Parish is back!

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/mission/missionthinking/glory_of_parish_system_what_driscoll_got_wrong/

[sydneyanglican.net] 11 Mar 2009--As I write this, hundreds of potential church planters are gathered in Seattle for Mark Driscoll’s boot camp. They are praying, planning, and thinking hard about how to plant healthy churches. Driscoll’s critique of Anglican parish system

Last year in Sydney Mark Driscoll critiqued the Sydney Anglican parish system an obstacle to church planting and evangelism:

“The parish system predates cars - it works for some not for all - it was made when people lived in community. Less than half own their home so they are mobile. People network by online tools. People live in 3 places - they work where they can make money, the live where they can afford, and they play where they would like to live. Evangelism is hard in a fluid mobile affluent city - it makes church planting hard.”

I found Driscoll’s threefold description of where people live very helpful. Where the parish system works best is where there is an overlap between the places people work, live, and play. So it is little wonder that family ministry is the bread and butter of suburban Anglican churches.

But we struggle to reach the next Generation who live, work and play in different parts of the city. In contrast those who have a young family tend to find the neighbourhood, school and kid’s sport connections that link people to the parochial geography a bit more.

Driscoll comes at this as an independent church planter. He has thought about where to plant in Seattle with a freedom that we don’t feel in Sydney. There was a time when parish boundaries were wrongly appealed to as a grant of monopoly franchise rights to the souls of the parish. Those days are (thank God) largely behind us.

Most would see parish boundaries as a responsibility and not a right. So two years ago we gladly had part of our parish carved off to let an independent Chinese church become Hope Anglican.

The neighbouring parish of Roseville has just launched a plant in a school in ‘our’ parish. Last year we were able to partner with Christ Church, St Ives to start a new evening congregation here.

Driscoll’s critique is therefore is most helpful for us when it exposes the limitations of thinking in community terms, where the community is not living parochially.