Archbishop Philip Freier
9 October 2024
As we commence this evening, I recognise that we meet on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I am grateful for the journeys that various parishes are making with traditional owners in their own context as together we contribute to the national journey towards a more reconciled Australia.
The state of Victoria is part way through the hearings of the Yoorrook Justice Commission. The Anglican Province of Victoria, represented by Bishop Genieve Blackwell and Bishop Richard Treloar, gave evidence at a public hearing of the Commission on 1 May 2024. Truth telling and better understanding of the effects of colonisation and dispossession are important for us as a society. It is important for us as a Church to understand our role, as a significant institution in the colonial era, and the role of our church members in this history. Our history tells us something about who we are as a community now, it does not predict our future but has an influence. It is undoubtedly challenging for many people to have the violent story of the colonial frontier told when previously they may have thought that colonial expansion in Australia was largely peaceful.
Structural disadvantage and intergenerational trauma are present in many family narratives in Australia. Human history is full of violence and cruelty and many of us have stories from our Immigrant, Refugee or First Nations ancestry that attest to this. That is why it is important that we bring the story of God’s creation, redemption and sanctification to the fore as the divine offering of healing to a broken world through the divine Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
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It is not just governments that are reappraising their role in the present-day circumstances of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The Anglican Church at a national level is facing the significant question about the gap between its aspirations and present reality as it affects ministry amongst First Nations people. There are challenges in resourcing the roles of National Aboriginal Bishop and National Torres Strait Islander Bishop. The work of NATSIAC, the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council is also significantly constrained by its lack of resourcing.
Sixty years ago, Oodgeroo Noonuccal published a poem, called ‘Dispossessed’ in her book of poems, My people: a Kath Walker collection which included these words:
When churches mean a way of life, as Christians proudly claim,
And when hypocrisy is scorned and hate is counted shame,
Then only shall intolerance die and old injustice cease,
And white and dark as brothers find equality and peace.
But oh, so long the wait has been, so slow the justice due,
Courage decays for want of hope, and the heart dies in you.
Even then she recognised the pivotal role that the Christian Church could play in ending intolerance and injustice. I think that her poem also well describes the frustration that still bedevils race relations in Australia as they concern First Nations people and other Australians.
There is a General Synod Indigenous Ministry Endowment with a balance of a little over a million dollars ($1,012,000) that was founded with a capital amount that Melbourne Diocese gave to the General Synod for this purpose around 20 years ago following a property sale. Unfortunately, this initial donation did not trigger donations from other dioceses as was hoped and remains the only capital gift. Happily, in recent years a sum of $50,000 has been added to the endowment annually by the General Synod. The capital amount is invested according to endowment principles and contributes $21,000 per annum towards the costs of the National Aboriginal Bishop, Bishop Chris McCleod. Additionally, $40,000 comes from the General Synod operational budget to fund the operations of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council. We would do well to consider further contributions to this endowment as resources become available from the implementation of the Missional Property Strategy which has 15% of property sales being applied to Aboriginal ministry and purposes.
We have made a significant step in the life of the Diocese to recognise that there were people who lived on, cared for, and have sovereignty in what is now known as Australia before European settlement. As Anglican Christians in Australia we want to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people take their full place within the church. By this we will be made rich. So, with the blessing of NATSIAC and in collaboration with the bishops of the Province of Victoria I invited Canon Glenn Loughrey to take on a pilot project to establish a provincial Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council and he was collated as Archdeacon for this purpose on 30 June 2024 in St Paul’s Cathedral.
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Together with his colleagues who initiated the Aboriginal Council of the Anglican Province of Victoria Archdeacon Glenn is working to establish a Council made up of clergy and lay leaders across Victoria. This is significant as it both recognises the voices of lay and ordained Indigenous Anglicans and seeks God’s wisdom in the way that the church has done so since the earliest times – through councils of ordained and lay people working together. Archdeacon Glenn is also charged with the development of the skills of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clergy and lay leaders and to work with dioceses, our ministry development pathways and Bishop Kate to create a pathway for emerging Indigenous leaders for the church. The traditional educational and formation pathways are not always the best places for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to develop and grow in their ministry and theological capacities. I look forward to seeing the fruit of God’s work through those who will grow and be formed as clergy and lay leaders in years to come. Finally, Archdeacon Glenn will provide advice to the bishops and Ministry Development Officers of the Province to assist in the continuing work of recognition, reception, formation and self-determination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglicans within the ACA. This will mean that space is made for self-determination within the Anglican family so that decisions which fit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of life may be made for the blessing of the whole church and have the resources that these decisions may be implemented.
