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WE CAN ACCOMPLISH MORE TOGETHER THAN APART

Retiring Moderator Very Revd Robert Yule's Address to Assembly

23 Septmber 2002

Being Moderator is a privileged, humbling experience, in which I have experienced extraordinary and undeserved prayers and love from people I have never met - especially in the time of my illness.

Twenty five years ago, in his retiring address, our church's youngest Moderator, Ian Breward, predicted that at the then rate of decline the last Anglican would bury the last Presbyterian in New Zealand in the year 2000. It was not one of the most percipient observations to be made by our church's leading historian, whose magnum opus, A History of the Churches in Australasia, was published by Oxford University Press just last year. In the event, some 90,000 Anglicans and Presbyterians were in church each Sunday throughout the year 2000, and over one million New Zealanders chose to identify as Anglicans and Presbyterians in the 2001 census. As Mark Twain once remarked, 'The rumours of my death are much exaggerated.

It is not just church historians, or sociologists, who have got it wrong about the church. One of my more unnerving experiences as Moderator has been of interviews with journalists with what I call PWHS, 'paralysed writing-hand syndrome'. When it dawns that the Presbyterian Moderator is not about to furnish the expected evidence of the church's decline and irrelevance, the journalist's pencil stops moving. It is symptomatic of a mindset among many guardians of New Zealand's public culture, who don't want to hear about the church's continued vitality and creative response to the challenges of secular society. In such situations I invariably have a more intelligent conversation with the photographer.

My theme while Moderator these last two years has been 'The Power of Hope'. Our Presbyterian movement, I have felt, has been excessively and unnecessarily demoralised. It needs the transforming motivation of hope. Hope - which is such a seemingly fragile and insubstantial quality - has the power to transform situations that are bleak, to motivate communities that have their backs to the wall, inspire people to heroic achievements.

Terms

You'll notice that I speak of the Presbyterian movement rather than the Presbyterian church. I do so for two reasons. Firstly, it is a dynamic term more truly descriptive of the living, organic character of the church. The church of Jesus Christ is a living organism. You cannot understand it if you think of it as something static or inert. It is something alive, vital, dynamic. The church continually surprises with its ability to rejuvenate itself when seemingly exhausted, when its critics have written it off and even its friends have given up on it. Because of the divine life of God revealed in its founder Jesus Christ and imparted to it by the Holy Spirit, the church continually demonstrates a capacity to reinvigorate itself even when overwhelmed by inner problems and external pressures.

Secondly, the Presbyterian Church is a wide-ranging and complex entity, for which the term 'movement' is a better description than 'organisation'. It comprises over 430 parishes, including Presbyterians in Union and Cooperative ventures, and covers the entire country with the exception of some pockets in the far north - historically Anglican and Methodist turf. It is ethnically diverse, ranging from heartland Scottish Presbyterianism in Otago and Southland, through the Tuhoe peoples who comprise Te Aka Puaho, our Maori Synod, to the burgeoning ethnic diversity of Auckland, which has more in common today with a Pacific-rim Asian city. The Presbyterian Church includes six ethnic groups in its trial Pacific Island Synod - from Samoa, the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau, Tuvalu and Kiribas - and four ethnic groups - Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese and Indonesian - in the newly-formed Council of Asian Ministries. My own congregation in Palmerston North - which is not noted as a multiethnic city - has eleven different nationalities in it.

The Presbyterian movement also includes the thirteen church schools. They have a strong sense of morale and purpose. They are consciously reaffirming their Christian character, positioning themselves more strongly over against our secular culture, seeking to renew the engagement of our Church with young people, and even beginning to consider the planting of new schools. The church schools merit greater recognition as a strategic part of our Church's mission to contemporary society, and deserve greater equity of treatment within our national educational framework. We could learn a lot from trans-Tasman experience in this regard. In New Zealand, church schools represent only 3.5% of all schools; in Australia they comprise over 30%, and rising, because of the demand for quality Christian education.

Also part of our movement are the seven semi-autonomous Presbyterian Support regions, together constituting the largest non-governmental social service provider in New Zealand. They are immensely respected in today's troubled social environment. They keep the increasingly market-driven commercial rest home industry honest. They speak up for the underclass of poor New Zealanders on whom the free-market reforms of the last fifteen years have fallen unduly heavily. Recently they even bailed out the ailing War Veterans Home in Levin.

Incidentally, an independent marketing survey showed that the part of our national movement best-known and most widely-recognised by secular New Zealanders is Presbyterian Support. On that basis the marketing agency recommended that we use the name 'Presbyterian' to describe our movement. Though it's a Greek word which few New Zealanders can spell, it at least avoids the confusion of the letters 'PCANZ' with the Prostitutes Collective of Aotearoa New Zealand. Mo Mansill, our church's national Youth Coordinator, also points out that the plural 'Presbyterians' has the great publicity advantage of being an anagram for 'Britney Spears'. What possibilities for redesigning the Presbyterian logo!

Trends

As I have travelled around the country these last two years, I have observed two opposite trends in our Presbyterian movement and shared them in a recent SPANZ resume of my time as moderator.

One is the dramatic shrinkage and ageing of many traditional congregations. The Council of Assembly strategic document, 'Directions, 2002-2005', notes that 'The Presbyterian Church has a pattern of rapidly declining participation. There has been a 30% decline in attendance in the last ten years. . . . Younger adults are tending not to participate. 46% of Presbyterian members are over 65 years of age.'

This is a concerning trend, which bodes badly for the future of our movement. Combined with the retirement or death of an outstanding generation of ministers and lay leaders with high ideals of public service nurtured in the Bible Class movement, it means that our church faces a looming leadership crisis and the prospect of a serious loss of institutional memory.

