Archbishop Jensen’s address to the Deep Impact gathering

Archbishop Peter Jensen | 10 July 2002

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Deep Impact

Sunday 19 August at State Sports Centre, Homebush

Introduction: What do they think of us?

The Melbourne based journalist Kate Nancarrow recently went shopping for a religion. She has lots of religious contacts, but no faith of her own. The Sun-Herald published her report cards on all of us. The Roman Catholics scored 6 out of 10, the Seven Day Adventists 2; the Salvation Army 8. Anglicans were awarded 4.

Here is part of how she sees us:
In a nutshell: There is a God. He likes to hear from us at Christmas and Easter.
Drawcards: The religion for people to tick at Census time when they are not sure what they believe any more.
Turn-offs: The Anglicans once had a bishop who wasn’t certain there was a God, either. On paper this looks like the perfect religion for a non-believer but somehow it just seems passionless.
Star power: Prince Charles, the Queen.
Score: 4/10. Probably wouldn’t cause me any trouble being one. Wouldn’t have to give up much or try too hard to fit in but there is just something not quite there. (SMH, 15/7/2001)

This was a light hearted but fairly accurate article. We are cool, establishment, passionless, non-demanding. Of course it is also unfair. It ignores what goes on in many of our churches; it ignores major social, health and educational works through bodies like Anglicare; it ignores our missionary efforts. But it forces us to face reality. The truth is, that a
church like this is doomed; we are not going to survive in the modern world, and we will not be part of God’s plans for passing the gospel on. We will make no impact for Christ.

What I need to say to you today is this: God is God; the gospel of Jesus is true and it is powerful in saving and transforming people; the Spirit of God is active in the world, and his church is one of the wonders of the
universe. Now, how does all that matter for modern Australia? I believe that the best thing that can happen to Australia is a resurgence of serious Christianity. Think of our nation and its life. We criticise our leaders, but in fact our political leaders are shaped by us. Our selfish and individualistic community attitudes often determine their policies. They cannot do the right thing because of our attitudes. To be the nation God wants us to be, we need to embrace the gospel of Jesus.

In recent days I have spoken to leading politicians in the three main political parties. Each has pointed to major social problems which government cannot solve - they are problems of the spirit, of the heart, of purpose. We have ceased to attend to the national soul. We have lost interest in righteousness. I want to say that what our nation needs above all else is the gospel of Jesus Christ to be at the centre of her life.

Could this happen? God can make a deep impact on this nation through us. But that means that we will deliberately accept his standing orders ‘go and make disciples of all nations’. God loves his human creatures and wishes to see them saved and have the joy of eternal life. His will is that all people everywhere should be saved through Jesus Christ the Lord. Is it our will? Do we share his love for those who do not know him? If so, here is our mission: To glorify God by proclaiming our Saviour. What does this mean? Listen to me expand it.

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.

I am saying that this ought to be the conscious mission of Sydney Anglicans. I am saying that we ought to embrace it gladly, work out what it means for our goals as a Diocese, adopt appropriate strategies, and make the sacrifices that will see the strategies fulfilled.

God on the Agenda

Isn’t is rather presumptuous to connect this mission with our nation? Surely private religious beliefs are one thing, and the life of the nation is something else? Let us go back into history. The Commonwealth of Australia is one hundred years old this year. In 1901, six far-flung British colonies became one nation. Why did this happen? Because ‘God wanted Australia to be a nation’. These are the dramatic opening words of Dr John Hirst, in his recent major history of this event. He means this: that the people who propelled Australia to nationhood appealed explicitly and consciously to God. The appeal to God’s will was one of the chief factors in the decision to become the Australian nation. It is no accident that our Constitution contains a reference to God, and that prayers are still said at the opening of Parliament.

What a contrast with today! It is notable how rarely God is mentioned or his word consulted in public life. We never ask, what is the will of God for us? What does the Bible have to say about government, about citizenship, about national goals and aspirations? We do not even ask, what sort of nation does God want us to be? It is as if we as a nation somewhere in the twentieth century decided adopt a rule that we do not talk about religion or politics. We are theological mutes; we have become adept at ‘the gagging of God’. The churches themselves have meekly accepted the rule, that we don’t talk about God in public life.

Even Christian leaders hardly raised the subject of God. They are confined to speaking about social issues only. Or they score headlines if they change or deny the faith. The person who seems most able to raise an interest in the really big spiritual and religious issues in Australia is the Dalai Lama. Real Christianity has been declared off-limits.

