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The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Christian leaders join Dominic Steele for a deep end conversation about our hearts and different aspects of Christian ministry each Tuesday afternoon.
We share personally, pastorally and professionally about how we can best fulfill Jesus' mission to save the lost and serve the saints.
The discussion is broadcast live on Facebook then available in video on our website <u><b><a href="http://www.thepastorsheart.net">http://www.thepastorsheart.net</a></u></b> and via audio podcast.
The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele
Confronting the big attendance drop - with Toby Neal, Dave Jensen and Geoff Bates
What should the church pastor / staff team / church council or bishop do about the big drop in attendance?
A new report (bit.ly/AttendancePatterns) shows Adult Attendance in churches in Sydney is down 7% or 14% against population (over a decade).
Adult attendance declined at approximately two-thirds of Sydney Anglican comparable church centers, and only one-third of church centers recorded an increase in attendance.
The big problem is newcomers. We just are not reaching them. Newcomers are down to 5.4%.
And with fewer new people joining churches, the churches that are growing are primarily growing at the expense of churches that are declining.
A noticeable decline in attendance was recorded in 2018-2019, especially in the most rapidly secularising areas of our region.
The issues are not just external. We have internal issues. There are denominational and congregational factors at play. There are key church health characteristics that show internal health factors are lower in those regions - factors relating to congregational character and leadership.
Geoff Bates pastors Life church in Sydney’s North West and chairs the committee that produced the Attendance Patterns Review report.
Toby Neal pastors Vine Church in inner Sydney, which has seen remarkable growth.
Dave Jensen works at assisting churches to grow in their evangelistic temperature through Evangelism and New Churches.
Host Dominic Steele also served on the committee that produced the report.
Church Suite Taster Days in Sydney and Brisbane
Check out the new church management software ChurchSuite. Gavin and Luke are hosting five taster days in Sydney and Brisbane in November.
Assistant Minister role at Village Church Annandale, Sydney
Village Church is looking for an assistant minister. Perhaps it’s you or you know someone? Could you lead our mission outreach and the ministry aspect. Plus help set vision and in preaching and pastoral care. For more info or to have a coffee email dominic@villagechurch.sydney
The Church Co
http://www.thechurchco.com is an excellent website and app platform built specifically for churches.
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There is a problem and there's something we can do Today, confronting information on church attendance. What should the church pastor do? The staff team, the church council, the bishop and other denominational leaders Jeff Bates, toby Neal and David Jensen are our guests. It's the pastor's heart and my name's Dominic Steele. If you're in church leadership anywhere, this discussion will be helpful for you to watch with your leadership team, for there's every chance your issues will be similar.
Speaker 1:Adult attendance in churches in Sydney is down 7% or 14% against population. Over a decade, adult attendance declined at approximately two-thirds of Sydney Anglican comparable church centres and only one-third of church centres recorded an increase in attendance. The big problem is newcomers. We are just not reaching them. Newcomers are down to 5.4% and with fewer new people joining churches, the churches that are growing are primarily growing at the expense of churches that are declining. A noticeable decline in attendance was recorded in 2018 and 19, especially in the most rapidly secularising sections of the region.
Speaker 1:But and this is the major revelation of the report the issues are not just external. We have internal issues. There are denominational and congregational factors at play. There are key church health characteristics that show that internal health factors are lower in those regions that declined factors relating to congregational character and leadership. And there's something surprising going on with large churches. We had 21 large churches churches of over 400 in Sydney a decade ago. There are now only 11.
Speaker 1:We are joined by a panel of experts. Geoff Bates pastors a large church in northwest Sydney, a church that's declined, but that's because he's planted a stack of other churches in his local area. He chairs the committee that has produced the report and we've linked to that report in our show notes. Toby Neal is pastor of an inner city church in Sydney that's seen remarkable growth and David Jensen has a new role, working to assist churches to grow in their evangelistic temperature and a disclosure. I assisted Geoff serving on the committee that produced this report. Geoff Bates, if we could start with you and your pastor's heart as you looked at this, data showing two-thirds of churches led by friends and peers have declined.
