Essentials

Written by: Rod Morris

In February 2022 I took the step of concluding 13 years of parish leadership and moved into a new role as a Church Revitalisation Consultant with City to City Australia (CTCA). Under God, it seemed like a good way to bring together the various aspects of my ministry over the past 35 years and apply them in a way that would be a blessing to the wider church.

CTCA has been active in supporting church planters in Australia over a number of years. As part of this work they have developed training resources for planting healthy churches and gained expertise in ministry coaching to support church planters as they get established. In 2022, we have had the great privilege of working alongside over 40 church planters as they have established new churches. A number of these are Anglican churches, but we happily work with anyone who can affirm an orthodox confession of faith such as the Westminster confession, the Heidelberg catechism, or our own Thirty Nine Articles and the three historic creeds of our Prayer Book.

In 2021 CTCA took the step of moving into the realm of church revitalisation, and as I write this article in late 2022, we are working alongside over 60 churches across denominations and around the country. This work involves either a full church revitalisation project, or a specific intervention such as coaching, relational evangelism training, or a ministry vision workshop.

Our highest profile revitalisation project on the Anglican stage is with Bishop Richard and the Multiply Tas program, but we have also been working with the Diocese of Canberra Goulburn, parishes within Newcastle, Adelaide, Bendigo, the Northern Territory, and Perth, and churches within the Diocese of the Southern Cross. Personally, this year I have had the great privilege of working with twenty different churches across Victoria, Tasmania, NSW, ACT, Queensland, and the Northern Territory. My projects included three specific coaching relationships with other Anglican clergy, eight church vision workshops with Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Brethren, and Independent churches, and thirteen ongoing revitalisation projects with a range of Anglican,

Presbyterian, Church of Christ, Wesleyan Methodists and independent churches. It is exciting to see what God’s people are doing in so many different contexts to see the gospel of Christ move forward.

Revitalise Australia

The full church revitalisation program with CTCA has three phases. The first is a health check and assessment of the current state of a church’s ministry. We visit the church’s Sunday services of public worship, and we assess the church’s facilities and their suitability for purpose. We meet with parish leaders to identify the current strengths and weaknesses of the church, as well as the opportunities and threats laying ahead. There is a 360 degree review of the minister’s leadership using the Christian Leadership Framework to assess their capacity for leading change, and there is a survey of church members to gain feedback on church health and life. We also gather existing data and reports such as annual meeting reports, NCLS results, vision statements, financial reports, parish publications, ABS census data, and whatever else the church has available that helps us understand their ministry and context.

The second phase is the writing of an extensive report in which we consider the church’s mission, vision, and values; their ministry systems for engagement, integration, and maturity; the infrastructure, governance, and operating systems; their church culture; and then we make some recommendations about how the church might move forward in their ministry. Phase three is then a year long journey in which we work alongside the minister and the church to help them implement the initiatives suggested.

Emerging themes

At this stage there are a number of themes clearly emerging across the churches that we are working with. The first is the stark reality of demographics. The churches are each significantly older than the communities they serve, often with a difference of well over 15 years, and there is a clear lack of young families, youth, and children across the churches. This clearly indicates that the churches should focus on developing their ministry to families as a priority. The clock is ticking, and time is running out!

An ageing congregation, often with limited incomes, means there is a real threat of churches becoming unviable, either financially or numerically. However, there is also a common concern that emphasis on recruiting new and younger members may result in existing and older parishioners feeling either overlooked or neglected.

There are too few doing too much, with few people having the energy or capacity to step up as volunteers, and as a consequence the churches are offering limited ministry options to their communities. There is a clear risk of the church spreading themselves too thin with a small pool of volunteers struggling with tiredness, ageing, busyness, and post-Covid residual exhaustion. It may be that Covid will prove to be a blessing in that it has enabled churches to stop lots of extraneous activities, and hopefully churches will be wise in what they restart.

Much of the load falls onto the minister, and church members are generally content with the clergy and staff they have serving. Whilst the ministers each have their own strengths and weaknesses, together with their corresponding professional development needs, they are generally suitable for the ministries they lead.

