Anglican Diocese of Perth

Northern Region

Bishop Farran's Sermons 2004

A sermon preached by Bishop Brian Farran
at S. John’s Church Greenwood
on the occasion of
the 20th anniversary of its consecration, July 25th 2004.

Recently I attended a 21st birthday party. I had been invited by the young man whose celebration it was. David is a member of the Northern Region Council. I was delighted and surprised to receive the invitation. Invitations to 21st birthday celebration tend to favour that age group!

I joined about forty people at David’s home. The vast majority of the guests were under twenty-one. It was an interesting experience eating sausages, pizza and sharing in vibrant young adult conversation. The main room was decorated with photos of the guest of honour. The photos told something of David’s life-story from his birth until that very day of the celebration.

The several speeches were tear-inducing. There were many moist eyes, for the story was of a very gifted human being - a loving son, an accomplished sportsman, an achieving student, a valued friend, an acknowledged Christian, a gifted musician, and a modest young man.

Even though I have been connected to David and his family through my visits to his parish as the bishop, I was glad that David had included me as a guest to celebrate his twenty-first birthday and all that the celebration meant to him, to his family and to his friends. I feel somewhat the same way tonight as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the consecration of this church.

Clearly, this celebration is a party, though not quite as raucous as a typical 21st birthday party. There are, however, a number of similarities. For instance, this is likely to be a night of reunions. Folk who once were very connected here may have returned to celebrate. That is a bit like meeting relatives whom you see only occasionally at significant family gatherings.

There are loads of stories to tell. The life of this church is being remembered, and it is composed of people with a variety of stories to share. As with the speeches at that 21st, we will learn much of the growth of this church, and of its character today. This then is an important and appropriate celebration.

I have alluded to a 21st birthday celebration as an introduction because like human beings congregations or churches have not only a life-story but a life-cycle too. With human beings it is more obvious and more natural to think of the aging process. However, a congregation too has a life cycle that began with its birth, and continues through infancy, adolescence, maturity, even to death (in some instances) when congregations close.

The birth of a congregation might have been occasioned by a gleam in some bishop’s eye as that bishop surveyed a projected new housing suburb and considered that it would be the missionary thing to do to begin a new congregation.

I first heard of Saint John’s Greenwood at meetings of the General Board of Religious Education (our once national education agency) in Melbourne. At that time I was Dean of the Cathedral in Rockhampton and I met up with Bishop Kyme at GBRE annual meetings and conferences. I think then that this parish had moved into a very healthy and vibrant adolescence. Certainly, S. John’s Greenwood had a name for itself that had crossed the empty space of the Nullarbor!

Remembering the birth of the congregation is likely to revive memories of vision, of hope, and enthusiasm. That time would have been noted for the huge amount of energy that pulsated through the church. The congregation might have been in love with what it was like to be a brand-new church and might have been full of undifferentiated activity, just like a young child exploring its environment.


Over the past two decades various research institutions have closely inspected congregations in an attempt to understand them and to analyse them, for congregations are unique communities. Such research provides information about what helps a congregation and what adversely affects congregations.


One such piece of research was developed by Martin Saairnen in 1986. A reviewer of Dr. Saarinen’s research published as The Life Cycle of a Congregation wrote, “As Marty was describing these life cycles, I found myself reflecting over my experiences as a pastor in four parishes and saying >So that’s what was happening. He has put into images and words the experience that most parish leaders (lay and clergy) have groped to articulate. Once identified clearly, the stage of life in which a congregation finds itself can become understandable...indeed, only then can options for change be delineated and choices pursued.”


Of the stage of birth, Martin Saarinen says, “the congregation’s sense of identity and how it may be a servant to the broader community is limited by its need to develop a broad enough base of members and dollars to support a ministry. The founders are known and remembered for their chaisma and ability to draw people together and fill them with enthusiasm.” Does that description ring bells for you about those heady days in the early 1980s?

This model of the life cycle suggests that each time a congregation moves to another stage there is both a dying and a rising (very Christian images). So, some aspects of life as they are, have to be relinquished in order for new development to occur.

This is obviously true in human maturation as well. The scattiness of childhood has to be foregone for the maturation of adolescence. Adolescents begin that process of specialisation that narrows their interests and concentrates their efforts and their learning in certain directions as they move towards young adulthood.


And as with human growing much energy is required, if a congregation is to grow and not decline. If a congregation recognises it is in decline, an injection of energy by everyone is required to arrest the decline and to begin growing again. In fact, the congregation has to develop a new vision for its life, reinvent itself for growth.