The absence of younger generations to replenish the ranks means that the decline in many churches will be terminal unless radical decisions are made to redress the situation. Ageing churches tend to be people poor but asset rich, and that raises potentially unsettling issues about how best to re-deploy their property and financial resources for effective mission.

One can observe that declining congregations reach a critical threshold of viability, below which the energies become more focussed on survival than on mission beyond the congregation. Some of these churches remain friendly and welcoming, but give an impression of growing comfortably old together. In others, a widespread sense of discouragement and low morale dominates their outlook. The basic problem is that many of these churches have postponed for too long the fundamental changes of leadership and culture necessary to attract a younger generation. Short of something like a kakapo recovery programme, extinction now stares them in the face and their situation will be virtually impossible to redress - short of a resurrection.

On the other hand there is an opposite trend, of emerging regionally-significant churches which are turning things around, displaying a vigour of renewal, developing multiple staff teams, engaging in community outreach and overseas mission, and attracting children, youth and young adults while at the same time retaining their older members.

What is common to these churches is the integration of spiritual and structural renewal - not one or the other but both together, the harnessing of personal faith to an outward-looking community profile, and a willingness to tackle, in advance, the tough leadership decisions necessary to ensure ongoing growth into the future. Like turning round a super-tanker, fundamental changes like this take time. Some of these churches made proactive changes as long as fifteen or even twenty years ago.

With a few exceptions, such as the community initiatives of Lance Thomas in Putaruru, Martin Baker in St Heliers, Auckland, and more recently Maua Sola at Mangere Pacific Islanders Church, I observe that these emerging regionally significant community churches are all, virtually without exception, the outworking of the vision of the national board of Presbyterian Renewal Ministries through the years 1986 to 1996, when their intentional strategy in that remarkable decade focussed on the holistic renewal of local congregations. Faith communities like St. Columba Botany Downs and Hornby Christchurch, St. Andrew's Mt. Maunganui and St. John's Rotorua, St. Andrew's Whangarei and East Taieri Otago, are emerging as the new flagship churches of the Presbyterian movement.

Teams

The critical factor in this second category of churches is the senior leadership. These churches are invariably lead by wise, winsome and courageous team leaders, who have been willing to stay around long enough to make a difference, have endeavoured to overcome entrenched attitudes, and build communities that are sunny, permission-giving, and outward-looking.

Teamwork and team leadership is I believe critical to the future of the Church. The future seems to be with larger churches able to employ multiple staff teams - even if initially through part-time and volunteer workers with specialists who can provide ministries of sufficient variety and quality to meet the standards of excellence that New Zealanders have come to expect in other sectors of society. Team leadership focuses on the creation of an environment where the people of God can exercise their gifts, develop their ministries, and reach their full potential. Despite recent changes in our School of Ministry and ministerial formation, I'm not convinced that enough is being done to develop team leadership in our church.

I am a firm believer that we can accomplish more together than apart. There is an individualism among Presbyterians which militates against corporate achievement. In a lecture to the 'Future of Anglicanism' Conference, held in Oxford, England in July 2002, Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University and Principal of Wycliffe Hall said of our sister church, 'It is simply unacceptable for any part of the Communion to behave in a maverick way, disregarding the sensitivities and biblically-nourished concerns of the remainder. They may use the language of "justice", "integrity" or "progress"; the reality is that the underlying philosophy owes more to Frank Sinatra than to Scripture, Creeds or the Christian tradition: "I did it my way".'

Threats

The exercise of personal power without any notion of broader accountability I believe should have no part in a movement that calls itself Christian. The greatest threat to our Presbyterian movement today is an independent, ungracious and critical spirit. It is present in all sections of the church, it undermines morale, and it is unworthy of Jesus Christ. Ours has been a great movement in the past, some of its strengths only evident in histories yet to be written, and can still be tomorrow - in its impact on local communities, education, society, the public life of our nation, global mission and the world church. As I write letters to the families of Alan Brash, Harold Turner, I recall outstanding leaders our church has produced. I say it again, we can accomplish more together than alone. Let's speak well of one another. Let's be encouragers and empowerers of others, rather than individualists and mischief makers, who undermine the unity of our movement and divert its resources.

In the early nineties, my church secretary at St. Albans was Kelvin Menzies, Deputy Director of Social Welfare in Palmerston North. A hope-filled person, Kelvin often talked about 'turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones'. Whenever we encountered difficulties, he would encourage us to approach them positively, to turn obstacles into opportunities. I believe if we all did this, our corporate morale would lift and our Presbyterian movement would surge ahead. It has so much going for it, and even in our secular culture, it is a movement that any politician would be glad to have behind him. I long for a church where we speak well of one another, appreciate one another's gifts, celebrate one another's achievements. It's time we exchanged a culture of negativity for the language of praise.

God is at work in the church. The church is what God uses. Despite all its faults, God has chosen to work out God's saving purpose for the world through the church - us, you and me. The emergence of Western society from the Christendom era is creating many challenges for traditional institutions, including the churches. But it is also showing what secular commentators haven't recognised, that the church can survive, indeed flourish, even when marginalised by secular culture. In the midst of an indifferent and increasingly dysfunctional society, the flame of the Presbyterian Church continues to burn, and is not consumed.

Very Rev Rob Yule, retiring Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Aoteoroa New Zealand, shortly leaves St Alban's Presbyterian Church, Palmerston North, to become minister of Greyfriars Presbyterian Church, Mt. Eden, Auckland.

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