In other words, back then Sydney Anglican growth had completely stalled. But now we hear it is declining.
In his more recent article, Rev Barraclough tries to interrogate reasons for this decline. None of the reasons he suggests have anything to do with Sydney Anglicanism itself. The problem pretty much gets boiled down to “the world has changed and our hearts are prone to wander.”
He recounts the influence of radical individualism since the sexual revolution, the emergence of Sunday trading, etc. etc., but it all sounds like he’s saying Sydney Anglicans just need to try harder to attend more often.
MEANWHILE, IN LEICESTER, ENGLAND…
The second story was from the other side of the world and illustrates the hope of the future. The Diocese of Leicester in the UK reported this: “New forms of church attract thousands of worshippers in Leicestershire.” It’s a beautiful story of new life, creativity, and freedom. Since 2011, the diocese has been working with an Anglican agency called Church Army to foster fresh expressions of church across their region.
First coined by Archbishop Rowan Williams and the Mission Shaped Church report back in 2004, the term fresh expressions refers to new forms of church that emerge within contemporary culture and engage primarily with those who don’t go to church. They are new, pioneering, innovative approaches to doing and being church, which often don’t look like ‘church’ at all.
The hope of the future include things like messy churches and heavy metal churches, as well as pub churches, microchurches, dinner churches or house churches and other missional communities. They are genuine churches, real places of belonging and mission,the hope of the future. The people who attend them don’t feel the need to go to a “normal” church on a Sunday morning as well.
Usually they aren’t led by ordained, paid clergy. Instead, fresh expressions are headed up by unordained, voluntary lay-leaders. In Leicestershire, 66% of all core leaders were women, 85% of leaders were unpaid, 74% were unlicensed ‘lay-lay’ leaders.
Since they began, there has been a 60% increase in the number of fresh expressions in the diocese. There has also been a 63% increase in the number of people attending a fresh expression, and a 77% increase in the number of fresh expression attenders who have been baptized.
