At first glance, Sydney’s Inner South West is the city’s “unBible belt,” suburbs where churches are doing it tough, but look deeper and signs of spiritual vitality emerge.
One of these is a growing desire for gospel centred churches to work together. So in early 2023 local pastors formed a network they call “T4CB,” (Together for Canterbury Bankstown.)
Their focus is on initiatives to aid the local churches – which tend to be small – that the churches could not manage on their own.
“One really obvious example was cross-cultural ministry,” Steve Gardner the minister of St Paul’s Anglican, Canterbury, and a member of the steering committee of T4CB, tells The Other Cheek. He gives a brilliant case study: “Initiatives like Peace Tent are superb examples of the organic dynamic that churches coming together to do amazing things actually that Lakemba Anglican could not do on its own.
“Peace Tent is a ministry that’s been going on for about 15 years, I believe, during Ramadan in Lakemba where a bunch of churches – Orthodox churches, Anglican churches, Uniting churches – come together and have a tent set up on Haldon Street where they offer tea and conversation with people who are breaking fast.” Haldon Street is the main street in Lakemba which has Australia’s largest Mosque.
Canterbury Bankstown is Sydneys second largest LGA with a population of 380,000. The largest religious groups is Islam, at 23.6 per cent of the population. The Watson electorate, which covers a lot of Canterbury Bankstown, recorded a 69.6 “no” vote in the 2017 marriage postal survey. (The second highest “no vote.) And then there is the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs – the local rugby league club which inspires considerable devotion.
Peace Tent was evidence that working together could help Canterbury Bankstown Churches thrive.
Planting across denominational lines is a powerful example of how churches in the Canterbury Bankstown region can be stronger together.
“We could see there was some quite amazing stories of churches across denominational lines having planted in the area. So probably the more powerful example was the Southwest Evangelical Church, which was planted in a vacant Anglican building at Kingsgrove in 2009. A congregation was sent from Chinese Christian Church Milsons Point and Peter Ko planted there with the permission of, I think Peter Jensen was the archbishop at the time. [And with the help of St Bede’s Anglican Beverley Hills] So that story we thought was a powerful one to really celebrate.
“And we’ve seen since then seen that kind of story replicated a few times. So Embassy Church at Belmore is a fantastic Pentecostal church which became homeless last year and was able to replant back into Punchbowl Anglican’s property, which had been vacant.”
This year Peter Ko, now an Anglican deacon, is heading to Bankstown to revitalise St Paul’s Bankstown.
Unity of Spirit
The numbers of people in church is greater in other regions of Sydney but Gardner has come to see God art work in Canterbury Bankstown. “I think actually there’s a spiritual flourishing I’ve seen in the churches here that it’s so refreshing and beautiful. I’ve served in northern region for a long time, and I think what I see going on here in a lot of the differences is quite exciting … A great example of a kind of work of the spirit a revival-ish kind of dynamic that I’ve not seen in other regions of Sydney.
“I think [of] the ministry of Embassy Church at Belmore, I’ve visited there a few times and I think it’s one of the best contextualised churches I’ve ever seen in my life. They’re reaching people that generally wouldn’t attend Anglican churches or Presbyterian churches and they are thriving. So they’re hundreds of people big, they’re decent size, but it’s a vibrant church, a beautiful church.”
Rahab
Out of the relationship between the Anglicans at St Paul’s Canterbury and the pentecostals of Embassy church has sprung one of the early benfits of T4CB.
“I think it was in the lead up to our [T4CB] launch in July 23, at a pastors gathering, at Revesby Congregational Church – what we do with those is we throw out areas of need that we think are pressing and just see if there’s an appetite to pursue them – I think I threw out that we’d noticed down Canterbury Road, a growing number of what looked like illegal brothels opening up out of the Covid Lockdowns.
“And Rearne [Gray] who’s a pastor of Embassy Church, was there that day, and I think that was her first pastor’s gathering. Her ears picked up and said, God’s put on our heart to do something in that space as well. So our two churches just got talking and it took about a year.”
They linked with Rahab a national ministry to sex workers, to ensure their team of women were thoroughly prepared.
“That team now, they go out on Thursday mornings visiting a number of brothels in the area. They have a team of women behind them who are praying at someone’s house while they’re out visiting. So that’s been an exciting thing. And I think one of the early wins of our movement was seeing an idea come to fruition and begin to see some gospel impact.”
“Out of that, again, so we say all the time, what we celebrate, we replicate and we want to celebrate the story of Rahab because it’s now generated lots of other different ideas and generated a deep friendship between our two churches. We’ve had preacher swaps, so Rianne asked me to go and preach at embassy. She came and preached here at Canterbury and we share resources and collaborative youth, young adult events, all that kind of thing. And it’s been mutually beneficial for both our churches.”
Find out more at https://www.together4cb.org
Image from the Together for Canterbury Bankstown website