How has this happened? We have to understand history. In the 1700s a contest began between those who believed in God and the Bible, and those who believed that human reason should determine our affairs. In the name of human reason it was said that:

miracles do not happen,
God does not intervene in human life,
Jesus was only a human teacher,
the Bible is a book full of errors,
human beings are essentially good,
religion is all about power,
there is no judgement day,
there is no heaven and hell,
Jesus died as a martyr, not as a sacrifice for sin.

Driving all this there was the quest for human freedom, freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of morals, freedom from God. It was a revolt against the authority of God. That is why the Bible took such a battering.

The contest was hard fought. The Christians responded at all levels. Thegospel declined in some areas, it flourished in others. Even when church-going was patchy, the basic Christian story of creation and fall and redemption and judgement was still in the minds of people. It was still the way the culture understood itself. However the signs were, there that the consistent attack on the Christian faith was doing damage. People wanted to live by its morals, without having its beliefs. Then came the crucial moment.

Dr Callum Broun writes about The Death of Christian Britain. I believe that what he has to say about Britain is true of Australia too. He tells the story I have just told. Then he identifies the decade of the sixties as the crucial moment when the British people stopped even thinking like Christians. The Christian story faded from people’s minds. The hunger for
personal liberty and individual rights led to the final revolt against God and his word. The knowledge of God was suppressed, and the people forgot. Sure, there are still Christians, there are still Christian buildings, there are still Christian leaders. But you only have to think of the funeral of Princess Diana - where the centre-point was not God’s word but a popular song - to realise how little Christianity means any more. You may have noticed that Christmas is now being called ‘the holiday season’.

Let me make this very personal. Do you want your children to be believers in the gospel? Do you want to pass on your faith to the next generation and to your grandchildren? Humanly speaking you are going to find this much harder to do than your parents did. The things we value will not be the things our children value. The culture is not now merely anti-Christian; it has suppressed the memory Christ.

This does not mean there is no spirituality. The spiritual gulf is filled with false religion, with new spiritualities, with drug-taking, with easily accessible pornography, with gambling, with the occult, with consumerism, with the worship of sport, with the idolisation of big but empty personalities. This culture is attractive but sad, addictive but miserable, canny but ignorant, sexy but loveless, powerful but poisonous, cool but deadly.

Our children will find it very hard to cope with the seductions of the culture. We find it hard to cope with the seductions of the culture. But if we are going to pass the gospel to our children - if we are going to see the lives of many of our fellow Australians transformed by the gospel - We will need excellent churches, we will need to speak cogently and persuasively in our society, and we will have to reject the worldliness which is all to evident in our lives. We have become as materialistic as the society of which we are part, and we are going to find it very hard to repent, to change our ways, to live as servants of Christ in a consumerist society. In the final analysis, the battle is a spiritual one.

Church-going Anglicans in Sydney are about 1% of the population. We are becoming invisible. It is almost as unusual to have a friend who is a church-going Anglican, as it is to have one who is an animal-keeper at the zoo. We are poised to become exotic. Most people will never meet or know one of us; it is hard for our children to have sufficient Christian friends to support them. How will our neighbours hear the gospel from us?

If we wish to have a deep impact on our society - humanly speaking - we need to aim in the next decade to have at least 10% of the population who are committed, equipped and bold to speak in the name of Christ. Whether
God will so bless us, is in his hands. But this ought to be our aim. There will need to be more of us, and the more of us will need to be more deeply committed, more constantly prayerful, more missionary-minded, more confident in God, better equipped, better educated in the Bible and more prepared to sacrifice time and money and worldly happiness, than ever before.

If God chooses to bless us in this way, I expect that he will follow his usual method. God works through missionaries, people who carry his gospel and who care for his people. If we are going to make a deep impact, we are
going to have to raise up the right people in sufficient numbers, to bring the gospel to our Diocese and to care for the churches. Then, in order for us to glorify God and proclaim our Saviour, we are going to have to support them.

Now for the good news!

Opportunity

I want you to see the need, but I don’t want you to despair. God is God! In fact there are signs of hope. I will give you four.

