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So we’re about 10 weeks in to the 52 weeks of Connect09.

Is it too soon to be writing it’s obituary?

I appreciate the good intentions and hard work of those who have had to work extremely hard to wrangle something together in a very short time frame, but the calendar is looking pretty bare, and this isn’t a rehearsal, this is supposed to be the real deal.

I was talking about Connect09 with some ordinary pew sitters the other week, and there seems to be a case of a severe lack of direction, which has been the case from the get go really.

The diocesan leadership didn’t really know what it should be, so they got the ministers together and told them to figure it out.

The ministers didn’t know what it was supposed to be, so they told the congregation to work it out.

The congregation didn’t really know what it was supposed to be, so nothing much is happening.

When you see people passing responsibility down the chain it’s pretty clear there’s no direction. Then to make up for that, no direction becomes the direction - it’s ‘whatever you make it.’

There’s probably a few initiatives here and there that are operating under (or have been co-opted by) the Connect09 banner,  but is anyone else feeling a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing?

Currently it seems everyone’s preoccupied with Acts 29 church planting, which is kind of odd - doesn’t having a outside network planting your kind of churches in your backyard mean you aren’t doing your job? Weird.

So we’re about 10 weeks in to the 52 weeks of Connect09. Is it too soon to be writing it’s obituary?

Hi Luke,

I agree that every parish has been left to work out their own ‘calendar’. Our parish has opted for early August to be the time for distributing the “Essential Jesus” gospels throughout the parish. This is also when a team from another parish are coming to help us conduct a Mission Week.

Before then ( since February )  we’re running various courses for our congregation to hone their skills etc.  “XEE” and “Just Start Talking” among them. In other words we’re gearing up to be prepared for results from when we do the big outreach. We’ve already begun to be more involved in community groups etc - and are currently finalising an adopt-a-block carve up of our suburb. We have also got the Bible Society’s “Jesus All About Life” September campaign in view. Our neighbouring parish also has the same time in August as their objective. It seems that many are gearing up now - and adopting the scouting motto of “Be prepared”.

So the answer to your question is “Yes” - it is too soon to be writing an obituary after only 10 weeks out of 52. But parishes should definitely have already decided their course of action by now. If not, then they should elect a new parish council and wardens - and get on with job at hand ( Connect 09 )  - and give their ministers a “friendly” word of encouragement to lead from the front.

I see a mixed response amongst the Anglican churches.  Some around the area don’t seem to be doing anything more (from an outsiders’ point of view), others like St Georges Anglican in Hurstville are already doing heaps more in terms of prayer, introductory bible classes and advertising.

Both the Parish where I worship and the Parish where I work have programmes in place to, firstly, connect more with their communities, and to, secondly, introduce the members of the communities to Christ through the gift of The Essential Jesus.
I thought it would be terribly hard to give them away, but I find it’s getting easier every time I give one away. On Friday a lady came into work to pick up someone who was at a meeting. While she was waiting, she started reading TEJ. She came over to me and asked if she could buy it, I said she could take it. No, she would pay for it; no it was free; no she didn’t want to rob us. I had to explain about the 20,000 copies we had, and how we only got them to give away.
If (when) we give away the 20,000 copies it will be great, but connecting with people enough for them to want to learn more about the Christ we serve is going to be the real joy. Not everyone we connect with will come to follow Christ (that is, of course, not in our hands) but some will, and knowing that gives us all the impetus to keep connecting, not just in 09, but in the years to come (it will definitely take more than 12 months to give them all away!)

In our small parish ( stmarks.com.au ) we’ve run ‘Just Start Talking’ and a sermon series called ‘Helping Them See’ and in April will do our first lot of neigbourhood visitation for the year inviting people to a CE course.  We’ll do more neighbourhood visitation when the “Jesus all about life” campaign is on and run a second CE course.  Our parish turns 100 this year and we are using that as an excuse to invite people to a ‘Church Open House’ in the back half of the year.  Those are the elements of our ‘formal / structural’ evangelism plans for the year.  We are not making use of Connect09 branding at all (but are grateful to have got a heap of nicely produced Luke’s gospels cheap) and expect these to be key elements of each year.

