Essentials

Written by: James Hornby

I landed in Launceston in 2017 to begin as Rector of St John’s and joined a Diocese that has an incredible vision ‘to be a Church for Tasmania making disciples of Jesus.’ My problem wasn’t ‘what’; it was ‘how’. How would we take that vision and, under God, attempt to see that come to pass in our little neck of the woods? It became clear we weren’t alone in that wondering. Nine other Anglican churches across greater Launceston were wrestling with the same. That’s right, ten Anglican churches across a regional city. Where I’m from, given the population, that sounded like a lot. And these other nine, like us, were largely struggling to reach people with the good news of Jesus. Faithful in worship. Absent (almost) in mission, Struggling with discipleship. I’m sure not an isolated story.

A year later, I’d been meeting with a small group of visionary, strategic Anglicans, representing several churches and an idea emerged. What if we came together? Our collective response was ‘Impossible!’ If there’s one thing true about Tasmania, it’s how parochial we are. But the idea wouldn’t go away. A nurse doing her PhD offered us the latest demographic data from her research, and the idea began to take shape. I met with all the local clergy, and together, choosing to put aside any differences for the sake of the Kingdom, we developed a strategic approach to future Anglican ministry in Launceston and surrounds.

This strategy rested on forming two multi-church networks centred around the two city churches – Holy Trinity and St John’s. Developing a strategy and implementing it are two very different propositions, and the journey of how it came to be, would be an article in its own right, but in October 2018, the Parish of St John’s and the Parish of St Peter’s merged together to form the All Saints Network, in 2019 a third parish joined and in 2020 a fourth and final parish joined the mix. In 2024, as of writing, the All Saints Network is a multi-church network comprising four churches and six congregations.

Multi-site churches and multi-church networks have been around for a long time. Anglicans are pretty late to the game – after all, we have our ecclesiastical structures, and they’ve served us well for centuries, except perhaps they’re not serving us so well anymore. What if the future flourishing of the Anglican church requires us to deliberately move beyond the traditional parish model, or at least intentionally make space for other forms? Again, even within Anglican circles, we see larger and established exemplars of this; Holy Trinity Network in South Australia and City on A Hill come to mind. What makes the All Saints Network a little different is that it has occurred in a regional/rural setting where it’s often tougher going for clergy and their congregations than those who live in the big cities. I think the future of the Anglican church must increasingly and deliberately encourage the forming of multi-church networks, from establishing networks of micro/house churches through to the coming together of established, viable parishes.

So, what have I learned from my experience? What do I wish I’d known before we started? What are some of the challenges and benefits that have emerged over the last five years?

This could be a long list, so let me summarise.

Firstly, the process is longer and more challenging than you think it will be. In 2019, I visited England to gain insights from those in similar rural contexts, and I returned with two truths from other team leaders. 1. Networks work, and 2. It takes about ten years. Five years into our journey, I can attest to both. We’ve transitioned from ‘formation’ to ‘consolidation,’ and we are still figuring out how to ‘work.’ This has included a change in our staffing structure, which was a difficult decision. We still have a way to go, and we have only begun to see the benefits in the last year and a half. I’m hopeful that we will shift into ‘flourishing’ over the next two or three years.

Change is always challenging, and we are not just talking about moving a pulpit. So, holding a long-term vision and being prepared to persevere through it is crucial. Secondly, it needs to emerge at a local level, not as an alien imposition. Bishops need to bless and support, not direct. Equally, the research would indicate that geographically and demographically discrete areas will be most amenable.

The old adage, ‘the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing,’ holds true. What might make sense strategically can still be practically and symbolically fraught, so patiently pray and wait for the opportunity to present.

Ongoing challenges include the push and pull of having a singular network vision and the need for individual expression and autonomy. This includes balancing the needs of every church against limited resources and being prepared to make tough decisions. The big heading would be ‘increased complexity.’ This challenges and stretches you and your team to grow as leaders, and not every leader will have the capacity to get there. For me personally, and our particular expression of multi-church, I have found consistent, clear communication to be an ongoing challenge. The other challenge for me has been flexibility.

We are not as nimble as a network as we were when we were just a single church, which can test your patience in the face of challenges. Also, I was so fixed on the ministry side that it was a bit of a shock to discover that our administrative systems no longer sufficed. That has taken time to redevelop and probably circles back around to the challenge of communication.

