Peter Corney on the future
Peter Corney is a well respected and well known retired Anglican vicar. He pastored one of the biggest Anglican Churches in Melbourne (biggest maybe?) and oversaw its growth until his retirement. He recently presented a paper to the Anglicans and it is an interesting read.Some of the highlights for me was his naming of four ways to view where we are as a Church at the moment:
(1) We are an institution /organization in serious decline and so we need renewal, revival, reform, radical transformation. Internally our core motivation is low and our current structures are proving ineffective for our core mission.
(2) We are an institution /organization in a social and cultural environment that is hostile to our core meaning and purpose, to our world view, our values, indeed to the very way we organize, meet and express ourselves. So we need to consolidate,
and sit it out till the environment changes. Survive till the Post Christian, Post Modern climate changes!
(3) Nostalgia – let’s hang on to or remake the past.
(4) Denial – never underestimate the power of denial!
He then continues by listing 10 key areas relating to local congregations that urgently need addressing.
1. The leadership/ministry area - we need leader/pastors and not pastor/maintainers.
(I love the bit how we need to avoid the Vicar of Dibbly syndrome)
2. New models of ministry/congregations
3. Church planting must be encourages in established areas as well as new housing development areas
4. plant more new settler/ethnic congregations
5. redevelop, redeploy and realiszing the assets of existing property
6. Develope a master plan of each region
7. youth and student ministry must become a major priority
8. Congregations must become focused outward on missional outreach
9. The development of a strong sense of community
10. the central leadership and administration must develop a permission giving culture.
He then lists the various myths that require challenging:
(1) The denominational franchise myth – all Anglican congregations must look alike. In a “Mosaic culture” contextualizing is a key, this will produce variety.
(2) The myth that the cross generational family village church is the only model.
It will continue to be a valid model but only one among a variety of ways of organizing Church.
(3) The myth that people under 45 are denominationally loyal. Denominational tags are increasingly irrelevant to contemporary people and of little influence in their decisions about attendance of a congregation. That will be decided by the variety of programs offered, the quality of worship and teaching, and whether there is a healthy children’s and youth ministry.
(4) The myth that local communities are residentially stable. At least 17% ofAustralians move every year and 40% every 5years. This means that Christian communities have to be constantly rebuilt. Welcoming systems, the constant development of voluntary leaders and clergy being willing to hang in for the long haul are all vital.
(5) The myth that the pastoral maintenance model of ministry grows churches.
This model has in fact presided over decline. In a high change culture leadership and creative initiative are crucial.
(6) The myth that new churches are only planted in new housing areas. New Congregations must be replanted in established areas as well as new ones
(7) The myth that in a mass media urban culture personal faith is still caught by association or socialization. In fact the power of the mass media is so great that it socializes young people out of faith. Young people, including the children of
Christian families, need to be brought to a personal decision and a “conversion experience” if their faith is to survive in this culture.
(8) The quality vs. quantity myth. The idea that numbers don’t matter its quality not quantity that counts. This is a false dichotomy – both matter! Ministry to the few means that the majority are left out. This can be an irresponsible position and
an excuse for failure.
(9) The myth of the charming amateur. The notion that the bumbling parson who runs a somewhat chaotic service and organization is charming, authentic and attractive and anything else is merely slick and superficial. If attendance is a
any measure of this myth then clearly the majority of punters have voted with their feet. Frankly we can do without the Rowan Atkinson image!
It seems to more that Peter Corney’s challenges are not simply for the Anglican denomination but rather for most (if not all) mainline denominations in the Western world.
You can read the complete presentation (pdf) here
August 20th, 2006 at 10:59 am
With all due respect to Peter, who has certainly been a very successful church leader, this sounds like a very ‘modernist’ take on the current situation.
It doesn’t sound unlike what he was saying 10 years ago.
August 20th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
I don’t see that Hamo. How is it modernist?
I see an emphasis on moving beyond the parish model and establishing new missional congregations, planting in established areas (sub-cultures) and fostering more of pioneering leadership style as being the challenges.
He may not use the same words as you or I may use but the meaning seems to be the same.
August 20th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Phil,
In Peter’s 4 ways to see ourself as a church (the first point) they all seem a negative. Are there only 4 or are there some positive ones?
As I read through this summary I didn’t find much new in it but as I kept reading I was reminded that we keep needing this ‘bread & butter’ from our forebears. There’s is a language that we need to listen to or we lose something. But, yes I’d agree with Hammo that there is an underlying assessment of the situation that feels, naturally modernist - but that ain’t a sin in a culture like ours - we keep voting back John Howard.
Andrew
August 20th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
I agree that there is nothing much earth shattering but I think it is good food to digest and sums up the challenge for established congregations pretty well.
But what makes it modernist?
I don’t see the summary of the situation as modernist or post-modernist but rather just a summary.
What am I not seeing guys?
August 20th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
um…
good question.
i think its something to do with how it feels to me.
i am trying to articulate why i felt that… maybe the 4/10/9 point lists?… maybe - i dunno - its a feeling.
i might come back to it!
August 21st, 2006 at 9:46 am
I think his 4 views of the church currently is very accurate for the vast majority of situations. Very good read.
August 21st, 2006 at 10:13 am
I think the first question to be asked when astute church politicians like Peter make speecehs is not what they say,but why and to whom they speak(OK thats 2 questions).Why - could it have anything to do with the dilemma the melb anglicans have without a bishop? And note that it was given to the cream of the “low church”/evangelical end of the anglicans-nothing wrong with that but it does shape a speech.
I agree with much that is said, but think he sets up straw men/women and then shoots them down;bit like some denominational staff talking about the emerging church,and the emerging church talking about deminations!
His “myths” are nothing new.
Myth 1 - who still thinks all angl congreg must look the same,apart those in sydney?.Who still believes that “local communities are residentially stable”,good sociology has never been the strength of clerics and gurus.And the only people believing the quality-quantity myth must surely be the prosperity theological charlatans.
The most important thing that anglians like Corney can help us all with is the whole notion of “church’.
One of the challenges the den that you and i belong to Phil ,and i suspect the emerging church process, is the difficulty we have in seeing the “church” as anything beyond the local.Is the church something beyond that - and I think anglicans can help us.
PS Good to know that we’re “us” and “them” over there, are “ethnics” - now thats good theology and sound sociology- yep they certainly need churches!
August 21st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
“American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches and getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.
The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns–how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.
Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.
The biblical fact is that there are no successful churches. There are, instead, communities of sinners, gathered before God week after week in towns and villages all over the world. The Holy Spirit gathers them and does his work in them. In these communities of sinners, one of the sinners is called pastor and given a designated responsibility in the community. The pastor’s responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God. It is this responsibility that is being abandoned in spades.
—–
From the introduction of “Working the Angles” written by Eugene Peterson.”
Via http://www.stupidchurchpeople.com/2006/08/this-guy-is-angry-at-pastors.html
August 21st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Nice challenging quote Lance - I am elevating that to its own thread.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I haven’t read all of the above responses, but my initial reaction upon reading the post was: it sounds to me like Peter was talking about how to build a successful institution, rather than spread the Good News. Mission is mentioned once. Pretty much everything there could apply to any other sort of enterprise.
Just a thought…