A phase inversion has been under way in our suburbs for years, but no one noticed until it was completed!
What is a phase inversion? The best way to describe it is to think of whipping cream. We pour liquid cream into a bowl and then beat it until it turns solid. What has happened to the liquid? Well, a phase inversion has occurred. When you pour cream from the bottle into the bowl you are pouring solids carried in a liquid. Beating the cream causes the solids that are present in the liquid to intertwine, making a mat of solids so that instead of having solids in a liquid, we have liquids in a solid. A bit like maple syrup on waffles. What has happened is a phase inversion. There are no more solids in the whipped cream than when it was a liquid. It is just that they have banded together causing the liquid to be trapped around the solids. But what we see and how the substance acts has changed.
The same is happening in our parishes. For decades most people in suburbs believed that the God of the Bible was true, although there were a few who disagreed or thought it didn't matter. The few were like the solids in the liquid cream. In recent years, those who do not trust the God of the Bible have become more obvious, more vocal, and increased in number so that the Christian community is now the minority in the midst of those who hold to other or no faiths. Like the liquid in the whipped cream, a phase inversion has occurred.
The inversion is obvious in highly Islamic suburbs. You only need to drive through the corridor from Lakemba to Marrickville to see this. Churches that were once bursting at the seams now struggle for presence in the community.
But the phase inversion is occurring all over Sydney. The liquid just hasn't yet turned to solid. What can be done?
Here are a few suggestions
1. Recognise the situation for what it is. No matter where you live, your suburb is not a Christian suburb. Almost no suburb in Sydney has even 10% of its residents in church.
2. Do not despair when you recognise the situation. There are many people whom God has placed near you who, by His kindness, can be reached with the gospel.
3. Rejoice, rather than being defensive at new gospel initiatives in your area. This is the opportunity for the intertwining and matting which surrounds people with the gospel.
4. Old practices no longer work. Merely advertising your church has little effect. Now is the day when we can think more broadly and begin new ministries.
5. Seek to understand what makes your area work. What activities, what people, what cultures tie it together.
6. Be prepared for half the new ministries to fail. Unless we are prepared for new initiatives to fail, we will never be adventurous.
7. All new initiatives cost, so we will need to close, consolidate or change some of what we have always done in order to resource new initiatives.
8. Pray and work towards the raising up of leaders from within to reach particular groups
The phase inversion we now see is no different to what has always been. Faith has always been the minority position. Now it is obvious. Now is the time to commence new ministries" and assess old ones.
