The Melbourne diocese has a vision to plant 30 new churches and revitalise 30 existing ones by 2030 as growth corridors expand without an Anglican presence to serve them. 

The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne Church Planting vision and strategy was officially launched at a Melbourne Anglican Foundation fundraising event on Thursday, 23 October. 

The strategy addresses a critical gap as Melbourne’s growth corridors expand faster than the diocese can establish new congregations. 

Canon for Church Planting the Reverend Bree Mills said the diocese was at least 10 years behind the city’s growth, leaving suburbs without churches that understood their context. 

She gave the example of Donnybrook and Kalkallo where two campuses of Hume Anglican Grammar are full but there is no Anglican church to serve the community. 

Canon Mills said the 2030 goal was achievable, with six church plants and nine congregations helping to revitalise existing churches started in 2025 alone. 

“If we just keep doing exactly what we did this year, we’ll actually hit that easily,” she said. 

Canon Mills said finding ordained leaders ready to plant remained the biggest challenge, more than funding or property. 

Young leaders showed passion for church planting, but most were a couple of years away from being ready, she said. 

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“We’ve got the buildings. We can use the school buildings to plant churches. We just don’t have planters and teams,” Canon Mills said. 

Melbourne Anglican Archbishop-elect Ric Thorpe was Bishop of Islington and oversaw the Diocese of London’s church planting work. 

Canon Mills said Archbishop-elect Thorpe was part of the working group and learning community that developed the strategy over two years. 

He encouraged the team to have a bigger imagination for the vision’s scale. 

“He was certainly one of the encouragements to think about, ‘Actually, couldn’t this be bigger than that?’” she said. 

St Columb’s Hawthorn vicar the Reverend Mark McDonald said churches offered both practical community support and the Christian message of grace and freedom. 

He said people without the Christian story had to turn to self-help, which meant finding the resources from within to fix themselves. 

“I think that’s such a heavy burden,” he said. 

Mr McDonald said having a church within walking distance mattered for people who could not easily travel. 

His parish’s outreach café serves about 150 people across four days each week, including a man with a visual impairment who is unable to drive. 

Because the café did not need to flip tables for profit, people could talk with others or sit quietly for as long as they wanted, he said. 

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Mr McDonald said his parish had redirected a quarter of its mission budget to support church planting in Melbourne through MAF. 

He said Anglicans were part of a city-wide church and needed to support growth across the diocese. 

“Any one of us that give into that fund might feel our money doesn’t do enough, but collectively, we could really make a difference,” Mr McDonald said. 

Oodthenong Bishop Bradley Billings’s episcopate includes the north and west of Melbourne where many of the diocese’s fastest-growing areas are located. 

He pointed to a City on a Hill church plant at Whittington in Geelong as an example of a new congregation meeting community needs. 

Bishop Billings said the church had made a real difference by giving people a place where they were always welcome, listened to and prayed for. 

People received both spiritual and practical support, including pastoral care for those facing illness, legal troubles or family issues, he said. 

He said establishing an Anglican presence in emerging communities reflected the historic parish model where the diocese sought to serve every locality. 

MAF is currently running a church planting fundraising campaign to support the 2030 vision. Details are available on the Melbourne Anglican Foundation website.