Speaker 2:Well, I actually internalised it. I thought, wow, this is serious. We finally got a report that tells us what the situation is and it's reliable. And it caused me to pray about what should I do? How should I help my church grow in this season ahead of us? The thing that confronted me was we're on this cliff or edge and baby boomers in the next 20 years, like myself, we're going to fall off the perch and go to glory and we're going to hit a crisis very soon. And it just confronted me. Lord, I need some help. Could you work in me and my church, your pastor's heart?
Speaker 3:Tavi Neal. Well, I think we're in ministry because we want to see people saved and the reports revealing our newcomer numbers are down, and that's why we're in ministry. We want to see people saved from hell and brought into Jesus' kingdom, and that's happening in far less. It's happening far less and I think we're in ministry because of that, and it burdens our hearts that as a network, a diocese, we're doing a worse job at that and we need to do something different. We need to face some hard realities and make the changes necessary in order to, as Paul says, he did all things for all people that he might save some.
Speaker 3:Obviously, god's sovereign, he's the one that actually saves people, but God uses us as his instruments to proclaim the gospel and bring people to life, and that's not happening. We're seeing the church decline to proclaim the gospel and bring people to life, and that's not happening. We're seeing the church decline. You know Jeff talks about a cliff and that's my fear that, yeah, christianity could be dead in 100 years in Sydney. That would be a tragedy. It is dead in many parts of Europe and we in Sydney have this rich, passionate gospel theology that should bequeath us just this gospel urgency and an effectiveness there, but we're not seeing that and that troubles me deeply.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Dave Jensen, your pastor's heart.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I find reports with numbers and statistics very difficult. I've failed maths in society Year 12, I'm terrible. I've failed maths in society Year 12, I'm terrible. I've got maths dyslexia.
Speaker 4:Every time I find myself callous in heart, which is often about non-Christian people, which is often what I do is I imagine the person I love the most who's not a Christian, and the eternity they are facing. And I imagine a scenario where they for some reason entered into a church that I wasn't there. You know. They came in, they visited, and what experience would I want them to have? How would I want them to be treated? What would I want them to hear? How would I want them to be treated? What would I want them to hear? How would I want them to relate?
Speaker 4:And I want that emotion and I'm getting emotional now thinking about that I want that emotion to drive my understanding of the reality spiritually in our churches and our evangelistic malady.
Speaker 4:And I think that all of us are here, you know, and I'm sure many of the people watching are here, as Toby said, because we want to see people saved, but we've got to remember, in the midst of the numbers, that these are human beings, these are people with names and I don't want them to go to hell. And I know that if I don't push myself and urge myself to feel deeply about that, then well, it's hard to get out of bed to do anything about it. But I want to remind myself, I've got a feel for it. I want a feel, I want it to hurt. And so in the midst of the numbers, there's a great pain of the millions of people we're around, many of whom we know and love, who don't know Jesus, and that we can do whatever it takes, whatever it takes to see these people won for Christ. Well, I want to do that yeah.
Speaker 1:The report analyzes the factors that have contributed to this decline under four main headings national headings, local community headings, congregational and denominational headings essentially external factors and internal factors. Now we want to say God is in control, but there are some things that we can do. Actually, just before we get to what we can do, we'll just put up on the screen, the um, the graph of breakdown of attendance change by regions, because you'll be able to see on the screen there and if you're listening to us, you want to head over to um thepastorsheartnet and pick this up and pick up the various graphs we're going to show you'll see a much bigger drop in the north shore of Sydney and in the Wollongong area to the south of Sydney, whereas actually attendance has been more or less stable or not dropped quite as much in the other three parts of Sydney the west, the southwest and the inner west, the eastern suburbs, the South Sydney region. Now, that was initially quite surprising to me. What was your reaction to that?
Speaker 3:Toby, it's interesting that, as you read through the report, there are many churches that are growing.
Speaker 3:It's not one or two, but there's a bunch of them that are growing more than 20% in the last 10 years, but then there's 60 or something percent of churches which have declined, and you know, for me that's telling. You know, it's not like just the soils change all the way across Sydney. No church is doing well and therefore this is just the new normal that we have to cope with. It's like, no, some churches are seeing significant growth people becoming Christians and then others aren't, and for me that creates a learning opportunity. What are those churches doing that is seeing people come to know Jesus. What can we learn from them?
