What must not change in a changing Church.
Those with long memories might have picked up an echo of a talk given by a former President of the ACL, Broughton Knox - "What must not change in a changing ministry".
The point of that address was that no matter how else the ministry may change to meet changing circumstances, the fundamental role of a minister in the church must never change. That role he described as teaching and proclamation -
"Teaching of the whole counsel of God, that is, the giving to Christians a Christian world view and the drawing out of the implications of this for daily life, and secondly, the calling out of the people of God by the proclamation of the kingdom of God, that is, the rule of God, made clear in the victory of Christ crucified at Calvary, and in his resurrection, and in the coming of Christ as king and judge.
For this proclamation, prayer is essential and essential for true and relevant teaching is not only prayer but also solid preparation and study".
I particularly wanted to remind you of Broughton Knox and his unswerving commitment to biblical Christianity because I and many here tonight owe to him such a debt as teacher and friend that it would be a shame if his memory and influence were to be lost.
I would like to suggest that the Anglican Church League and perhaps the authorities at Moore College give consideration to the inauguration of a Broughton Knox Memorial Lecture to perpetuate his memory and his unique insights into the Christian faith. I raise this as a suggestion in the hope that someone may think the idea worthy of serious exploration.
The title of my address is: "What must not change in a changing Church?"
I use the term "Church" in its popular sense to refer to the denomination we belong to and the parish life it creates.
To suggest that our denomination is changing might seem a little strange to some who feel it doesn't change enough, but we have to acknowledge that despite the natural inertia of large, old institutions great change is occurring even within the Anglican Church of Australia and our own diocese.
1. The National Church
Let me first consider the national Church. Remember, this is a federation of 24 dioceses linked by a constitution declared by the courts to be of little binding force in what it can require but of significant force in what it can allow.
Meetings of the General Synod over recent years have resulted in fundamental changes in the ordained ministry of our Church. Some dioceses have ordained women to the presbyterate, others have not. No longer is there a uniform and potentially interchangeable ministry for our Church. This is a major change.
This month the General Synod adopted the new A Prayer Book for Australia. This represents another change of massive proportions. This new book revives pre-Reformation ceremonies such as the use of holy water at funerals, the anointing with oil at baptisms, absolution with the sign of the cross and restored services discarded at the Reformation. In the Holy Communion a consecration prayer admits the suggestion of the real presence with the Benedictus Que Venit and worse still the idea of a spiritual sacrifice other than of ourselves and our souls and bodies.
Much of the years of hard and courageous work by our former Archbishop Donald Robinson in helping to produce An Australian Prayer Book (1978) in a form which preserved the standard of doctrine and worship from BCP and the 39 Articles and in a form the whole Church could support has now been lost with this new book.
The leading Anglo-catholic bishop said to me after the decision to accept the book had been taken, "I feel like a cat looking into an empty cage" and at the conclusion of the debate he said to the Synod that, like Adolf Hitler, he had no more territorial ambitions.
Words cannot express the disappointment many of us felt at the passing of that book as an ordinary bill.
Clearly the present character of the Anglican Church of Australia is vastly different from that of the reformed Church of England reflected in the 39 Articles, BCP and even the Constitution of 1961. The safeguards proffered as reasons why Sydney should adopt that constitution have proved to be no safeguards at all.
The great danger facing Sydney can be described, as one of our bishops did in relation to the new prayer book, as a problem of "creep". By that is meant gradual change at the edges, supported out of a spirit of co-operation with the national Church, which will continue to erode Sydney's loyalty to the primacy of Scripture and then suck her into the swamp of syncretism and liberalism.
And what has been the result of this liberal catholic ascendancy in the national Church? The figures are now out. Based on the National Church Life Survey and other statistics provided by the dioceses, attendances in Anglican churches have now fallen below 1% of the Australian population - around 140,000 out of 18 million.
This is a revelation of abject and catastrophic failure!
There is worse to come. The age profile is such that within 10 to 15 years this already disastrously low level of support will drop by half as a predominantly aged membership dies off.
But at the recent General Synod, apart from a brief debate on evangelism, there was no evidence of awareness, let alone concern, at this calamitous state of affairs. While the Synod busied itself on a prayer book that will do nothing to stem the decline, legislation of a purely housekeeping kind and mostly motherhood motions, yet another opportunity to arouse a sleeping Church to its mortal danger was lost.
