Starting new churches in Melbourne

[Andrew Stagg]

Gordon Cheng wrote:

*If someone was wanting to plant a church close to RMIT and Melbourne University, then what arguments would Satan use to prevent that from happening?*

Hi Gordon,

Obviously if you want to plant a church between RMIT and Melbourne University, that's pretty much where St Judes sits. Which sounds a bit odd. Since you've kindly shared you thoughts with us on this, I'm interested why you are thinking about this area. Is it the university students. Is it that your skills and knowledge match this demographic. Is it that you really feel called to this area.

As a few of us have mentioned - there is a great need out west and east. Additional to that, others have mentioned there is a great need at the other university campuses - so we naturally hope that if you are convinced that Carlton is the go, you have a solid reason. Obviously you don't need to share your reasons with us, but at the same time I hope you can understand our curiosity, since St Judes is already in the area.

your most affectionate uncle,
Screwtape

[David Palmer]

    Gordon Cheng wrote:

*If someone was wanting to plant a church close to RMIT and Melbourne University, then what arguments would Satan use to prevent that from happening?*

Why would you plant a church close to RMIT and Melbourne University when St Judes and Scots are already there?

Why not look at planting a church near to Monash, or have you got another church covering Monash, or the University out Footscray way?

[Luke Isham]

Just to throw a spanner in Gordon's way.

What if Docklands, Scotts, AFES and St Judes don't have the CBD and universitites covered well enough?  Given the number people, lots, there might be the space for another church?

[Danny Saunders]

Gordo's question was: *If someone was wanting to plant a church close to RMIT and Melbourne University, then what arguments would Satan use to prevent that from happening?*

Well, not that I'm suggesting this was necessarily Satan's strategy & I'm not sure what bearing this has on the current discussion...but on this thread it seems we're all so anglo/cu-centric perhaps that we've overlooked that Planetshakers was planted right in the heart of RMIT not too long ago. Whatever one may think of this particular brand of, dear I say it, "church". Planetshakers is a "church" plant in this area so shows perhaps that it can be done, and quite succesfully, for good or ill time will tell, even in the RMIT/Melb CU/Scots/St Judes heartland. The horse has already bolted while we're still sitting around wondering about it. Let's not die wondering.  

[Jordan]

I think it's worth revisiting Phil's observation. The difference between 'wanting to', and 'called'.

Satan might want you to plant a church near other established ministries! He may figure that dissension between churches can easily be stirred up that way, causing hindrance to effective mission and ministry. A controversial thing to say perhaps, but possible!

On the other hand, God may want you to do the church plant. In which case you should go ahead and do it, come what may.

I think a better question would be: 'If God was wanting someone to plant a church close to RMIT and Melbourne University, then what arguments would Satan use to prevent that from happening?'

But this question assumes to know God's will in the matter - which is really the underlying issue.

Gordon, are you trying to arrive at God's will by second guessing Satan? Sounds like a fairly low percentage way of getting guidance doesn't it?

In Christ,
Jordan

[Jason]

David,

Just to clarify: Are you saying that Satan would use the argument, "Why would you want to plant a church close to RMIT when..."? Or are you actually asking Gordon a legitimate question why he'd want to plant a church at RMIT etc?

[David Palmer]

Some javascript/style in this post has been disabled (why?)

Hi Jason,

I wasn’t thinking about what Satan might think, I was just thinking there is reasonable coverage around RMIT/MU – St Jude’s, Docklands, Scots, someone mentioned Planetshakers, Lygon Church of Christ come to mind.

Being nearer Monash I thought why not near Monash? We have a Presbyterian Church in Clayton working well with a non AFES Christian group (Christian Life or some such name) and I was wondering what Church or churches were plugged into Monash CU, perhaps there is an opportunity for a plant there?

As far as Gordon himself is concerned I believe he has been exploring opportunities for doing church planting work and has a heart for Melbourne. I don’t know him well enough to know whether he is gifted for such work. My experience in the Presbyterian Church is that gifted church planters aren’t all that thick on the ground, although we have (to date!) successful ones at Melton and Bundoora (tied to Latrobe CU) and several overplants elsewhere showing excellent promise.

Cheers

David

 

From: Jason (via Nabble) [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, 25 November 2008 7:01 PM
To: David Palmer
Subject: Re: Starting new churches in Melbourne

 

David,

Just to clarify: Are you saying that Satan would use the argument, "Why would you want to plant a church close to RMIT when..."? Or are you actually asking Gordon a legitimate question why he'd want to plant a church at RMIT etc?

