The Uniting Church at Thirty
The Uniting Church in Australia is celebrating its thirtieth birthday. But what is there to celebrate? As far as membership growth, increase in numbers of buildings and social welfare and care centres, numbers of ministers in training, new congregations established, expansion of missionary endeavours, and every other standard of comparison, the Uniting Church is in serious decline.
Every matter for comparison was great thirty years ago than today. The graph lines are all uniformly downward and will soon reach the point of being unsustainable. The only graphs going up, are those measuring the average age of membership and those counting the investment dollars from the sale of church properties.
The Church Life Survey indicates that an entire generation of young adults is completely missing from the Uniting Church.
I preach or attend almost every week in a church of another denomination and there I always find significant numbers of former members and former ministers who make themselves known to me.
Many people think the problem within the Uniting Church lies in its accommodation to homosexual leaders and ministers. But the crisis in the Uniting Church lies less in gender and sexual issues than the fact that it is in decline because liberals have taken control.
It is a symptom of a malaise that has been growing throughout the three decades of this denomination’s existence.
Thirty years ago the Uniting Church came into being when three denominations – Methodist, Presbyterian and Congregational – decided to leave behind their different cultures, heritages and tradition and form a new denomination. There was much idealism and hope at the time. Neither remains today.
The new denomination was the third largest of the Australian churches after the Catholics and Anglicans. Today it is the fifth largest. It has been passed by the Australian Christian Churches, a coalition of Pentecostal churches, and the Baptist Church, which 30 years ago was one-fifth the size of the Uniting Church.
The Uniting Church is like a cruise ship that left harbour well, but is sailing in ever decreasing circles without a captain. Members of the crew get together every now and then to elect a first mate. Large numbers of the passengers have jumped ship, and the rest, discontented, are going along for the ride because they have few options: life outside is worse than living inside.
The founding ethos was that the new church would be Australian in character. It would cut its ties with tradition and church customs, provide leadership based on mateship, rid itself of traditional theology and authority, and remove all sense of mystery. It would be driven by whatever was popular at the time. It hasn’t worked.
Churches by their nature require an ethos that includes tradition and culture, mystery and authority. Reject the bishops and abandon the Bible and all that replaces them are mates and newspaper polls. Standards of behaviour are the stuff of Christian churches. Become inclusive of all beliefs and all behaviours and you have nothing unique.
That might not find acceptance in the cafe latte set, but they are not central to the Christian faith. The Christian church does not have to be popular in society to survive, but it must be faithful to Jesus Christ.
Effective leadership is absent in the Uniting Church.
When an army is constantly routed and the officers are defecting, it does not make sense to blame the foot soldiers. Look at the generals. The Uniting Church has few people of leadership ability who would be at the top of any enterprise outside of itself.
The most recent Presidents covering the second half of the Uniting Church’s history, have been “do nothing” people, leaving no legacy except thousands of members who have left the church disillusioned with the results of their leadership. Vision for the future has been totally absent.
So has personal involvement in Australia’s latest natural disaster. I visited the flooded areas in the Hunter and the Central coast as I always did in time of natural disasters. In the past I organized busloads of volunteers, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for those in rural areas, and distributed thousands of food and clothing parcels. But where was President Henderson? Where was the Moderator? Where was the current Superintendent of Wesley Mission? They were all missing from the action. That is an example of the leadership problem.
Thomas C. Reeves, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, in The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity, asks: “Why are mainstream churches failing to teach right from wrong? Why are young people abandoning them? Why are church leaders so quiet in the face of growing moral anarchy?”
How do theologically liberal clergy, out of touch with the members in the pews, gain control of church structures? Why is the hierarchy so often out of tune with the expressed views with their members?
Dr Jim Heidinger, of the United Methodist Church, says the hierarchy “often have difficulties in the parish because of their views, and then they begin searching for power …
Conservative evangelicals, on the other hand, tend to stay out of the political side of church life and concentrate on spreading the gospel. The result is a liberal takeover of church authority.” That is true of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Consequently mainstream denominations have fallen for cultural fads and political correctness. Liberal Christianity is indistinguishable from a dozen humanitarian causes. It may cease to be essentially Christian.
The result is terminal. Secular humanism has triumphed over the faith of our fathers. The social, political and sexual agenda of church officials finds little support in the pews. Church members are discouraged about the direction and future of the church we love. The gender issue is only part of a large scenario.
Happy birthday! But you will not find much joy in the celebration.
