Archbishop Peter Jensen has preached a combination of congratulations and caution to a packed audience at Sydney's Town Hall on the first night of this year's Sydney diocesan Synod.
Three years into the Diocesan Mission, the Archbishop has revealed churches appear to be on track for achieving the goal of "at least ten per cent of Sydney in Bible-based churches in ten years'.
"The increase appears to be in the order of three per cent," Dr Jensen says.
"That is about double the rate of the increase we experienced in the quite good years 1991-2001. It is almost double the rate of population growth in Sydney itself."
The steadfast application of the Mission's four policies by congregations and organisations has resulted in a long list of measured increases.
"Here is what is evident " more paid workers, more congregations, more children's work, more money, more students in training, more people attending our churches in one way or another," Dr Jensen reported in his annual Presidential Address to Synod.
"This is a great beginning, and I have not told half the story. We give God thanks for it!"
However Dr Jensen warned his listeners that Sydneysiders were building up a resistance to the gospel.
The "sheer busyness of life', an increasing ignorance of Jesus and his message, the bad name of the church Australia-wide and a deep unwillingness to commit are hampering the gospel.
Suggestions that new industrial relations reforms were about making ‘Sunday the new Monday’ earned a stern warning.
“If this is a consequence of the new legislation there won’t be time for relationships - and that’s what life is about, not merely the economy.
"We live in a society which sets huge store on the individual and autonomy and on freedom of choice.
"People recognise that a commitment to Jesus is an all-encompassing matter. They see it as an unacceptable loss of freedom."
But, flanked by representatives from successful Sydney ministries, Dr Jensen pointed out that Australia was looking less and less like a secular society.
"I think there are many signs of a new interest in moral and spiritual matters, as the failure of secularism to feed the soul becomes more and more apparent," he says.
"And I think that it is immensely heartening that Christians are far more prepared to speak about the faith in the public arena than even five years ago."
However Dr Jensen admits to a certain impatience with the Mission's progress.
"Change is like climbing the steep stairs near where I live," he says.
"The top always seems a long way further until you look back and see how far you have come.
"Then I say, praise God, look at what his hand has wrought!"
The Archbishop began his address by referring to the Reformation that transformed 16th century England; he concluded by hinting that Sydney Anglicans were entering a new reformation.
"It is not surprising that we have experienced opposition and even defamation and abuse more frequently in these last years, even from some of our fellow Anglicans," Archbishop Jensen says.
"The Mission is hard work. Why be involved?
"In principle the answer is the same as that which steeled the martyrs in their day. Is there any greater need that our community has, than to hear the words of Jesus and so be saved from what the Bible calls, "the wrath to come'?"
Click here to read / listen to a full copy of the Archbishop's presidential address.
