Tag: Australian church

Church attendance and identification with the Christian faith have been gradually declining in Australia for as long as I have been leading Bayside Church. When I was tidying up my office recently, I came across a newspaper clipping from the early nineties noting the decreasing interest in church among Australians. While our church defied that trend for many years, the overall decline has continued until recently.

Changing trends

The last census revealed that only 43.9 per cent of Australians identified as Christians, while the “no religion” group had increased to 38.9 per cent. In comparison, the 1971 census data showed that 86.2 per cent of Australians identified as Christian, with just 6.7 per cent choosing “no religion” as their belief.

However, the trend may be shifting. According to a recent article published by The Lowy Institute, ‘The global resurgence of religion among young people (especially young men) stands as one of the great puzzles of our era, defying two long-held sociological iron laws: faith is for the old, and for women.’ This change offers a glimmer of hope for the future of our church communities.

The trend reminds me of the Jesus People movement of the late sixties and seventies, when hundreds of thousands of young people came to faith in Christ. I was part of that movement in the late seventies, even though I was unaware of it at the time—many of my friends were too.

Dr. Intifar Chowdhury, a youth researcher and Lecturer in Government at Flinders University in South Australia, says, “If the future belongs to the young, and the young are turning to God, the political map of tomorrow may look far less secular than was once thought to be inevitable.”

Gender differences

In Australia, young Gen Z men now identify as Christian at higher rates than women. However, they are not always attracted to healthy communities but rather to churches that operate as male-led hierarchies. These churches promote distinct male and female roles and preach about Biblical manhood, appealing to an ultra-masculine understanding of what it means to be a Christian. While this attracts some men, it can also alienate those who do not fit the typical macho image.

These churches are discouraging young women, who are more likely to reject faiths promoting male headship. The result is a growing gender gap in religion that reflects the broader cultural and political divide. Churches and Christian leaders should convey the gospel message with the understanding that all people are created in God’s image and are equally deserving of respect, dignity, and love, regardless of their gender or sexuality.

How church helps

Academics suggest that religion can help people overcome social isolation and provide answers to life’s big questions. Faith can help you find purpose in life, provide comfort during difficult times, and offer hope for the future.

A healthy church is a wonderful community to join. I emphasise the word healthy because harmful churches can cause pain, manipulate members, and discriminate against minorities. If you belong to a religious community where you feel unsafe, I encourage you to move on as soon as you can.

A good church supports your spiritual growth, fosters community and belonging, assists you through life’s challenges, offers service opportunities, provides moral and ethical guidance, helps you celebrate life events like weddings, baptisms, child dedications, and funerals in a spiritual setting, and gives hope and an eternal perspective. A church is more than just a building—it’s a community where faith develops, people are cared for, and God is glorified.

You can make friends with people you wouldn’t meet otherwise. That’s one of the things I love about the church in general and Bayside Church in particular. I get to meet people I wouldn’t have normally met. My life is richer for the experience, as these people consistently offer me a different perspective on life outside my bubble — and we all need to acknowledge that we live in a bubble. The diversity of perspectives and experiences within our church communities can promote personal growth and learning.

How scripture helps

The American Bible Society recently reported a 29% rise in Bible use among Millennials over the past year, with scripture engagement also increasing among Gen Z.

The Australian Bible Society notes that Gen Z, the first generation to grow up with smartphones and tablets, is the most anxious and fearful of any age. But young adults who frequently engage with the Bible—reading it regularly and applying it to their lives—experience half the anxiety of their peers.

Engaging with Scripture can be a transformative experience, enhancing emotional and mental well-being. It encourages self-acceptance, self-esteem, peer support, and hope. The Bible provides spiritual growth, guidance, wisdom, renewal, comfort, encouragement, and strength for life. It’s an extraordinary book, and I encourage you to engage with it—read, study, meditate, and journal.

Help for everyone

Challenges are a universal part of life. Whether it’s grief and loss, bullying, family stress, trauma, discrimination, financial hardship, or global issues that cause us deep distress, we all face tough times. Some people face these things alone, and that’s when a strong faith in God, a supportive church, and the Bible become especially important.

I’ve been involved in church leadership for 40 years and have often seen the incredible support people get from their Christian community. Friends come together for those in hardship, offering practical care, prayer, a hug, or a shoulder to lean on. The Scriptures offer immense encouragement, fostering trust and prayer, along with helpful advice, reminding us that God loves and cares for us. This reassurance from Scripture can be a source of comfort and guidance during our most challenging times.

