Special relationship
At the celebration of Dick Lucas’ 100th birthday on 14 September 2025, the overseas contribution was a series of recorded video messages from past and present Christian leaders in Australia, testifying to a special relationship. The relationship, first between conservative evangelicals in the Church of England and Sydney Anglicans, has enlarged over the last fifty years and more to embrace a much wider constituency.
Strong words from close friends
In a special relationship there are times when strong things need to be said. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov 27:6).
In 2023 Phillip Jensen was interviewed by Simon Manchester for Sydney Anglicans. Simon Manchester had served as Curate under Dick Lucas at St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London from 1982–1984. Asked to reflect on his visits to England, this was Phillip Jensen’s response: “England was a great disappointment to me. Having been raised on British history and especially evangelical Anglican history, and having been educated by English books and preachers, I was horrified to see the weakness and frailty of the evangelical movement. With some marvellous exceptions, the accommodation of evangelicals to the national Church presaged its current divisions, decline and disaster.”
Following the nomination of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, Mark Thompson, writing for The Gospel Coalition commented:
“This week, the Church of England’s leadership continued its tragic slide into irrelevance as it announced the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Anglicans around the world had hoped for the appointment of an orthodox and faithful guardian of the faith who would address the serious decline in England’s established church and its dire standing in the global Anglican Communion. Sadly, those making the appointment have chosen to continue on a decades-long course of theological revisionism, cultural capitulation, and unprecedented division … it may yet be that the Lord will use this appointment to galvanize the faithful in the urgent work of evangelism, discipleship, and faithful witness to the gospel, the only real hope for Britain, global Anglicanism, and indeed the entire world.”
These are strong words, but from close friends, deeply grieved by what is happening in the Church of England, and standing with us contending for the faith. Peter Jensen, former Archbishop of Sydney and first General Secretary of Gafcon, spoke on The Pastor’s Heart following the Church of England Synod in February 2023 with evident distress. Dominic Steele on that platform has given significant attention to what is happening in England, interviewing Vaughan Roberts, William Taylor, Charlie Skrine and others on The Pastor’s Heart. From this side of the world, we are humbled and thankful that you are willing to listen to us. The question is—are we willing to listen to you?
Deep roots in shared ministry convictions
A special relationship has deep roots. Not simply, or even primarily, around people, but roots in shared ministry convictions around expository preaching, multiplying gospel workers and gospel partnership.
John Stott in Australia
John Stott first visited Australia in 1958, the same year that Basic Christianity was published. He returned to Australia in 1965 to give the Bible readings at the Church Missionary Society (CMS) summer schools in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. The expositions from 2 Corinthians had a profound impact on preaching in Australia, which had become predominantly preaching on an individual text without reference to context. Peter Adam, writing about this time in an article for TGC Australia comments:
“I was a new convert when I attended the CMS Victoria Summer School at Belgrave Heights in January 1965, when John Stott gave those studies on 2 Corinthians. It was the first time I had heard expository Bible preaching. My response was, ‘That is how to preach the Bible, and that is what I want to do!’ I knew that such preaching would grow churches, and when I went to London in 1972 and visited All Soul’s Langham Place and St Helen’s Bishopsgate, I saw that it worked!”
College of Preachers, Campus Bible Study and Ministry Training Strategy
Following Stott’s visit to Australia in 1965, the College of Preachers was set up by John Chapman and Dudley Foord in Sydney to promote expository preaching. This was one of a number of initiatives that started a movement in Australia around expository preaching. Another was Campus Bible Study (CBS). Phillip Jensen was appointed Anglican Chaplain at the University of New South Wales in 1975, starting Campus Bible Study the same year. His first significant ministry partnership was with Col Marshall, a Navigators missionary on the UNSW campus. Together they started training Ministry Apprentices, which in time evolved into the Ministry Training Strategy (MTS) with Col Marshall as the first Director.
Dick Lucas and Phillip Jensen
A similar movement was developing in the UK.
