by Jeremy Halcrow

Newly released evidence from the National Church Life Survey (NCLS) that caring for outsiders, particularly migrants, improves a church’s ability to win converts is set to inform church planting strategies in South Sydney.

“The region will not reach its goal of seeing ten per cent of people in church if we don’t win new converts,” said Bishop Robert Forsyth. “Fifty new church plants doing well at attracting people from other churches will not be good enough to sufficiently grow the total pool of Bible-believing Christians in Sydney. We must reach out and care for non-Christians.”

Across the NCLS sample, congregations which develop support ministries for people from a non-English speaking background have above average levels
of newcomers, the best measure of ‘conversion growth’.

The pattern is repeated across the Sydney Diocese, where 12.3 per cent of churchgoers are ‘newcomers’.  Yet congregations that provide counselling
services,  support schemes and drop-in centres have higher levels of newcomers.  Very few Sydney Anglican churches have a special mission focus on a particular ethnic group. Yet among those congregations that do, some 19.6 per cent of their attenders are new to church life.

“It appears that a major reason for the relative strength of many ethnic churches in Australia is that they often meet not only religious needs but also social and economic needs among migrants,” said NCLS researcher John Bellamy.  “The migration experience is a time of great change for those who undertake it. While many migrants already have a religious faith when they first arrive in Australia, for others it is a time when they first become involved with a Christian church.”

Bishop   Forsyth   believes the Anglican Church needs more detailed comparative research into church plants. “This will help us see what kinds of support ministries do best at strengthening both our existing churches and our new church plants,” he said.

Xuyen Tang,  manager of Anglicare migrant services at Cabramatta, says that a church’s care for people must not be conditional to winning converts.  “It is the Lord who convicts a person to follow him,” she said. “It cannot be genuine love if it comes with strings attached.”