The last three years have been extra-ordinary. Extra-ordinary for two reasons.
First because of what I've been privileged to watch God do in the last three years. He has done great things.
Secondly, though, because of how deeply he has imprinted lessons in me, lessons I already knew but now know more firmly, and with greater conviction. The lessons I'm talking about are old ones but enormously important. Ones like the importance of the ministry of the word, the desperate need of people for that word, and too , the enormous riches within Sydney evangelicalism.
Our relationship with the church on the Central Coast started some 12 years ago with what, in hindsight, appears prophetic but in reality was probably just youthful enthusiasm. My wife and I were holidaying on the Coast and had been reading of the staggering growth rate the Coast was enjoying (around 5%). It made us aware of the needs the place would have in the years to come for a growth in gospel ministry. One day when we were driving out of Erina Fair (the major shopping centre on the Coast), I leant across to Cathie and said "that's where we're going to plant a church"! She, of course, wondered what on earth I was talking about. Looking back, I wonder what I was talking about too! And yet 12 years later here we are having planted a church at Erina (not quite where I said but at least in the same suburb). As we think back to that day we shake our heads in wonder.
Over the years we talked to a lot of people. We found we weren't the only ones aware of the massive needs on the Coast. Others had seen them years before and seen the seriousness of the need far more than we had. Over a period of time, under God, a group of these like-minded people came together. During 1995 that group formed loosely into a board who undertook to make the church plant a reality.
The church itself began in February 1996. While I was assistant minister at Gladesville, my wife and I and another couple travelled to the Coast and started our first Bible Study group in a house at Ourimbah. At the 1st meeting 17 people came - 8 of whom I knew beforehand and had encouraged to join up with us with the aim of being partners in establishing the church. The others were people who, one way or another, had heard about our venture. I have to say here that there is no substitute for wide publicity. We received a lot of media attention (most of it prompted by negative reaction to what we were doing), but as they say 'any publicity is good publicity' and God used it to let people know we were around. I don't think there's been a church planted in the history of humanity which enjoyed so much media promotion. As a result there were people just waiting for it to happen.
From the beginning we started with a very clear goal - to establish a Bible teaching ministry that would put a fire in people's hearts for gospel work. And so we met regularly to look at the Bible. At first we met fortnightly at Ourimbah. We did that for 3 months travelling up from Gladesville for each meeting. In that time we averaged around 17.
Eventually, however, we needed to make our meetings more accessable to strangers and so we moved it to a classroom at Erina High school. This was also the place we intended to hold our Sunday meetings.
Than in August 1996 we had our first Sunday morning church service.
At that first service 45 adults came, 12 of whom we probably shouldn't count since they were young people from Gladesville come to run our children's ministry! They helped enormously however and continued with us for four months. All of which enabled us to not only run a parallel children's ministry but meet regularly around the word with those who became our core.
In effect, we therefore started with around 30 Central Coast people. Now, two years later, we average on Sunday mornings 190 adults (with over 120 kids looked after in 6 Sunday school classes). We also have a night service with around 75 young adults. We have a Friday night youth program, seniors group, mid week women's ministry and a small group network with around 120 people.
We have come a long way!
Of course, numbers aren't everything, but they are some evidence God has done great things. In the midst of all this we have seen people converted. Revival hasn't broken out yet, but around 15 people have come into the kingdom. Let me tell you about just one of them.
Very early in our life as we met on Mondays we had something of an argument. We were studying 2 Corinthians and considering the issue of tolerance. I had suggested we ought not tolerate teaching that adds works to grace. Surprisingly this caused a disagreement. People felt it was too narrow and divisive to suggest adding works to Grace destroyed grace. (It was a difficult time given that we were working hard to get a core of people together and now sensed significant fragmentation of that core over a fundamental issue).
However good always comes from standing for the truth of the gospel. Within the group was a lady called Wendy who later told us all that that was the first time she had ever heard you are saved by what God does for you, not your own works. She said it was like a bomb going off in her head. She told us later it put her in such a spin she didn't know how she drove home that night! Three months later I sat in her dining room and led her husband to Christ. They now host a Bible Study group in their home. God has done great things!
Along with conversions, we have seen people returning to church after years away. It seems for many they just gave up on church. We have seen others come to understand the implications of Christ's death in new and deeper ways. For many it has led to profound changes in their lives.
In all this, let me assure you, we have done nothing special. We have had no great tricks to bring it all about. We have been doing what most of you do every week. We proclaim Jesus from the Scriptures, We urge people to live in light of that word and we pray. God has given the growth. In our circumstances, quite dramatically.
It has led me to ask a number of times - why here, why now? There are probably a number of reasons, however one obvious one stands out.
The Central Coast is full of starving people. They are starved of the word. The place is full of people crying out for Bible teaching ministries.
The Central Coast continues to be a massive growth area. There are 250,000 people on the Coast... 150,000 in the central region north of Brisbane Waters and below Tuggerah lakes. It continues to grow at around 5000 per year. The churches on the Coast have simply not kept pace. And gospel-proclaiming, Bible-based churches are few and far between.
Don't get me wrong, there are good churches on the Central Coast. They are working hard. But there are very, very few where people can go and be taught the Bible, where they can go and find the Bible, the word of God, at the centre of what is going on in church. Many places have the Bible. But it is just one ministry option among many. There's the Bible, but there's also worship, there's also counselling, there's also spiritual experiences, there's also... In it all, the ministry of expounding the Scriptures some how gets shifted off centre stage. My impression is it's getting worse. More and more feel it is too limiting.