Speaker 3:It's not hopeless, and there aren't a few churches with particularly gifted leaders that are seeing that growth. There's a bunch of them. And so what's going on there that we can learn from? So for me there's a lot of hope in the report. It's not like everything's bad. No church is doing well. It's every church going downhill. There's a bunch of churches that are seeing growth. So what are they doing well? What can we learn from? For me, that's one of the most interesting things I saw in the report.
Speaker 1:David, your reaction to the issues in Wollongong and the North Shore versus the other regions.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the reason you're surprised and I'll just translate it for non-Sydney people is that and the reason it probably surprised us is that if you know Sydney, you will know that traditionally we've thought of the North Shore as a kind of Bible Belt.
Speaker 4:It's not Hills Bible Belt but it's Bible Belt-ish and the Hills is part of it, of course. And then Wollongong as well is a region in the Anglican Diocese of great, strong churches, very close-knit, those type of things, and certainly not a Bible Belt, but not what it isn't. It's not the inner west where we are now, which anyone who knows Sydney will know would be the place we would say traditionally would be the least likely for Christians. It's the most liberal, the most left-leaning politically, those sort of things. So I love this statistic, I love it. I don't love that it's declined, but what I love is that it points us to the lie of blaming the soil Because we're seeing churches in now. This might be embarrassing for you, dominic, but I don't even care. We're seeing churches in Annandale, where we are right now, an area that is very liberal, very left-leaning, and we're in a church building that 40 years ago was almost empty and dead and yet which has seen revitalisation, new converts every year, people becoming Christians. Why is it? Annandale is suddenly the hotbed of revival in Sydney. Get out of here. You know it's not that whatsoever, and I'm sitting next to Toby at Surrey Hills, which we all know is an incredibly difficult, hard area politically, you would think not an area open to Christianity, and yet you're in a church where you've seen enormous growth.
Speaker 4:Now what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that primarily, it's not a soil issue. There's something internal happening and that is hope producing. Because if it's soil, well, there's very little we can do about that. It feels like, oh, that's beyond us. But if it's actually internal, that's man, we can do something about that. We can learn from the guys who are growing in tough areas like the inner west, and we can apply those things in Wollongong and the North Shore. So, yeah, I get encouraged by it and I think it's just a further evidence that blaming the soil is just super unhelpful. I just don't think it's true. I think it's evidently untrue. We've got people in hard areas who are growing churches, people in areas that we would have thought of previously easier, who are finding it more difficult. So we just need to get right to the core of the issue, of what's really going on. I think that points us to the fact that it's not the soil.
Speaker 1:I mean it was the case. One of the things we discovered we looked in all of the 26 mission areas of Sydney and in every single one or not quite every single one, but almost every single one there were three or four churches that had grown by 20% over the 10 years 20% or more and there were six or eight churches that had declined by more than 20% or more.
Speaker 4:So in the same soil, there were different churches getting radically different results and I've got to say listen, one of the things we'll talk about is transfer growth and conversion growth, and we need to talk about that.
Speaker 4:But I've got the privilege now in my job for Evangelism new churches I get to visit a lot of churches and the good news, the amazing news that we need to hold on to, is that thousands and thousands of people become Christians in Sydney, in Sydney Anglican churches every year, in every suburb and in every postcode I'll use postcode, not suburb, maybe in every postcode, and God is not done with Sydney by a long shot. There are thousands of us becoming Christians, and in the most light, from the east, south, northwest, all over. And so it is about, I think, learning with humility from the people who are doing well, having the humility to go. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing, maybe I'm not doing this as well as I would like to instinctively believe, I need to learn from others and that kind of thing, but just that there's a great hope there and I think that data backs that up.
Speaker 1:I mean, one of the recommendations in the report is that a church that has dropped by 20% over the decade should have a consultation, an external consultation. Come and look at that Now. I know you've had a church consultation and you've had a church. I mean you're not in the dropping 20% category, but was it helpful?
