by Geoff Robson

In a frank assessment of the church’s role in Australia’s drought-stricken rural areas, the head of the Bush Church Aid Society (BCA) says ministers and congregations have failed to properly respond to the current crisis and must do better.

Canon Brian Roberts, National Director of the BCA, says the drought ‘has highlighted the bankrupt state of affairs in the church’. He believes many churches have become ‘as depressed as their communities’ and are ‘recipients of the love and care being offered by others’ rather than providing support themselves.

“It cuts across the witness that we have an all-powerful God who gives a depth and coping mechanism in life,” he said.

Mr Roberts says the church doesn’t seem to have the answers it says it does, and believes the drought has revealed ‘how few bridges have been built between the church and the community in the good years’.

In the past nine months, the BCA has raised over $400,000 in drought relief funding, and has distributed fodder to more than 650 families in 20 different locations. But Mr Roberts says that many saw the aid as ‘a token response and questioned what it really achieved’.

Mr Roberts said the drought could have a positive long-term effect for the church by challenging it to be more flexible in how it seeks to engage with the community, without surrendering ‘its God-given core beliefs’. He said there were examples of where the church had been an effective witness during the drought.

“Some men have started coming to hear the gospel in Lightning Ridge, [and] lives have been lifted. The fodder has not been action for the sake of action. The effective execution of the fodder distribution program has enabled some to deliver on their goal of reaching Australians for Christ.”