ANDREW KATAY INTERVIEWED BY STEPHEN HALE

Stephen Hale: City to City commenced in Australia around 2010; and you became the CEO around 2014, is that right?

Andrew Katay: Yes. City to City had made a connection here at the end of 2010, with the first event in 2011. Tim Keller was not inclined to lead a conference here in Australia unless it would lead to some tangible movement in the church, but by 2014 there was this nascent city expression that had already begun to emerge in the couple of years prior.

Stephen Hale: There was the Trinity Network in Adelaide, and City on a Hill had started in 2007.

Andrew Katay: Yes, so Tim had a level of confidence that if he did come out, it could achieve what he hoped: a movement. And that’s when City to City really became a public thing. We realised that with the conference, we needed proper governance, so we created a company limited by guarantee with a proper board and so on. That enabled us to employ some staff and function as a proper organisation from the end of 2013. The “Pastors and Planters” conference, which many remember, happened in 2014, with 800 or so people packed into the Wesley Theatre.

As I joke about it, the conference at one level functioned  as an extended advertisement. Because at the end of each session, we were very deliberate about a kind of a call to action. Are you interested to plant a church? Be in touch with us. Are you interested in some city training? Be in touch with us. Would you like to be a coach? Be in touch with us and so on. And so that generated a lot of work.

Stephen Hale: And in some ways you were ahead of the pack in terms of, say, coaching . That was just emerging.

Andrew Katay: Yes. That’s because a lot of those early days were fairly research-based for City to City. It still is now, but they’d really done a good job in the United States of basing their training and practice around research. And one of the research findings was the degree of failure in those church planting organisations, which did not make a high priority of coaching. It’s just obvious now, but in those days, it wasn’t quite an “of course”. It has been a commitment within the City family generally globally, but certainly here in Australia as well, that if you’re a church planter, then you have to be also connected with a coach.

Stephen Hale: As you look back on the last 15 years, what would you say are the key outcomes of this new focused and renewed energy in the church planting space?

Andrew Katay: The plain fact is, in the 21st century, churches are closing at a reasonably rapid rate. So if there aren’t churches starting, then that just leads to a decline in church expression. The focus on church planting has at least ameliorated, if not negated, that church closure factor. One of the things that Tim Keller often said is that the reason for planting new churches, even when there is a church in every suburb, is innovation. Tim called church planting the church’s R&D department. And I think there’s something in that actually: freedom to try new things; different models of church. The missional community style of church. But that innovation is often then adopted by existing churches: you could say (to adopt a very capitalist view) it creates a kind of pressure on existing churches to “lift their game”. I think there is actually something really healthy in that.

The other thing is that the NCLS statistics are that church plants have slightly more than twice the number of what NCLS calls newcomers (that is unchurched or de-churched people, who have become regular attenders) than existing churches: Specifically, on NCLS Sunday, 8% of the people who were in church that week weren’t in a church five years ago; compared to 17% for church plants.

I think for quite a while, there’s been a fair level of hopelessness about evangelism, or any real prospect of any kind of missional fruit. Yet in this context church plants, are seeing at least a trickle, and maybe even more than a trickle of genuine conversions, prove that it can be done.

Once you’ve got “it can’t be done”, ruled out; the question is, okay, what might we be able to do to move the dial a little bit here as well? So that’s part of the R&D thing. But it does increase, I think, the level of potential hopefulness. And that, I think, is a very valuable thing.

Stephen Hale: The sceptics will say that in reality there aren’t that many converts or baptisms. How do you react to that?

Andrew Katay: Oh, we have some data on it actually. We surveyed churches that we’d been working with in our evangelism training program. What we found was that around 2600 conversions were reported. This is not “throw a blanket” - this was actually interviewing specific pastors and “getting them to name names”. So no, I don’t think that’s true. I think that there is genuine conversion growth to be had out there.

Stephen Hale: From another perspective, the cynics would suggest that there’s a disproportionate number of plants in the inner city relative to the ‘burbs. I remember Mark Patrick saying there were 11 church plants within 5km of him or something.

Andrew Katay: Yes. Green Square in Sydney has seen a massive urban development taking place. Tens of thousands of people were moving in, with statistics to suggest it was going to be the most densely populated area in Australia and so on. And there were no churches there and therefore, let’s go plant. But it is a question of how many are needed: One, two, eight. And it certainly is the case that hip young church planters do get, I think, disproportionately attracted to hip young places. And that’s fair enough.

My perspective is, let a thousand blossoms bloom and see which of them actually take root.

Stephen Hale: Fair. So, what would be the key essential components of a potentially effective plant?

