In his annual Presidential address, Archbishop Peter Jensen has called for visionary leaders to enact change within the church to win Australia for Christ.
"To fulfil our Mission we need leaders; we need leaders who are able to lead in the midst of change and leaders who will themselves create necessary change," Dr Jensen told a full house at the Wesley Centre on the first night of the Sydney Synod.
"We need leaders who are driven by a vision for the gospel to go to the whole community. We need to give them permission to change. And we need people who embrace such a vision, encourage initiative and support their leaders."
In a wide-ranging address, Dr Jensen spoke of the challenges and opportunities that face the Diocesan Mission at its half way point.
"Many of our clergy are tired and some are a little dispirited," he says.
"The evangelisation of the world, starting with Sydney has proved harder than we imagined!"
He said an element of the pastor's role " missional leadership " needs to come to the fore.
"The essence of leadership, biblically speaking is the exercise of designated responsibility in obedience to God and in the strength which he gives," he says.
"It does not have to be flashy; it does not have to be dictatorial but it requires moral courage."
Be both "radical and conservative'
Dr Jensen likened the leaders needed for gospel growth to that of Moses, who stayed faithful to God's word and led an often unwilling and rebellious people in a time of challenge and change.
"Moses illustrates that leaders for change must be both radical and conservative; indeed the more conservative they are, the more radical they can afford to be," Dr Jensen says.
"Only by a sustained obedience to the word of God can we afford to make the changes demanded by our spiritual environment and task."
Dr Jensen says the Mission has forced change in parishes and organisations but warned against timidity, passivity, selfishness and sloth in the face of a rapidly changing, multi-ethnic society.
"We have seen Australia turned into a new, non-British nation. We have been through a moral and spiritual revolution as well as an economic one. September 2001, the Bali bombings and global warming have seen us catapulted into a new and frightening world.
Instead of shrinking back into an old, anglicised church life that resists change and repels newcomers, he called for Sydney Anglicans to "accept the need for change' and have an "energetic commitment to reform'.
"If we want our churches now to reconnect with their communities; if we want them to be able to welcome new people, to become Australian churches and not just English churches washed up on this alien shore " we are going to have to signal to our ministers that we are ready for changes which do not compromise the gospel but establish and commend it."
Call for more reform
He says the Mission has enacted positive changes in parishes and organisations but reforms have not gone far enough.
"Much of what we do is still shaped by the nineteenth and twentieth century experience of church life. We are functioning well for a 1970s social context. We are ready to fight the last war.”
He says the key to fruitful change is godly leadership amongst the clergy combined with their partners in mission, a well trained laity.
Dr Jensen says one of his personal goals for the year ahead is to make the resources of the Diocese more available for the parishes for training to make Christ known.
He is also spearheading changes to the ordination process to increase the size and flexibility of the ordained stipendary workforce.
He stressed that the biblical theology taught at Moore College is central to the evangelical cause.
He also spoke of the importance of diocesan organisations such as Anglicare and the newly created Mission Board in equipping Christians for the task ahead.
Dr Jensen says the Diocese will put "even more effort into helping the leaders to lead more effectively, especially supporting them through change'.
"But the indispensable support needs to come through the members of the churches who embrace necessary change, though they might find it difficult."
Failure of secularism "creating opportunities for the gospel'
Dr Jensen acknowledges the task of the mission is difficult but says the "failure of secularism' is creating opportunities for the gospel.
He says he has "never had better opportunities than this year to share the gospel with others'.
"The failure of secularism becomes plainer by the month," he says.
"Secularism fails to support the central concern of the truly human life: relationships. And Australians regard relationships and families as their chief source of happiness. These are issues about which the Bible speaks with power, most notably our obligation to love."
Quoting a recent article in The Australian by Paul Kelly, Dr Jensen says the ruling libertarian agenda over the past forty years with its love for tolerance and "culture of intense individualism' has done "untold harm' to families and relationships.
He points to a new mood of social conservatism promoted by the Prime Minister John Howard and others such as Labor's Kevin Rudd and Lindsay Tanner.
"Kelly refers to the battle between the cultural progressives and the cultural traditionalists," he says.
"Quoting Francis Fukuyama, he points out that, ‘The culture of intense individualism" spilled into to the realm of social norms where it corroded virtually all forms of authority and weakened the bonds holding families, neighbourhoods and nations together’."
"There is something revealing about the malice and hatred, the sheer lack of civility - dare I say the failure to love our neighbour? - in so many of those who write to newspapers about the Prime Minister.
"I think it reveals a fear that Mr Howard’s social conservatism may actually have proved to be broadly correct."
Dr Jensen says the gospel of Jesus is strikingly relevant to all these common human concerns.
"We are talking the same language as our neighbours - and the word of God, with its emphasis on love not tolerance, on community not individualism, on self-discipline not permissiveness is going to enhance human life and make our aspirations more readily achievable."
Click here to download a pdf of the address