Yes, the national Church is changing and for the worse. Liberalism, relativism and medievalism have won the day. Most evangelicals outside Sydney are intimidated and lack the confidence to withstand the pressures. Sadly some in Sydney are the same.
Maybe, after all, it is true that there is no hope for the Australian Church. Maybe the old wineskins cannot any longer carry the new wine of the gospel. Maybe the efforts at appeasement and persuasion are like sending good money after bad. Maybe we did cross the Rubicon, as one speaker at the Synod suggested we might with the new book.
One thing is certain, attempts by Sydney Anglicans to gain legitimacy through acceptance by the national Church and attempts to bring about change through gentle persuasion are doomed to failure. Even if we were to succeed in winning a change of heart at the top, the shrinkage in grass roots support and the time delay in any turn around by that approach would be such that neither we, nor our children, would live to see the Church once again become a force for the gospel in this land.
2. Sydney
But what about Sydney? Measured against the rest of the Church Sydney is doing significantly better, though of course not well in relation to the population residing within our borders. On the published data, the average attendance in the diocese of Melbourne is about 85 per Sunday. The equivalent figure for Sydney is about 185.
The age profile of Sydney Anglicans is significantly lower than the rest of the Church, and the number of people offering for service in full time ministry in Sydney is very encouraging, even though some see it as a problem. Youth work in this diocese is vastly more developed than in any other diocese and the strength of movements such as Katoomba Youth Convention and university work holds out real hope.
What has brought about this difference? One thing: the evangelical, reformed, protestant character of the clergy and people.
Gospel ministry has produced the fruit of conversions and transformed lives.
Whatever the shortcomings of our diocese, and there will always be those to tell us what they are, they should not blind us to seeing the vitality of our youth work, the godliness and biblical commitment of the clergy and the willingness of ordinary church folk to engage in evangelism, Bible study and loving service to relieve need.
The role of Moore College has been fundamental to this and let me add, without apology, so has been the role of the Anglican Church League.
But Sydney is changing too!
i) Diocesan Administration
Because of the wealth generation by the Secretariat, the growing complexity of diocesan administration leading to a sense of isolation from the levers of power, centralism and bureaucracy have grown over the last 25 years to a point where many feel that the diocese is effectively out of everybody's control or worse still that it has fallen into the hands of a very few insiders.
This situation leads to the danger that decisions will be made and resources allocated on the basis of a theologically superficial pragmatism which could well destroy the very things that made Sydney what it is. We all serve the diocese well if we demand and give a high degree of accountability for whatever part of its operations any of us have responsibility for.
The forces governing the administration of the diocese are changing. Whilst the main trend has been toward centralism this has produced pressure for some form of regionalisation to give people a sense of participation and ownership.
The majority view that regionalisation should not be at the expense of the unity of the diocese is surely correct. This is because the benefits we derive from belonging to a large, well resourced diocese with a strong evangelical tradition are too valuable to fritter away by means of sub-division aimed at improving local circumstances.
However the desire for more local participation needs to be satisfied. In meeting this there should be a balance between local initiative, regional participation and central facilitation. The security of a diocese large enough to resist liberal pressures, the capacity to provide Bible-loving pastors and the opportunity to utilise the talent of local people can be met by a rational devolution of power from the centre, through regional structures to the parishes. I hope this will be the outcome of current moves to regionalisation and not merely a "Claytons" regionalisation still leaving all effective power in the centre.
ii) Sunday Worship
Under the influence of events such as Willow Creek Conferences there is a massive, and in my view unstoppable, change toward non-liturgical and more informal services with modern music and less participatory formats. These services have as their rationale the need to be less alien and more open to unchurched people. The quality of these services so far may be patchy but they are here to stay and like it or not they will change the face of Anglicanism in this diocese.
If this is correct, then efforts must be made to ensure that the quality of what is done in church is improved and more importantly, expresses the reformed principles of BCP and the 39 Articles, remembering that even they stand under the Scriptures. Even if the forms of worship services change due to social pressure (though hopefully never leading to the extinction of our received liturgical heritage) we must ensure that the change is one of form but not substance. Unless we do this we will suffer the same fate as Anglicans in liberal and catholic dioceses but by a different route.
iii) Patterns of Ministry
Though in our diocese we have not gone down the path of ordaining women and appointing them as senior pastors, nevertheless there are many women, deacons and lay, who are working full-time in parish ministry. It is too early to tell how this change will develop but if it does not seek to overturn the roles God has assigned to men and women in the public leadership of the church it should be welcomed.
