The Sydney Anglican Synod has endorsed a target of five per cent growth in the numbers of people attending church through conversion growth, people coming to Christ. After debate over two days, a motion moved by Peter Stedman, Senior minister of Norwest Church, has the Synod inviting “all parts of the Diocesan fellowship to join in a special five-year focus to prayerfully seek to grow our attendance in churches by five per cent for each of the next five years through conversion of the lost through faith in Jesus.”
The motion adds: “noting that 24.1% of the population are children and young people, and 78% of
Sydney Anglicans became Christians before the age of 18, encourages all parishes to strive to increase their allocation of resources to ministry with children and youth every year during the special five-year focus.”
An amendment on the second day of debate added multicultural ministry to the priorities in the motion.
Moving the motion, Stedman confesses he had to repent of complacency as a church leader. “I’ve been the senior minister at Norwest Anglican for 15 years now. When I started there in 2010, there were 150 adults and children who called Norwest home, and yet in God’s remarkable provision in 2010, we started growing and growing.
“Now, to be clear, Norwest is in a very particular context. Norwest Anglican sits squarely within the Bible belt of the Hills District in Sydney. We’ve been blessed with lots of transfer growth, and it almost didn’t matter what I did.
“We just grew, and I just assumed we did evangelism well, and then after 10 years of growth, I was invited to join the Reach Australia Leadership Development Programme. I didn’t really want to, we were going fine, but I was encouraged to, so I did, and as part of the programme, we needed to have a church consultation.
“Now I’m more than a little embarrassed to say that I felt quite confident about this. In fact, I was already looking forward to reading the report that would affirm all the things that we were already doing so well, which I blissfully believe was pretty much everything.it
” The report I received was a little different and bruising and as bruising as it felt, I’m so thankful to God for that report because that report started us in the West on a four year plan to rethink, replan, reshape, restructure, pretty much everything and one of the things that struck me from the report was how few people were coming to know Christ at Norwest, how few. What the report showed was that in the previous 12 months, we had seen four people make decisions to follow Jesus. Four people from a church and a ministry of more than 800 people – half a per cent.
“We were nowhere near as good at evangelism as we were in my mind. And so a number of years ago, I stood before our church and told them that I was sorry for leading them to believe that we were better at sharing Christ with people than we actually were. That, as a ministry team, we were going to reflect on that and do better, lead better. Twelve months ago, we did something very similar in this room. Together. Together we prayed a prayer of repentance, acknowledging our shortcomings for not giving sufficient priority and attention to seeking the lost…
“In the last 12 months, 30 people at Norwest have made first-time commitments to lay down their lives at the foot of the cross to follow the Lord Jesus all their days and to repent of their sin. In 2021, Norwes conversion rate against our average Sunday tenants was just under half a percent. In 2024, that has changed to be 4per cent, it would not have happened without the help I got. I realised I needed to do better. I realised I needed help.”
The reason for including youth in the motion was laid out by Craig Roberts, CEO of Youthworks, in seconding the motion. ” Fact: 78% of people in church today made a first-time decision for Christ before they turned 18. Fact: 24.1% of the population is under 18. Fact: the largest 25 churches of the diocese have each invested significantly in youth and children’s ministry over the long term. Fact: at a northern regional evangelistic youth event … 110 out of 570 attendees, 19 per cent, made a decision for Christ. Fact: In each of the past three Januarys, church youth summer camps have reported 14 per cent of attendees making a decision for Christ. In fact, if you had an altar call this Sunday in church and 19 per cent or 14 per cent of the attendees came forward, you would be shouting from the rooftops that revival had broken out in your suburb. And yet we see these sorts of conversion rates in youth ministries across the diocese. Youth and children are the most fruitful evangelistic demographic ministry to youth and children is a proven growth driver of healthy churches.”
Toby Neal, senior minister of Surry Hills church, busted a myth. “Now, some of us, I think, may be tempted to think the recent rise in attendance is just a bounce back from COVID, and what was all the alarm last year? It’s kind of returning to normal. Everything’s okay. But remember, the decline began before COVID more significantly. Our attendance hasn’t recovered [to] the most recent high point in 2015 and the number of newcomers in our churches has been steadily declining for a number of years. All of this while Sydney’s population is exploding. So we should rejoice in the growth, praise God, but we also face a great challenge. But with it comes a tremendous opportunity. In his speech this afternoon, our Archbishop said that we have one all-encompassing purpose: to make and mature disciples of Jesus. I’m very proud that day one of synod, we’re talking about that this year. Wonderful.”
Dean Sandy Grant expressed reservations, theological ones. “I have several hesitations with the motion. I have some theological disquiet about the 5 per cent per annum attendance growth by conversion target. I appreciate that the report says it is only adopted in prayerful dependence on God. I understand its intent is to galvanise as a spur to renewed effort and rethink a strategy.
