I think its time to redraw Parish Boundaries.

The Diocese is currently being carved up to create Mission Areas. These Mission Areas are groupings of existing parishes.

What would happen though, if you re-drew parish boundaries on the basis of mission?

  • you could change boundaries to better reflect areas that churches connect with in mission. Plenty of boundaries were drawn before the motor car – major roads now create physical and mental barriers that boundaries may not reflect
  • you could create new parishes around newly planted churches
  • you could amalgamate neighbouring parishes where it would be helpful for mission
  • you could identify areas in exisiting parishes that weren’t being reached & carve them off to create a new ‘Mission Parish’. Priority could then be given to think about who could connect with the people in these areas.
  • you could create two parishes out of one to help foster church planting and better connections with the whole community.
  • you could have some churches without parish boundaries – ethnic churches that draw from further, large regional churches etc

The problem of course, is who the ‘you’ is in the examples above. No-one would trust ‘the Diocese’ to do this. Wouldn’t this be exactly the kind of centralism that every right thinking rector would ignore?

Why not then make it vountary? Give each Parish 6 months to talk to its neighbouring parishes and say where lines should be re-drawn for the sake of mission. If you can’t agree then the lines stay where they are.

Let me give you a quick example of how it might work around Roseville East:

  • We could split the existing Parish into two to better reach Castle Cove. We could call Al Stewart and say – we have an empty building & rectory – can you help us find a church planter?  They’d then have a parish to evangelise and we’d need to give people to that task.
  • we’d talk to Chatswood about extending our boundary to the railway line or the highway rather than the arbitrary boundary that snakes through the suburb at the moment. We’d want to figure out though who & how the residential high rise and business areas would be reached. Their Chinese ministry may be better placed to do that.
  • we’d talk to Roseville about the church they’ve planted in the school in our Parish. Do we keep that overlapping and messy or should a new Parish be created around the school and its catchment area?
  • We’d talk to Willoughby East, Willoughby, and Northbridge about the difficulties of reaching the Middle Harbour Peninsula Suburbs. Should we work together to better reach this area? Should this involve some kind of redrawing boundaries or amalgamation or the creation of a new Parish?
  • there are lots of churches on the boundaries of Chatswood but no-one church is operating inside the Chatswood CBD. Should we think of ways to work together to create a regional church bigger than any local parish? Could this happen without property?

Those would be great conversations to have. They’d open our eyes to the mission field around us. We’d pray together for the lost and think about how we can do mission together. Whether the boundaries were redrawn may not matter too much. What does matter is doing what we can to have a gospel strategy for the people around us.

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