Andrew Katay: I think that is a very interesting question. For so many reasons, one of my favourite churches is perhaps one of the worst organised institutions I’ve ever seen in my life. There’s something wrong every single Sunday with the PowerPoint and so on - it’s a shemozzle. And yet they are a beautiful Christian community that loves each other extraordinarily well, that is open to the community. They’re seeing people pouring in.

Our thinking in City to City is that the fundamental components that go into fruitfulness at the moment are fourfold:

• One, what we call Grace Renewal Dynamics, which is to say, the grace which justifies us is also the grace which sanctifies us. But for very many Christians, their experience is that what justifies them is grace; and then what sanctifies them is hard work and a lot of discipline and willpower, and saying, “sorry,” and promising not to do it again and trying harder. And this is a catastrophe. So, to preach grace for sanctification as much as for justification, no more, no less, is a spiritual dynamic that’s at the heart of a church whose people are going deeper into Christ all the time: what the Puritans called being a “physician of the soul”.
• Second is contextualisation. You just cannot yell John 3:16 a little bit louder and think that’s going to make a connection with anyone: we know this at the level of language. We here in Ashfield have a lot of Chinese residents, but we don’t have a Chinese language service, and that’s okay because there are lots of Chinese churches here. That’s a choice we make. The language question is just the surface level question of contextualisation that we all agree with. You’ve got to speak their language in more than just mother-tongue. We have to do a really thoughtful job of contextualisation.
• Third, there has to be what we call “an integrative vision of the Christian life”. The great pressure of our culture is to be dualist: which is that you’ve got your spiritual bits, your private life, and maybe your family life. And then there’s public life, which is secular and not spiritual. Christians feel that pressure enormously. And when the only kind of applications that are made in sermons tell members to evangelise more, and to give more money, and to read your Bible and pray more, and to not have sex with anyone other than your spouse; it just reinforces the dualism. If all the illustrations you give are illustrations about church life, you just deepen the dualism. If all the calls to service that are promoted are volunteering at church, if there’s no lauding of the service of God in the world then you’re just deepening the dualism. And dualism leads either to “split personality” Christians or people dropping out - because it feels like their two worlds are getting more and more spread. Eventually they choose one - they can’t not live in the world; so they stop living in the church.

• And then fourth is what Tim Keller called a “catholicity of spirit”, which is to say, we here at CCIW (Christ Church Inner West) in Sydney, cannot reach the thirty-something-thousand residents of Ashfield and Five Dock and Haberfield with the gospel, for at least the very obvious reason that we’ve got maybe a maximum of 270 people that can fit in the building. So if we’re serious about saying we love our part of there Inner West and we want to see the people of this area reached for Christ, that’s got to mean we value other churches, not just tolerate them, but celebrate them. … We say “walk together in all things and work together in some things.”

In 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, Paul uses an analogy of a body: many different parts, one body, and he applies that to a particular church. But what if you applied that to the Church of the Inner West? Different parts, but all necessary, all needed. No one can say to the other, “I don’t need you”. No one can say the other, “I don’t belong”. And that is itself a pretty powerful witness to a world that only ever complains more and more about how fractured we are and how tribal the world is. If Christians could act just a little bit different from that, it might actually stand out. So for us, whether it’s missional community or attractional, whether it’s on a Saturday night or a Sunday morning or afternoon, whether it’s contemporary or traditional, we don’t think the model matters. Because if there was one model that worked, then we’d all know it already and already be doing it, because it would have worked and everyone would have it. But there isn’t one that’s “it”. The issues are deeper than that.

Stephen Hale: That ‘catholicity of spirit’ you speak of strikes me as a very generous approach. That does kind of fly in the face of the fact that we’re living in an era when people on the Evangelical spectrum have become more highly defined and very specific, almost tribal.

Andrew Katay: Yes. I think there’s an irony in that the tribalism in Evangelicalism is often theologically justified. Churches and groups claim, ‘we have to maintain theological purity, biblical faithfulness and fidelity’ and all this kind of stuff. The reason that’s ironic is because in my judgment, it’s the Bible that is constantly pushing unity with other Christians on the basis of God’s grace to sinners: so the more theologically concerned and biblically driven you are, the more into unity you should be. The less into unity you are, in fact, then the less biblically faithful and theologically accurate you’re actually turning out to be.

Stephen Hale: What would you say, then, is the role of the denomination versus the role of the local church?

Andrew Katay: Yes, it’s so interesting. The fundamental irreducible role of the denomination, I think, is (A) authorising ministry and (B) property holding, which is in a centralised system to prevent individual churches just flogging off their property when they get into financial difficulty. And that’s a pretty important role. It used to be that denominations also functioned as a “network” of like-minded people. But it’s been a long time since denominations were a group of like-minded people (Although, the closest you might get to this is Sydney Anglicanism, actually). But now, given what Tim Keller called the “theological vision diversity” that exists within denominations, the emergence of networks within denominations seems to be a kind of inevitable and even necessary thing.