“But in paragraph 27 [of the report], there is a mere assertion that a new priority to seeing the loss saved is best addressed by setting such a goal. Where is the theological argument for such a claim? There appears to be little integration of the James 4:13 –16 insight over the potential for presumption in growth goal setting that may be a clear and present danger. Recently, in my quiet times I came across Samuel 24 and David’s wicked census that reminds us numbering your troops can, although not necessarily may be done for wrong reasons
” Secondly, I have some pastoral hesitations. We hear reports of a significant number of ministers who are weary or discouraged, especially rectors. Now they must grapple with a call and lead for constant conversion growth and trying new things in a context of decreasing volunteering and a heavy burden of compliance.”
Dean Grant moved an amendment adding “in a spirit of humble dependence and pastoral flexibility” to the beginning of the Stedman motion. The mover accepted it.
Andrew Errington, Senior Minister of Newtown, was the first of many speakers who said, “I’m going to vote for this motion in whatever form it ends up,” but who had reservations. “I really think Pete’s [Stedman] right, it’s really easy to stop thinking about evangelism and we have, I’m guilty of that as well and I’ve had to repent of it and we have undergone a transition in the last few years at Newtown and it’s been an incredible blessing to renew our focus and it’s been obviously the right thing to do and it has shocked me how easily it has dropped off the radar and I’m very grateful for the people who come put it back on…
“Speaker 6 (26:10):
Addressing the target of more resources for youth, ” I’m not entirely persuaded this makes sense as a recommendation for all parishes. For example, if you just put on a new youth and children’s minister this year, it would be very difficult to do what that motion recommends over the next five years. We have increased our staff allocation to children’s and youth ministry over the last few years. I can’t see us meeting that goal despite the best will in the world and clear prioritisation of youth and kids ministry for us over the past few years.
“It also wouldn’t quite make sense for the demographics in our area, Newtown and Erskineville, we have a real drop off in the teens, but a huge number of young adults with 15% above the state average for 25 to 40 year olds. It makes much more sense for us to invest in that demographic, and actually, that’s where we’re seeing some people converted at the moment.”
Bishop of Wollongong Peter Hayward spoke of his experience cooperating with other churches for the Hope 25 mission in the Illawarra. “I was privileged to receive information from independent evangelical churches, Baptist churches, and Pentecostal churches about their NCLS data. And most of them had growth, which is pretty good, but it was all adult growth. And so, one of the things we have found in the Anglican Church, our context, is that the repetition of most conversions happening with youth is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not the only way you can do church growth. And one of the problems is yes, it’s a focus, but it’s the way we’ve happened to organise ourselves, the way we’ve put resources, the way we do things. But lots of other churches have found a way to grow without that same level of focus.”
Raj Gupta, senior Minister at Carlingford, questioned the target. “I did perhaps somewhat cheekily think I might bring an amendment to change 5% to 10%. And I’ll tell you why, because I understand all of the things Dean Grant raised. I’m the leader of the church. We have lots and lots of issues, and that is normal. And yet I found myself sitting in a particular gathering, it would’ve only been a couple of months back, and I was listening to a pastor from a different denomination that even a different state talk about what God is doing in his church. He produced a chart for us and it talked about 13% annual conversion growth on their attendance base, year on year over a sustained period of time. And the truth is, I felt I saw that, and I felt entirely inadequate. I felt like an impostor in this gathering, as if I didn’t deserve to be there, and couldn’t lead a church or leave a group of people in evangelism.”
First, he thought of excuses. “But as is so often the case, my reaction at that time when I went away and I thought more about it, well, at first I went to all of the reasons why that couldn’t possibly work in my context and I have a long list., And then later on, I came across another report. Some of you have seen the same report coming out of the Unstuck Group from America, which was released a few weeks back. It discussed annual conversion growth of between 10 and 15% across a range of church sizes. It wasn’t just about large churches, it wasn’t just about small churches.”
Presenting to his staff team, he confessed, ”I realised what I was doing was going for the excuses and thinking about why it couldn’t work.”
Andrew Katay. The Senior minister of Christ Church Inner West asked, ‘What if it really happened?’ “I want to raise a slightly different point from those that have been raised so far, although I will give you the obligatory. I will vote for this motion no matter what comes in. I’m a true believer. What if it happened? I mean, praise God, but what if it happened that each year for the next five years, 5% of each of our churches became believers and joined the church. So, you have a church of 100, and then it grows to 125. Let’s assume there’s no transfer growth.
“I can tell you that 20% of that church is now new believers. Now I know that some new believers all arrive as beautifully, fully formed, mature, well-constructed, ethically responsible grownups, virtually deep Christians. But actually, no, they don’t. So, you have a church that’s between a quarter and a fifth of brand-new Christians, and what are you going to do with them? The Great Commission does not come as a single, focused entity. ‘Make disciples of all nations’, doing how many things? Two things. ‘Baptising them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I’ve commanded you.’ And the point that I want to draw attention to is the fact that if it worked, then we would be investing as much in discipleship as we would be in evangelism, and we ought to, otherwise our evangelistic efforts will prove temporary and fruitless.”