Brian Tung will be one of 31 people ordained as deacon in the Diocese of Sydney this month, with the ordination service to be held on February 8th at St Andrew’s Cathedral.

But he is already part of a new ministry aimed at reaching some of Sydney’s ‘lost people groups’.

Mr Tung has been working at St Andrew’s, Riverwood since graduating from Moore College in 2001. In September last year the parish launched the International Bible Fellowship, aimed at reaching the people of many different ethnic backgrounds in their area.

“We have lots of contact with non-English speaking people, but it’s not just one group,” Mr Tung said. “The church includes people from Chinese, Colombian, Indonesian, Greek, Egyptian and Macedonian backgrounds.

“We’ve done a lot of pre-evangelism, like running ESL classes and playgroups, but we felt it was time to take it to the next level.”

They decided the best way to reach this group was through a service in English. “A lot of people have tried the strategy of being language-specific. If we were to do that for, say, the Chinese group, we couldn’t minister to the South American people,” he says.

Himself a first-generation migrant who came to Australia from Hong Kong in 1979, Mr Tung says members of the new congregation are united by the common experience of being migrants.

Having at one time been drawn to the idea of doing overseas misson work, Mr Tung has found a need for cross-cultural ministry right here in Sydney. “These are people who would otherwise have no access to the gospel message,” he says. “This is not an easy ministry to start, but it the right thing for the parish to do. The rector, Bruce Southwell, has been pushing for it and the church has been supportive.”

Mr Tung said that, against the contemporary trend, the new service is ‘highly liturgical’, using resources from the new Sunday Services prayer book. “Many of our people read better than they listen,” he says. “Having an ordered service on paper makes it easier for them to follow. It also means that they can take the Order of Service home and read it again on their own.
“In that sense, having the Anglican tradition helps us in the way we run our meetings.”

Among the ordinands are others who, like Mr Tung, have been in full-time ministry previously. They include Tim Bowden (Evangelism Ministries), Bob Cameron (Killara), Denise Chee (Ecom), Ruth Mahaffey (TAFE Ministries / Richmond) and Dominic Steele (Christians in the Media).