Speaker 3:I think all the churches need to be having consultations because, I mean, I was having a chat with you recently, dominic, and like, our churches have grown, we are seeing newcomers, but we're constantly pulling our hair out going what could we be doing better? Because we don't want to see a few people becoming Christians, we want to see hundreds of people becoming Christians. You're not complacent, I'm not complacent, and I'm constantly trying to work out what's the obstacle. How do we see more people? How do we increase the vitality of the Christians? How are they growing? How can we increase the vitality of the Christians? How are they growing? How can we present them fully mature in Christ? So there's this. I think the big issue is a complacency among ministers. So for me, it's not those who've declined 20% should be doing consults. We all should, because how are we going to reach our city Like we all got to be constantly learning, passionate about seeing our churches grow. So yeah, that's my view.
Speaker 1:Well, Toby's put it on the table. Complacency among ministers, Geoff.
Speaker 2:First of all, when you have a consultation, it's uncomfortable because you're confronted, and this report has also made us confronted. Hey, things need to change, and if it's Northern Region or Wollongong, we just can't do things the way we used to. We need to invest particularly into the senior minister and help him to change things the culture of the church and outreach. We don't want anyone to be asleep at the wheel. This is not a blame game. We just want to empower me as a minister, but others, to do the task God's called us to do, and that is to bring Jesus to the community we are a part of. And so how do we do that?
Speaker 2:We need to see the facts. Things are going down Well. Don't play church. Let's think about how we might reach the community we're part of. How are we going to grow the church? How are we going to grow people in maturity? Keep that at the forefront of our thinking so that I don't get distracted with all the other things that come on my plate during the week. So the report's been really helpful to confront me. And also consultation Okay, keep that in mind. Keep it the foremost thing that I should be doing.
Speaker 4:You know they say you're always the last person to know that you've got bad breath. Everyone else knows you've got it, but what do you do about it? When someone says here's a mint, you know, here's a piece of extra, do you say no, thanks, I don't have bad breath, I don't care what you think. Or, even though it hurts, you go thanks and you take it. And I think there's a part of this report which is hey, we've got bad breath here. The reality of the situation is that things aren't okay and pretending that a decline is actually either not a decline, that the stats are wrong somehow, or that it's under the sovereign will of God, we have no part to play in this, no burden to bear in it. I think it's unbiblical, I think it's deeply unhelpful, I think it's a deep critical misreading of reality. I think it's as you said, toby, and I'll again use you as an example to say you said something you said.
Speaker 4:Even though we're going through growth, I'm constantly asking what can we do better? I would offer that, knowing you personally, you're not asking what can we do better, you're asking before that, what can I do better? What am I doing? That is, can I be 1% better 5%. Is it possible that if Charles Spurgeon was in my parish right now, he'd do a better job than me? Okay, if so, what do I need to do to be more like that? How do I? And so that divine discontent that we don't use to depress, but rather to spur us on? Um, I think that is a, I think it's a wonderful gift of god, but we need someone and this report does it for us to to be the reality check, and that's wisdom, to understand reality, to ooh, but we can fix it. There's a mint, have a mint, take it, and we can learn from one another in how to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, another confronting factor is I mean, we have talked about the fact that, across the city, there are some churches that are growing and, in the same region, some churches that are declining. The churches that are growing, though, are performing more strongly on transfers switching in transfers from within the denomination or switches from the other denominations than they are in newcomer growth, and so, even if my church is growing, there's no reason for me to be complacent here.
Speaker 4:Oh, big time. Transfer growth is a fascinating thing to talk about, because we can often use it as a bit of a piñata battering ram like oh well, it's not real. And I want to say no, no, no. Transfer growth, or rescue growth, or your ability to take in transfer growth, says something powerful about your church. And, by the way, if these people are leaving churches and they're not landing where you are, where are they going?
Speaker 4:You know we want to welcome them well, but also that what you'll identify and this has been my experience, never as a rector, but as an assistant who's worked at small and big churches in a range of different contexts, but being able to just observe patterns of how churches are reaching more and more people is that churches that have transfer growth, they usually are experiencing that transfer growth for one reason above all others, and that is that their people are inviting people they know to join their church. Why? Because they love their church. So they've got a mate who's struggling at X, y and Z church, or they've moved to the area and they say, oh, you've got to come, come with us, come join us. And so transfer of growth is certainly not something you know. We need to identify it for what it is and not pretend it's not what it is.