I cannot detail each aspect of Martin Saairnen’s model nor all of the stages in the life cycle. However, thinking this way is useful at this time of momentous celebration.

For the model indicates that decline is reversible, provided that the congregation accurately identified its position on the life cycle and implements the necessary initiatives to foster growth once again. This fostering growth is very much connected to the vision that the congregation develops for its life.

I suppose that some here have watched that renovator’s dream television programme, The Block. It is amazing to eavesdrop on the competitor’s plans for their renovations, simply to begin to see the possibilities they see.


The seeing of possibilities for the future mission and ministry of a congregation is a very necessary gift. Without vision, things will remain as they are, and in many instances that simply means more decline.

Martin Saarinen’s model offers hope. Saarinen states that, “decline may be arrested by tapping again the life sources inherent in the birth story of the congregation (how it came into being) or in discovering a new sense of mission in a changed context. Life threatening situations for a congregation are often the occasions for rediscovering or re-envisioning itself.”


The good news is that the church is being re-energized with a sense of mission. In fact, we can take our lead from the Church of England. There is a stereotype of the Church of England that makes it appear as if it is locked backed in the 1800s, unadventurous and stagnant. Well, much creative exciting innovation in parishes and in ways of being the church is exploding in the present-day Church of England. An exciting report was adopted by their General Synod in February last, mission-shaped church.

This report is warmly endorsed by Archbishop Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said, "we can say that what's before us now is an opportunity to become in every way a more adult church. That is taking responsibility, exercising trust, living with some uncertainty and in every way therefore growing up into the Christ that we seek to serve as Church. So I very, very warmly commend the report to you. I look forward enormously to working with its recommendations and finding out how exactly we implement this exciting and deeply disturbing, properly disturbing vision." The report bluntly states that, "the church needs to learn from the Holy Spirit to be more an anticipation of God's future than a society for the preservation of the past. Perhaps our greatest need is of a baptism of imagination about the forms of the Church."


Strangely it seems that in order to face the future with real mission capacity the Church is recovering principles of ministry and mission from its earliest period, the period of the New Testament church and the church of the first centuries. That church understood that its most important human resource for mission and ministry was its faithful baptised members.

That church believed on the basis of the teaching of a founding apostle, Saint Paul, that each member of the church once baptised was gifted by the Holy Spirit for ministry and service. In effect, the church is like a human body, composed of many interdependent connecting parts, each of which is necessary for the functioning of the whole body. The church can only be fully effective whenever its members discern and recognise their gifts for ministry and offer these to the mission of the congregation.


Decline has clogged the arteries of our church simply because we have failed to honour the role of all the faithful baptised, that together, we are the royal priesthood of which Saint Peter speaks. We have been working with a limited understanding of ministry, and we have been under-resourced for far too long. We have effectively for a very long time disenfranchised the vast majority of the church from its role in ministry. Now we are seeking to readdress this issue before it is too late.

Hence, the opportunity for every faithful baptised member of this congregation to reflect together over five weeks on A New Vision for Our Church. Over 1500 copies of this study have been sold throughout Australia, so that means that a significant number of worshipping Anglicans have been exposed to this return to New Testament ministry principles.

I sincerely hope you will join them and rediscover the heritage that is yours through your baptism. We have each of us been authorised for ministry and mission, but I am afraid this has been one of the church’s best-kept secrets!


Mission takes precedence over every other aspect of the church’s life. Indeed, worship, fellowship, teaching, leadership, service all require a mission intention. If there is not this alignment, then we are working against our basic theological values. Such persistent antagonism to foundational values will lead to frustration, inertia and finally irrelevance.

Operationally, we act as if the church is primarily for Christians. Whereas, foundationally the church is for those not yet here. We tend to structure our programmes for those already here, and that acts like organizational gravity, accelerating the internal focus and fascination.


Let me introduce the thinking of Ruth Page about mission. Ruth Page has written: “Mission is not so much activity on behalf of God as participating in what God is already about...Mission with God means that our proper role is to discern what God is doing in the world and co-operate with that.”

This understanding of God and the consequent role of the Church have huge implications for this and every congregation. The study programme will give you vital information about your role in this mission and ministry.

That 21st birthday party of David’s was really a celebration of David’s future potential. Along with the other guests, I got to glimpse David’s potential from hearing his life-story thus far in the celebratory speeches.

Tonight is very similar. We are celebrating the potential of this congregation by recalling its story, by remembering its birth, what it has achieved, and dreaming of what it still has to achieve in God’s mission.


Tonight is the God-given moment for new vision, new energy, further commitment, deeper living into our baptism to be available yet again to our missionary God. Tonight we launch into A New Vision for Our Church.