Keith Garner heralds new era at Wesley Mission
The Rev. Keith Garner officially began work as Superintendent of Wesley Mission in Sydney on January 1.
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But he’d spent the previous four months in Sydney “quietly watching and observing”.
And that’s the style of leadership he intends to encourage and be part of henceforth: “This is a new era in the life of the mission.”
Mr Garner says, “I don’t come with a huge agenda to change this or change that but I shan’t be afraid to make changes that are necessary to make.”
He does come after 26 years experience as a Methodist minister in Britain. Born in 1955, he began his ministry in 1980 at Plymouth Central Hall, served at Elm Ridge in Darlington from 1983 until becoming Superintendent of the Colwyn Bay and Llandudno circuit in 1992 and chair of the Bolton and Rochdale District with responsibility for 150 churches plus schools and old people’s homes.
But Mr Garner says he is very conscious that now he is part of the Uniting Church, with which he wants to forge good relationships.
Wesley Mission has 2,300 regular worshippers, supports over 250 fellowship groups, ethnic and pastoral missions, extensive media production and distribution, over 450 distinct programs or centres.
From its headquarters in the centre of Sydney, next to the New South Wales Synod offices, it supports a paid staff of 1,400 and 3,500 volunteers.
What Mr Garner notes, however, is that, “Wesley Mission has some very distinctive features about its history. One is its commitment to evangelism and that’s a commitment I not only believe in but will strengthen wherever possible: our commitment is to reach people for Christ.”
City centre evangelism
“Evangelical”
for Mr Garner means that “I’ve got a clear understanding that the gospel
is not a privatised thing; it’s not simply something I do for my religion.
It is a conviction about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus that is offered
for all. That is fundamental to everything.
“Evangelical is not to me a party term. It is a Uniting Church term. It’s a Methodist term. To me it’s a John Wesley term. I am very pleased to be a Uniting minister though I am proud of my Methodist heritage.”
Mr Garner says, “We
recognise quite clearly that we have an evangelistic role and here in the city
centre my view is that that’s what’s needed.”
While the evangelical
focus is important, the emphasis that attracted Mr
Garner most about Wesley Mission was its involvement alongside the poor and its commitment to those who are vulnerable.
“If you were to say, ‘What’s the one thing you would like people to say about Wesley Mission?’ I’d like them to say that ‘There’s a place and a people that care and that care expresses itself to those people who most need to know it.’That’s really the heart of what I want to be about.”
Best known in the UK as an inspiring and gifted preacher, Mr Garner will have a regular opportunity to exercise this gift with the 200-strong Sunday Night Live congregation (and broadcast audience across the country).
With Sunday Night Live he feels there’s a lot of work to be done in moving the church into the future, “reaching a new generation of people with the gospel, and doing things in new and more modern ways”.
Most congregations have moved out of the city centre, he says, but he has no intention to move out of the city on a Sunday night when the place is still full of young life.
“Our challenge is we’ve got to find ways of reaching them that is culturally identifiable, that rings true to the kind of questions they have about life, about faith, how they can engage with God.”
Fresh expressions
Mr Garner’s previous appointments have been very different: a central city mission, a large, suburban church and one of the largest congregations in Britain on a Sunday morning, where he tried to understand new ways of being church.
But, rather than “new”, he likes to use the words “fresh expressions of life”, which indicate they’re not just necessarily new beginnings but “a new way in which you can perceive something that God is continually doing, because I think that freshness is something that happens and renews itself.”
While Mr Garner thinks the language of the established church doesn’t take seriously new technology and the fact there is a new generation of people that is writing the church off, he believes some people are not writing off all expressions of religion.
“What I would want to do is to look around and be aware of where these fresh expressions are actually working and say, ‘Let’s now breathe into that our word and deed emphasis.’
“Some of the best examples of young people doing church are often doing only part of church. They’re doing the believing and the praying but they’re not really getting engaged with the social dynamic. If we could find a way in which we could bring those two together in a more modern style that would be excellent.”
The first thing that has to happen for any church to grow, says Mr Garner, is that it needs to be culturally relevant. But there’s not one template for a growing church: “A city centre church may have a different model than a suburban church.”
