Now that I’ve been able to talk through this issue with Parish Council I’m able to share more of the detail of my thinking with our members.
Background
Planting new congregations may be a bit “trendy” these days but it’s nothing new. It’s the way Parish and churches have grown over the years. This Parish planted various congregations and started various sites including St Tim’s and St Barnabas. More recently, other Anglican Churches in the Shire have also started churches at different times and different places eg. in Miranda North School and on Saturdays at Jannali and Menai. These churches have been started not to give the existing members some other option, but to start churches to reach people who haven’t yet come to know Jesus.
For many reasons new congregations have been found by researches, to generally grow faster than existing churches. It’s not rocket science to work out why. New churches have a very real outreach goal and strategy which older congregations often don’t have. For the past 10 years Gymea Anglican hasn’t grown, in fact we’ve lost membership by some 20-25%. Since I’ve been here, I tried to help us increase our adult outreach in some small ways, planting a new congregation was always planned to be one of these.
My background over the past 20 years as a Senior Pastor, has been to grow Parishes and one key strategy in this has been the planting of 7 new congregations. Since coming to Gymea, I’ve chatted with our staff and leadership about this so that we can slowly work towards this. Since March 2011, I met with Matt & Stuart to find the best way of doing this. Their decision to start their own church in 2013 hasn’t changed my mind that we should stick with starting a new one at Gymea Anglican. Why?
a) With many people leaving our church, we need to grow again. If we don’t many ministries will have to stop or be cut back.
b) People of our Parish still need us to find new ways of helping them to come to know the Lord Jesus.
c) While we need to care for each other in our current upset, we mustn’t stop caring for those outside our church; those who don’t know the Lord Jesus.
d) Being united in the ministry together of the gospel can help to refocus us on who we are and what we are about together.
What’s Next?
Will those who aren’t part of this new congregation be neglected by our staff or ministries? Of course not, I’ll continue to work with each of our congregations to see how we can grow and care for each of them.
I’m delighted our Parish Council has called us all together for prayer on Wed 29th Feb at 7.30pm. I’d also like to invite any and all our members to join me at one of the Prayer & Information meetings I’m holding to discuss and plan this new congregation. These will basically be the same so I hope you’ll try to get to one of these. I’m hoping that a core group of 30 members will commit to this mission focused church plant. But I’m also hoping that all members of our Parish will pray and support this:
Sunday 26th Feb at 11.30am OR 4pm
Saturday 3rd March 3.30pm OR
Sunday 11th March 4pm OR
Wednesday 14th March










