Aren’t independent Anglican congregations a bit of a contradiction in terms? 8-)
Not round these parts, Terry ;-)
But with loosened diocesan boundaries (or abolished diocesan boundaries), I suppose the more technically accurate way of describing them would be as attached to the Dio of [wherever].
Ah, Mr Kirsop, I was careful to restrict my initial comments to liberal rather than Anglo-Catholic churches. While I find the concept of Anglo-Catholicism slightly foreign, even a bit eccentric, I don’t put it into the same basket as liberal (aka revisionist) streams.
Sorry for any confusion or distress I may have casued.
Unfortunately many churches that were Anglo-Catholic a generation or so ago have been thoroughly gutted by theological liberalism.
Now THAT is distressing - discerning the truth, while never easy, is becoming a more fraught enterprise on a daily basis. I am thankful for good gospel-centred teaching in my early years as a Christian, and for the blessing of continuation of that in every church I have attended since.
Hi Craig; it is distressing. I believe that Christ Church St Laurence would probably think of themselves as liberal Anglo-Catholic too. In fact, I am not personally aware of any genuinely Anglo-Catholic churches in Sydney, although I may be mistaken there.
I would think church planting by genuine Anglo-Catholics (such as the church I attended in Port Macquarie once when I was on holidays, although I am not sure where they stand these days) ought to be welcomed. Perhaps post GAFCON we will start to see this. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is already happening.
I believe that Christ Church St Laurence would probably think of themselves as liberal Anglo-Catholic too.
Whatever some members of the CCSL congregation may call themselves, I’m pretty sure their rector Adrian Stephens would not call himself ‘liberal’ as he is from the Dio of The Murray.
(Anglo-Catholics from The Murray and Ballarat tend to be orthodox, traditionalist and opposed to the ordination of women. This story will give some background to the battle between conservative Anglo-Catholics and liberals in Brisbane)
Gordo.. give our current bishops some credit for recruiting conservatives ;)
With Moore College and SMBC chockers with students, not to mention other Bible colleges around the place, we should really be looking for more ways of putting graduates into spots in churches, or even starting their own.
People from minister-less churches feel free to pipe up now. Unless of course you’re too busy running your churches to be lurking around these fora…
For me, I’m currently doing ministry training at the resource-rich Chinese Christian Church in Milsons Point. One of the things I’m involved in is meeting with and training young lay leaders from independent Chinese churches in the west and south west of Sydney. Most of these guys come from churches where there is no minister or no minister for their English ministry. Many of these churches have been looking for ministers for a while and while some haven’t got the resources to afford one, some can afford to take on a minister but just haven’t had much interest either from established clergy or college graduates.
Perhaps this is a Chinese church thing. But methinks this could be a wider westie thing.
I believe that Christ Church St Laurence would probably think of themselves as liberal Anglo-Catholic too.
Whatever some members of the CCSL congregation may call themselves, I’m pretty sure their rector Adrian Stephens would not call himself ‘liberal’ as he is from the Dio of The Murray.
I certainly meant no offence to Adrian, and thank you for the clarification. My impressions were drawn from interaction with sources from the congregation and may not be reliable.
One thought that occurs to me is that if diocesan boundaries were to loosen post-GAFCON, it may even be easier for dioceses outside Sydney to plant evangelical churches within Sydney than it is for some Sydney Anglicans!
If the Diocese of Far Away were to sponsor a church plant next to St Lost the Plot’s somewhere in Sydney, it would be easier in some ways to separate gospel issues from personal and relational issues, if that makes sense. The Diocese of Far Away would simply be taking advantage of loosened diocesan boundaries to do some useful mission work, and would hopefully be welcomed by evangelicals of whatever denomination. And they might be able to do this more straightforwardly than St Nigel’s (down the road from St Lost the Plot’s), where gospel issues might easily be overshadowed by less important considerations.
That may just be dream-world of course, but it would be nice to give it a go. We are nowhere close (in human terms) to achieving the diocesan missional aim of having 10% of Sydney people in Bible believing churches in 5-ish years time, and I reckon we should be inviting evangelicals (Anglican or otherwise) to see Sydney as a challenging but worthwhile target for prayer and mission.
With Moore College and SMBC chockers with students, not to mention other Bible colleges around the place, we should really be looking for more ways of putting graduates into spots in churches, or even starting their own. We’ve already seen some graduates of Moore planting independent churches in places like Bathurst, Wagga, Orange, Central Coast… why not go the extra step and plant independent Anglican churches in similar places? Some people who like to be Anglican don’t necessarily want to go to independent churches (I’m not saying whether that’s good or bad), but would value the opportunity to attend an evangelical Anglican church that was located in their diocese but not necessarily connected to it.
Er.. Gordon… Orange Evangelical Church was NOT planted by a Moore graduate. Martin was employed by OEC to be it’s first minister. The local Bishop (of Bathurst) on hearing that OEC was a Sydney plant rang up to do some complaining, but on having Martin tell him it was not, then invited him around for a cuppa!
Martin also found that when he began his work at Kellyville that some ministers of parishes abounding his were quite happy about his work… as long as their own parishioners stayed in their own parishes.
Thanks for the correction David. I should have been aware of that!
Jeff, how exciting if some major push were to happen for church planting within Sydney Diocese from outside. I really hope that we would welcome such initiatives with open arms, even if the churches happened to be right in our own backyards.
When I think about my own area of Carlingford, we have some large congregations but we are really only just scratching the surface here. As long as church planters are teaching the Bible, we should be praying that they will be able to reach the places we can’t.
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