By Rev Colin Gurteen and Rev Carol Bennett
What possible connection could there be between isolated Uniting Church communities scattered across the expanse of the Northern Territory and Western Australia and those faith gatherings in which we worship here in lutruwita/Tasmania?
The short answer is everything.
In May and June we had the privilege of working for the Pilgrim Presbytery of Northern Australia, based in Darwin but also visiting Alice Springs, Broome, Nhulunbuy and Tennant Creek.
Our brief was Presbytery support for Ministers and congregations, everything from leading worship to vitality of call conversations, with lots of workshops in between.
Each congregation was unique, with its own history, its own current story, its own strengths, and its own problems.
Where one community was flourishing with lots of young families, another was a bare handful of folk hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
Where one was in the very heart of the city, we could only reach another via a plane flight.
No two communities of faith could be mistaken for another, and yet each was the same.
Every congregation was facing the identical, unmistakeable challenge: how to navigate change.
While we led workshops on budgeting for mission, conducting the sacraments, the role of church councils, and using gifts, behind every session lay the reality of dealing with changing circumstances.
Wherever we went and whoever we spoke to, there was the clear recognition things are not as they were before, and that inescapable change is our universal context.
How do we function now we no longer have a Minister? What does our future look like when our numbers are falling? Who is going to lead us into an unknown future?
Of course, the simplistic answer is that God will provide.
But that pious reassurance offers little comfort when the writing is clearly on the wall.
What was gratifying and encouraging was the willingness of Christians, in often difficult circumstances, to face reality in faith and hope.
There was no denial, just honest acknowledgement that change is inevitable.
So it was that the major gift we had to offer to the Northern Synod was creating a safe space in which to wrestle with the reality of change.
To ask, “what does change feel like? What can we expect? What have we learnt from confronting change in the past?”.
There are many emotional challenges in negotiating our way through times of uncertainty, and our impulse is to retreat to the familiar, with frustration that nothing is clear, guilt that we haven’t been able to ‘save’ ourselves, and always grief at the loss of the way of being church that has nurtured and comforted us.
At the same time, we are carried with the promise that resurrection is God’s answer to death.
Understanding life cycles helps us ground ourselves, and seeing the ‘big picture’ reassures us we haven’t gone astray, that learning more about our individual strengths and weaknesses equips us for the challenge.
Navigating change is how we recognise and manage our fears, work through the ‘messy middle’, and develop the necessary skills to walk with one another into an unknown future.
Did our Navigating Change workshops solve all problems, lead faithful congregations into a secure and glorious future? Of course not.
Hopefully, however, they provided understanding and resources, and offered hope.
And we ourselves came away energised to confront whatever may come.
At the beginning of this piece, we suggested that the church of the far north and that of the surrounding south are deeply connected.
Naturally, we are linked by our shared faith in the God of unconditional love.
Equally, we live in uncertain times and are being called to navigate change.
The question is: have we prepared ourselves to step into whatever future God is calling us to?