Alongside John Stott at All Souls, the ministry of Dick Lucas at St Helen’s was to have a profound impact. Dick modelled expository preaching through the pulpit ministry of St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London, during the week and on Sundays. The midweek lunchtime service for City workers, consisting of a short expository sermon with an evangelistic thrust, were wonderfully blessed by the Lord, with many converted.
As committed as Dick was to expository preaching, he was equally committed to multiplying expository word ministry through training others. The Evangelical Ministry Assembly (EMA) started in 1984. The main component was “Expositions for Expositors”, where Dick, the preacher, would expound a Bible book to preachers who would then preach it in their churches.
Phillip Jensen was a regular speaker at EMA through the 1980s and 1990s, reciprocated with Dick’s regular visits to Australia to speak at the CMS NSW-ACT Summer School and Katoomba Convention.
How to change the Church
Phillip Jensen’s talks at EMA in 1986 and 1988 had a significant impact in the UK.
In 1986, his theme was “How to change the Church”.
Talk 1, titled “God’s plan for the world, the Church and pastors”, focused on Ephesians 1:10, God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” That is not yet. The now is the Church age, the age of suffering and gospel proclamation so that people will be transformed, ready to meet Christ. In God’s theology of transformation, the agency for change is the Word of God proclaimed. And so the pastor’s job is to preach the word and to equip the local church they serve for the ministry of the word, all so that people will be saved and grow in mature likeness to Jesus.
Talk 2, “Alternative Models of Ministry”, warned from the Pastoral Letters of the ever-present dangers of rationalism (the liberal model), experience (the charismatic model) and institutionalism.
Talk 3, “Changing the Church”, began to address the subject of theological pragmatism, which he returned to in more depth at EMA 1988.
Theological pragmatism
The address on theological pragmatism at the EMA in 1988 was from 1 Corinthians 11. Evangelicals face two dangers. On the one hand, traditionalism, which is gospel orthodoxy stifled by tradition and institutional practice: refusing to change for the sake of the lost; accommodating the 1% who are in the church, ignoring the 99% who are not; being unduly influenced by the bleating of the sheep, and therefore distracted from the plight of the lost. And on the other hand, pragmatism, which is doing whatever works to grow the church; compromising on gospel principles and the Bible’s clear teaching for the sake of growth or ease; not teaching on hell and everlasting judgment; not teaching on the stuff that clashes with culture like secularism and gender issues and the complementary roles of men and women in the home and the church. The flight response of evangelicals from pragmatism is often traditionalism. Instead, Jensen argued for what he termed “theological pragmatism”, which is necessary and urgent biblically permitted change for the sake of the lost. Some things in church and ministry are inflexible and unchangeable. Some things however, while essential, are flexible. The theological pragmatist says: “I will do anything within the realm of flexibility to see more people saved.”
Developments in the UK
The EMA was complemented through the year by expository lectures. Notable series included Romans, Hebrews and 2 Timothy. The lectures were given in various locations across the UK, and in time, across the world. The format was a group of preachers gathering together over a number of sessions with Dick opening up the Bible. The question Dick was answering was: “How do you preach this?” People who were there recall the excitement of these times, as if people were discovering something new and wonderful. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Dick was creating a culture that became a movement. The culture was people spending time with an able leader passing on convictions and principles that in time they would pass on to others. It quickly became a centrist movement, uniting people from different networks, tribes and denominations around a shared commitment to expository preaching. Anglicans and Independents were coming together under one banner. The Proclamation Trust was thus started in 1986. One reason was to mark, in an appropriate way, Dick’s twenty-fifth anniversary as Rector of St Helen’s. Providentially, this coincided with the more important reason to galvanise the growing movement around expository preaching.
