The Sydney Morning Herald today reported,
“The Assemblies of God churches, the largest of which is Hillsong in north-west Sydney, are on a mission of meteoric growth.
The oldest and largest Pentecostal church in Australia is planning to increase the number of its churches nationwide by one third to 1500, appoint 2000 more ministers and erect 100 church buildings in the "short term to medium term".
Before an audience of about 2000 church organisers, Mr Houston claimed that 176 churches had been established in the past two years - one every four days. In the next two years the church is aiming to build at least 180 churches.”
Wow .. there’s some fairly serious statistics there. Since I embrace the mixed ‘economy approach’ to church, I am encouraged to see such activity with Hillsong. Although I am interested to know how many of the people joining Hillsong are merely transferring from other established churches. Certainly the National Church Life Survey has suggested that we are shuffling our congregations so that more people are found in fewer but larger churches with the total numbers still in decline.
This isn’t a criticism but an observation. The other thought would be are these basically middle class people with middle class values rather than a broad range of people types. Is this Hillsong attractional model the last Bastion of the church from the modern era? Do the smaller liturgically conservative congregations need to adapt this model to survive?
In the end I hope that established Christians find themselves in a place where they can thrive and be part of whatever God is doing in their area. As far as the emerging church goes, I think we are not so much caught in an emergent era but a transitional one. There needs to be a change of guard from Boomer through Gen X to Millenial before we can say that emergents have become mainstream within this mixed economy of church types and approaches. And the final challenge is whether we can all hold hands as we move forward …as JC said we would be known for the love we have for each other.
The exciting thing for me is this…we all respect each others approaches and just live life…go for it… and as the master said… the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!
You beauty!
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Long term detention has had a devastating effect on (this) family... Detention of this family at the Woomera Detention Centre is no longer an option. I strongly recommend that...the family be given alternative accommodation, preferably community-based...Anything less would be a failure of our duty of care. - Psycologist to Dept. Manager, Oct 2002 (National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention).
Seeking asylum in Australia is not illegal under Austtalian law, although it is popularly believed that these people are here illegally. They get treated worse than our criminals, and have recently had criminals included in with them. When they leave...mental health is a common problem.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
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5 comments:
Great post on Hillsong. I guess since they're in your neck of the woods you have a "birds-eye" perspective...
You're right, about churches becoming bastions of transfer growth with middleclass values. I see alot of churches here in the U.S. who are intentional about serving the poor, but are not equally intentional toward integrating it into a multi-class congregation.
The mitigating factor of course would be the very community churches are serving per se. I think the class mix is easier to achieve in an urban context, where the population is so concentrated and their is an economic mix.
José
http://www.holdingtheman.com/2004/04/touching-heaven-changing-little.htm
A clarification: these new churches aren't planted by Hillsong.
Ps Brian spoke those comments at the national AOG Conference. Hillsong is part of the AOG Church, and Ps Brian is the President of the National Executive.
When he made those comments, he was speaking as National President, not as Senior Pastor of Hillsong.
Admittedly, some of the church members would probably have changed churches, but there are still quite a lot of new christians joining new church plants.
Our church planted a new church late last year, and when that happened, some members of our church left to join the plant, as they wanted to be part of a small church where they could be involved in building the church from the ground up.
Thanks Paula..sounds great. Also great that people want to be involved in a smaller scene so they can get stuck into things.
I lived in the Hills area for many years and can testify that huge numbers of Christians transfer to Hillsong from existing churches.
Only a few months ago my sister-in-law and her husband transferred from an evangelical Anglican church to Hillsong. She is merely the latest of many I know.
Whilst there is genuine conversion growth I think your questions are substantially on the mark.
Questions have been raised in some quarters as to how sustainable Hillsong growth will prove to be as the transfer pool from extablished churches drys up.
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