Speaker 4:But also, I think we have a lot to learn from churches that experience transfer of growth to go. Hey, they're obviously doing something right because Christians are choosing to join their churches. Now, what they do with those transfers, when they get them, is critical, that we need to make sure we utilise them missionally. But it's an important thing. Toby, we've chatted about this before. Did I miss anything?
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting. In your introduction, dominic, you said that churches that are growing are growing at the expense of the other churches, and I just want to protest that language because I think our city is very transient. We have people moving all over the place. Covid accelerated the move away from the city back to the suburbs. In our church, one third of the people are new within the last two years, and then two thirds have been new in the last five years, so we have enormous transfer growth just because of our area being such a highly mobile area.
Speaker 1:We would be similar.
Speaker 3:You'd be similar and we not only have transfer coming in but a lot of transfer going out, so to maintain net growth is very difficult.
Speaker 1:You've got to paddle as fast as you can just you do.
Speaker 3:But my, my question is we're receiving people who come to us as they leave us. Are they finding churches where they're, where they find it easier to belong and grow, or are they rebounding out of those are not going to church? And I think if we're not good at transfer growth, we have no hope in hell of being good at newcomer growth.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely right.
Speaker 3:Because if Christians don't want to join us, then how are we going to see non-Christians want?
Speaker 1:to join us. Well, one of the things we found in the report and we'll put this graph up on the screen. It shows the growing churches have really, really strongly agree on strong, growing sense of belonging and that a growing church has a whole lot of people who say I like coming.
Speaker 4:Big time, and this is the most natural thing in the world and we just know it, We've all experienced it, God willing that if you're loving church, you will be far more prone to being both missional and willing to invite friends who are Christians, or move into the area or whatever, to join because you're loving it. And what makes you love church? Well, that sense of belonging absolutely and this is what the data also shows is that what makes people have that greater sense of belonging isn't community events that's part of it but it's that they're challenged through the word of God.
Speaker 4:They're being stretched through the preaching, through the small groups.
Speaker 1:Let's just go through them. The first one is and we'll put this one up on the screen the growing churches have clearly got preaching helpful to life, and so it's the word of God that actually shows me how to live. Toby, how do you do it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the difference between, I think, teaching a text, you know, just expositing it, but actually taking what God has said and saying it again to God's people today with a purpose. That, how you know, In our preaching we need to shake people. This is where God's taking you, and so we need that gospel-centered, Christ-exalting vision in our preaching. It needs to drip with a vision for life, a vision for discipleship, a vision for the lost, a vision for the Christian life which actually grips people and moves them so that they want to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1:I mean that flows out in these next couple of them Growth in understanding of God at church. There's another one of being challenged to take action through church and then, interestingly, strongly committed to the church's vision and goals and confident the church's vision and goals and confident the church's vision and goals are achievable. Let's go to Jeff here, because you've spent a lot of time thinking about vision and how you communicate that at church.
