Lithgow's path to the future

The Lithgow Parish of the Uniting Church has been exploring the idea of an enterprise-based community to be established alongside its existing congregations.

Driven in the first instance, by the rapid ageing of its congregations and the likelihood that in five to ten years there will be substantially fewer people, the parish has been thinking through its future.

It has been good for people here to see that the church has experienced peaks and troughs throughout its history, usually in association with changes in the way that we think. This has freed people from guilt if not from grief and enabled a more positive approach to the future.

We are in fact planning one. We have also recognised that our denomination is not alone in its decline. There has been enough work done to show that all mainstream churches are in the same position and that those who are less mainstream have simply delayed what has already overtaken older denominations.

Our first concern is to ensure a Christian presence in our area into the future, so we are looking at ways to financially undergird that presence.

Less pragmatically, we want to create the opportunity for people to have the time to explore what the change in thinking in our culture might mean for the church. For example, how do we frame our language about God to speak to, and about, basic human self-understandings and needs in light of the changes we are experiencing?

History tells us that human self-understandings and needs are fairly much the same; it's how we talk about them that changes, and maybe the emphasis, at this time on one thing, at that time another.

We want to gather people in the context, perhaps, of guided retreats, to do the work of theology that speaks to this age, recognising that, just as change takes time, so we need time, to think and to talk together so that new ways of expressing faith can emerge. Despite the wonders of the Net, we are pretty much convinced that nothing much replaces "face to face" for the development of ideas through conversation, and that such conversation is part of what it means to be human and worth preserving. We also want to gather people who will be self-supporting missionaries to work in Lithgow and the smaller communities which surround it.

This is part of a transition, we believe, from an over-emphasis on ordained ministry towards ministry exercised by all the people of God according to their gifts and calling. It is also a recognition that we live in a missionary context and that missionaries need to be equipped and to have clear lines of support and accountability.

We are also working on the premise that missionaries need rest and refreshment; so we intend to have people moving, in cyclic fashion, in and out of a central place for just these purposes. While we have not settled on a particular business enterprise just yet, we have begun to narrow the field.

The one thing that seems clear to us is that what we do must have the faith practice of the church at its heart. We have seen other communities of faith go down the business enterprise path only to lose sight of the purpose of such a venture and perhaps, at the same time, lose sight of the purpose of the church. Having the church's faith practice at the heart of any venture will help us also be clear about ethics; paying taxes where they should be paid, for example, and avoiding unfair competition.

We are just at the beginning of this process, which will probably include consolidation or development of some existing property to finance whatever enterprise we come to. But the important thing seems to be that the decision to take this path has given us a sense that we have a future.

Gereldine Leonard is a minister in placement at Lithgow with an interest in the changing shape of the church, including its theological approach.