Ministry is tough. It was for the Apostle Paul, and it still is in 2024. In case it isn’t clear – multi-site churches/multichurch networks are not a silver bullet. They do not replace the faithful proclamation of the gospel, a commitment to discipleship and ‘Christian social liturgy’ (doing good as Christians in the public square). But they do offer some tangible benefits that make going the distance that little bit easier.

So why do it? What have been the benefits? The slogan we used for the first few years was simply ‘better together.’ And that’s the biggest benefit. There’s something about people and churches belonging to something bigger than ourselves, pointing us to the kingdom of God while facilitating a sense of belonging and co-participation that you don’t always feel at an ecumenical or diocesan level. At a strategic level, one of our core values for coming together as a network was that we might be able to enable ministry in gospel-poor areas. One of our churches is in a town of 4000 people, where no other Anglican church exists. This church is not financially viable and would struggle to exist on its own. As a network, we are able to resource this church and trust that the ongoing, faithful proclamation of the gospel will bear fruit. This principle works itself out in our other churches.

As a network, we employ a youth worker who runs a network-wide youth ministry. This means that any family with teenagers that turn up to one of our churches can connect straight in with a youth group. This wouldn’t be possible otherwise, and this kind of representation speaks to many of the benefits of churches coming together.

This also speaks to another advantage of multi-church networks, reserved usually only for the largest of churches, that of specialisation. Having people equipped and experienced in specific forms of ministry – whether youth or evangelism or discipleship or whatever your specific ministry needs are.

Personally, the biggest benefit is that I get to work in a team. I have colleagues and friends in the trenches with me, and we can (and do) support each other when we inevitably go through difficult seasons of life and ministry. Even though our theological colleges still tend to prepare ministers for solo ministry, the benefits of teamwork are well-documented, as are the dangers of isolation in ministry.

Would I do it all again? Well, we’re not there yet, but yes, I would. Our hope turned out to be a truth. We are better together. It’s been hard work, but the benefits for us have been clear. We celebrate the ‘wins’ together and mourn the losses. We cover for each other and are in it together. All the while engaging with worship and mission in ways that we couldn’t have dreamed of if we’d chosen to stay separate. I’m grateful for the vision and courage of both laity and clergy, who were willing to sacrifice and change in the face of significant challenges. It’s amazing what God can do when you don’t care who gets the credit. I look forward to seeing how it continues to unfold.

James Hornby is Lead Minister of the All Saints Network

Written by: Matt Williams

“The system is breaking. Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you. Then stick around to help us build the new one.”

It seems a bit pompous to begin an article quoting myself, but I do so to illustrate that this has been going on for some time.

Back when the Diocese of Melbourne invested in a solid program for equipping new Priests-in-Charge of parishes (EPIC) they used to invite me back for some frank talk with my colleagues. I always said something along these lines.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

The overall structure of our church is not fit for purpose. In many ways, we still have a nineteenth-century structure attempting to satisfy twenty-first century compliance demands. The inevitable result of this is a failure to comply, massive inefficiencies in resource allocation, and the burnout of many of those trying to hold things together in the interim with string and spreadsheets.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

We should notice that we’re not alone here. This issue is not peculiar to the church. It’s a widespread problem in professional vocations – education, health, and social workers are all drowning in it, vocationally disoriented, burning out, and leaving in droves.

The whole approach of society to risk is to imagine that everything could have been prevented if only another piece of paper had been filled out. So, each time something goes wrong somewhere sometime; the paperwork and mental load is increased for everyone everywhere all the time.

This is unsustainable. Something bigger must come eventually, in the break of this whole system and the approach of our society to risk management. The pendulum is swinging to maximal red tape.

Let it break. Your first job is to ensure it doesn’t break you.

And yet, the problem in the church is worse. Because even if that pendulum swings back to a reasonable centre, our structures are still not fit for purpose.

Let us speak frankly, for the time is short. These are our problems:

1. We do not have an alignment of responsibility, visibility, and capacity to act.
2. We cannot create that alignment with a heavily decentralised system, which is what we have.
3. Parishes do not trust the centre enough to allow it to centralise.
4. The centre does not have the visibility of the parishes to centralise competently.
5. Therefore the work of bearing responsibility is shafted onto vicars; the work of being the conduit of visibility is shafted onto vicars; and all expectations of action are shafted onto vicars.
6. Vicars have not been selected or trained for anything like that skill set.

These are problems which have proved intractable for a long time. This is not something solved by pat answers, like “just preach the gospel”. We need strategic managerial reform, because bad management hinders gospel preaching. We need, in a word, centralisation.

But can we trust our centre to competently centralise? From a long history of past performance and false starts, not really.

