With its youngest ever rector just appointed, Summer Hill has become the next stop in a concerted plan to revitilise Sydney's inner urban parishes.
Its a big step of faith for Chris Braga, 33, who will take charge without the "re-planting' of an outside congregation that has helped strengthen some of his neighbour's parishes.
"I don't have any money. I don't have a team around me," he says, "It really is a case of working with the people who are here."
Bishop of South Sydney, Rob Forsyth, says that it takes a certain kind of minister who can cope in the Green-voting, irreligious, secularist heartland of Sydney.
He is hand-picking young, dynamic leaders who are ‘brave’ enough to become missional leaders there.
“A small number of clergy can do it and I’m trying to find those clergy,” Bishop Forsyth says.
A multi-ethnic missionfield
Although the church currently has 40 adults, Chris says the big plus is that it has already begun to reflect the ethnic diversity of the suburb.
Summer Hill sits within the 4th most ethnically diverse municipality in the State, and Chris' passion is ministry to this side of inner-urban Sydney.
"Big cities attract people from all around the world," he says. "We need to get better at reaching many different ethnicities in the one location, rather than "mono-cultural' congregations. We need to get really good at urban mission and at multi-ethnic mission."
Chris has a particular heart for the twenty-something children of migrants, who feel like they don't fit anywhere.
"Why does the traditional Anglican church need to change? Because Australia has changed. We want to set up a church that really works for the people who live here, particularly the second generation Vietnamese, Lebanese, Greeks, Chinese. They want to be Aussies, but it is not the old Australia of the traditional Anglican Church."
Chris makes the same point about himself.
He has Portuguese ancestry but is Australian-born.
"How Portuguese, am I?" he asks.
"The second generation want to be Aussie, but they don't fit our Anglican churches," he says.
