When I was ordained a priest in 1968 at S. Thomas' church Narrandera in New South Wales on a stinking hot mid December morning at 8.00a.m. a bush choir struggled to sing, in that small country church as the bishop entered, Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, Behold a great prelate, who in his days was pleasing unto God. That was an indication that the church had chosen to ignore Saint Paul egalitarian picture of the church as the body of Christ,and to continue hierarchy, which it still, sadly, continues.

Saint Paul developed an understanding of our corporate life that subverted the hierarchy of the ancient world. This understanding threatened the power of Caesar, and Caesar's institutions, such as slavery, the economic and military engine of the Roman Empire. The church with its message and practice of radical equality was seen to be subverting the very basis of the Roman Empire. The church was suspect, even seditious. Hence, its persecution.

In principle because of the New Testament the church is still subversive, and is still an alternative to our own hierarchically driven society where brute power, or money, or beauty or knowledge create their own hierarchies.

The highpoint of Saint Paul's redevelopment of the concept of body is his statement to the diverse group of Corinthians who constituted the church at Corinth - a very secular, multi-racial, prosperous, tourist destination city -"now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.".¹

These very words are true of the congregations that make up the Northern Region: "now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it". This means that each member of the Anglican church here, from whatever parish, is significant for the church's mission and ministry. Indeed, it means further that the body is incapacitated, if any one member is not exercising their particular gift of ministry in the mission of this Anglican church.

Throughout the history of the church over the last one thousand years or more, the ministry of the church has been quarantined to the clergy or to religious orders or even to missionaries who left their own culture to go to foreign places to proclaim the gospel. This contraction of ministry to what were virtually classes of members of the church reintroduced the practice of hierarchy, and clearly went against the teaching of Saint Paul.

It is astounding that this anomaly of practice was not critiqued until as recently as the 1980s, when the church found that in its remotest areas like Alaska or the outback of Australia or Nevada -the testing area for the United States Atomic weapons programme- the mediaeval parish version of being church could not be sustained.

Now we have begun to embrace, haltingly, what is known as Total Ministry, that is, the version of ministry that Saint Paul taught and which the New Testament churches practised. These churches relied on local leadership from within the congregation with the support of itinerant leaders (apostles or their delegates) who visited and mentored these churches and their local leadership.

We are developing in this Region a version of Total Ministry that we call Ministering Communities in mission. This practice seeks to change the self-understanding of congregations from being consumers of religious experience, just coming to church, to being ministers, that is being the church. This is a huge cultural shift that demands commitment, vision, energy and perseverance.

More than anything else, we need now people within the Region who have ideas and faith! Therefore, we need to have identified the particular gift for ministry that the Holy Spirit has bestowed on each of us through the combination of our birth and our baptism. There are helpful processes of identifying such gifts, mostly based on our detecting what is our deepest desire for God.

This identifying of gifts for ministry is a particular responsibility of our priests who have the special task of emulating the Holy Spirit by co-ordinating the variety of gifts for ministry in the congregations of the parishes to undertake the mission of the church.

I earnestly believe that whenever a person's imagination is excited by a vital vision of the church's mission and ministry, then such persons will invest themselves in service with energy and enthusiasm. Thankfully, I can rehearse instances where vision has activated many people and drawn them into ministry and service.

I want to provide you with some existing examples of such liveliness in parishes and offer some future hopes. Before I do this, however, I want to re-examine some ministry and mission principles that must underscore what we plan and how we work.

Over-emphasis upon the ordained ministry captivates the church to a tiny minority who increasingly cannot make the church work effectively by themselves. It is clear that those churches that are working with a vision that ministry belongs to the whole church are the congregations that are lively, healthy and able to multiply membership.

The churches most at risk are those that are dependent upon the resources of only the one - the ordained minister. The research data and our own empirical observations will indicate that unless there is quick, sustained change, some parishes will be altered deleteriously in the next five or so years. One only has to scrutinize the information in the Diocesan year book to recognize the at-risk parishes, and their reliance on funding external to the Sunday offerings.

The vision of Ministering Communities in mission is about recapturing the essential energy and drive of the churches in the New Testament era. Those early Christian communities recognised the missionary responsibility that each member had; that membership of the church was not a private indulgence; that being a member of the church was about ministry (diaconos) of some kind.

This vision that we adopted at last year's Regional Assembly has its critics. The role of critic is important and healthy for all. Any vision has to be re-evaluated, and any leader has to check to see if people are following.