My husband has been a bit reticent about giving the Gospels away, so I was quite surprised when he said the other day that he has to get a bundle of them (60 I think-a lot more than I’ve been able to give away). A friend of ours (an Evangelical but not a Newcastle Anglican) is a scripture teacher on the Central Coast -can he have 30 for his class? And then he was talking with some colleagues who had seen the Connect09 signs and wanted to know about it-could they all have one too?
At first glance it looks hard, and a lot of people assume that they could never do it (we’re no Billy Grahams!) but I’m coming to realise just how hungry people are for the Gospel.

Jean Marlow - 16 March 2009 10:51 AM

I had to explain about the 20,000 copies we had, and how we only got them to give away.

Hi Jean,

20,000 seems a huge amount for one parish - so I guess that yours covers several large suburbs - but 20,000 homes seems immense. With all that door to door walking, you could end up with the fittest congregation in Sydney ! What sort of timetable have you worked out ? Street by street - or adopt-a-block ?  We’ve only got 6,000 and that seems daunting enough.

Kevin, we were surprised when we examined the ABS figures that show there are 20,000+ households in the parish. It is a very large area, and as you say, it covers several suburbs.
At the Church which I attend we expected to order a similar amount and were surprised to find that there are only half as many households as we had expected-Penrith and Blacktown areas both have similar populations, but the area we think of as “Penrith” includes many other parishes, and the Penrith parish includes all of the shopping centres and factory areas. Blacktown parish on the other hand includes all that we think of as Blacktown plus Marayong, Prospect and Arndell Park. Perceptions are often correct but not always.
We have several different irons in the fire, including focusing on one area where only one couple attending our Church lives. Most of the parishioners are scattered throughout the parish, but there is one little pocket of a couple of hundred homes and only two people come to Blacktown Anglican Church.
As you imply, we do have a fairly fit congregation-just as well!

It just occurred to me that Connect 09 has come and gone (and indeed 1/12th of 2010 has come and gone!). I’m completely out of the loop, but I keep an eye on sydneyanglicans.net and don’t remember seeing an wrap up of Connect 09.

What was the general feeling of how it went? What was good/bad/could be better? Did it live up to expectations?

Luke, I think the finance troubles hit the Connect 09 Program somewhat, but that said I believe it was always going to be extremely difficult. How do you connect with the unconnectible, and getting more unconnectible.

I thought the problem was more ‘experiential’.  Speaking from personal experience, people were too preoccupied trying to keep their own jobs and lives in check, and/or trying to find a job once lost.

And (this will offend the Tias of the world) who wouldn’t blame them?

Salutations..

Arthur Lee - 05 February 2010 02:56 PM

And (this will offend the Tias of the world) who wouldn’t blame them?

Huh??!?

TZ.

What I was getting at was that people might (operative word, might) get offended by the notion of a person trying to save their job in these uncertain times, but as a result (timewise and effortwise) doing less outreach.

I lament the passing of Connect ‘09. I lament the opportunity to see what people could do to spread the faith. i also lament the fact that I would not have been one of them.
    To tell the truh , I was turned off by Syd. Ang. and their involvement with Bishops in the belly of Africa who were obsessed with homosexuals and women priests. Quite understandable for Africa considering their Aids problems and the Muslim challenge in their midst.
    We could do worse by borrowing from the USA like we usually do. I have annoyed the inerrant Bible people, by preaching for a few years now that the World of God is just as important as the Word of God. Lo and behold the good old USA has being doing just that for several years before I got the idea. Good to know that you are not alone
    There are several churches in USA preaching a more reason based message. Perhaps it will take over from the Pentacostal prosperity type message. The church website I ” stumbledupon” was
    http://www.reasons.org/

    To keep the Bible bashers happy, they believe in the inerrancy of God’s word. It’s just that they take time, context, state of mind of the author etc into account. This particular church is run by a scientist Dr hugh Ross , an Astronomer. In some ways it harks back to the Scholastic approach popular 1000’s of years ago.

There is an article about the continuation of Connect 09 til Easter, when it will be called Connect For Life.

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/news/stories/connecting_now_for_life/ provides the gist.

The paper version of the article is actually longer, with several positive outcomes of Connect 09. 

Another positive outcome was me being able to hand out some Essential Jesuses in the past few months :=).