by Bishop Robert Forsyth

Who are we are seeking to share Christ with?  A recently published report from the Church of England, The Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context (Church House Publishing, 2004) has much to teach us. Or rather, to remind us of what we are also finding in our own Mission.
Three things strike me as I read the English report with Sydney in mind.
1. It’s non-churched, not just the de-churched.
There report describes two kinds of non-Christians in English society. Those who have had with some link with the Christian faith but have moved away from it are called the ‘de-churched’. Those who have had no connection with church at all are the ‘non-churched’. These are the unbelievers for whom Christianity is an utterly foreign culture and for whom the Christian church as we know it is ‘peripheral, obscure, confusing or irrelevant’.
The Church of England report asserts that up to 40 per cent of the English population are ‘non-churched’, and that the proportion is growing. I am sure that it is similar here. Our experience in the South Sydney Region of the Diocese certainly suggests so.
The report makes clear that in England most effort is spent on the more profitable area of the ‘de-churched’ (although sadly there is also a group within this segment who are so negative about how they have experienced the church in the past that they are very hard to move. They are titled the ‘closed de-churched’.
Inviting people to church as we currently know it may be an effective mission strategy only to those who are ‘the ‘open de-churched’. We need something else when dealing with the un-churched’. As the report puts it, ‘instead of “come to us” the new approach is to be ‘go to them’.
2. Neighbourhood and network churches
The second interesting feature of the report is its argument that ‘a geographical approach alone is not sufficient’. Parish, by itself, is no longer adequate as the Church of England’s missionary strategy. One size fits all will not do.
This is not news to us. We are discovering the same here in Sydney.  The report argues that modern English society is one where people relate increasingly in a network rather than a neighbourhood way.
We are aware of similar challenges in Sydney. In it, as well as growing and planting parish churches, we commit ourselves to ‘to take further initiatives to create fellowships by penetrating structures of society beyond the reach of the parish church with the gospel’.  This is our recognition of the need for network church plants.
Does it matter? The Church of England sees itself as a church for all. We too have a similar outlook in the Anglican Church of Australia. It’s driven both by our concern to bring all to know Christ and also by something in our historical background as (however inadequately expressed) a church for the nation. In a society that has changed radically,  it is imperative that a church that seeks to be ‘a church for all’ must become a church for network as well as neighbourhood.
3. Ten years of church planting. What actually is church?
The third feature of the book is that it is the second such report on church planting in the Church of England. The first was published in 1994. The report provides an opportunity to reflect on how it looks ten years on.
What did they find? There is certainly much more diversity in the kinds of churches planted than people had thought there would be. In fact, one of the key theological issues raised by the report is the question of what is church; how radical can expressions of church be and still be ‘church’. Too often in the past, church planting has been simply a way to reproduce the sending church rather than create the right kind of Christian community for the new context. Although some 90 per cent of Church of England church plants have survived, the report also draws attention to the need to focus as much on the maturity of the planted church and developing the new church plants than simply providing a set of ‘how-to’s to get started.
The one feature about mission here in Sydney, and especially the South Sydney Region, is that we know that can no longer go on believing that the old ways will work. We are forced to be innovative by the challenge of the situation we are in and the call of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our brothers and sisters of our own tradition in other parts of the Anglican Communion are also wrestling with these issues and may have a great deal to teach us, as we, in turn, have to teach others. I hope we can produce something of the quality of the research of this report here.
We have embraced a renewed call to mission for our Diocese. Now comes the radical and exciting task of forming our own ‘mission-shaped church’.