Churches are generally losing ground in the western world. Some churches try new ways to make converts and build numbers, but how effective are they?
The Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia is determinedly evangelical, tending towards Reformation theology. It is one of the largest denominations in Sydney. In 2002 it began a decade long mission, and chose to continue the mission for another decade in 2013.
Rev Dr Martin Bragger is a retired Anglican minister who has studied the success of the missions and of the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican church generally, and has concluded that “we need to do something completely different”.
This summary of his conclusions is surely applicable and helpful for other churches in Australia, and probably elsewhere too.
Some unpalatable facts
Overall, the Anglican Church in Sydney would be seen as a successful church. The Bible College which trains its ministers is full. So is the Youthworks College which trains children’s and youth workers. Yet the broader statistics don’t look so good.
Net attendance
Net attendance grew at the same rate as population growth for the decade of the mission, but is now falling behind population growth.
Newcomers
If churches are to grow, they need to attract newcomers (defined in the statistics as people who weren’t attending any church five years ago). However the percentage of newcomers in Sydney Anglican churches reached a peak just before the start of the mission, at 12%, but it has since fallen steadily to less than 8%, and still falling.
Age profile
The age profile of Anglican churches is rising all the time, at a rate of about 3 years every 5 years. It is not surprising that the percentage of youth in congregations is declining.
Should we expect to be growing?
Many christians would think this question doesn’t need to be asked – of course we “should” be growing! But other christians may shrug their shoulders and say God is sovereign and it is all up to him.
It may be that western societies have had their chance and we are only going to see further decline in christianity in countries like Australia. It may be.
But surely our aim is to share the opportunity to be part of the kingdom of God with whoever will listen, even if our expectations are not high?
We work so hard, why do we struggle?
The “SIC” church model
Church programs are too often….
- Sunday-centric – which doesn’t suit large numbers of people these days, who work, play sport or visit family on Sundays.
- In-drag – waiting for newcomers to come to us rather than going out to where they are.
- Christendom form – our form of church, with its christian rituals (e.g. singing together or sitting passively in pews listening to long sermons), christian jargon (e.g. the words of songs) and the architecture of many churches, were generally developed in the period where Christianity was the only religion, and followed, at least nominally, buy most of society (i.e. Christendom). They are not always meaningful in today’s world.
The more and better delusion
Mission strategies haven’t changed all that much in decades, yet there seems to be the expectation that if we keep doing more of the same, only somehow “better”, we will get a different result.
Albert Einstein apparently said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
A love affair with square wheels
Bicycles with square wheels are not suited to the world we live in, and won’t take us very far. Many of our traditional structures and methods are similar.
Resource allocation
If we do a tally of the funds or the time spent in our churches, it is likely that most resources are spent maintaining the existing structures – buy and maintaining buildings, paying staff, keeping equipment up-to-date, etc.
Yet very little of this is effective in carrying out the mission to serve people and share good news with them. We are investing our resources selfishly and ineffectively if we want the kingdom of God to grow.
A cultural intelligence deficit
Christians have too often failed to understand the times. There is a large gap between the Christendom practices we have inherited and so easily still follow, and where 20th century western societies are, as this table shows.
| Christendom | 21st century Australia |
|---|---|
| Ethnically and linguistically homogeneous. | Ethically and linguistically diverse – 26% born overseas. European ethnicity is shrinking as a proportion. |
| Most people went to church (95% in 1918). | Few go to church (<10%). We are experiencing “the rampant collapse of religious affiliation”. |
| Biblical worldview (even if subconscious). | Biblical worldview has disappeared and Biblical knowledge is poor. |
| Church the centre and integrating hub of community life. | The church is on the retreating periphery of a society increasingly hostile to it. |
| Everyone worked locally and not on Sundays | “Work and play” micro-village activity has consumed Sunday. |
| Church structures and ministries aimed at maintenance of congregation, not mission. | |
| Change was so slow as to be imperceptible. | Change is rapid, ongoing and accelerating. |
Sydney is now a “kaleidoscope of Live, Work and Play micro-comunities”, a mosaic of mostly pagan tribes. The church lives in a parallel universe that is hardly connected.
We need a new mindset.
We need to do something completely different (if we want the kingdom of God to grow).
“Unpalatable though it may be, the current [conventional] church structure has not been for over 20 years, is not, nor on its own can it be made to be, capable of achieving trend-reversing missional goals.”
Thinking differently
The following pages offer ways forward.
For more information, visit Martin Bragger’s Unbounded Church website.
Photo by Vladimir Kudinov on Unsplash, with some modifications.