“Do you see the crowds?”
“Do you see the crowds?” These 5 words from Archbishop Kanishka Raffel’s presidential address has set the tone for our Sydney Anglican Church’s Synod which began last Saturday. And it began not in the place where Synod usually begins but in Sydney’s growing South-West where all members of Synod had the opportunity to see the extent of growth in this part of Sydney and the need in the years to come for new churches in new communities that will continue to pop up in this ever expanding area.
The first day of the Sydney Anglican Synod is always a day to look forward to (maybe I am just weird). In this case it was great to come together with colleagues, friends and acquaintances from across the city, and to be encouraged to lift our eyes to see the crowds who will in years to come inhabit these new areas of Sydney and need to hear the Gospel.
For new churches to be built however, land has to be purchased and it has to be done before development begins and so for the last 10 years we along with every other church in the Diocese have been paying a 2% levy for the purchase of new land so that churches can be built in these ‘Greenfields’ areas. See https://greenfields.sydney/ for an example of what’s come about in that time. But outer Sydney continues to grow and so to enable more people who move into these new areas to be able to hear the gospel we will need more churches and so one of the significant discussion and decisions made at Synod this week was to extend the levy for the next 10 years so that more could be spent on buying up land for new churches in the North-West and South-West growth areas.
The Archbishop’s inspirational exhortation for us to “see the crowds” has reverberated right through this first week of Synod (click here for the video of the Presidential address). It was mission-driven and gospel-focused, as he asked us how to reach the new housing estates where 30 new churches are needed to reach the hundreds of thousands of people who will move into the Greenfields areas to the west of Sydney.
On top of this, Synod has considered, debated and voted on a number of items of business ranging from how money is spent on mission and ministry across the Diocese to how we deal with and respond to the very real and problematic issue of domestic abuse both within and outside our churches; from how we use surplus assets where the viability of church property is under review, to how we as a Diocese will continue to support our brothers and sisters in the Bathurst Diocese as they seek to reach the lost and grow God’s church
In all of this, the driving force of our Diocese remains the proclamation of the Gospel of our risen Lord and Saviour and so, many of the items of business that come before the Synod and the decisions which follow have this as the backdrop.
As our Diocese encourages us to seek to glorify God by actively loving, serving and encouraging people to know and follow Jesus, the vision of the Diocese can be ours as well: to see Christ honoured as Lord and Saviour in every community of our suburb. Seaforth Anglican is playing its part in this wider vision as we build lives for Christ by connecting with those around us, growing disciples of the Lord Jesus, and building our church community through serving one another in ministry.