Recently went to the Transforming Melbourne Pastor’s Consultation conference. I was invited by one of my Facebook friends — Kitty Cheng — who is also quite involved with Transforming Melbourne. Go here to find out more about the extensive research and data collected by the Transforming Melbourne team. The data is also available as a City Wide collection or individual Local Government Area. Before I continue, I must applaud the Transforming Melbourne Team and the amazing research, data collection and extrapolation of results that they have undertaken and I whole-heartedly stand by their heart and desire to see the city for Christ. When I first heard about Transforming Melbourne three years ago, I felt was a little redundant, and a little like a desperate last gasp, clutching at straws as it was. So, I did approach the day with some trepidation, but the data I posted here, did help make my decision to go easier.
It was fantastic to catch up with a few folk — Robert Carner from the Presbyterian Church, Dave Zovak from Forge, Bessie from Oikos, and my mate Andre from Big House Communities. Not too mention Mark Sayers who was there to give a talk on youth and Gen Y. It was great to catch up with them all and hear how they have been travelling. I haven’t seen Mark since his book launch late last year.
The day started off with the presentation of the compilation of the data by the researcher — which, boiling it down, claimed that the church in Melbourne is failing miserably in many areas such as church co-operation, reaching the lost, social justice and discipleship. In fact, quite the opposite is happening. While I don’t think it was anything new to many of the folk there, it was quite sobering, for myself and I am sure the others, to see the facts laid out in stark simplicity. After the sobering presentation of the data, there were calls by speakers such as Mark Sayers, for the church in Melbourne to wake up, relate to the young, understand the culture shift, and get out of the building. The highlight for me was Brendan Nottle from the Salvation Army, who put it the simply, taking the data and getting passionate when he called the room full of “professional” pastors to get back to roots in Jesus as our leader, emulate him, and get out of their buildings and into the community!
Until Mark and Brendan spoke, I felt that there was a key word so obviously missing from all the rhetoric and data — Discipleship. It was great to hear Mark and Brendan bringing it back to Discipleship. Up until then, it had been about statistics and numbers etc and it was refreshing to get the issue of Discipleship returned to the conversation. So, it was quite disappointing, after a session of very sobering data, then some fantastic challenging, to spend the majority of the afternoon in session with professional pastors from the larger mega-churches in Melbourne, sharing their “programs” with us. I sat in the Discipleship session to learn that one particular (mega)church realised that they needed to do more about Discipleship, so they came up with a program to help address the short-fall in their numbers of “conversions”. It was disturbing to hear talk about stream data and pool data, and conversion and following Jesus brought down into the realm of programs measured by baptisms and ultimately tithing.
I can be sure that I was not the only one who felt out of place or had that bitter taste in my mouth, and I cannot comment about the other sessions, but on the whole — the afternoon seemed to more rah-rah!, program, mega-church pentecostal-like. It was an extreme juxtaposition to the morning and the talk about returning to our roots, lives being changed, heralding the Kingdom of God, etc. So, I am not sure how the whole Transforming Melbourne is going to work but for us and other similarly sized plants and house churches etc (and I cannot be sure the data covered them or the vast number of un-churched churches), the data not only serves to prove what has been said for years in so-called “alternative” circles, but is quite indicative of the sorry state of the whole Church Community and our failure to work as one in the Kingdom of God!
On a personal note, I admit that the data did cause me to pause and reflect that I personally have been very negligent in my own discipling of others — but did realize, again, that I am discipling my wife and kids. It did spur me on to dream larger dreams of the Kingdom and become bolder for Christ.
These are my thoughts and I own them — I would love to hear more from others about their thoughts not only about Transforming Melbourne’s data, but the TM Pastor’s Consultation day. I do pray that the data will spur the church onto understanding that their faith and churches need to orient themselves around Jesus and NOT programs and dollars.
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