This project has rapidly become an important template for the development of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander church life nationally and is being watched with interest. The first two years of the project have been fully funded through Trust funds made available from here in the Diocese of Melbourne and from the Diocese of Bendigo. While Glenn remains a priest and Archdeacon of this Diocese the project is being auspiced through the Bendigo Diocese. I encourage you to be praying for Archdeacon Glenn, the members of the Council as it is formed, and the growth of the vibrant ministries which are being led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
I reiterate these words from my Synod Charge in November 2007. They represent my approach towards First Nations people and ministry since I began my ordained ministry as a missionary in Western Cape York Peninsula in 1983.
My prayer is that the new found national concern for Aboriginal people will be a lasting concern; that it will be authentic, generous, and sympathetic; that it will genuinely seek the very best outcomes for Aboriginal people – the outcomes they themselves want. And I pray that, when they are given the same opportunities and support that the rest of us take for granted in every aspect of their lives, this nation will rejoice in the unique gifts and exhilarating energy that Indigenous people offer. Most of all, I pray that they and all of us will know the fullness of life that comes when we are reconciled to our Creator, ourselves and each other.
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I have been interested in how often a single question keeps coming up when I meet people and as they respond to the knowledge of my conclusion from office early next year. Their question goes along the lines of, ‘What are the biggest challenges that you have encountered over the past 18 years?’
Three things particularly come to mind as the big disruptors that have challenged our planning and missional aspirations. Each has called for a refocus of how we are present and reach the increasingly diverse and growing communities of Melbourne and Geelong.
The first of these was the Global Financial Crisis that worked its way through the international economy starting with the US sub-prime crisis in 2007 and continued until early 2009. By November 2008 Australian equities had fallen by around 50% from their values the year before and continued to deteriorate until the recovery of 2009. This had a big impact on our diocesan finances as the value of our investments plummeted as did the returns we received from them. We quickly guaranteed the deposits in the Anglican Development Fund to give confidence to our investors many of whom were parishioners who had deposited money to offset the loans that their parish had taken for building projects. The bishops and the registrar joined me in taking a 20% reduction to our remuneration. The plans we had for centrally funding new initiatives and assisting with the maintenance of historic buildings had to be shelved.
Happily, we did not have external debt funding that was the source of compounding misery for many corporations and even some religious entities during this time. Prudence and austerity throughout the period of the crisis meant that we were well placed as the economy improved in 2009.
The second of the big disruptors to any concept of ‘business as usual’ came with the establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse that ran from 2013 until 2017. I am confident that we have established much more robust practice and have strengthened our culture to ensure that our Church is a safer place for children and vulnerable people. Perpetrators of abuse against children in our diocese were not numerous but the harm they caused is great. I have the most profound respect for the journey of healing that those who have experienced abuse are making. We have applied ‘trauma informed’ procedures in our complaint and redress processes. The establishment of Kooyoora as our independent Professional Standards organisation has enabled the proper separation of functions that, in the past were often concentrated in a single individual.
I gave my wholehearted support for the foundation of the National Redress Scheme on 1 July 2018 and had advocated for a higher cap of $250,000 for the scheme even though a lower cap of $150,000 was eventually put in place. The National Redress Scheme runs until 30 June 2028, with applications being received until 30 June 2027. We have made 21 payments under the NRS since 2019 totalling a little under a million dollars. Whilst it was initially thought that the NRS would be the single channel for response to historic abuse it quickly became clear that civil litigation is increasingly chosen by survivors as the means of pursuing redress. Since 2019, we have made payments of nearly $12 million to 36 survivors through this means. Our actuarial advice, which we update annually, suggests that there is still a journey to be travelled through our likely redress obligations. The harm caused to survivors is deeply lamentable and has given reason for the diocese to enact systems to prosper a culture of safety in our parishes that minimises the opportunity for harm to occur. Naturally enough, the payment of many millions of dollars from our finances has made our combined aspirations of meeting our redress debts without extra costs on parish ministry, balancing our budget and investing in new initiatives challenging.