One criticism that is pragmatic is the issue of the time availability of parishioners to undertake leadership roles or to join ministry teams. I believe that people find the time to do what they really want to do. The issue, I think, is not so much scarcity of time, as priorities for time usage. And setting priorities, a necessary task for all of us, is about recognizing our deepest desires. At bottom, human beings do what they most desire. And they are content and find meaning when their deepest desires are met.

That statement, "at bottom, human beings do what they most desire" may sound harsh, but psychologically I am convinced it is true.

I believe that the biggest task before us in this church is to assist people to connect with their desire for God, and even to touch their desires (period). Our relationship with God is a function of desire. Certainly, the possibility from God's side of a relationship is an outcome of God's desire for us. Jesus Christ is the living embodiment of God's desire for us.

Living as a Christian is intimately knowing God's desire for us, and our own deep desire for God that is fulfilled distinctively in Jesus Christ. For only through Jesus is God known as personal, as compassionate and as longing for us with womb-like contractions.

Desire, its power, its energy, its confusion was explored in the first of the Harry Potter books. Here is a clip from the film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone that brings the young Harry face-to-face with desire and its inner working.

CLIP FROM FILM

The mirror of ERISED (the mirror image of desire) "shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts".²

For most of us, the real (rather than the presenting) issue about our desires is the extent of our desire for God. It seems to me that the Christian Tradition does enable us, when we desire God with passion, to have enlarged lives, deeper purpose, more fulfilment, more of our potential actually available to ourselves and to others, especially those whom we love.

Ministry is essentially about our desire for God - to be self-giving, to be generous, to be imitative of the Divine life as lived out in Jesus.

This is the reason that fundamentally I consider that our most basic problem as a church is our lack of desire for God. It is also the reason that experience in the church for some is so empty and flaccid.
I suggested earlier that there are instances of desire driving significant initiatives. We have had some highlighted in our Passion segments throughout today.

There are many throughout the Region, and we should be thankful for these.

I want to end by detailing some of the models of how we might be church in this Region in the coming years. This is about structure. Structure is the means of ensuring that a message becomes a movement, rather than just remain limited to the few who adopted the message first. Structure opens up possibilities for many others, certainly for a next generation.

The models presently in place include:

1. The family-sized church, with attendance of about 50-70.
2. Churches that are not growing beyond 120-150
3. A very large church of about 300
4. Churches in schools as seamless faith communities
5. Churches working on the model/principles of Ministering Communities in mission
6. A church in an ecumenical venture
7. Churches with part-time stipendiary priests

A further model for new housing estates like Bennett Springs, or Landsdale or Ellenbrook might be the diocese buying a house that can be large enough or designed especially to host meetings, worship and outreach activities. We would establish lay communities whose ministry would be to rent this house and become the minister in this area exercising hospitality and presence, whilst being aligned to a sponsor parish. We would want to seek committed Anglican Christians, who have natural gifts for outreach and hospitality, who would live in these houses for a specified contract period, undertaking this ministry of community hospitality and presence, developing a house church that is connected with an already established Sunday congregation.

At the moment this is a dream. Michael and I are working up this concept, and we will be seeking Diocesan Council approval and funding from the Parish Development Fund for this venture. When all the approvals are in place, and once we have established the criteria for selection, we will be calling for applicants to undertake this ministry of presence and hospitality. We believe it will be effective.

Why?

Well, the answer was partly given in a recent Perspective radio programme on Radio National.
Here is the text of Vern Hughes, the Development Manager of the Social Entrepreneurs Network of Australia.

"Our age is marked by a diminishing circle of trust. Corporations, trade unions, churches and politicians all find themselves on the outside of this circle. Our stocks of social capital are diminishing (that is, our capacity to trust others and to act on this trust in expectation that it will be reciprocated). The consequence is a shrinking of our social networks to people who are like us, or think like us. Disengagement, insecurity and downwards envy are the result.

The traditional politics of Left and Right cannot help us in understanding this new world. The flow of trust and reciprocity in the community cannot be adjusted by pulling levers in government or adjusting economic management devices. It cannot be legislated for. Trust and reciprocity are generated primarily in civil society, in the relationships and institutions of civil life -- families, friendship groups, neighbourhoods, churches, clubs, and voluntary associations. From there they shape the effectiveness of other institutions such as the market and government.