---

This email is a reply to your post @ http://n2.nabble.com/Starting-new-churches-in-Melbourne-tp1076617p1575428.html
You can reply by email or by visting the link above.

 

[Gordon Cheng]

Hi all,

just bumping this for an update, which is that due to financial issues I've taken redundancy and am looking for a job. The arguments for planting a church (or several) near Melbourne/RMIT seem as persuasive as ever, and the Satanic counter-arguments seem excellent as well—thanks especially to Alex, who I will be engaging as my lawyer next time I get sued ;)

Those who are in the habit of praying might continue to ask God to supply more church planters for Melbourne, including the other places that have been mentioned, and asking him to give wisdom as to what I should do.

I am planning to visit Melbourne again in Jan '09 and, God willing, will be able to get some further ideas on this topic.

[Jason]

Gordon,

May God open up opportunities and support for any ministry you have in mind in Melbourne. The more Christians down here the better.

J.

[Gordon Cheng]

Thanks Jason, much appreciated.

Were we to come down I would be looking for helpers, pray-ers and friends who have an interest in being involved in some fun stuff, gospel-growth wise.

[Maria]

Graeme Chiswell who is the campus direcor of Monash CU worships at GWAC (Glen Waverley Anglican Church) with his family. GWAC has links with Monash, particulary through "International Friends", an outreach to international students which works in conjunction with FOCUS, CU Bible studies for International Students. The links between GWAC and Monash CU are presently growing. There are also a few churches in Clayton with links to Monash CU.

In reply to David who wrote: Being nearer Monash I thought why not near Monash? We have a Presbyterian Church in Clayton working well with a non AFES Christian group (Christian Life or some such name) and I was wondering what Church or churches were plugged into Monash CU, perhaps there is an opportunity for a plant there?

[murray]

Monash may be a potential church planting spot. Apart from GWAC there are a couple of other close church that have ties with the CU work. Mentone Baptist has two AFES staff workers in the congregation as well as a bunch of students.

[Gordon Cheng]

Murray and Maria, we're friends with the Chiswells from years and years and years ago. Why would I jeopardize that by planting a church near them!

Actually there would be room for another church or 30 around Monash too. Just a gut feeling but I have often thought, having worked on both campuses, that Monash has even more potential as a place to find future church leaders than Melbourne Uni. And part of that means having good local churches cultivating and training the local talent.

[murray]

Gordon Cheng wrote:

Murray and Maria, we're friends with the Chiswells from years and years and years ago. Why would I jeopardize that by planting a church near them!

Actually there would be room for another church or 30 around Monash too. Just a gut feeling but I have often thought, having worked on both campuses, that Monash has even more potential as a place to find future church leaders than Melbourne Uni. And part of that means having good local churches cultivating and training the local talent.

i think you misread me Gordo. I think there is potential around Monash. I was simply adding to Maria's comments lest the broader readership conclude there is no work being done in the area

I agree 30 evangelical churches around Monash would be fantastic. 30 evangelical churches around Melbourne would be fantastic! (I know there are more than that). The wonderful (and disturbing) thing about this list of potential church planting areas is that there is no end to it. On top of the already said areas, there is also around Deaking uni, Caufield campus for Monash, most of the bay area, inner east and on and on.  

When you're down in Jan and if you would like to talk shop, please don't hesitate to drop me a line

[Gordon Cheng]

Hi Murray, yes I did misread you, I'm sorry about that. I'm even sorrier I didn't get to catch up with you on the last visit to Melbourne (along with quite a number of other friends down there). One way or another we will get to talk one of these days. Well I guess we're talking now, but you know what I mean.

[murray]

No prob Gordon. I didn't express it very well.

To repeat Jason's sentiment, Melbourne needs as many Gospel workers as possible, so if you believe God wants you here please come.

[Bogong]

I'm fairly new to theological debate, but I'm very interested in improving access to Christ's message.

One thing I have noticed that works in other walks of life is "demographic compatibility" (for lack of a snappier term).

People are far more likely to get involved in an organisation or activity if there is a group of similar people to mix with. By this I especially mean age group, but also geographical location, ethnicity, background, education, etc. I think the overall term for what I'm getting at is "fellowship".

