What should we be asking God to do in Australia over the next ten-to-twenty years?
A few weeks back TGCA got together about forty people to give the better part of a day to thinking and praying about that question. We asked what, if anything, we might be able to achieve by working together that would not be possible apart. It was a stimulating day and the ideas that have begun to emerge are, I believe, exciting.
I want to share one of them with you here. If you’d just as soon jump the throat-clearing and get on with it, by all means skip to the second heading. I do, however, want to frame what follows with a few qualifications and right-sized expectations.
Some Throat-Clearing
Specifically, what follows is the beginning of a process. It is the result of a somewhat rag-tag group of Christians leaders, the number of which was dictated partly by the size of the room the meeting was held in. The hope is to kick the ball forward—perhaps with a larger leaders’ summit a year or two from now, or by some other means. But all of this is to be confirmed.
Consequently, none of what follows has anything like an official stamp from any organisation or group. Consider it (in Yes, Minister or Utopia terms) an interim report on the draft findings of a preliminary investigation into a possible project for a yet-to-be determined future process. Or something like that.
Okay, with my throat now cleared, here’s a claim, and an idea. The claim is that Reformed evangelicals have a distinct unity at present. The idea is that we ask God to double our numbers over the next twenty years.
A Claim: Remarkable Unity
The claim first. Within the family of Reformed evangelicals in Australia, I reckon we are experiencing a moment of remarkable unity. History buffs will point to the 1959 Billy Graham Crusade as the high-water mark of evangelical unity in Australia. That’s probably true. But Graham was a particular figure, the post-war period was a particular era, and that mission created a particular kind of unity. All wonderful, of course. But historically specific and probably unrepeatable.
My claim is a little different. We are not, as in 1959, galvanised around a specific person (Graham) and a specific event (the Crusade). But as we look at the Reformed evangelical community today there is a remarkable unity, both in doctrinal commitment and in ministry philosophy. We share, for example, a biblical-theological approach to reading the Bible, seeing the Old Testament as fulfilled in the New. We believe in expository preaching—making the main topic of our teaching the main topic of the passage. We believe the gospel activates us into a passionate plea for every man, woman, and child to turn to Christ and be saved from the coming judgement. We believe in planting churches, in cross-cultural mission, and in putting denominational distinctives in second place.
If agreement on these matters strike you all as a bit “meh”, it’s likely you were born after about 1985. Every single one of those commitments have, historically, been points of difference and dissention between evangelicals. They really were. They’re not now. That is remarkable.
That’s the claim. Here’s the suggestion—let’s do something with that. But what? What if we started asking God to double the number of Reformed evangelical Christians in Australia over the next twenty years?[1] What about that?
An Idea: Double the Number in Twenty Years
This was an idea that emerged on that day in June and started to get some traction (Andrew Heard, in a forthcoming article on this site, will give it a fuller treatment). It’s a stretching goal. If I look at the churches and ministries I’m involved in, it’s challenging. If we were to pursue that goal it couldn’t be business as usual. We’d need to think creatively, critically, expansively about what God answering that prayer would look like. Still, it’s imaginable. Unlike some goals (say, for example, every Australian a Christian by 2030), I can imagine what that prayer would look like answered. Stretching? Yes! Possible to imagine? Also yes!
It’s also the kind of prayer that would force us to think beyond our patches. The prayer, you remember, is not for my ministry to double, but for the number of Reformed evangelicals to double. That forces me not only to pray for my church, my theological college, my organisation, but for all of us to have each others’ backs. To be praying for each other.
Done right, it would bring us into closer partnership with each other. Imagine, for example, that I’m struggling along in my local church, asking God to double us over the next twenty years. It might occur to me in the course of those prayers that the church in the next suburb has a strong youth ministry, but no venue, and I have a venue, but no youth. As I pray the prayer for a doubling of the work, I could also set up a coffee with the pastor in the next suburb. Perhaps we share a youth ministry? Perhaps my venue would help your youth work, and your youth work would help our church? What if this, and a thousand similar ventures, were the result of the prayer for a doubling?
Ambitious but Modest
Finally, I feel that this sort of prayer strikes the balance between godly ambition and appropriate modesty. At one level, it is modest. It’s a kind of Benedict Option for evangelicals. It doesn’t require a “year zero” plan of blowing everything up and starting again. It’s simply a prayer for more of what God has already done. It acknowledges the truth that we face significant headwinds in an aggressively secular and secularising culture. We would be strengthening what we have, not starting from scratch.
But it’s ambitious. People without Christ face the judgement of God. A doubling of the ministries over twenty years would only be a preliminary step toward the ultimate goals of seeing Australia overwhelmed with the saving knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. That’s got to be the ultimate goal, surely. But in order to get there, what about praying for a doubling of Reformed evangelical Christians on the way there? That’s worth praying for at least, isn’t it?
There are other matters we’d need to press into. The opportunities and challenges of groups who speak languages other than English, the specific challenges of second and third generation migrant churches, the work in and of indigenous communities, for example. No one thinks we are doing enough to reach those outside of the middle class. We need concerted prayer and work in reaching “hard places”—whether the “hard” refers to socio-economic, cultural, or geographical circumstances. And we need to think deeply about the next generation of leadership coming (or not coming, at least in sufficient numbers) through our theological colleges. We need to think beyond our shores. A concerned effort for Australia that didn’t spill over into a sacrificial uptake on those going beyond Australia would be a strange “own goal”.
But as a start, what do you think? Asking God to double the number of Reformed evangelical Christians in Australia over the next twenty years?
[1] Reformed evangelicals aren’t the only team holding out the gospel in Australia. To any who are, may God bless you abundantly! But the nature of coalitions is that we gather around certain shared values and commitments. In the case of TGCA, one of those commitments is to Reformed theology.