A key step in cementing this centrist movement was the partnership between Dick, an Anglican, and David Jackman, an Independent. David was minister of Above Bar church in Southampton. Both men shared the same convictions about expository preaching. Both men wanted to train gospel workers committed to expository preaching. The hand of God was surely in this, bringing these leaders and their constituencies together. This partnership established the Cornhill Training Course in 1991, with David Jackman as Director. The location was St Peter’s Cornhill in the City of London, hence the name. The vision of Cornhill was to train men to preach, and men and women to teach the Bible in a variety of contexts, reflecting the Bible’s positive teaching on complementarity.
Two other notable developments in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s were Ministry Apprenticeships and regional Gospel Partnerships, both strongly influenced by the special relationship. Ministry Apprenticeships were modelled on CBS and MTS. John Stevens, FIEC National Director in the UK, writing for the Foundations journal in 2014 said:
“A major development over the past decade in the UK has been the establishment of a number of regional ‘Gospel Partnerships’ around the country, which have sought to provide a framework for co-operation in gospel ministry between like-minded evangelicals. The growth of these partnerships has been largely organic. The first ‘Partnership’ was established in the North West of England, in the aftermath of a tour of the UK in 2003 by Archbishop Peter Jensen to encourage Anglicans who were beleaguered in their denominational struggles. The success of this model of fostering gospel co-operation and extending gospel ministry has led to similar Partnerships being established around the country.”1
Today there are seventeen regional Gospel Partnerships in the UK, nine running a Ministry Training Course.
Developments in Australia
In Australia, MTS was started, and has remained, a centrist training movement, embraced by Anglicans, Independents and Presbyterians in Australia and around the world. In March 2026, Ben Pfahlert as Director will be in the UK to share the MTS story of how God built a movement of healthy gospel ministry trainers in Australia.
Recognising the key evangelistic imperative regarding church planting, in the mid- 1990s Phillip Jensen initiated a number of church plants around Australia. One of the first was EV Church on the NSW Central Coast, led by Andrew Heard, an ordained Anglican minister. Outside the Sydney Diocese, it was easier to plant independent churches. EV began in 1996 with 10 people meeting in a house and quickly grew. Today it is one of the largest evangelical Bible-based Reformed churches in Australia. Through the late 1990s and early 2000s these new churches grew into a partnership of like-minded church planters. The formal association of independent churches took place in 2004 as the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches (FIEC).
Reach Australia (RA) started in 2009 as a church planting network called the Geneva Push. The goal was seeing healthy, sustainable, evangelistic plants, led by healthy leaders. In 2018 the name was changed to Reach Australia with an expanded vision: “To reach the country it was clear that not only did the planting of new churches need to continue but established churches across the country need to become healthier, more evangelistically urgent, spiritually vibrant, and practically skilled.” Today RA is a network of 450 established churches and church plants across Australia from over 12 denominations working together to reach Australia for Christ.
A special relationship with deep roots
These brief reflections on the special relationship barely do justice. There are many other ways the story could be told. Over the last fifty years and more, shared ministry convictions around expository preaching, multiplying gospel workers and gospel partnership have brought our two countries together, reflected in frequent ministry trips both ways across the world, cementing the special relationship. In the UK we have benefitted greatly from the ministry of John Chapman, Phillip and Peter Jensen, Col Marshall, Peter Adam, John Woodhouse, David Cook, Mark Thompson and many more. And from those who came to this side of the world and stayed a bit longer, like Simon Manchester, David Peterson and Jane Tooher.
We are still being wonderfully blessed with ministry from Down Under. In September 2025, Phil Colgan spoke at the Anglican ReNew Conference. In 2026, Ben Pfahlert will be speaking about MTS across the UK, Andrew Heard will be speaking at the Reach UK Conference and Carl Matthei at EMA.
Challenging times in the UK
The last twenty years in the UK have been very challenging. Foremost is the difficulties faced by evangelicals in the historic denominations. Consider two of the counties that make up the UK, Scotland and England.
The Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known as “The Kirk”, is by far the largest Protestant denomination in Scotland. The Kirk has been an unbroken line through Scotland’s history since the Reformation, a major part of Scottish life and culture.