Take churches as a case study of what has happened over the last century.

As the state and market grew in the twentieth century, Christian social thought followed the trend.
Three things happened in this process.

First, the social witness of the church was increasingly directed, not to the community or to individual persons or even to parishioners, but to the government of the day. The duty of a church member became one of barracking for the state to make a good society on behalf of us all. Christian social witness simply became a matter of lobbying.

Secondly, the relationships between people in civil society (the level of trust, belonging and co-operation between us) dropped out of the equation. The character of persons, and their sense of duty and obligation to each other in civil society disappeared from the public agenda, and has now virtually disappeared from the social thinking of the church.

And thirdly, the church's own community (parishes, clubs, women's groups, youth groups) became sidelined in the social thinking of the church, no longer central to their social vision or how to achieve this vision. At the same time, the church agencies in welfare became service delivery instruments for governments, funded by governments, and they became the means whereby the churches made their contribution to society.

These are profound changes in one of our key institutions, the churches, over the course of a century. One of the key generators of social capital in the community has almost shut down. One of the key vehicles for the society's self-reflection has almost stopped running.

Unless we rediscover civil society we cannot rediscover the source of community and the source of social capital and trust." 3

More than anything else, I believe that we must recover our effective presence in the community as an instalment of the Reign of God. We have got to stop being worship clubs or a version of a mutual friendly society. We have to develop an essential ingredient of Anglican Church life - presence.

In the words of one young theologian, "if we cannot shape a Church in which people are genuinely present to each other, we have nothing to offer the world."4

One other possible development might be a major parish that is cramped for room yet with growing attendances establishing another campus rather than extending the present building. This is happening in churches in the United States. The senior pastor (the Rector) is the main preacher whose sermon is carried to the second campus via video-link. All the rest of the worship and programme at the second campus is live. This arrangement works effectively, and there is a growing body of knowledge about it. As I suggested, this is another cost effective possibility.

In regard to the objectives of the Regional Strategic plan this year we have:

1. 50% of all clergy in active ministry be undertaking supervision; achieved 45%
2. Each clergy will have completed a ministry review by December 2003...unachievable.
3. All clergy to attend at least 3 days professional development training each year; highly achievable this year.
4. Establish a process for parishes to review worship; last year worship audit booklets sent to all clergy. North Beach parish (I know) carried out such a congregational audit.
5. 50% of parishes to develop ministry teams structure; 26% of parishes have done so.
6. Net decrease of 20% stipend and assessment arrears between December 2002 and December 2003; actually a 65% increase.
7. All parishes to have new comer orientation process by December 2003

Finally, I suggest that our concentration as a Region in 2004 as we live out our Strategic Plan be on leadership development and spirituality. Michael Wood and others will speak about leadership development. Let me say something about spirituality.

I think that a key element of spirituality that imitates Jesus Christ is the practice of hospitality. I want to hold up to you one essential piece of hospitality: welcome. It is clear that Jesus welcomed all sorts of people into the Kingdom of God through his embrace of them.

I believe that a fundamental piece of welcome is helping people to come inside the congregation. I remember a man once confiding to me that he wanted to return to the church, but did not know how to come back.

My practice as a parish priest was to arrange for induction gatherings. People new to the congregation would be gathered together to share stories - to hear my story as a Christian, to listen to each other's story, and to hear the story of the parish. These were significant bonding occasions, and gave new members the opportunity to own their search, to be affirmed by the searching of the others, and to receive in one sitting the story of the parish. This allowed them the knowledge of the insiders, and rather than getting it bit by bit over a long period, they were updated almost upon arrival.

I am surprised at how poor parish induction has been. I sometimes wonder whether we deserve the number of people who do come to us new. This kind of welcome, of bonding, is basic hospitality. It is just taking people seriously and attending to them with respect and care.

Well, I have talked about body shape, about the church as the body of Christ, about how shapes as church, and about desire to be God's effective people.

After afternoon tea, Michael Wood will take us into training for all this.

1 1 Corinthians 12 : 27
2 J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Bloomsbury, London, p.157.
3 Vern Hughes, Social Capital, Politics and Churches on Perspective, Radio National, Wednesday, August 6th 2003.
4 Ben Quash, The Anglican Church as a Polity of Presence in Anglicanism: the answer to modernity, (eds) Duncan Dormor, Jack McDonald and Jeremy Caddick, Continuum, London, p.56.