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Of the things that I have said at Synod, the one sentence, ‘I can’t rule out the need to reach into parish finances to meet the cost of redress’ is the one that has received the most response. So far it is true that we have not imposed a charge on parishes or, without consent, sold parish property on account of these redress obligations. I have always wanted to prioritise the capacity of parishes and other ministries to carry out their vital work at the grassroots and am glad that it has been possible, so far, to leave finances at this level undisturbed. It is however, extremely challenging for management, the Finance Committee, the Melbourne Anglican Diocesan Corporation and the Archbishop in Council to strike the balance between competing expectations. There will be more to be said on their efforts to achieve this balance between honouring our redress commitments, meeting our growing compliance requirements and funding new initiatives later in the Synod.
More than any of these financial consequences of past failure and misconduct I think that the change of culture that truly puts children at the centre is of prime importance. This is a culture that welcomes the clearances that we require, the training that we need to complete and applies child protection knowledge to our pastoral situation with gladness. It is clear to me when I visit parishes how it stands out when a parish or other ministry has truly embraced this change of culture.
The COVID pandemic between 2020 and 2021 is both very recent but at the same time remarkably distant now that we are back to the usual interactions and mobility that were so curtailed in the periods of lockdown. You made great efforts to stay connected and continue pastoral ministry in such a difficult environment. Online options for worship are now much more evident than before, a lasting consequence of the COVID lockdowns.
There has been a post-COVID dip in enrolments across Australian Theological Colleges. I hear figures of up to 25% fewer enrolments spoken about when the post-Covid numbers are compared with pre-2020 levels. This has flowed through to a reduction in the number of ordinands in the diocese in the last two years. It seems that this is a temporary reduction as the number of enquirers and members of the year of discernment are well back to the pre-COVID levels. In 2020 and 2021 all interviews and selection conferences needed to take place on-line. The return to in-person processes has made its own positive impact.
The availability of Government JobKeeper payments was undoubtedly a great blessing to support our pre-2020 staffing levels through the COVID lockdown years. Since 2022, there has been a settling of the ‘new normal’ for a variety of ministries both in historically larger and smaller parishes. I think that we are close to seeing where this has landed now but it has been a protracted journey out of the COVID lockdown years with implications for staffing levels going forward.
I am very pleased that a protracted dispute with the Girls Friendly Society (GFS) has been resolved. It concerned the ownership of Edith Head Hall, a former residential facility in North Melbourne. Bishop Paul will say more about this later in the Synod but I want to express my regret that this difference existed and also express my appreciation for all concerned who worked to reach a settlement. This settlement involves the payment of $7 million from the Diocese to GFS in exchange for the uncontested title of the Edith Head Hall property. This will happen in instalments over 2024 and 2025 and will make a significant impact to the balance sheet in future financial reports. On the positive side I am optimistic that GFS will grow its impact as a valued partner in children’s and youth ministry within the Diocese.
Synod reports are voluminous, and I express my appreciation for the many people who have written them and contributed to the activities that are reported on. There is much that properly deserves our attention in these many pages. I find it a great encouragement to read the reports that relate to ministry and encourage you to seek them out for your attention and to inform your prayer. I am grateful too for the people and their parishes who embraced the various initiatives that have been offered to assist ministry planning and focus as well as missional awareness.
The most recent of these has been Leading Your Church into Growth (LYCIG) work that has emerged from the Reimagining the Future team. These resources have been provided to assist our ministry focus in the post-COVID environment.
There have been a number of programs over the years that we have developed and resourced starting with Mission Action Planning or MAPs two decades ago.
I am keen that our parish renewal efforts work in an integrated way with our other efforts. The Reimagining the Future team has coordinated meetings with the Children’s and Youth Ministry team, the Archdeacon for Parish Partnerships and the Co-ordinators of Prevention of Violence Against Women, Disability and Inclusion, Safe Ministry, Church Planting and Revitalisation, Coaching and Supervision along with Theological Training to better integrate our mutual, parish facing efforts.