Diana Chandler, senior writer with Baptist Press, asks, “So, do people who engage with Scripture report less anxiety? Yes, and the difference is stunning.”

 

Warning: Some of the content in this blog may be triggering.

Last weekend, thousands of people rallied to protest the increasing levels of violence and other abuse against women by intimate partners. There comes a time when people say enough. That time has come. Among G20 nations, Australia ranks eighth for rates of domestic violence against women. There’s been an almost 30% spike in the rate of Australian women killed by intimate partners last year.

In the Church

A church community should be a safe place where abuse is named, victims are not blamed or shamed, and unequal gender roles are challenged. Sadly, this is not always the case. Domestic violence and other kinds of abuse occur in Christian families to the same degree as outside of the Christian community. Churches can do better. An excellent place to start is the Safer Faith website, which has abundant information, guidelines, resources, and Bible studies to help Christians and our communities be safer.

So, let’s explore some reasons why churches are not always safe and free from domestic violence.

Church Structure

Some church structures can be a critical factor in causing domestic violence. It concerns me that we still have patriarchal churches that are run by men and invariably support men at the expense of women. You can pick these churches a mile away. Check out their websites and observe the leadership structure. I’m not talking just about the staff. Who’s on the Board, the senior leadership, and are women permitted to teach and preach? If they’re all men, run away.

 

These churches invariably espouse Complementarianism, the belief that men and women are “equal but different.” I’m not suggesting that all complementarian churches have an abuse problem, and I don’t deny that there are clear differences between these two genders. Still, complementarianism usually places men in the superior role of leading and women as their “helper,” supporting the man of God. It’s all very Orwellian: All humans are equal, but some humans are more equal than others!

As Matthew Henry once wrote, “Eve was not taken out of Adam’s head to top him, neither out of his feet to be trampled on by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him.”

Church Teaching

It’s easy (and lazy) to quote isolated verses out of context. I heard of one guy who beat his wife while quoting scriptures on submission: “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord,” clearly ignoring the previous verse: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Paul affirms that husbands should love their wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. I’m pretty sure Jesus doesn’t beat up his church (or anyone else, for that matter). Jesus stood up for the victims and showed compassion and grace. We are to follow his example.

Submission has been used for centuries to suppress women. I have heard of multiple occasions where a pastor has instructed a woman to stay with an abusive partner, to submit to him and to be the best wife she can be. The inference is that the violence is somehow her fault, and if she were a better wife, he wouldn’t hit her. If you’re in a situation like that, THIS PASTOR encourages you to get away to safety as quickly as possible and reach out for help.

Church Emphasis

Another woman told of her minister advising her that her husband might stop hitting her if she had more sex with him. This stereotype is emphasised by some of today’s megachurches that stress the manly man versus the feminine submissive woman who looks after the home and keeps her husband happy. Consider the recent Stronger Men’s Conference, complete with monster trucks, a sword swallower, a wrestling match, motorcycles, and pyrotechnics. In contrast, the upcoming women’s conference is all pretty and pink and looks like a promo for Barbie. Aussie megachurches are much the same.

Pastor Josh Howerton recently got himself into trouble for propagating this same trope at his church in Dallas, where he gave a “gold nugget of advice” that his mentor had given him for couples intending to marry. He encouraged men to do whatever their fiancés wanted in the lead-up to the wedding and then told the women they needed to do the same thing for their husbands on the wedding night: “Stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do.” With this level of objectivation and misogyny, this guy needs to get a new mentor.

These churches encourage men to be Wild at Heart and to recover their masculinity, strength, and roughness. Women are to delight in their men’s strength, look up adoringly at them, and think how lucky they are. Teaching like this leads to all kinds of abuse that, sadly, we see regularly reported by news outlets.

Other Causes

In the same way that some churches and Bible teachings characterise women as subordinate to men, pornography does the same thing. In porn, “females are characterised as subordinate to males, and their primary role is the provision of sex to men.” Much porn is gonzo, a genre that depicts hard-core, body-punishing sex in which women are demeaned and debased. It won’t be long until the man who consumes this rubbish wants to try it.

Domestic violence can be caused by alcohol abuse or drug use, which can lead to higher levels of aggression by perpetrators. Pregnancy may also intensify the risk of domestic violence, as can financial hardship and unemployment.

Solutions

What I’ve written about here is complex; we all have a role. If we know someone who is violent or abusive to their wife or girlfriend, we need to act. Dads can talk to their sons about respect for women and healthy models of masculinity. All men can behave considerately towards others. Appropriately, the focus for International Men’s Day for 2024 is Positive Male Role Models.

