by interviews, vignettes, and personal stories of burnout experiences— including that of Peter Adam.
Ash helpfully starts the book by addressing the burnout elephant in the Christian ministry room: the mis-construal of burnout as a sacrifice for Jesus, hinted at in aphorisms such as George Whitefield’s “I would rather wear out than rust out” (24). In response he suggests that there is a “partial parallel between burnout and self-harm … [in that] each damages strength and life to no good effect.”
The aim then is not to flee from sacrifice—for we are called to costly sacrifice (Rom 12:1)—but rather to engage in what Ash describes as “sustainable sacrifice … the sort of self-giving living that God enables us to go on giving day after day” (26).
In response to the elephant Ash reminds the reader that we are but creatures of dust, embodied, finite, and limited beings in comparison to our creator. Yet our own human predilections tend to blind us to that reality, preferring— in our strength—to “believe that we are something other than dust” (37), contingent on the animation of God’s breath in us. Indeed, as it was this delusion that was shattered on a societal level by the sudden spread of COVID, should there be any surprise that we have such high levels of burnout in the post-COVID landscape?
Ash’s solution re-centres us as God’s creatures, dependent on Him, and importantly with our finitude and frailties known by Him.
From this basis Ash suggests seven “keys” of sustainable sacrifice. The first four come in the form of our own finitude, and form foils to God’s infinitude: Sleep, Sabbath, Friends (peers and fellow workers), and Food (renewal and sustenance). While each seems relatively straight forward, Ash deftly walks through each topic with a biblical guide to our own frailty, looking for God’s sustenance at each point. Suitably this focuses our attention on God’s love for us, rather than our own self-reliance.
Each chapter ends with some practical actions for the reader, and stories from those who have gone before us into burnout.
The final three keys are less attributes, as they are to do with temptations. The first addresses the celebrity culture of the modern church—of which there is no shortage of examples for how this has gone wrong. The second is a broad encouragement—and an encouragement to encourage others. Too often ministry can be seen as a competitive sport, and Ash defuses that mentality here.
The final key is a continual rejoicing in God’s grace, rather than gifts. Having joy in God’s grace as the motivator to ministry is the key here—drawing from J.C. Ryle. The book is rounded out by an extremely helpful appendix on a clinical approach to defining burnout from Dr Steve Midgley, a trained psychiatrist and Church of England minister. This chapter is worth the price of the book on its own and is invaluable at taking a self-assessment or giving to others.
Overall, the book is mercifully short for those who want
something to bite into quickly—and let’s face it, most people who are at risk of burnout will benefit from a shorter work—yet is deep enough to sustain. Highly recommended for anyone in Christian ministry— volunteer, lay, or ordained—and best read before any signs of burnout.
Chris Porter is the Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne
Book Review: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
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- Written by: Rev Dr Christopher Porter
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
by John Mark Comer
Waterbrook Press (2019)
There is a distinct irony with writing this book review heading to a busy conference on a long-haul flight. But perhaps this is exactly why it is a good book for our modern culture. While the pandemic has certainly changed the dynamics around “busyness” over the past years—and this book has been woefully overshadowed by COVID—the underlying characteristics of Hurry that this book aims at are ever more present as we exit the active stages of our COVID pandemic and attempt to catch up on the past two years.
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is a deep reflection on the challenge of modern life—although there are hints that this is a universal human predisposition rather than a uniquely modern challenge. The book is peppered with the author’s—John Mark Comer—autobiographical account of hurry and burnout with his outwardly successful megachurch, and his ongoing conversations with his quasi-mentor John Ortberg (17).
The book moves through three distinct sections. Firstly, a solid analysis of our predisposition towards speed and hurry. Secondly, some approaches towards a solution. Then thirdly, some active practices for “unhurrying your life.” Throughout the book the diagnosis of our situation is clear, as he quotes from Byung-Chul Han “[the Western world is] too alive to die, and too dead to live.” (9)
The response to this diagnosis is clear, with the titular line coming from John Ortberg’s mentor, Dallas Willard: “Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life” (19). But eliminating hurry is easier said than done, as our modern society has baked in our predilection for speed into everyday life. From smartphones which are touched on average 2,617 times a day (36) through to advertising which persuades us that busy is better.
What is the solution that Comer offers? Drawing on biblical themes and Jesus’ example he emphasises the finitude of humanity, and the vastly disparate prioritisation of the time that we have. As he observes we often say we are “too busy,” and yet the average American spends 2,737.5 hours a year watching TV (72).
The solution then? Take the easy yoke of Jesus. A Jesus centred rule of life. Often “rules of life” are treated with suspicion by evangelical Anglicans, yet as Comer offers, they are a trellis for our lives. “The point of a trellis isn’t to make the vines stand up straight in neat rows, but rather to attain a rich deep glass of wine. It’s to create space for the vine to grow and bear fruit.”
With that diagnosis and prescription, Comer moves to the final portion of the book: four practices for unhurrying. Helpfully alliterated for our sermon centric ears, these are: silence and solitude, Sabbath, simplicity, and slowing. Each of these points digs deep into Jesus’ life described in the gospels and sees how His practice can be applied to our lives.
Throughout the book Comer is friendly and laconic and comes across as a mentor rather than a sage. While the examples are firmly American-centric, it is not hard to translate these for any modern context. At times the book feels a little “self-help-y,” although that is likely a product of the proliferation of self-help books on the market. Nevertheless, this is a helpful read, diagnosis, and engagement with our hurried lives. Perhaps on a busy flight is the best place to read this, it has certainly given me a lot to think about.
It isn’t a quick “life hack for the soul” (12) and nor does it claim to be. It is not exactly short at 286 pages, but instead it aims for deep formation. As Comer sagely reflects “Life is extraordinarily complex. Change is even more so. Anybody who says differently is selling you something.” (