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As we read the financial accounts that are tabled in our Synod Reports it is important to realise that they don’t tell the whole story of initiative and the support that is present for growth in the life of the Church. You will see that $12 million has been allocated for the three years 2024, 2025 and 2026 to invest in land and buildings for church planting in the southern, northern and western growth corridors. I am pleased to say that we are close to settling the purchase of a property at Clyde with the 2024 allocation and I look forward to a building program on our church land at Wallan next year. In addition to these resources from the Diocesan budget we have generous support from a range of donors and philanthropic sources through the Melbourne Anglican Foundation. What you will not see in the financial accounts is the effective commitment of a further $12 million this year to allow the City on a Hill West congregation to move to the All Saints’ Footscray site and the Emmanuel Iranian congregation to move to the St George’s Reservoir site which would easily be the cost of establishing these church buildings were we to start from scratch today. This all adds up to over $16 million in support for church planting initiatives in this calendar year. I think that is an impressive outcome given the other constraints on our finances that I have already mentioned.
Momentum is building across the country for the national Hope25 Initiative from the General Synod Mission and Ministry Commission. The Hope25 website has a vast range of resources and training recommendations covering all styles and sizes of churches. Our Melbourne diocese Hope25 committee is arranging some workshops in late February across the diocese and has a table here at synod with some Hope25 postcards for you to take for your parishes. Every bishop in Australia has contributed a daily devotion for a Hope25 Lenten Study book and these will be available for the first time in Australia in the cathedral here on Saturday for just $10.
There is an order of the day on Thursday for a Hope25 presentation from our diocesan committee. I am glad to see that Hope25 is well represented in the pew sheets of the parishes I visit. I urge all parishes and interested parishioners to sign up for the Hope25 emails, share ideas with other parishes and plan at least one event after Easter 2025 to share our hope in Christ with people who do not yet have faith in Jesus.
It has been interesting to look back over my years in Melbourne at the range of initiatives for parish vitality and ministry engagement that have been commended. When I first came to this diocese, I embarked upon Prayer4Melbourne, this involved visiting workplaces and shopping centres, to talk to people and find out what mattered to them and most importantly what concerns that they thought that the Church should be praying about. Calling Melbourne2Prayer was a natural outcome of this as was the 2008 initiative Aim4Melbourne or ‘Connection with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit and Connection with each other.’ We had a Year of Fresh Connections in 2009 and several years of the Back to Church Sunday initiative that we received from the Church of England.
In 2010 we unveiled a new vision to make the Word of God fully known across the entire Diocese of Melbourne. From this vision statement ‘Seeing the Parish with Fresh Eyes’ was developed in 2011 and ‘Serving the Parish with Fresh Focus in 2012. The Bishop Perry Institute, which gathered together our training and resourcing efforts was established in 2012 and served us until the COVID shutdown almost a decade later.
Our Diocesan Reconciliation Action Plan was developed in 2013 which sowed seeds for work that continues today. Mission Shaped Structures was a focus for 2014 with new work on Vision and Directions taking place in 2016 that led to the Vision and Directions Strategic Plan 2017-2025. This plan underwent a COVID tightening of focus and this year an evaluation from the Archbishop in Council. By 2017 parish renewal initiatives that included Pathways and Coaching programs were well underway. Several Diocesan Youth Forums took place in 2019 and more recently there have been several Student Voice forums that gathered students together from our Anglican Schools. As I mentioned earlier the Reimagining the Future tool was circulated in 2021 and has been complemented by the Leading Your Church into Growth program (LYCiG) from 2023 until the present time.
This is all to say that I am grateful to the members of staff who have resourced these initiatives, for the Bishops and the Archdeacons who have picked up these themes in their episcopate conferences and through their parish engagement generally. I am particularly grateful for the people in the grassroots of our ministries in parishes and authorised Anglican congregations who have participated in and put their efforts into this work. I’m grateful too for the many who have participated in and attended my Breakfast Conversations in Federation Square, some 65 in total, as we explored together the broad topic of ‘What kind of a society do we want to be?’
At any point in history it is difficult to distinguish between rising trends and one off events that do not in themselves represent a cumulative change over time. Is the rise of China as a major military power a precursor to great power rivalry and conflict in the Pacific? Will any of the conflicts that involve nuclear armed nations see the hostile use of nuclear weapons? Will enough nations, especially the heaviest greenhouse gas emitters get to zero CO2 emissions in time? These and many other questions come to mind as we contemplate the many fractured relationships between people and nations and as we see on a daily basis the impact of climate change and the awful destructive power of modern military arms and their impact on civilian populations.