The Articles Declaratory of the Constitution of the Church of Scotland were drawn up early in the 20th century to facilitate the union of the Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland. The “declaratory” nature of the Articles means that they are intended to define or “declare” a status that already existed, but explicitly spelt out for the avoidance of doubt. The Articles Declaratory were declared lawful by the Church of Scotland Act 1921, thus recognising the Church of Scotland as the national church in Scotland but independent from the state in matters spiritual (“established and free”). Key features include:
- The Church of Scotland adheres to the Scottish Reformation; receives the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life; and avows the fundamental doctrines of the catholic faith founded thereupon.
- The principal subordinate standard of the Church of Scotland is the Westminster Confession of Faith approved by the General Assembly of 1647, containing the sum and substance of the Faith of the Reformed Church.
Today the Church of Scotland is one of the leading liberal or revisionist Churches in the world. Key decisions in recent years on marriage and human sexuality, now enacted in church law, constitute the formal rejection of the Bible as the Church’s supreme rule of faith and life.
While the issue of same-sex marriage has been the dominant presenting issue in the Church of Scotland, the strong revisionist undercurrents are now being seen in other areas, most significantly in its confessional position. The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) was adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1647 as its subordinate standard on matters of doctrine, and ratified by Acts of Parliament in 1649 and 1690. Through the influence of the Church of Scotland, the Westminster Confession became established as the dominant Confession of Presbyterian churches worldwide. The Church of Scotland can legitimately be regarded as the “Mother Church” of Presbyterian Churches worldwide. At the General Assembly in 2022, the Church of Scotland reaffirmed its commitment to be a “confessional” Church, while at the same time agreeing to rank the Westminster Confession alongside a number of other Confessions or doctrinal statements. Taken together, this “portfolio” of Confessions will define what the Church of Scotland believes.
The next largest denomination, the Scottish Episcopal Church, has followed a virtually identical path to the Church of Scotland, and is now one of the leading revisionist Churches in Global Anglicanism, with strong links to the Episcopal Church in the USA.
In 2021, the Church of Scotland and the Scottish Episcopal Church signed the St Andrew Declaration, affirming their partnership and common trajectory. In 2022, the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland signed the St Margaret Declaration, expressing ecumenical partnership.
On every metric, the Church of Scotland is experiencing an unremitting trend of decline, facing the realistic prospect of extinction within a generation. Here are the facts:
- The 2019 Radical Action Plan endorsed a reduction in the number of ministers and congregations by 40%.
- In 2022 the Assembly Trustees reported that “professions of faith and baptisms have almost baselined” (the baseline is zero).
- In December 2023, there were 259,200 members of the Church of Scotland (4.8% of the population of Scotland). The number has been reducing steadily since the high point in the 1950s of 1.3 million. In the decade since 2013, the number of members has fallen by 35%, a significant acceleration in decline. The number of members actually attending church in person is 61,560 (24% of members). The average age of those attending church is 62 with 59% of members aged 65 or over.
- On finances, in 2024 the Assembly Trustees reported a budget deficit of £8.1million: “If deficits continue without further and more fundamental actions then the only means of paying core costs including Ministers’stipends and staff salaries will be from the Church’s General Fund. Based on our revised assumptions using updated data available to us, the general fund will be extinguished by 2032.”
- In 2025, the Assembly Trustees reported: “The financial situation since last year’s Assembly has in fact worsened and the Church of Scotland is at a tipping point in terms of its financial viability.”2
For Bible believing evangelicals in the Church of Scotland, the last decade has been traumatic. The majority of the historic established evangelical congregations have left. Yet at considerable cost in different ways. Some wanted to leave but couldn’t for various reasons. Others felt convicted to remain and witness from within. The argument from some who remained that they would inherit the Church in the end has proved untrue. There are no evangelicals left in their churches.
