Diocesan Women’s Day Address by the Archbishop - 9th August 2003

The Place and Importance of Women in the Mission of Sydney

Introduction
You do not usually go to the Diocesan Synod to get a spiritual high. But I had one last year. It was the single most important moment in the Synod in living memory.

We were challenged by the idea of a Diocesan Mission. We agreed that we should adopt the Mission Statement, with its stirring call ‘to glorify God by proclaiming our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ in prayerful dependence on the Holy Spirit, so that everyone will hear his call to repent, trust and serve Christ in love and be established in the fellowship of his disciples while they await his return.’

We solemnly accepted a startling goal for our mission: ‘To see at least 10% of the population of the region of the Diocese in Bible-based churches in 10 years’; we even accepted an amendment to make this ‘an initial goal’ in case we grew complacent. Then we discussed strategy and agreed that it would be a church-planting exercise; we wanted ‘to multiply fellowships, congregations and fellowships.’

Then came the moment of acceptance or rejection. I have to admit that I was slightly nervous. Would the Synod – the representatives of our 260 parishes, adopt this bold and daunting proposal?

The positive response was overwhelming and immensely heartening and exciting. The Synod accepted the challenge; most of us then came forward and appended our names to a giant banner; and then we issued a challenge, a challenge that has brought you here today. It runs like this:
‘In submission to the word of the Lord Jesus, the Archbishop and Bishops of the Diocese have committed themselves in unity of heart and spirit to give example, energy and leadership to this Mission. They are doing so in fellowship with the Archdeacons, the Synod, the Standing Committee and its Mission Taskforce…’ and here we come to you in particular… ‘together they invite the whole Anglican community in Sydney (with all other believers) to join them by taking the initiative to see that Christ is proclaimed to all people’.

There is your invitation to join the Mission, to put yourself more completely at the service of the Lord in his Mission in this part of his world. I am hoping that you are keen to respond very positively. For myself, I have made the chief part of my job.

When I invited Narelle Jarrett to become Archdeacon for women it was with the express intent of motivating Christian women throughout our Diocese to get involved in Mission, training them, mobilising them and resourcing them. We had this vision: that the sharing of the gospel with unbelievers would become the great passion of the Christian sisters and that you would collaborate and co-operate as never before to see that this task gets done. Today’s conference is a direct result of that Mission and marks a significant moment in its forward momentum.

I do not doubt that you have been involved in ministry and in mission long before now. But today is like that important and dramatic moment in the Synod when with each other we renew our commitment to the great commission of the Lord Jesus: ‘go into all the world and preach the gospel’.

I have said that I am hoping that this will become ‘the great passion of the Christian sisters’. There are two reasons why I have challenged you to make this your priority.

The first is the need of our nation and our world. I was recently talking to a professional psychologist with many years experience in counselling people. She said to me that she was perfectly sure that every person had a longing for the spiritual; that in a sense, every person was looking for meaning in their lives and had some way, however inadequate, of fulfilling this need. I asked her whether she thought that this meant that we all innately believed in God: she said that she was sure that we all did believe; atheists were often angry at God and chose not to believe for that reason.

In one sense this was a surprise. The prevailing mood of our society is a compound of three secular forces: naturalism, or the belief that this world is all there is; relativism, or the belief that there is no ultimate truth, we all have our own equally valid point of view; and libertarianism, the belief that to be mature I must be autonomous, I must run my own life without interference from God or anyone else. We certainly organise our lives as thought these three beliefs were true. You will notice that they effectively cut God right out of the picture - and I can personally testify to the scorn you get when you try to say that he is really there and has a word for us.

And yet it was not a surprise. Despite the anti-God mood, people cannot help longing for meaning, for spirituality. When I was talking to our hospital chaplains recently, they told me that there was an intense interest in angels and dolphins, especially amongst younger women; here is an unmet need for the spiritual, for guidance, for relationship. The fact of the matter is that our new society norms have failed us, and particularly failed women. When we encourage people to live for themselves, to live without self-discipline, to be uncommitted in relationships - we are teaching the path of misery and sorrow rather than the way of peace, health and happiness. When we leave them without any word from their Creator about how to live, we leave them open to the apparent guidance of the stars or of ‘angels’ – occult forces who do not have our best interests at heart.

Unbelief is popular but it is sad and unfulfilling. Worse than that, it leaves us with our guilt. For modern life is still inhabited by sinful men and women. Our sins are a burden to us and in the end they will be our undoing for we will face the judgement seat of Christ with them still undealt with. Instead of the joy of eternal life with our loving Saviour, we will face the misery of eternity without him and the pain of knowing that we have missed out on what God has offered us in Jesus. You would not like this for yourself; you cannot stand the thought of it for those whom you love and that is why you pray and that is why you hope that someone will share the gospel with them in a way which brings them to the Lord.