Speaker 2:Just a step back from that. When I'm preaching. I want to be changing, I want to be convicted, I want to be enthused and not just be a talking head at the front. If I want people to change, I want to start with me to change and be convicted to honour the Lord Jesus and grow his kingdom in my midst. So just that is important. And so, when it comes to vision, I want to believe it, I want to prioritise it, I want to be able to incorporate it in my preaching program and implement it in my teams. So it's not just I'm going to do it for one week a year and talk about vision. No, I've got to actually now put feet and hands and toes and everything else to it to make that vision work. And I've got to believe it and not just talk about it.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 3:I think this word vision sometimes trips us up, actually, because I think when we're thinking about vision, we think of the perfectly crafted vision statement by some kind of marketing professional, and that's not. I don't know whether that's not. It's just what is God calling us to be as disciples of Jesus, and why does this church exist theologically and you know, and is there an urgency? Do you really believe that? Are you impressing upon your people? So it's not something different. It's what we've been taught at Bible College. We teach the text with an urgency and a purpose and a drive to see people's lives changed by it. That's what I mean by vision, and I think vision sometimes gets a bad rap in our tribe and it's just like no, no, no. What is God calling us to be as Christians, and churches Preach that? That needs to permeate everything, and yeah, so yeah, I just think we need a correction there. We're not asking you to. You know. We don't need perfectly crafted vision statements. It's everything in church life, directing people to what God is doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so why are we not doing as well on the North Shore and in Wollongong on these things? Well if I can offer, what can we do?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so I'll just. I've had the opportunity over the last 10 years to. I've been an evangelism minister, mission pastor, in the western suburbs, central coast, overseas in Sydney, and through desperation, through really not knowing what I was doing, I dedicated myself to observing and learning from the brothers who were flourishing, you know, doing well and just trying to steal as much from them as I could. You know, just taking as much as I could and just going hey, what are they doing? And what's been fascinating for me is that over the last 10 years, not just in Australia but New Zealand, the UK, canada, to observe that the patterns that are at churches who see growth, whether that be London, sydney, you know, christchurch, wherever, there's always the same patterns. Now, how they contextualise those patterns are differently, but they prioritise the deep eternity patterns shaping perspective of the gospel in the lives of their people. So they don't sacrifice on the maturity of the saint that they they. They pour effort and energy into ensuring that the saints are being fed through the word, they're being stretched, but also that their churches are places where they can have strong, warm, community, a sense of belonging, those things. Number two they think carefully and considerately about how to engage non-Christians with the gospel. So they actually give a damn about the damned and they resource it appropriately. Most churches I've got to be completely frank here will give 1% resource to evangelism, 99% to other activities. We would never do that for Christians. I'm not saying we need seeker services, but we don't need seeker disservices either. You know, and that's the reality of the state of play. But the churches who see conversion growth it may be 10% resource, but they've actually thought carefully about how non-Christians are actually converted. But all of that is driven by the major pattern and I think this is the elephant in the room here, the emperor with the no clothes.
Speaker 4:Here the pattern that is always present at churches who see people converted and the saints growing is the leader. The leader who is a compass, an inner compass setting to the eternal realities of heaven and hell, of the consequences of what that means in edification and eternity, but also has the humility to admit that they don't know what they're doing and need help. And if you think you can nudge your way there, that you're, ah well, I'll vibe this, I'll just work it out. You can't, you won't, you haven't, and that will prevent you actually learning. But the guys who are doing it. They've got the humility to go. No, no, I need help. I want help. That's not shameful. I want to do that Now. I'm not making accusations about people in the north all willing gone, because I think this is present everywhere, but I do want to say that the leader who has the wherewithal to smell the breath and go, it's me, it's me, I can be, I've got, but I'm not going to buy, but I've got to learn. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Can I offer a possible? I think it's hard to work out what's going on in the north and in Wollongong, but those regions have experienced a far quicker secularisation in the last 10 years than other areas.
Speaker 4:They've caught up to the inner west. They've caught up to South Sydney and the inner west.
Speaker 3:And I wonder whether you know South Sydney region. We've been desperate so we've had to go. We need to do you know what can I change? How do I do this? And I wonder whether things have been good in Wollongong and the North Shore which has meant, oh, we just keep doing what we're doing. It's always worked, we don't really need to change much. And my question is now society's changed so significantly in those regions and it's impacting church life there, so it could be just the lack of need to be self-reflective in those regions, because they have been healthy, church-going areas. And this is the wake-up call that all of us are living desperately in a society walking away from Jesus. We need to give great attention to what we're doing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I just agree entirely with that. To say, hey, the Gong and North Shore. Well, one of the idols in those areas is comfort, money, pleasure and not dissimilar to South Sydney. So it's not politically left-leaning, there's money, but the secularisation of those areas is not brand new information to those in the inner west, is not brand new information to those in the inner west, but also for us in Sydney.
Speaker 4:I think that it's just taken away the shroud of nominalism. Nominalism is not the enemy. We can use nominalism. The people most likely to be converted are nominal Christians. So we want to grab them while we can.
Speaker 4:But I think we're just having reality displayed for us to go hey, the shroud of Christianity, of Christendom in this nation. It hasn't been here since the 1950s. We know that. So crack on. How have we done it in the past? Well, how do our churches who flourish? What do they do?