To break this impasse, we need to solve the fourth problem, and then use that to solve the third. We need to engineer systems that build visibility of parish life to the centre. Then – and only then - parishes should hand the centre trust to take over safety, compliance and property management tasks based upon that visibility. If the centre can truly see them, we might believe they can actually do them, and let go.

The order is important. Centralising before visibility will fail to solve the problem and damage trust further, because the centre will be working blind, and we will both fall into a pit.

If we can achieve those two things, building a virtuous circle of central competence and parish trust, a world of good can break out. Management tasks will disappear from vicar’s heads, they will be vocationally realigned, spend more time on the things they are trained for and passionate about, and more missionally effective.

The people responsible for things will be able to see if they are actually doing them right down to the parish level, through a series of reports.

And so responsibility, visibility, and capacity to act will belong to the same people, those people will be selected and trained for those tasks, and they won’t be the vicars.

That’s the dream. But the reality will be bumpier than that. Real people doing real jobs make real mistakes. Parishes are notoriously suspicious of giving up power. And this is definitely that.

But it’s the only way out. We must support and encourage the centralisation of safety, compliance and property management tasks – even if our own parish can currently do it better than the centre.

We must encourage and honour those doing the slog work of compliance for us, not allowing them to be invisible.

We must use our power to strengthen others, rather than to think of our power as something to be grasped.

Huh. Sounds like someone else I know. Perhaps the solution lies in preaching the gospel after all.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus… Philippians 2:5

 Rev'd Canon Matt Williams is the Vicar at St James' Old Cathedral, Melbourne West

Written by: Richard Condie

The Anglican Church has for a long time held an audacious aspiration to reach the whole world with the gospel through the Parish system. Dividing up a diocese into a patchwork of joined geographic units, so that everywhere was “someone’s responsibility” has been a remarkable vision. It demonstrates a gospel commitment to the world, not just to the faithful who gather in church buildings each Sunday.

In Tasmania this has been a such a gift. Someone is looking out for people’s spiritual welfare in the remote and sparsely populated regions of the west coast, just as much as the battler suburbs of northern Hobart. But the traditional model of the Parish, with the priest dispensing the weekly word and sacraments and expecting people to come is not a model that meets the mission needs of the 21st Century.

The Diocese of Tasmania began to change when John Harrower was elected bishop in 2000 with much innovation in mission. More recently we have tried to meet this challenge by adopting a new Vision to be a church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus. The traditional parish patchwork is being transformed, as we rethink how Parishes go about their life and ministry. Here are the principles that have guided us over the last 8 years.

CLEAR EXPECTATIONS

The first thing we did was set clear expectations. Our 2017 Vision expected every Parish to work on seven areas. Each parish was to have:

• active disciple-making pathways – because we needed a clear plan for how people came from “no faith” to be mature followers of Jesus,
• active ministry to young people and families – as we know most people come to faith before adulthood,
• transformative public worship aimed at discipling – because church services should serve our main purpose,
• a transparent culture of safety for all – because everyone is valued,
• avenues of intentional prayer – as it is foundational to mission,
• a commitment to world mission – because it is the best indicator of local mission,
• and leadership from well-trained biblically orthodox clergy.

We do all of this in relationship with our agencies like Anglicare and BCA, our schools, and chaplaincy teams in hospitals and prisons.

These expectations drive the conversations we have with our Rectors, their Parish Councils and incumbency committees. Being clear about what we expect helps us to focus resources and training. The priority of disciplemaking has become the heartbeat of parish and diocesan life. Rectors working at revitalisation along these lines are encouraged to spend 50% of their time working on new things.

TRAINING IN DISCIPLE-MAKING

It would be unfair to set expectations without providing people with the knowledge and skill about how to do it. We have invested heavily in training and development for both clergy and lay people. All ministry leaders are in development cohorts according to their stage of ministry – the newly ordained, new rectors, senior leaders, chaplains and so on. This helps us target training to the right needs. All the ministry leaders gather twice a year for input as a whole leadership community.

We also hold an annual Bishop’s Training Event. 400-500 Anglicans gather to explore different aspects of disciplemaking and receive practical training in the areas listed above. These days are a highlight of diocesan life.

INVESTING IN OPPORTUNITIES

So often in the church our best resources get spent on solving problems and dealing with conflict and difficulty. We decided to put our best resources into opportunities and growth, and this has become the sole focus of our Director of Ministry Development. This has led to a multiplication of innovation and growth. In the same way, the stance of the whole diocesan team is to support parishes, and enable partnerships where ministry is prioritised.

