Taking the church in a new direction
‘Sydney Shift’ is the name that was given to a meeting of some 50 people who met on Saturday 21 July in Turramurra in Sydney who were shifting or had shifted into simple/home/marketplace/open/coffee house small churches in recent times. I knew nothing about them, but thought I’d tag along to see what was happening.
The first person I introduced myself to was David Newby, who had organised the day. His small church story starts in the mid 1970s, when he became convinced that church was a participatory not a spectator affair. His 1997 AOG church had an open pulpit and no agenda. He is now involved with a couple of home churches, works on churching with the Aboriginal community and at times participates in the local AOG church. He organised Sydney Shift as a way to connect people on a similar journey, model church as dialogue not monologue, fill a void and discuss what God is saying and doing. ‘Bondage’ is a word that comes into his mind as he thinks of what is happening for many in the wider church. His vision is for a church where people are ‘loving and serving one another by the Spirit’ without being ‘controlling, jealous, threatened, agenda driven or performance driven’; where ‘every local body should be unique’ with ‘a fluid atmosphere of waiting on God’. David’s introductory talk entitled ‘world trends in the church’ was along these lines, the statement that particularly stays with me being ‘Because I have a gift, I serve you.’
David Orton then gave a historical overview of shifts in leadership and ministry over the last two millennia, focusing on Jesus as the one true prophet, priest and king, other priesthoods being overthrown in the Reformation, other prophets in the charismatic movement and other kingly hierarchies and power bases in the emerging churches today. During the rest of the day, interspersed by lunch and small group discussion, there was a range of speakers, planned and unplanned, that revealed the diversity of experiences of church that were represented there.
I tend to withdraw when with people I have not known whose journey seems different from mine. But I realised during the course of the day that our different paths had in reality joined us in the same journey, and I had common ground when we talked of bondage, politics and power masked as theology, openness, risk-taking, leaving space for God’s Spirit, sharing and serving and when such passages as Hosea 8:4, Acts 2:42-47, Ephesians 4, I Corinthians 4, 12 and 14 and II Corinthians 3 were quoted and discussed. The day carried with it the promise for the future that where God takes us all in pursuing our varied and apparently messy small church pathways is on a common resurrection journey.
Ken Goodlet (who is in a home church in the Blue Mountains)