Melbourne’s largest Pentecostal church, Planetshakers, has planted a local campus in the heart of Sydney’s North, on the Macquarie university campus. After six months, it has attracted a core group of several hundred attendees.
Planetshakers and another large Pentecostal church – Kingdomcity from Perth – form a new wave of churches planting in Sydney. While the fallout from troubles at Hillsong may affect how these plants go, The Other Cheek understands plans for them have been underway for some time before Hillsong’s annus horribilis.
“So far, we have a good community of people who are passionate, you know, we’ve got a great local core team now, Joey Poh, a Planetshakers pastor and spokesperson, tells The Other Cheek. “We have some involvement in universities as we have a passion for providing care and support at a time when we recognise that many young people are struggling with isolation and mental health challenges, especially international students.
“Many years ago, I was an international student at university and found the community support incredibly helpful.
The Planetshakers plant began meeting in the Macquarie Graduate School of Management on the uni campus but has moved to a different space in Macquarie Park. A key attendee told The Other Cheek at the new plant that finding a church venue in Sydney’s booming Macquarie Park area was difficult.
For over a century, Evangelical Anglicans or Presbyterians have run “student churches” close to campus, such as St Barnabas in Sydney, St Judes Carlton and more recently, Bundoora Presbyterian in Melbourne.
Planetshakers has student groups on eight Universities in Melbourne. Planting close to a university in Sydney continues that focus. The Other Cheek hopes to explore the growth of Pentecostal groups on campus.
“But you’ve now planted in Sydney, is that part of a movement to shake up a little bit more of the planet?” The Other Cheek asks Poh. “It is the first interstate plant, but we do have international campuses, one in Cape Town and one in Singapore.” The Cape Town campus has now passed 2000 in attendance.
Planetshakers was born in Melbourne or Adelaide, depending on how you track its history. Russell and his wife Sam Evans, began the Planetshakers conference at his father’s Influencers Church in Adelaide in 1997, but the church started in Melbourne in 2004.
It is distinctively a Pentecostal church that bears the mark of having started as a youth conference. “I think since the very beginning of the movement, there’s been a focus on being presence driven, being centred on the presence of God and pursuing encounters with the Holy Spirit,” says Poh. “That’s what defines who we are as Planetshakers—our vision is to empower generations to win generations.
“The entire movement is centred around encountering the presence of God. And out of that reaching [people] with the gospel. And it really is that simple. We keep it simple. Obviously, part of what is distinctive about Planetshakers is the contemporary expression of what we do.”
“We wouldn’t consider ourselves a youth church, but we have very little [difficulty] having a contemporary expression. Because we recognise that in churches all around the world, a lot of expressions are losing the interest of young people. And we found that if young people come … the older generations tend to have the maturity to bear with a style that might not be their own. If we can build a church that is continually relevant to young people, we tend to reach all ages.”
“We don’t really focus on tracking numbers, Poh says of the Melbourne-based Sunday attendance, but I would think it’s roughly about seven or eight thousand across Victoria at the moment. That’s probably only a third of [Planetshakers] – if everybody came at the same time, we probably wouldn’t be able to fit them in our spaces. It’s probably something like 14 to 18,000 people across the state in terms of people who call Planetshakers their church home.”
Russell Evans’ father, Andrew, presided over a couple of decades of growth in the Pentecostal movement as national president of the Assemblies of God (now the Australian Christian churches). He also founded the Family First Party.
But Poh clarifies Planetshakers is not a “how to vote” church. “Our approach is, as a church, we’ve got to be relevant. So we’ve got to be engaged, we’ve got to be involved, and we encourage all of our congregation members to be prayerful about their decisions.
“And just as we say to our congregation about anything else, ‘you want to engage it, take it seriously, do it with wisdom, do it in a way that lines up with your values.’ But we never have, and we never will, stand on a stage or in any forum, and pick a political party to support. Not because we’re fearful of any reactions, but because we genuinely don’t believe that’s the best approach for the church or the best way to pastor people and to make what needs to be there are personal decisions as to who they want to vote for.”