Let me ask: do you have a passion for the salvation your Mother, for you Father, your Husband, your Sister, your Son, your Daughter, your friend? I know you do; you wish to see them safe with the Lord; you long that they could somehow get their lives back into order, that they would give up that libertarianism which is so destructive; that they would discover peace with God. Do you not hope that someone else would care for them as much as you do yourself? I know that we were always so grateful when a fellowship leader took a special interest in one of our teenagers. Then should we not extend that passion to others? To the parents, sisters, friends and children of other people?

The second reason why the great passion for sharing the gospel should be our priority, is the nature of the gospel itself. ‘What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!’ The Lord is so kind, so faithful, so full of light and grace. Paul speaks of ‘Jesus who saves us from the wrath to come’; and we know that this salvation was accomplished when he lay down his own life for us.

How is the salvation applied to us? It is as we hear the gospel message and believe it by the power of the Holy Spirit. I am a Christian because someone went to a huge amount of trouble to share the message of Jesus with me. We could start religious movements in all sorts of ways; we could even plant new churches by having a good car park and a cr�che; but it would all be useless and worse, unless the gospel did its great work of converting people and uniting them to Christ and to one another. Our business as Christians is to promote the gospel.

But that leads to three questions for us today: Can women do this? Must women do this? How can women do this?

Can women do this?
This is indeed a strange question. Men and women are equally disciples of Jesus; we are saved by the same person and the same method; we share the same obligation, even if there are differences in how we express that obligation. From the very beginning women have shared and supported the gospel of Jesus.
Consider the quiet sister of 1 Peter 3, who is exhorted to win over the unbelieving husband, by the behaviour of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives’ (3:1,2). Of course they are obliged to try to save their husbands: they are Christians. Consider the work of Priscilla, who with her husband, ‘explained to (Apollos) the way of God more adequately’ (Acts 18:26). Consider Euodia and Syntyche, who ‘contended at (Paul’s) side in the cause of the gospel’ (Phil 3:4). Consider Tryphena and Trophesa and Persis, women ‘who work hard in the Lord’ (Rom 16:12).

Yesterday, I read through the whole gospel of Luke. The women you meet in it are both ordinary and remarkable. It begins and ends in the temple; but it also has women both fore and aft. Think of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, a great model for all believers of how to receive and live with the word of God, no matter how threatening and strange. I wish to be like Mary; she is a model of faithfulness, and her song entered into scripture itself, ensuring that she ministers to us by word and deed to this day.

Then, at the other end of the gospel are other faithful women who have followed Jesus from Galilee and who serve him to the end by taking care of his poor crucified body. Their service is rewarded, because they become the very first to hear the testimony of the angels to the resurrection; it was they who told the apostles.

Women do not need to be patronised. If you read the gospel there are some remarkable men as there are remarkable women; they are people first of all. But my point is this; that the Lord summons men and women equally into the task of sharing the gospel. Indeed that is what we may see in history.

In our own part of the world, let me mention Florence Young, for example, whose determination to share Jesus first of led her to found the South Sea Mission and then took her to China as a missionary. She was truly one of the most remarkable of Australia’s Christian sons or daughters - but she is merely a stand out from amongst the great roll-call of those who have ventured for Christ at home or abroad; paid or unpaid; well-known or unsung. We only have to think of the heroism and faith of untold numbers of scripture teachers. I myself have in my own life two remarkable ‘Mothers in the Lord’ who ministered Christ to me with special insight.  Or we can remember the more public and extraordinary – and yet different - ministries of Mary Andrews and Patricia Judge.

In fact, the historian Callum Brown tells us that the cause of Christ has been largely carried by women in the churches in the last two hundred years in particular. It is only in the 1960s that women ceased to be as committed to the gospel and the churches have faltered as never before.

Must women do this?
In one way we have already answered this. The assumption of scripture is that all believers will commend the gospel by word and deed. But my real question is more specific: is there anything about the present that really challenges women to get passionate for sharing Christ?

Well yes. I have already mentioned the secularisation of our society from the 1960s onwards. In societies like Australia, the knowledge about Jesus has taken a terrible battering in the last forty years. The people who talk about angels and dolphins and who consult horoscopes can tell you almost nothing about Jesus. They may not even know what Christmas and Easter are really all about. The number of church members has nose-dived dramatically. We have turned from being a sort of Christian nation to being a mission field.

There is no room for niceties or mere onlookers and passengers when the ship is in heavy seas. All must be involved. If we value our church, if we love our nation, if we long for our friends to know the gospel, we must all play our part: especially women. Why?

Surely that is obvious. Women make up more than half our numbers in the churches; and women certainly make up half our target group. Men may indeed evangelise and edify women and women may evangelise and edify men; but the most natural way for Christian ministry to occur is along the lines provided by gender; it is no accident that our wise ancestors taught us to minister especially to our own sex.

For a while there it looked as though we a had all come to believe that men and women were just slightly different versions of the same fundamental human model; but thankfully in the last ten years or so, reality has kicked in again and even the secularists are happy to concede that men are from Mars and women are from Venus; that we are not the same; that what the Bible tells us is true. This is why the Bible supports different roles for men and women in family and in church life. When we confuse the roles we actually harm both the sexes and store up trouble for ourselves; when we follow the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we find that there is joy in his service and that there is more than enough ministry to go around.