Most significant of all is that the next generation of Bible believing Christians in Scotland is not looking to the Church of Scotland or the Scottish Episcopal Church as viable options to serve in Christian ministry.
The Church of England
Evangelical Anglican churches are strong and growing.
The experience of contending for the faith galvanises churches and individuals.
For now, the vast majority of Anglicans are committed to remaining in the Church of England. Gafcon’s Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) is, by comparison, small. For example, the largest diocese, Anglican Mission in England (AMiE), is only 35 churches. There are, however, regional areas of strength, as in the North-East, where large AMiE churches have planted out of Jesmond in the Church of England.
In the Church of England, the collapse of Living in Love and Faith (LLF)3 around issues of legality and process, is due in no small part to the efforts of groups like the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) and the Evangelical Alliance.
CEEC has made it clear that the collapse of LLF has, if anything, galvanised the revisionist cause in the Church of England. The House of Bishops’ proposed way forward, post-LLF, is evidence for that. Moreover, the appointment of revisionist Archbishops of Canterbury and Wales, leading to Gafcon’s declaration of a global realignment in the Anglican Communion, is clear evidence of the strength of the revisionist movement.
CEEC, along with ReNew which represents conservative evangelical Anglicans, are the members of the Alliance who have consistently called for meaningful action to achieve meaningful structural provision in the form of an orthodox Province. The rationale is that if the revisionist cause prevails, there can be no future for evangelicals in the Church of England without a provincial solution.
This sounds visionary. And it is. The question is, will the breadth of the Alliance be prepared to take meaningful action to secure the future? Breadth is its greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness.
Meaningful action takes many forms, the most positive expression of which is raising up leaders.
This necessitates the development of alternative training and ordination pathways. At the 2005 ReNew National conference, a number of alternative pathways were presented.
The major problem is that very few churches are training people in significant numbers. A common reason expressed is a lack of clarity about the future. The irony is that meaningful action is critical in this period of uncertainty in order to secure a clear future.
The churches which are training will have a significant bearing on shaping the future. The leaders in these churches are not thinking primarily about how the present generation of leaders can, in good conscience, remain in the Church of England. They are compelled to evaluate the situation in light of the needs of future leaders. Moreover, these churches are embracing the opportunity necessitated by the need to develop alternative training and ordination pathways to reflect on the whole approach to training. For example, local churches taking more responsibility for training in partnership with training providers, and modelling a positive complementarian pattern in how we train gospel workers.
Many of the emerging generation of future leaders would love to see a future in the Church of England, and will pursue the alternative pathways that reflect the courage of their convictions, to secure that future. The Lord is raising up a generation of humble, able and courageous leaders who are determining the future.
The Free Church of Scotland and the FIEC
Through these challenging times, the Free Church of Scotland and the UK-wide FIEC have been beacons of light.
The Free Church of Scotland was founded on 18 May 1843 when 474 ministers left the established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. These events have come to be referred to as the Great Disruption. Over the next century and a half, the denomination declined to around 100 churches.
The Free Church was very much in the shadow of the established Church of Scotland, that is until a series of remarkable events. In the context of the apostasy of the Church of Scotland, a decision in 2010 to allow churches to depart from its historic position of non-instrument exclusive psalmody offered a lifeboat for seceding Church of Scotland ministers and congregations. David Robertson, a leading Free Church minister at the time was a leading advocate for this change. In 2014, the Free Church College changed its name to Edinburgh Theological Seminary. The change in name represented a change in ethos as the Seminary welcomed people training for ministry from Independent churches as well as Free Church Ministry Candidates. In 2020 Paul Clarke was appointed Convenor of the Board of Ministry, responsible for training ministers. Prior to becoming the minister of the Free Church congregation in St Andrews, Scotland, Paul was a senior staff member at St Helen’s in the City of London, a church with a vibrant training culture. A number of Free Church congregations have been planted or revitalized through a network called Generation.