We guys can also teach others to resist the sexist rhetoric of public figures, be they politicians, pastors, or influencers like Andrew Tate. We can warn of porn addiction that can lead to sexualised violence and be educated on the dangers of social media and the sheer vitriol and hatred of the online space, and the algorithms that continually dish up more of the same.

We can advocate for women’s rights and believe that women deserve equal rights to men in every sphere of life. We can nurture our children, nieces, and nephews by having honest, frank, and healthy conversations about these challenging issues.

And that’s where the church can shine by modelling respectful relationships in which everyone is equally worthy of respect, dignity, and love, regardless of who they are. We can healthily teach the scriptures focusing on the Royal Law and the Golden Rule: love your neighbour as yourself and treat others as you would like to be treated.

 

For Further Help:

National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counselling Line.

Phone: 1800 737 732 Web: www.1800respect.org.au

First point of call for access to all services across Australia (24 hours a day).

Bayside Church Pastoral Care Phone: 0401 721 912

I regularly hear words of alarm and outrage from some of Jesus’ followers who embrace a gloomy view of the world. Confession: I used to hold that viewpoint, too. It’s all tied into a futurist understanding of Revelation and Bible prophecy, which teaches that things will worsen until Jesus returns. I used to look for evidence that everything was deteriorating, but I eventually woke up because history and the present world tell a different story. For the most part, the world is a better place to live now than ever in human history.

And so, when I hear people say, “Every year, it gets worse and worse,” I find myself reacting to this so-called “Christian” form of outrage. Some of Jesus’ followers feel compelled to be incensed about something as fuel to keep their faith alive. I don’t believe this is an appropriate way for God’s people to live.

Amazing Insight

Consider what it would be like to build a church in a corrupt and dreadful place next to a temple that was dedicated to an idolatrous god that was worshipped by people having sex with prostitutes and animals. That story is reflected in Jesus’ incredible discussion with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, near a mountainous region containing Mount Hermon, Israel’s largest mountain.

Matthew tells us that Jesus asked his disciples what people were saying about him. They told Jesus that people’s opinions were mixed, with some believing Jesus was John the Baptist reincarnated. Others thought Jesus was Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets who had returned from the dead.

Jesus then asked his disciples for their thoughts on his identity. Peter answered first, of course, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Play on Words

Jesus told Peter that his insights had a heavenly origin, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

The Play on words in the original manuscript was between Peter (Petros), a rock that can be thrown, and Rock (Petra), a large mass rising from the earth. Matthew 16:18 could be translated as, “I tell you, Peter, that you are like a little stone, but on this massive mountain of the revelation of who I am, I will build my church.” The Church was and is established on the foundation of Jesus the Messiah.

The Worst Place

So, what are the gates of Hades that will not overcome Jesus’ Church? As mentioned, this conversation occurred at Caesarea Philippi, ancient Paneas, “The city of Pan.” In Jesus’ day, a temple to the goat god Pan was at the centre of town.

Pan received worship through intimate acts with goats. The court in public view outside the temple was called the Court of Pan and the Nymphs. Nymphs are creatures of fantasy, like elves or fairies and were thought to be a large group of inferior divinities. Today, the word can refer to a woman who suffers from hypersexuality, a mental illness.

Pan’s temple was set on the side of a gigantic rock face. Next to it was an enormous cave where the Jordan River originates and flows to the Dead Sea. The cave was called the “gates of Hell.” The priests of Pan would say that if you did not worship Pan to his satisfaction, he would open the cave and swallow you into Hell.

For the disciples, this was an evil place, and this is where Jesus says, on this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. In other words, think of the most formidable and least likely place to found a church; that is where the Church will thrive.

Worth Considering

I find it fascinating that of all the places where Jesus could initiate his Church, he chose that place. It’s a truth that resonates through the centuries right down to our time.

The Church has had the worst of things thrown at it. It’s been outlawed and oppressed, and its people persecuted and martyred. Sacred books and Bibles were burned or banned. Add to that the trouble we’ve brought on ourselves – immoral and abusive pastors and priests, Church splits, discrimination against minorities and selfishness, always wanting everything our way. It’s a miracle that the Church still exists, but here we are.

My encouragement to you is simple: while some awful things are happening in the world right now, the world is much better than it was. If you follow Jesus, Set your mind on things above, not earthly things. Jesus affirmed that His Church would be built on the rock where the darkest rituals occurred, and it would prevail. Live in faith, not fear and be encouraged.