Toongabbie Anglican Church Blog

Weekly Blurb

When a church falls apart

Saturday 3 November, 2007 · Posted by Raj Gupta · 1 Comments

I was interested in this article from the latest edition of Southern Cross.

Southern Cross: When a church falls apart

It begins:

Pete Stone* is driving through the streets of one of the fastest growing suburbs in Australia, as he chats to me via his mobile. I imagine the freshly painted homes sparkling under a hot spring sun.

Pete ministers amongst the newly built dreams that commentators dub ‘aspirational Australia’. But spiritually, his suburb mirrors the bare strips of drought-strangled lawn – everywhere he looks, it’s fast drying up into a wasteland.

A few years ago, a nearby church had 700 members. A split in the congregation has seen its numbers dwindle to one-tenth of that number.

Another church down the street from Pete’s had 500 members: “They have just closed the doors and sold the property. The church is gone”.

He has seen a significant number of nearby churches – both evangelical and Pentecostal – fold in recent years.

The reason? Pete says there is ‘a systemic problem’ in a suburban culture especially susceptible to ‘the consumer mentality’.

In the modern ‘consumer culture’ of 21st-century Australia, people instinctively move on to the church down the road whenever conflict arises.

Pete may pastor a vibrant evangelical church on the Bible-belt fringes of one of Australia’s largest cities, but many have joined it as a result of divisions in three nearby churches.

“Every time you have a church split, people fall out of church life,” says Pete. “Others do go on to other churches, but when they move on they haven’t dealt with the issues and the conflicts pop up again down the track in their new church.”

With this history, it’s not surprising that unresolved past conflicts continue to undermine ministry at Pete’s church.

He says tackling conflict within churches is ‘the critical issue’ for Christian mission in the new suburbs surrounding his church.
* Not his real name

You can read the full in Southern Cross (on the back table) or on the web. But reading this should be enough for us to ask hard questions of ourselves. Are there unresolved issues among us? If so, do they threaten our valuable work together to see our area won for the Lord Jesus?

What do you think?

Raj

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