There is an identifiable sense of dissatisfaction with the support offered within most dioceses as it does not seem to clearly facilitate and enable ministry to flourish. People are feeling swamped by the legal and administrative requirements for ministry, and whilst these are recognised as necessary, they seem secondary to core ministry tasks.

Whilst the Sunday services conducted in various churches differ according to their liturgical and theological traditions, they are generally appropriate to their context and the existing congregation so there does not seem to be a great need to change existing services. But at the same time, there is the glaring problem that these services fail to engage with younger members of the community.

There is a pressing need to initiate new services that are more accessible for families and non-churched people. Consequently, almost every church needs to focus on initiating these new services. Whilst some churches have specific legacy issues related to historical abuse which clearly undermine their reputation within their community, people are generally cautious about doing church things following the Royal Commission and there needs to be deliberate attention in restoring the church’s reputation as a safe place.

A common theme is a lack of vision and the absence of a clear sense of where the church might be in five years and the steps needed to get there. I have already decided that this lack of vision and the consequent sense of being stuck in maintenance mode is actually definitional to church stagnation. Consequently, developing an easily shared vision and defining ministry pathways seems to be a priority with each parish. Churches are in maintenance mode rather than missional mode and none of the churches have an easily communicated vision of where they believe God is taking them over the next five to ten years. CTCA are addressing this issue using a vision workshop which helps the church identify where they think God is taking them and the steps needed to make that vision a reality. It is an effective tool and I think the power of the workshop is that it gets the key leaders within the church to develop an agreed sense of what they should be doing, and where they are going.

Similarly, churches do not have well-developed systems for engagement with the community, integration into the life of the church, or for producing spiritual maturity. They are generally just doing what they always have done, and there is little sense of intentionality within the church’s practice. Sadly, amongst the churches needing revitalisation there is real enthusiasm and openness to exploring new ways of using facilities to generate income, but not an equal enthusiasm for exploring new ways to use facilities to initiate ministry. Churches are running midweek ministry programs for families and engaged with community support programs such as op shops, food banks, and emergency relief, but there are few functioning pathways between these ministries and the worshipping community. Consequently, they each need to explore and define the way in which they engage with their community in outreach, integrate contacts and new members into the worshipping life of the church, and to a lesser degree, how they help people grow to spiritual maturity.

There is a general expectation that outsiders need to take the initiative in connecting with the church and there seems to be a degree of spiritual passivity, introversion, introspection, and a cultural cringe about evangelism across the churches. Most communities would not notice if their local parish closed down. There is a clear opportunity to grow the church’s profile within the community by owning our identity and developing clearer strategies for community engagement. CTCA is addressing this specific need with the ‘Ripple Effect’. Julie-Anne Laird, who is a Lay Canon for Church Planting in the Diocese of Melbourne, has developed this material together with Sam Chan and we are seeing churches enthusiastically embracing this combination of whole church training workshop, small group resources, and assistance with developing an understanding of the local community.

Ten steps to help revitalise your church

1. Check the pumping heart of gospel clarity within your church. It doesn’t matter how slick your ministry is if you’re not proclaiming Christ and helping people grow to Christian maturity.
2. Rally the troops to pray. It is God’s church, and He is the one who brings about church revitalisation.
3. Develop clarity of your vision and identify the steps for moving forward over the next 5 years.
4. Audit the existing core ministry systems of your church and check their effectiveness in engaging the community, integrating people into the life of the church, and growing to maturity as disciple making disciples of Jesus. Especially check your Sunday services and their effectiveness as the shop front for your ministry.
5. Conduct a local community study in order to develop a community profile and understand your ministry context and how you might engage meaningfully with those you serve.
6. Create a disciple-making culture and work on equipping people to effectively share the gospel.
7. Mobilise your members for ministry by helping them identify their gifting and find areas for ministry service.
8. Develop a leadership pipeline that helps people be disciple-making disciples.
9. Identify and deal with any specific problems, the skeletons in the cupboards and elephants in the room, which may be having a detrimental impact on your church.
10. Ensure there is ongoing support and encouragement for the Senior Minister.

Rod Morris is a Lead Consultant within the Revitalise Australia program with City to City Australia.

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.

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!

Written by: Chris Porter

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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

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.” (