Date posted: February 8, 2012
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”
In Australia we are in the midst of a pivotal moment that is discouraging and yet thrilling.
Ministries are shrinking, less leaders are coming through, conferences are struggling. The number of churches closing far outweighs the number of those being planted. There is less money around to fund mission and ministry. Apart from the over seventies age group people are leaving the Church and active faith in every age group. Attitudes towards Christians in Australia are at best indifferent and at worst antagonistic. If it was not for immigration and the faithfulness of Australian Christians from non-European backgrounds the statistics would look even more terrible.
In such a moment it is easy to become discouraged.
Yet this moment is strangely also thrilling because it presents with a challenge.
Our Australian context is home to a particularly virulent form of secularism. A cultural situation which presents a unique set of blockages to faith. We face;
The Secularism of the Moment: The Christian faith is a historical faith. It remembers the past, and points us towards God’s coming victory in the future. In contrast our nation’s ahistoricalism borders on the pagan. We choose to ignore the pain of our Aboriginal history. We forget the pain of our white history. We turn a blind eye to the pain of our Chinese history. Instead we bow down in worship of the ephemeral. We are a nation enslaved to the moment.
The Secularism of Rootlessness: The Bible is a record of covenants, commitments and connections. Yet these words strike fear into the contemporary Australian heart. We are a rootless people. In contrast to the original inhabitants of this nation we have little or no connection to our land, instead we remain constantly on the move relationally, geographically and psychically. Nomads in a portable bubbles of individualism.
The Secularism of Success: In a time when other countries are struggling economically, Australians are now the richest people in the World. My home of Melbourne, is listed at the world’s most livable city, and Australia is listed by Newsweek as the world’s best medium sized country. Many Australians are experiencing one of the global history’s highest standards of living, yet such wealth presents a clear and present danger. We are materially rich, yet spiritually poor. In our time of plenty, we can forget the poor in our midst, we can forget those seeking refuge at our shores, we can forget God. We have become a content-lite nation, not really standing for anything beyond some platitudes about freedom, fairness and casualness which could easily be as applied to New Zealand or Canada. We are living up to historian Manning Clark moniker – the kingdom of nothingness. We lie reassuring comfort of our warm, scented and candle lit bath, allowing ourselves to be soothed by the relaxing music, unaware that under the water we are spiritually bleeding to death.
The Secularism of Post-Christianity: Go to a conference on mission in Europe or America and you will hear the term post-christendom thrown around. Observers were labeling Australia post-Christian in the 18th century. Our first minister the Reverend Richard Johnson found the colonial government totally unsupportive of his efforts. He asked for money to build a church and received nothing, eventually in frustration he raised the money himself and built a chapel for five hundred people. At the Christmas service only about forty people showed up, not too long after his chapel, our nation’s first church was burnt down, Johnson returned home to England sick and discouraged. We have no history of a powerful and strong state Church to look back to, our nation has never been shaken by a great awakening. Our founding fathers were more disciples of Jeremy Bentham than of Christ. In the Australian imagination the Church and the Christian faith remains a peripheral oddity.
Communicating the gospel and living the way of Jesus in this environment is the great task before us.
This is a daunting challenge, but nevertheless it is a challenge that God has allowed us to face. Yes, there will be less money, but that will mean we will have to work smarter. Yes, there will be less comrades beside us but that means we will have to turn more to God. Yes, we will seem like cultural oddities but this will keep us humble. Yes, as believers in the nation we face indifference and antagonism, but what would you rather, be thrown in a prison cell for your faith, or have the hipster barrista look at you strangely for reading your bible whilst you sip your single sourced, shade grown, organic, relationally traded, perfectly crafted latte?
The future of the Church in this nation is dependent on how we respond to God’s challenge to us to make disciples and live out his kingdom. It’s our watch. Your faithfulness, your obedience, your response to God counts. You are not just some nobody inconsequentially toiling away in the sunny yet lost kingdom of Oz. God has placed you here for a purpose.
I believe that Australia despite being hidden away down under is actually in a strategic position. The form of secularism which is normal to us is springing up all over the West and the developed world. Already Australian leaders such as Alan Hirsch, John Dickson and Mike Frost are applying lessons that they have learnt here in other Western contexts. Our learnings, victories and failures will be instructive far beyond our shores. We are the post-Christendom laboratory for the rest of the West. When you walk out the front door of your house you are entering the cutting edge of secular culture in the West.
Standing before such a gospel resistant culture we may feel like a tiny mountain climber standing before a soaring and seeming unassailable peak. In such a moment our eyes can be drawn to gentle grassy hills in the distance. Yet we have to ask ourselves ‘Who wants to give their lives to climbing gentle hills when we can take on such a staggering peak.’
Besides, look outside, the sun is out.