As a result what we do is remarkable. I mean this in the sense that it is worthy of remark. This is not just my impression but rather a weekly experience. People come and remark on what is happening. They say they have never heard a Bible passage explained before. They say they have never heard the great Reformation statements (faith alone, Grace alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone) taught and applied. All of this means what we do is remarkable. For example, after a sermon on Philippians 2, someone remarked they had not heard a sermon on Jesus for 8 months. I said it was unfortunate they weren't able to get to a church in all that time. They said they'd been going to a church all that time!! I didn't know what to say. I simply couldn't believe it. Yet it was true.
As a consequence, our church has been a magnet for people who are starving of the word. They come under the word and they blossom.
I hasten to say again. We have done nothing special or unusual. We have simply given ourselves to the exposition of the Scriptures and prayer.
I don't think anyone could live through this experience and not be impacted by it. Three things...
I am more fully committed to preaching the word as the centre pin, foundation, heartbeat of church ministry. It cannot simply be one ministry among many. It must be the ministry upon which all else is built and fuelled. I knew this before but while in Sydney it is so easy to think you need something more to make inroads into the pagan world. You can drive 10 minutes in any direction and find someone expounding the Scriptures. To attract attention in Sydney it seems you have to do something more than this. As a result we forget the significance of the ministry of the word. It is different on the Coast. Here it's a desert. The evidence of light topical preaching is everywhere. People are starved for a regular expositional ministry of the word. There is no better testimony for the foolishness of being distracted from Bible ministry than the hunger of people who have lost it and long for it.
Secondly you can't be involved in what we have done and imagine planting Bible-based churches will be without pain or controversy.
Planting churches is by it's very nature controversial and threatening.
When a new church appears near you, a very human response is to fear the impact it will have on your own ministry. You will feel judged. Does their arrival mean they think we can't do it ourselves?
Our arrival quite naturally aroused all these reactions. The local press, because of what others said of me, labelled me "the sinister minister on the Central Coast".
Rumours circulated, not maliciously, just as a reaction to these fears. They tended to look for and seize on any negative they could find. I heard through the grapevine I had been kicked out Sydney because I was married to a woman who was divorced. I heard I had never received a theological degree. I heard I didn't believe we could have an security in our relationship with God. My favourite was one some friends heard at a local party. Apparently I wrote to all the churches on the Central Coast and said if they gave us two families to help get started we would reimburse them for any lost offertory! I just wish we had that much money! (Actually another rumour was we had been given a million dollars - I wish!).
Now we tried to smooth over these fears. We met with Pressies, Baptists, Churches of Christ, Anglicans. There is no doubt we could have done it better. But I have to say the last 3 years have taught me there will always be people who are negative. No matter what we did or how we did it there would be those thoroughly opposed to it. This is in part because there are many who do not share our passion for the lost, or see the massive need that cannot be reached by the small numbers of churches already established.
The fact is, if we wait for the negative feeling to go away, if we wait for people to be won over to thinking planting churches is a good idea, we might as well decide now not to do it.
The controversy with us however has been greater than normal. I am an ordained Anglican minister running a church in a diocese without a licence from the Bishop of that diocese. To my knowledge this is the first time this has happened in Australia (although it has happened in England and has happened again at Bathurst).
This fact has caused enormous stress amongst Anglicans on the Coast (and wider afield). In fact the Bishop of Newcastle wrote an open letter to all the Anglican churches on the Central Coast.
Early on we met with the Anglican ministers on the Coast. Brian Telfer, John Woodhouse and I spent an evening with them. It was very heated. But as we talked, it became more and more obvious we share so little in common. It confirmed us in the need to act. One minister was concerned we were not a real church. We had no bishop. He felt we would cause great damage to people who may come to us thinking we were a real church only to find we were something less. Ultimately one minister admitted to me his great fear was the loss of protection our arrival would mean. He perceived Anglicans on the Coast had enjoyed a monopoly for a long time and with our arrival there would be a viable option for Evangelicals moving north.
In all of this it must be said almost no one has come to us from Anglican churches. People who want what we are offering do not usually go to Anglican church up here. They end up in Baptist churches, or AOG churches or... If the Anglican church up here is struggling and in danger of sinking our arrival has had little to do making things worse.
All of this has taught me we can't plant churches withoutcontroversy.
Lastly let me say, it has taught me, or rather reinforced in me, the enormous value of Sydney evangelical Anglicanism. It gets terrible press from all kinds places but its commitment to the word, its depth of insight theologically, its ranks of godly men, women... you are blessed!
There is a great deal to do in Sydney I know. Churches need to be planted here. But compared to the resources to achieve that task elsewhere, you are brimming over. We, who are outside of the Diocese of Sydney, we need people, people who know importance of the word of God, we need them to leave Sydney and come North - or anywhere! People all over the Central Coast, and I know elsewhere, are starving, starving of word based ministry.
I'll finish with a quick story.
We have an 80 year old man in our congregation. He went to a church dinner at Gladesville. He got up because he wanted to say something. He wanted to say thank you for establishing this Bible ministry on the Coast. That was special. He said how desperately areas like the Central Coast needed Bible-based churches. But I tell you, he said it with tears in his eyes so deep was his gratitude.
In hindsight we might have done some things differently. But however we do it, we have got to keep doing it.
Andrew Heard is the founding pastor of the Central Coast Evangelical Church.
This address was given to the Annual General Meeting of the Anglican Church League in July 1998.
In this format, © Anglican Church League.
Document added 21 October 1998.