Under John Steven’s leadership, the FIEC has grown significantly over the last 15 years to over 600 churches across the UK. Notable developments have been the annual FIEC Leaders’ Conference, the growth of the central staff team, the appointment of Regional Directors and a growing programme of national and regional events. The FIEC has pioneered a number of local or regional training and planting movements based onstrong relationships, connections, and shared ministry convictions.
Emerging movements to multiply gospel workers in the UK
The difficulties faced by evangelicals in the historic denominations, along with leadership scandals, cultural issues and financial pressures, have resulted in a crisis in ministry recruitment. Yet, through the storm there is evidence of Church renewal. One expression of this is movements to multiply gospel workers. These are emerging movements at an early stage of development.
Movement in Scotland
The story of what has happened in Scotland is told in the film Gospel workers for the Church in Scotland, produced by The Bonar Trust. The film and the trailer can be accessed through https://bonartrust.org/ or on YouTube.
Movement in England and Wales
In May 2024, a consultation of training stakeholders was held in Oxford, England. This marked a turning point. Facing up to the crisis in ministry recruitment, we left convinced that ministry is a noble task, convicted to pray to the Lord for workers, and committed to work together as training stakeholders, believing we can achieve more together than apart.
In autumn 2024 a working group of training stakeholders was formed at the invitation of four Gospel Patrons, tasked with enabling a movement to multiply gospel workers in England and Wales.
The movement embraces Anglicans, Independents and others, and is positively and generously complementarian.
Within this constituency, there are just under 100 stakeholders, which includes 60 churches with a healthy training culture identified by the working group.
The movement is training stakeholders working together based on consensus around vision, culture and strategy. Working together to build consensus is challenging. It is much more than knowing who the stakeholders are. It is getting to know one another to build understanding and trust.
With 100 stakeholders this is a complex and time-consuming task. There was limited understanding of other stakeholders, and often misunderstanding, based on dated experience, assumptions and hearsay. And with a number, disagreements, divisions, hurt, rivalry and criticism of others.
The last ten years have seen a broadening of training options. The period when new models and approaches are developing, especially when the numbers accessing training are relatively low, has the potential for unhelpful competition. Moreover, training providers have deeply held convictions about what training is best: residential or church-based; in-person or hybrid; how theology is best taught and so on. These convictions need to be understood and respected.
All this, along with the complex Anglican situation, led to an impasse.
Helped by the special relationship
A trip to Sydney in August 2025 helped find a way forward.
The main reason for the trip was the first in-person meeting of the Training Culture Fellowship International (TCFI). TCFI was established in 2024 by Carl Matthei, Anglican Chaplain and Director of CBS at UNSW. The members of TCFI are from Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, US, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Everyone in the group has developed a culture of training gospel workers in their local churches or ministry settings, evidenced by a high percentage of people trained going on to full-time gospel work. Moreover, they have been enablers for the multiplication of training culture beyond their churches or ministry settings.
TCFI was formed in the context of a growing impetus around the world to train gospel workers. The first in person meeting of TCFI was in Sydney, in August 2025. The next will be in the UK, in July 2026. Distinctives of TCFI are culture and fellowship. Culture is the critical factor in effective training, and fellowship is the trusting relationships that enable collaborative working.
Alongside the TCFI meetings there was the opportunity to meet with a number of past and present ministry leaders. People were willing to give generously of their time and wisdom.
Moreover, our visit coincided with a period in Australian evangelicalism that Rory Shiner, Chair of The Gospel Coalition Australia, recently referred to as a “galvanising evangelistic effort across Australia”.
In the Lord’s providence, the insights and encouragements from this time in Australia have galvanised efforts in the UK to enable the movement to multiply gospel workers. Here are some of the influences:
Repentance for renewal
The 2024 Sydney Anglican Synod received a report on attendance patterns and mission in the diocese, covering the period 2013–2023. In 2023, adult church attendance across the diocese was 48,000, 1% of the adult population. The period 2013–2023 showed decline across a range of metrics. The presentation and discussion of the report was characterised by a tone of repentance, reflected in the motion agreed by Synod: “We recommend an earnest humble campaign of repentance where we have collectively been distracted and haven’t given sufficient priority, attention and resources to see the lost of Sydney and the Illawarra saved, and for more earnest prayer for growth in faith among our members.”