He also thinks expectant congregations are critical: “The feeling that when you come to church something might actually happen, that we might actually be different when we leave this place than when we came.”
Growing churches also need leaders who share in a vision together, so that it’s not just a one-person show. And he thinks worship “isn’t just in boxes, it’s everything — it’s excitement, it’s quiet, it’s reflection, it’s sermon, it’s all those things.”
He says, “I think we need to even look at all the ways we communicate and say, ‘Is this language even beginning to remotely ring the bells for people today or are we still telling stories that are years out of date? Are we still talking about a past generation instead of trying to say what does this generation want?’
“I think the church has to be not just a gathered crowd but a living community. People have to feel this really does make a difference to our lives.”
Compassion
As
head of an organisation that administers $150 million of aged care and welfare,
Mr Garner feels a key social issue facing Wesley Mission is its work with the
homeless.
“It’s a great statement that here we are in 2006 and we are still dealing with the issue of homelessness and much of it in the way that we’ve dealt with it for the best part of 200 years. I think we have to look at that and say to ourselves, ‘How do we genuinely make attempts to get people back into the community?”
He says, “With all the wealth in the world that we have today, we still have people who, for all kinds of reasons, some of which are not their own fault at all, still find themselves without a roof over their head at night. That’s incredible really.”
More broadly, Mr Garner thinks it’s critical that all Christian organisations take seriously that every decision they take has an impact somewhere else. “Quite clearly we’ve got to be a people whose voices are for equality in the world. Not just for ourselves.”
It’s about compassion, he says: forgiveness and readiness to give people an opportunity to start again.
Yet he says the church has lately forgotten about compassion, along with many other centralities, like the centrality of the gospel, preaching faith, and a deep social commitment. “I think we’ve got to get back to a lot of centralities: preaching the good news, spelling out of the good news in specific circumstances of social justice, in the caring for the poor, in the caring of the hurt.”
A sensible
faith
Mr Garner, married to Carol with three adult children, is not from
a church family, though his family are now in the church. “Church life for
me was a real challenge — to enter into that culture ... I think church is
an enormous culture jump for anyone to enter into. And at no time has it been
greater than it is today, for people who do not know its language.”
He first heard someone articulate how it was reasonable for a sensible person to believe in the Christian faith by reading C. S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity.
“You didn’t have to be an emotionally weak person to come to a place of dependence and belief in Christ. But, actually, you could be a sensible, thoughtful person and come to a place where what you believed Jesus Christ was about could actually break into your experience and bring meaning.”
Lewis’ books aren’t just children’s stories, he says. “The door in the back of the wardrobe is a place all of us need to go... where we go into a world which can make sense of the things that our daily lives are about.
“We are lacking today the kind of stories that can open up people’s imaginations onto another world. If Lewis could do that again after all these years, I think it’s incredible. We need more C. S. Lewises really to do that, don’t we?”
And about that leadership style?
“I’d like to think that my style was collaborative ... I do think that leadership should be shared, but at the same time not afraid to be visionary, not afraid to look at what it is that God is saying to us at a point in time and somehow articulating that vision in a way that enables people to respond to those needs.”
Mr Garner says, “I certainly think that there is a degree of leadership of Wesley Mission that is almost unique in any world church because of the sheer size of the operation. I don’t think you can move away from that.”
There is an executive part to the job, he says, “but first and last I’m a minister of the gospel and that really should somehow empower every other aspect of mission. It should be the thing that I come back to again and again and again.
“I think Wesley Mission has made the right decision in terms of looking for someone who is a minister of the gospel to be its leader. Not because that’s necessarily me but because I think that’s a very brave message about what it is we’re trying to do. I’ve said on many occasions that I think Wesley Mission is a large church with a huge mission. It’s not an organisation that does church. The Christian thing is right at the heart of it.”
Keith Garner’s diary is no longer his to control. Already his PA has to squeeze dates in at the back end of the year.
“That’s the reality of it. But I hope the busyness of it and the profile of the work never leads me away from concern for ordinary people, because that’s really what it’s about.”
Marjorie Lewis-Jones and Stephen Webb