FUNDING FULL-TIME MINISTRY

We know that disciples are made by word and prayer. Under God we know that this depends in large part on the quality of the ministers that lead our Parishes. Over the last 8 years we have used our New Ministry Development Fund (built up from a percentage of the proceeds of property sales) to help eight parishes move from part-time or volunteer ministry to full-time stipends. It has been so encouraging to appoint full-time ministers to Parishes for the first time in over 20 years. Our hope is that with focussed ministry from well-trained clergy these parishes will see revitalisation. We are seeing some encouraging signs.

FOCUS RESOURCES

We didn’t really plan it this way, but the crisis of having to fund redress for sexual abuse has helped us focus our resources. In 2018 our decision to sell church properties to raise the necessary funds, providentially led to reducing the number of church centres in our rural Parishes which in turn has led to more sustainable Parish life. One Parish has reduced nine centres down to two and is now able to focus on its mission. The reduction of maintenance on buildings and the release of capital to support ministry has meant the expansion of real ministry in many places.

NEW MODELS OF MINISTRY

We have also explored new models for Parish ministry. In very small communities we have adopted a “community ministry” model led by local lay people, with occasional visits from clergy for the sacraments. One of these, on the idyllic Flinders Island, enjoys clergy coming to visit, where we supply a house and car in exchange for some Sunday ministry.

We have developed two “network parishes” where several parishes have been combined under one parish council, Rector, and leadership team, while retaining local ministry in different communities. This has the advantage of united vision, centralised administration, team leadership, but targeted engagement in each centre.

Some of our larger parishes have developed partnerships with smaller parishes to provide encouragement and support. In one place the Rector of the larger parish meets regularly with the Rectors of three smaller parishes for prayer and mutual encouragement. The larger parish sends a team once a month to help with music and children’s ministry.

CHURCH PLANTING

Lastly, we are working on congregation and church planting through our “Multiply Tas” team. With the help of City to City Australia, we have started a couple of new congregations in existing parishes and plans are afoot to plant new churches in the centre and northern suburbs of Hobart. Multiplication and innovation to make disciples is our goal.

We want to be a church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus, by reimagining parish structures in a variety of ways fit for a new generation of mission.

Richard Condie has been the Bishop of Tasmania since 2016.

Written by: Stephen Hale

The Future Of The Parish

This edition of Essentials is focussed on this pressing question. In it we explore a range of dimensions to this big question. As we all know things aren’t all that great in many, many, parishes. Given the Anglican Church is structured around the parish what might the future look like. I have previously written in Essentials about the forthcoming Great Collapse in the Autumn 2023 Edition.

There are lots of great articles here and all is not gloom and doom. Alongside of the many struggling churches there are lots of great stories of renewal and change in lots of different contexts. In this edition we feature a Diocesan perspective as well as a look at a range of models of what’s happening on the ground.

We recently held the National Evangelical Anglican Conference in Sydney. It was a wonderful Conference, and we were greatly blessed by the ministry of Rev Charlie Skrine from All Soul’s Langham Place as our international guest speaker. We hope to feature some of the talks in future editions.

STEPHEN HALE, LOCATION, EDITOR

Written by: Angela Chandler

Sing Lustily and with a Good Courage! ^[i]

Growing your church through a welcoming music ministry 

Most of my life has been spent in small to medium sized churches with limited resources and one main congregation catering for all ages. Although I have trained as a professional musician, one of my special areas of interest has been encouraging people to participate in communal music-making with whatever experience or skill they have. I have delighted in gathering together a community choir for carol services, hand drumming sessions at our after-school kids club, and nurturing the skills of young musicians in our church.

I am grateful for the reflections of some of the participants on their teenage experience in these activities over the years, which are included in this discussion.

Read more: Sing Lustily and with a Good Courage!

Written by: Alanna Glover and Philip Percival. © Emu Music

Have you ever watched the musical, the Wizard of Oz? I once read about the characters of Tinman and Scarecrow being used to depict the divide that seems to exist in much of our contemporary church music^[1]. In the story, Tinman has a brain, but not a heart; Scarecrow has a heart but not a brain; and so they follow the yellow brick road in order to find their missing pieces. Contemporary congregational music is often thought of in the same way. Some songs are ‘Tinman’ songs, they are rich in theology but fail to engage people’s emotions. Others are ‘Scarecrow’ songs that are emotive or catchy, but lack theological depth and end up stirring people through their melodies and experience rather than Biblical truth.

Read more: Engaging the Heart & the Mind