Collaboration for growth
The 2025 Sydney Anglican Synod called for a five-year focus to reverse the decline. The Synod agreed a ‘galvanising target’ to pursue 5% annual growth through conversion, outlining a number of lines of strategic effort to achieve this and instructing a small group, led by Archbishop Kanishka Raffel, to formulate concrete proposals.
The Reach Australia Growth and Change Report (2024) set ambitious goals: 750+ healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches by 2030; and transformative leadership development to double the number of Reformed evangelical Christians in Australia by 2035, which means churches growing by 5% a year.
In June 2025, The Gospel Coalition convened a summit of movement leaders from across Australian Reformed Evangelicalism at Moore College in Sydney. The result was a commitment to work together to double the number of Christians over the next 20 years, broken down into a 5% annual conversion growth target.
Syndey Anglicans, Reach Australia and The Gospel Coalition aligned.
Global and national vision
Through this period of renewal, which includes multiplying gospel workers, the growth of the Church in Australia is seen in the context of a global vision. The biblical conviction is that a global vision furthers a national or local vision.
Training culture
The relationship between vision, culture and strategy is hard to define, principally because culture is hard to define. Instinctively we know that culture is very important. But what is it, and how does it relate to vision and strategy? Put simply:
- Vision is setting goals in response to need.
- Culture is the mindset, convictions, commitment and investment needed to achieve the goals.
- Strategy is how to do it.
All three are important, but culture is the most important. It is impossible to build a movement to multiply gospel workers without a healthy training culture.
We were privileged to see a wonderful example of training culture at CBS.
Complementarian convictions matter
While the major stakeholders in Australian evangelicalism referred to here—Sydney Anglicans, Reach Australia and The Gospel Coalition—are complementarian, over the last few years this conviction has been repeatedly challenged. Responding to this, movement leaders and key training stakeholders like CBS, MTS and Moore College have embraced the opportunity not only to affirm the Bible’s clear, consistent and positive teaching on a complementarian pattern of ministry, but to take steps forward in modelling it well.
A movement to multiply gospel workers is multi-generational
In the Report presented to the Sydney Anglican Synod which recommended a ‘galvanising target’ of 5% annual growth, one line of strategic effort agreed was to focus on young people of secondary school age and school leavers.
Theological pragmatism
Might theological pragmatism be an important principle to help us navigate the current challenging context in the UK and build a movement to multiply workers? Freeing us from an institutional mindset perhaps? The theological pragmatist says: “I will not be bound by an institutional mindset that says things must be done this way.” It allows creative, entrepreneurial thinking. And it cautions us from making dogmatic claims like “Residential theological training is the best” or “Church-based training is the best”. The theological pragmatist says: “Both are legitimate applications of what the Bible teaches about training gospel workers, so we should back both if it allows more people to train for ministry.” Theological pragmatism can, of course, be taken too far, but the principle is helpful as we work together to build a movement.
Importance of a special relationship in a crisis
In the next few months, if the Lord is pleased to bring momentum to the movement to multiplying gospel workers across England and Wales, in His providence, a key factor in breaking through the impasse is the wisdom and insights borne of this special relationship. And that includes the strongest words, mindful that “faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Prov 27:6).
This article was originally published in the ACR’s Easter 2026 Journal.
- John Stevens, “Gospel Partnerships and Gospel Unity in the United Kingdom,” Foundations 66 (Spring 2014). ↩︎
- Taken from “Lessons learned from the Church of Scotland”, 27 June 2024. ↩︎
- Living in Love and Faith was a Church of England project publishing resources on differing views of sexuality, gender and marriage within the church. ↩︎