And that’s just okay: networks are tribes. And as I say, my view is that tribes are okay. What’s not okay is tribalism. And tribalism is the view that my tribe is the only legitimate Christian tribe - I think that’s where it gets to be a problem. That kind of tribalism is a sin from which the only proper response is repentance, to be honest. I’m glad for agencies like Exponential, for example, which at least in theory, attempt to function as a kind of chamber of commerce that bring tribes together.

The world is becoming a very fractured and tribal place; and in my view Evangelicalism is in danger of becoming a little more like the world in its fractured, tribalist state. I’ve ventured to capture some of these thoughts in a book which we recently put out, called “Unity for Movement”.

To explain, if I can beat a drum here, a ‘movement’ is different to a ‘network’. A ‘movement’ is by definition not one thing. The Acts 29 Network, for example, might be fast growing, but a movement includes the whole body of Christ with all its different parts and bits. Acts 29 is never going to reach everyone because not everyone’s an Acts 29 kind of a person, whereas a movement is a genuine widespread impact of the Gospel in an area.

Stephen Hale: Some organisations have a more generic model for church planting, would that be true? You might, for instance: target young families; sing three songs; have a Kids’ Talk; then the kids go out before have a long sermon…

Andrew Katay: Yeah, sure, absolutely… And if that model didn’t work, we’d know that, and if it was the only one that worked, we’d know that too. And so, if there is a church planting agency that has a particular model that says: here’s how you’re going to run the church if you plant with us, it’s okay, that’s good; God bless. But don’t then go the next step of saying, “because this is the only way we do it, it’s the only way Jesus wants it done” - that gets ugly.

Stephen Hale: OK, so if it’s not about a particular model, how do you go about raising up new church planters?

Andrew Katay: Yes, presently, there are fewer people presenting themselves specifically to be a church planter. This, I think, is not inconsistent with a general cultural cautiousness, maybe even fearfulness. The idea of the sort of A Type risk taker, who goes out and takes the world: there’s not many of those around anymore. And maybe that’s not such a terrible thing.

But there can be, I think, at least a bit of a sense of “have your cake and eat it”: I want full autonomy, decision making, independence, capacity to do exactly one thing and be thoroughly supported and with all sorts of guarantees and no risks at the same time. Hence, there is increased pressure around issues of support - both financial; but also mentoring and coaching and training and so on. And that’s ongoing. The issue of the relationship between a senior pastor and an assistant (especially if the assistant is a planter) regarding autonomy is a live one: how much freedom to give, how much not to give... These are all very real and contested areas.

Stephen Hale: Now, one kind of cliché is that it’s easier to start a new church than to actually work out how to turn around an existing church, because you haven’t got all of the kind of inherited tensions and issues and personalities et cetera. What’s your reflection on that?

Andrew Katay: I would say it’s both easier and harder to start a new church in comparison to strengthening an existing church:

• The benefits of starting a new church are the idea of a “blank slate” for the DNA and all that kind of thing, but it’s worth not underestimating the sheer intensity of the challenge of getting a thing up to a stable and sustainable level. That’s a genuine challenge. And the financial pressure and the venue issues are massive - if you don’t have a kind of a denominational context, it can be really tough. So that’s on the one hand.
• On the other hand, the benefits of an existing church context - the assets it has, by which I don’t mean primarily the building, although that can be true. But the history and longevity; and the place and the standing that the thing has in the local area. But yes, the issues of past hurt and pain and trauma are their massive areas of challenge. But you’ve got to do both. And that’s why both City to City and now ‘Reach’ have two arms: the church planting arm and the church consultancy arm, in order to try and speak to both. And we find that we probably can help four times the number of churches be strengthened in consultation as we can plant.

Stephen Hale: And in terms of revitalisation, you’ve seen fruit in that area?

Andrew Katay: Yes. Again, we did some surveys recently. In the churches that we consult with, we’ve seen an increase in attendance of, on average 32% and an increase in offertory of 17%. Okay, that’s not revival, but it’s not nothing either.

Stephen Hale: This might be contentious, but many church plants do seem to be in the more conservative end of the spectrum, how do you reflect on the tension between theological clarity and gospel flexibility? I guess you’ve already been talking about it, but that’s a big underlying issue, I think.

Andrew Katay: Super interesting question. I think I would potentially point to the fact that the theologically conservative wing of the church, at least in its current form, is the most evangelistically oriented; and church planting, I think, often comes from an evangelistic imperative. The danger that the question points to though, is theological conservativism as an end rather than a means: that is, as though the goal was to turn people into theological conservatives like us. That approach is only going to hamper mission effectiveness, because, in the end people get that you’re just trying to talk them into a position.