When I was looking for somewhere to learn about Christianity, I stumbled across an ideal church, simply because I had previously voted there. I soon found out that some friends (who I thought were agnostics) were also Christians and attended another evangelical Anglican church only 2 km away. Both had congregations that I could feel at home with, the same age, the same secular interests, similar levels of education, etc. But these two churches are islands in a very empty ocean. None of the 10 nearest Anglican churches even have websites and when I enquired about them, I was quietly told that they were a bit elderly and could perhaps be seen as not going out of their way to welcome newbies to faith.

What luck I had! If I'd lived a couple of suburbs away, after summoning the courage to wander along to my local church, I would have probably been unimpressed by the service and felt no fellowship with the congregation. I probably wouldn't have been assisted by people I could identify with or been as thrilled to discover Christ's message as I was. I might have drifted in the secular world for many more years.

What we need is new congregations (probably in existing churches) specifically targeting Gen X and older Y's who (like me) have been raised in a world where God was never mentioned (except incidentally as a mild expletive). If there was a congregation targeting yuppies in the inner south east, bogans in an industrial suburb, migrants in another suburb, etc., these people could be easily marketed to.

There's an awful lot of interest in Christianity amongst this young-ish age group, but very few places for them to look for practical guidance and find fellowship with their peers. When I "outed" myself as a new Christian convert to a few of my closer friends, they showed a great deal of interest in "Dave's new hobby" as one of them calls it. One agnostic/mild atheist friend even came along to my first communion a few months ago. But at the moment there are no "reformed protestant" churches friendly to men in their late 30's near any of the suburbs they live in. So I can't refer them to somewhere friendly to help them towards faith. I've only been a Christian for 11 months, so I'm not ready to answer some of the pointy questions they ask.

The further I progress as a Christian, the more confident I am that we need a dozen or so congregations like this scattered around Melbourne.

[Jason]

Welcome to MASG Bogong. It's great to see your comments and contribution. What's even more fantastic is your story of walking along to a couple of welcoming Anglican churches.

Hope to read more of your contributions in future.

J.

[murray]

Thank you for your first contribution Bogong. It was encouraging to read and I agree with the impulse for planting new congregations across Melbourne. I reckon this is one of the hottest topics across Christendom at the moment. In fact I have been having conversations with people at Mentone about starting a new work sometime next year.

As I’ve been thinking through all these issues (and the following is not a response to anyone’s postings but just me rambling), planting new congregations for the sake of reaching Gen Xers and Gen Yers is a good thing, although, as some missiologists are now arguing, the issue is not so much generational as it is about epistemology and culture. Many want to plant congregations so that Church can be expressed in different ways; this sentiment crosses generational boundaries; it just happens that more under 35s are ‘postmodernists’ in their outlook than those who are over 35.

Reaching young adults for Christ is a great motivation for planting new congregations. Underpinning it all of course is the very the nature of the Gospel and the great commission which suggests we’re to be in the Gospel growing business until Jesus comes back. That by definition means planting congregations. But it also includes existing congregations maturing in Christ, and part of that is them growing and changing in order to express God’s Kingdom in the culture in which we are now living, rather than the culture of 50 years ago or even of the community from a  different part of Melbourne.

Perhaps it is important to differentiate between Church and Church services. Church is of course defined by Christ and there is an ontological thing going on, thus we wouldn’t want to change that. Even the way Church expresses itself as God’s people needs to be aligned with Scripture – gathered around the word, reading Bible and preaching, prayer, loving one another, etc. So our aim mustn’t be to change the Church in that sense. However whilst we wait for heaven our Church meetings need to be communicable, firstly for the Christians gathered, and second, for unbelievers. Hence why I don’t preach in Latin to my congregation (and because I can’t remember much Latin anymore). Accordingly, styles of music, sitting arrangements, the way church services are organised, times, places, and many other things ought to change and be shaped so to enable Christians from within that particular community to meet together and to be a platform that can take the Gospel to unbelievers in that community (by community we mustn’t automatically define it geographically).  My point? The answer is not always to begin a fresh work, our existing congregations should always be reforming. However no congregation can meet the needs of every subculture and so for the sake of reaching as many of possible we need to begin new works. Having said that the Gospel is the great unifier, crossing generation and cultures (told you I’m rambling).

New congregations are necessitated by the burdened to reach new subcultures, but there are other factors such as a congregation maxing its size, or location or time.

[Tracy]

"If there was a congregation targeting yuppies in the inner south east"....
Dear Bogong, there are plenty of 20-40 year olds at the very evangelical St Matthew's Prahran: www.stmatts.com.au
BTW, Bogong, are you named after a moth?