You may have missed it… but friend Izaac and I have been arguing the merit or otherwise of Sydney’s oversupply of evangelical churches and full time ministry workers back at this post of links – where I threw in a little comment that a densely populated map of Anglican churches in Sydney was a cause for concern not celebration.
This is what I said…
To me, this pretty much sums up the problems with the Sydney Anglicans – so many churches in such a small geographical space. It’d be interesting to plot the number of evangelical churches around the rest of the country in comparison.
It has sparked an interesting discussion. I think. Check out the discussion (and join in) here… Should church planting and/or evangelism be considered in the framework of economics? I think so…
Comments
I have my own tag. This is such a proud moment…
Nathan I am not sure if you are ever pleased when it comes to Church size and form.
You don’t like multi site
You don’t like large churches
You don’t like small churches in proximity
I don’t know what to say.
I am one to argue for economies of scale – large and few churches but not large enough to lose community or discipleship.
In defence of north Sydney Anglicans. Good on them. If every one in the region went to one of those churches there would be more then 11,500 people per church. Now are they too small. Each Church currently on those numbers have around 190 members I think that is fine. (YES it is an average I know that.)
Do we need more evangelical biblical people up in North Queensland – YES of course but that shouldn’t mean that we critical of North Sydney.
PS I am back!!
Perhaps if you tried slightly harder you’d find a common logic in my desire to see a geographic spread of bible teaching churches…
So you are saying fewer churched in Sydney and more in other places?
Yes, that is what I’m saying – provided that’s a typo and you’re suggesting “churches” rather than churched…
You need to fix your blog I don’t get notifications any more when I comment and someone else comments after.
I’m not sure that’s a flaw… something needing to be fixed implies something is broken. You should just check back every day…
Yeah that is a typo.
Don’t agree on closing churched in Sydney to open churches in other areas. Yes to more churches in other places but closing/ fewer churches in Sydney is not the answer.
Sure people need to move out to where there is greater need but by having a critical mass like that in Sydney it does help other denominations and other places. In addition I think that we should grow our own ministers from within. I think that is healthy.
I would suggest less planting of churches in concentrated geographical areas would be a good model.
Hmm, “growing our ministers from within” sounds good in theory but is pretty difficult in practice. Take Maclean, where Izaac and I came from for example. We are both products of that ministry, but also from AFES ministry and church ministries in Sydney, Brisbane and Townsville. Where do I belong? Where do I end up?
What about Mount Isa, what about Mackay? Who is growing the ministers in places where no evangelical bible teaching ministry exists…