First unparalleled numbers of Spirit-filled, gospel-centred missionaries are being raised up in Sydney. Our training College is bulging and bigger numbers are expected. They are young, they are enthusiastic, they are well-trained and they are spiritually minded. Furthermore they are both men and women. While the media has been obsessed by debates about the ordination of women, God has been doing a wonderful work. More and more younger women are offering for ministry, aware that there is enough to do and that ministry for men and women is service not power. We must follow God’s leading in the way in which we minister, and he will continue to bless us.
Second, we have a sound and biblical gospel. In evangelical Anglicanism we have an understanding of the gospel which pays attention both to the head and the heart. When the spiritual typhoon of the 1960s hit us we did not panic, but we set ourselves to create a counter-culture, one that would not concede ground to the prevailing culture, but would be able to minister within it. We needed to be radically conservative, and that is what we have become. We have a much better educated laity than almost any other denomination, a well trained clergy and a principled commitment to the truth which bites in the real world. In short we have developed a genuine alternative to the prevailing secular culture. For example, our schools are very popular with ordinary parents because they embody Christian standards. Mind you, it is very important that we do not compromise on spiritual truth, since again and again it can be shown that those who compromise with secular thought and practice, cannot pass the gospel on to the next generation.
Third there are real signs of a missionary ethos beginning to develop. I see it in the brilliant initiative of Craig Blackett in involving us in TAFE students. I see it in the Ministry Training Strategy. I see it in the cross-cultural work that has begun in so many of our churches - look at the choir! I see it in the new schools we are setting up, and the determination of those involved to evangelise. I see it in our camping movement. I see it in the willingness of some churches to sell pre-loved buildings and to expand our work into new areas. We must be entrepreneurial: but instead of the greedy investments of capitalism, we want the generous investments of God’s people! We need to take missionary risks for God.
Fourth, human beings need the gospel as much as ever. Australia has never been so wealthy - but the misery of sin is clear on every side, and the consequences of sin are becoming more and more apparent:

Suicide,
drug taking,
relationship breakdowns,
the inability of the society to tell us what a man and a husband is;
the greed of those who exploit our bodies for gain,
the shallowness of what passes for entertainment,
the unhealthy obsession with sporting victories,
the state of the banking system, the media and the police.

Analyse these manifestations by the standard of God’s law. You will see that they stem from our disobedience to him and constitute our gravest national peril. Those whose business it is to feel the national pulse are telling us that we have a crisis of the spirit.and don’t think for a moment that you will be able to put up a Christian wall around yourself and your family and protect your loved ones from these miseries. Only a commitment to the gospel for the whole community can help here.

Action

So, what are we to do and be? Here are six things:

First, adopt this mission for your Diocese, your church, your family, your self, and act upon it:

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.

Second, give yourself to consistent, persevering, evangelistic prayer for our nation.

Third, engage deeply with God in repentance; especially let his word minister to you about your materialistic attitudes. From this and other sins, individuals need repentance; churches need repentance; our Diocesan life needs repentance. Let us take up this task willingly and fervently.

Fourth, go into training: insist on being equipped with Christian truth so that you can be a faithful witness to Christ in today’s world. Pastors, what are you doing in the area of adult education? What of training courses in evangelism? Are we training people for school scripture?

Fifth, give sacrificially and generously to the service of God’s gospel. Give your sons and daughters; give your money to the service of the Jesus; give your time; give your life to the service of the gospel. There will be no advance without sacrifice. Perhaps we could tithe our membership, and think of 10% of our young people in Christian ministry.

Sixth put God on the agenda where you are. Talk about him; insist that he matters; do not step back; do not allow the world to make God dumb. Start tomorrow by talking about some of the ideas you have heard today. For my part, I intend to take every opportunity to put God on the agenda of our nation. That is why I have accepted the invitation to speak for Christ in the Town Hall on the evening of September 5th. I hope that you are thinking about who you can invite, or how you can use such an opportunity. When you ask me to come and minister in your church or school or club, please ask yourself how can we best use this occasion for Christ?

I do not want to get involved in mere formalities - there is no time for such things. I do not wish to be merely a symbolic Archbishop. I want opportunities to speak to your congregation and your community about Jesus. Give me a chance!

Conclusion

Our federation ancestors talked about God. But the first action of the new parliament was to ensure the British ascendancy by passing the white Australia policy. We were doomed to be monocultural. Thank God those days, are past and we have welcomed to our shores not only the British but the Europeans and the Asians, the Islanders and the Africans.

Humanly, we are multicultural, and this is to be welcomed. Spiritually, there is only one true God, before whom we are all equal and before whom we must all one day stand. How wonderful it is to have here today
Anglicans from all backgrounds, bringing their own cultures to enrich the whole. In the Book of Revelation, John sees ‘the glory and honour of all the nations’ brought into the city of the one God. That is our vision too.

What should your church be like? What should our Diocese be like? It would be fantastic if all the churches of the Sydney Anglicans and all our activities had the marks of those early Christians that Paul wrote to in Thessalonica. Their lives were marked by faith, hope and love; they were full of good works done in Christ’s name. They were joyful because of the saving message that they had received. They were models to others. And from them, ‘the Lord’s message rang out everywhere’. What was especially famous about them? What should be famous about us: ‘you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait from his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead - Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath’. Your best service as a citizen of this country will be to exhibit those marks, and to act upon them. May these things be said truly of us!

Amen.

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