Dear sisters in Christ: I hope that you have a great and growing passion for the lost to come to know the Lord; I hope that your passion will be directed to your most obvious and easy mission field, the field you know from the inside, so to speak – the field of the women of this nation who know so little that they find spiritual solace in dolphins and angels. And I have another burden to lay upon you as well.

The horror of sexual abuse of children has come upon us like a thick and ugly cloud. It sometimes involved women; it usually involves men. Unfortunately it has sometimes involved men who profess Christian faith, and sometimes even leaders. It means that to some extent the responsibility for children’s work is going to need to be carried more than ever by the Christian women of our congregations. I say this with sadness; I hope that men do not retreat - I myself have always loved the immense privilege of ministering with children. But the women are going to have to help us in this matter, and take the initiative more than ever in children’s ministry.

Think of the implications of what I am saying. If we are going to accept the challenge of 10% of the population in our churches, much more than half the work has to be done with women and amongst children, and more than half the work must be done by women. In God’s providence this has occurred at a time when women have never been better educated and more able to do the work, and more equipped to take initiatives to see that it is done.  Look around you.  What can be done?  What must be done where you are?

How can women be involved?
At the Synod we endorsed four major policies for the whole Diocese.  The idea is that they be taken and applied in the local situation:  the Mission is a local Mission; the “head office” only exists to help it along.  What are the policies?  How can you become involved in putting the policies into practice?

The first policy is that we pray for unbelievers.  I have asked Bishop Reg Piper to become particularly responsible for encouraging prayer in our whole diocesan life but, of course, the responsibility belongs to all of us, not merely him.  The beginning of such prayer is with the word of God itself.  Our first task is to pray for ourselves and for our fellow believers that by the power of God’s Spirit we will be persuaded more and more of God’s love for us in Christ.  As we are reminded of this and assured of the truth of it so we will be encouraged to give ourselves and our lives to obedience, sacrificial service and prayerful compassion for those who do not know Christ.  In other words, the preaching of the gospel itself should result in sustained and fervent intercessory prayer that unbelievers will come to know Christ.  This is something that we could all be involved in personally and mutually.  And I hope that it becomes a marked feature of our diocesan live, not least amongst our women Christians.

The second policy calls for the multiplication of congregations and fellowships within and beyond our churches.  Christian fellowships centred on Christ and his word are the essence of what we mean by church.  It is a powerful evangelistic context for people to come to know about Jesus and to be built up in him.  Observation tells us that women are particularly good at relationships and networks.  What are the opportunities that you and your friends have for drawing people together, sharing the gospel and sustaining the life of the group?  It seems to me that our programs that have begun in a number of churches with migrants and the teaching of English are typical of the possibilities for befriending and helping people.  These groups should, if possible, be connected to the local church and likewise should, if possible, be bridges into the local church.  But it may well be that some people will never cross that bridge and for them an experience of fellowship with a small group of people may always be what they need for a spiritual home.

The third policy is the multiplication of trained workers at all levels.  If our Mission is to succeed we are going to need to pray that the Lord will raise up many full-time workers, especially those capable of being trained at a high level.  But, in fact, we are all going to need to be trained further and better equipped to use the opportunities that come our way.  I hope that you will be asking your Minister what training programs are going to be made available for men and women in your churches.  I believe, also, that as work amongst women expands, parishes will recognise that paid women workers will be indispensable to the spread of the gospel and that they will pay for themselves in the sense that their ministry will generate the income necessary to support them.

The fourth policy is the need for reform.  This will occur at all levels of our diocesan life, but the issue which I want to draw to your attention is that there will need to be changes in our parish life and that the problem very often is with ordinary Christians who do not want change and resist it.  Of course, there is no point in change for change’s sake, and reform of the way we do things should be subject to scrutiny, but there is an innate conservatism in congregations arising from a level of comfort that impedes the growth of the gospel.  We say we wish to welcome new people but, in fact, we do everything to keep new people out.  The changes we need to make may be as obvious as making sure that our buildings are well-signed and that a cr�che is available.  But it may require ordinary persons to see what needs to happen, to suggest it graciously, and to provide the effort.

Conclusion
As I said at the beginning the Synod of 2002 was momentous and stirring.  During the course of this year I have seen the beginnings of the Mission in numerous places.  I have heard of churches being involved in a self-audit to see, in fact, if they are welcoming to new comers.  I have heard of congregations being started.  I have heard of much evangelistic effort being undertaken.  There are reports of church plants beginning.  Organisations are changing and cooperating in a new way.  There has been a call to prayer.

Clearly, however, there is still a very long way to go before all of us get moving.  When the Synod finished we say together the great missionary hymn “I cannot tell why he who angels worship”.  We went out from the Synod determined to serve Christ.  I hope that that day and, indeed, this one too, will prove to be the beginning of something grand that we have done for God together.

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