As an Evangelical, you’re not there to talk people into a theological position, you’re there to lead them to Christ so as to share in his grace and love, just as you have shared in his grace and love. If you want to call that theological conservatism, that’s fine too. But that’s theological conservatism as a means to fidelity to Christ, not as an end in its own right. And I think that’s the crucial kind of distinction there.

The hard thing is, of course, that no one would put their hand up to admit, “I’ve turned theology into an end in itself and I’ve forgotten Christ”, so it takes a degree of humility and collegiality and accountability within your own network, people you trust and so on, to actually hear that might be what’s happening here a little bit.

Stephen Hale: Now, City to City is passionate about empowering people with mission in the workplace, which you’ve already touched on. Do you think that mindset has shifted a fair bit, in the broad sense?

Andrew Katay: Sadly, no. I don’t see it particularly having changed. My view is that regular Christians find it as difficult as ever to connect the ordinary business of their lives to the God thing. And there’s two thoughts I have about that.

• One, I think that Evangelicalism, although it calls itself Reformed, is only three quarters Reformed. By that I mean: in my definition, Reformed theology is about the sovereignty of God over creation and redemption in a way that links redemption to creation; and Evangelical theology really was not born in that context. Rather, it’s always been conversionist first and foremost, having emerged within the context of a nominal kind of Christendom. So, it’s never wrestled with the questions of fundamental theology. This is something that I think needs to be augmented. So that’s the first thing.
• Secondly, this conversionist drive tends theologically toward the individual and you might even say, to individualism. This has meant that I don’t think Evangelicalism has ever really adequately integrated the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of God with its doctrine of individual and personal salvation.

Now, very important, what I’m saying is not: have the teaching of Jesus about the kingdom of God replace or overwhelm or substitute for individual personal salvation. No. But at the same time, if all you’ve got is individual personal salvation without any teaching about the Kingdom of God (which in Paul’s language gets refracted into the Lordship of Christ) it means you’ve got no theological grounding for life in the world - there’s nothing for you to do or be in the world.

And this is why so many focus simply on (1) ‘being good’, which is still about private morality: not sinning, not stealing the stationery at work and so on. (2) Evangelising, because you’ve just got to get other people into the lifeboat and so on. And (3) give some money to church that you earn from your work… But there’s no corporate category. There’s nothing about the world.

And this is why one of the things you’ll notice in the songs we sing about ‘what we do as Christians’ is that they focus almost exclusively on being in a relationship with God: singing praises as though that’s all there is (a bit like staring into the eyes of someone you are in a relationship with and never moving beyond that eye-

gazing). That vision of what it is to be a Christian is to just be in a ‘relationship with God'. Sure, the individual personal relationship with God; salvation and justification and so on – that’s all rock solid. But that relationship happens in a context, theologically, that is bigger and broader: God’s purpose in creation, which is what redemption is meant to redeem. It’s his purpose in creation and so on. And that suddenly opens up a whole trajectory for you to actual live in the world.

Stephen Hale: Yes, that is so much more rich. Two final questions: Firstly, and this is not meant to be contentious, are women church planters?

Andrew Katay: Yes. But there’s a reason for that in our context, which is that City to City is categorically and very self-consciously not a denomination. It is the job of denominations to authorise ministry. The denomination decides who and how people are authorised to minister, that’s their business. Anyone who comes to us to be trained and equipped and funded can be coached and helped and assisted.

We have both very convinced egalitarians and very convinced complementarians on the same staff team who are very happy in fellowship with each other, because they recognise how to not make secondary issues primary issues.

Stephen Hale: Yeah, sure. Broughton Knox did say it was something that should not split the church!

Andrew Katay: He’d be turning in his grave then!

Stephen Hale: OK, and lastly, you’re leading this big organisation and you’re still leading a church. How on earth do you pull it together?

Andrew Katay:

Yes ... That question has an assumption that they’re being held together or that I’m leading. What I keep testing is that there’s mutual benefit to each from the other:

• That is, it’s good for City to City for me to still be in the trenches: preaching every week, pastoring, all the ordinary business of being in church life as a church leader because that just, in a sense, at the level I contribute, helps keep City to City real.
• On the other hand, there are benefits to church by me being involved in City to City because City to City is just a very fertile kind of area. It’s brought enormous benefits, I think, to the way we try and do church here. And what I ask everyone each year on both sides is this, is it not working and is now the time when you want someone better doing this job for you? Up till now they’ve said, no, you’re okay, keep going. We’ll see how it goes.

Rev Dr Andrew Katay is Senior Minister, Christ Church Inner West, Sydney and Executive for Content and Ministry, City to City Australia.