An even more significant change at the local level is in the developing ministry of lay men and women. Thanks to the courses run by Moore College, there is a more biblically literate band of lay preachers and ordinary church people in Sydney than anywhere in the Anglican community. The expansion in recent years of the small group ministry and, even more recently still, of lay pastors opens up new opportunities for church members to exercise their gifts in valuable ways. This too is a change to be welcomed and encouraged.
The current moves to authorise lay administration at the Lord's Supper is a natural development of these trends. The overwhelming support it has so far received in the Synod says to me that if it is not this year then certainly in the not too distant future it will come. The focus should be on managing the change in a way that preserves order (or orderliness) and gives due recognition to the feelings and preferences of those who do not want to accept it. It is however an idea whose time has come.
So what is the future of evangelicalism in Sydney and in the national Church?
Not as secure as some people think. Disunity between evangelicals, subservient denominationalism and our accommodation to the "gospel" of comprehensiveness in the name of conciliation, threaten to blur the borders of evangelical distinctiveness and rob it of its mission.
In the early '60s I recall a Reformation Rally address by Bishop Loane, as he was then. He spoke on "What is an Evangelical?". At the end of a typically clear and inspiring address he quoted St. Paul, "If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound who shall heed the call?"
Sir Marcus, as an evangelical leader, was the epitome of clear, courageous commitment to evangelical principles whose sound was always clear and compelling. Evangelical leaders of this day must not fall below the standards set by our former leaders. If they do and the sound is blurred then it will not take long for our diocese to join the slide we are now witnessing around the Australian Church.
But if leadership remains strong, if the clergy keep teaching and living the Bible and the laity insist that their local churches not depart from the faith "once for all delivered to the saints" there is reason for optimism even in the face of recent losses.
3. The Role of the ACL
It is no exaggeration to say that as goes the ACL so will go the evangelical heritage of this diocese. Through the Synod and its committees for most of this century the League has successfully striven to preserve the evangelical character of Sydney.
Sometimes that character has seemed so secure that evangelicals have felt they could leave the work to the League and even to oppose it when it suited them. Neglect or opposition by evangelicals, if it were to continue, would lead to the end not only of ACL but of the very evangelical character that the League has helped to secure and promote. This is why the League needs the committed support of its members and to be joined by other evangelicals who support its objectives.
But the ACL cannot live in the past. Like the Church as a whole it must rewrite its agenda to advance the gospel in changing times. This last year the League has begun the most far reaching overhaul of its policy objectives and administration ever.
The policy objectives adopted by the Council seek firstly to reaffirm its unchanging role as defender and advocate of the protestant and reformed principles of our Church as expressed in the BCP and 39 Articles under the Scripture.
To this the League has added as specific objectives: the promotion of the interests of the local church as the key environment of Christian ministry and evangelism; the work of lay men and women in the outreach of the gospel; the strong support for the training of godly and competent pastors; the supremacy of Synod in the governing of the diocese and the reform of its structures and practices to increase the effectiveness of local church based evangelism and ministry.
To achieve success in these objectives the League is completely changing its culture and the shape of its administration.
No longer is the League to be limited to the capacity of the Council to put into effect its policies. Through the establishment of management and policy task forces, made up of ordinary members, we hope the evangelical and gospel cause we stand for will grow and multiply. In addition, we are in the process of establishing regional chapters of League members to support regionalisation and a women's affairs task force to give biblically committed women a means of advancing the legitimate aspirations of women within the life of the diocese and the parishes.
Already this year we are experiencing a significant increase in membership and we expect this will continue through the work of our recruitment task forces.
It is my hope that as this next year passes, evangelicals who love our Church will rally to the ACL as the legitimate expression of their aspirations. I hope all members of the League will support us in this cause and that we can work to ensure that the gospel will grow in our diocese and beyond.
Whatever else changes in a changing Church, the commitment of the ACL to its principles and the support of its members in implementing these principles must never change.
Bruce Ballantine-Jones
President
Anglican Church League, Sydney
20th July 1995.
Canon Bruce Ballantine-Jones is President of the ACL and Rector of the Sydney parish of St. Clement's Jannali.
(Copyright Anglican Church League)
Anglican Church League, www.acl.asn.au