Speaker 4:They don't think anything will happen outside of their saints galvanised together. I think anything will happen outside of their saints galvanised together, working together as the family of God to bring people in. So they depend not on skywriting and letterbox dropping but on the saints bringing people. You can't just depend on opening church and having it happen. So I think yeah, I think there's alarming news for all of us, but there is great hope to say, hey, the church is in the hardest areas, that the one's growing, so we just need to learn. We need to learn from each other for all of us. But there is great hope to say, hey, the church is in the hardest areas of the ones growing, so we just need to learn. We need to learn from each other, and the churches in the hardest areas need to keep learning as well and keep being better.
Speaker 3:I have a friend who says the culture of Sydney Anglicans is we preach and pray and hope for the best. And it's great that we preach and pray. But there's more we need to be doing other than preaching and praying and we need to give great attention to how our churches are going. One of the things in a report is the challenge of being a senior leader. There's so many demands on us, but that is what leadership is and we need to give attention to all of those demands, because if we don't give appropriate attention to the things we need to in church life, we won't see the growth God's got for us.
Speaker 3:And I don't think the solution I mean I do think we need to be resourcing mission, but I don't think solution is just that because, as you said, belonging is one of the key correlates with the churches that are growing. So it's the entire system of church. Are our services actually enriching, inspiring, faith deepening for our Christians? And if that's not happening, that's going to have an impact on mission. And so there's this interplay between all the things that happen in church life. So the solution I don't think is fire all non-essential staff and just employ evangelists. That's not going to change this. You'd agree here, wouldn't you Certainly? But we certainly need to resource evangelism.
Speaker 3:But it's not as simply as just saying let's double down on evangelism.
Speaker 4:We need to give comprehensive yeah, we need to see people love church and love the loss, and we need to. Can I say that there is a pragmatic step to this, which is that we need to stop sucking at mission. So we need to go hey, who are the people, who are the churches seeing the most people converted? What are they doing and do that? It's not a silver bullet, it's a bronze fist. And you know what, as you get the bronze fist in, then over time, develop it, contextualise it.
Speaker 3:My point, though, is that that only works within a culture where everything else is attracting people Absolutely.
Speaker 4:If you do otherwise, it's sort of the PS on the end and mission. Okay, here's what it is. Mission doesn't create the healthy church. Mission benefits from the healthy church and that's mission heat, if you know that word, Mission heat is the church on fire for Jesus.
Speaker 3:So they're wanting to serve, they're wanting to use their gifts they're wanting to give.
Speaker 4:But I would also offer that I wouldn't say, hey, leave mission for five years, just work it, because I think mission is actually the way that you build a healthy church as well. So it's more attention to all those things, that's right.
Speaker 2:But understanding that your mission stuff will work best from the healthy church. The report said that churches under 100 and churches over 400 are the ones in the greater decline, and so you've asked the question what does the leadership need in those different situations to help them lift their game in outreach? And I think we need to really put our heads together. Maybe missionaries need to work on this, or maybe local churches get together and share resources and vision or staff, or something that will help these smaller churches and larger churches, because the ministers need help and I think they're the first cab off the rank that needs to work on this, and we've identified this. So if you're in a church of under 100, what do you need most to help you think about outreach. You might be thinking I've got to juggle too many, you know balls to keep going. How do we help that person to be focused? And maybe consultation, maybe conferences, maybe some help. We could, as a great denomination we have in diocese, we could get together and enable them, and the same with the larger churches.
Speaker 1:We are out of time and I want to say thank you to Jeff and to David and Toby for joining us today. Can I just encourage you to take the moment to read the Attendance Review Committee report there's lots of things to learn in it and then to encourage the leadership team in your church, having read that report, to watch this discussion and engage and work out what you're going to do differently. Jeff Bates is the Senior Minister of Life Anglican Church in Quakers Hill in the northwest of Sydney. David Jensen works for Evangelism and New Churches, encouraging evangelism across Sydney, and Toby Neill is the Senior Minister of Vine Church at Surrey Hills in the inner city of Sydney. My name is Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastor's Heart and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.