I am particularly aware of the members of our community who have family and historic links with places overseas where conflict is working its destructive force amongst civilian communities. The news about any particular conflict seems to fall very quickly into the background as a new conflict emerges and then, in its turn, fills the media news cycle. Our Sudanese and Myanmar diaspora communities know well the pain of armed conflict that still continues in the places that they have come from. Perhaps different issues and different actors but the same pain and even survivor guilt as they make their way in a new society. Conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues at a high intensity even if it is not reported to same extent that it was a year ago. These conflicts, once initiated, are not quickly resolved. Just a few days ago the anniversary of the armed intrusion of militants into southern Israel was observed. The year that followed this attack and hostage taking has seen daily horrors amongst civilian populations in Palestine and now Lebanon.
It may be that the graphic and instant character of modern media makes us feel more involved and the demand to ‘take sides’ more immediate. However this occurs, there is a danger in these conflicts overseas quickly spilling over into divisions amongst us in our Australian community. I well recall the visit to Melbourne of Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul in 2012. He was, at the time, the Primate of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. In this cathedral he implored the members of the Sudanese community to leave their cultural and identity differences behind and embrace a new and unified identity now that they were living in Australia.
It may be a part of how we are as humans, perhaps a result of us living for most of our evolutionary history in small family and clan groups where quick decisions about others outside the clan were necessary for survival. Was this person a friend or foe and what were the predictors of friendship or them likely causing harm? Whatever the reason we seem to quickly default to thinking that if we know a little about someone we have all that we need to shape our attitudes towards them and our interactions with them.
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In Australia we have had periods where anti-Irish and anti-Chinese stereotypes were abundant in the print media of the time. Just look at any of the newspapers from the goldrush era to see this. These have passed and are not evident in community relationships today. Anti-Jewish sentiments have proven to be different. The same ridiculing stereotypes that could be found alongside of the others I have mentioned continue into the present day and seem qualitatively different to these other, more contextual, prejudices. The Holocaust, one of the defining horrors of the 20th Century was fed by these anti-Semitic tropes. It is dangerous for us and for our community to give any space for anti-Semitism to express itself.
I have met privately with Jewish leaders and spoken at the Kiddush following the Shabbat observances at the St Kilda Synagogue this year. I know from these interactions that the Jewish community in Melbourne feels particularly vulnerable at a time when many feel outrage about the ongoing conflict in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
The role of the Christian Church in our society is powerful when it comes to being a voice for peace and love of neighbour. We have a unique opportunity to model restored community across difference and to show what koinonia is truly like in the midst of increasingly shrill positions that emphasise difference in the world and in the church. I am glad to serve as the Co-chair of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission and in that role contribute to restoring koinonia as the true basis of our relationship and Christian identity. Our commission will meet here in Melbourne in early May next year as we finalise our agreed position on shared moral discernment. I rejoice with the members of the Greek community in anticipation of the visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch to Melbourne. I have written elsewhere of the pioneering support by my predecessors in office to the Orthodox communities, both Greek and Syrian, during the early days of Melbourne.
Thank you all! I single out my Episcopal team, Bishops Genieve, Paul, Brad, and Kate, Ken Hutton my Executive Officer and all the episcopate team, the Registrar Malcolm Tadgell; the Senior Staff team of Archdeacons; Archbishop in Council including the Chancellor, Deputy Chancellor and Advocate; the Business services team which includes Finance, Property, HR, the ADF and Anglican Funds, Insurance, Anglican Media, IT, Archives and Parish Support; the Dean and the Cathedral especially for the hospitality and worship that they offer us over the next days; the Area Deans as they have embraced our wellbeing initiatives; the Anglican schools, agencies, and chaplaincies.
During the period between 2014 and 2020 when I was the 15th Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, I was only able to add that responsibility to that of Archbishop of Melbourne through the great support from our ministry and administration leadership team. I was especially grateful of the willingness of Bishop John Harrower to take up the responsibility of Bishop assisting the Primate for those six years. Our team is cohesive and hardworking and will, I am sure, continue that great support as Bishop Genieve takes up her role as Administrator (sede vacante) of the Diocese next year.
All those I have mentioned serve the ministry in your parish, authorised Anglican congregation, chaplaincy or other context. You and your ministries are at the centre of all that we do. Committed membership, spiritual worship and outreach to those who are not part of the church in the communities in which you serve are at the heart of making the Word of God fully known. May we all, clergy and laity, be encouraged and enlivened for the daily living of our discipleship as a follower of Christ.
I know that our Synod membership changes over the three-year term of the Synod but I do want to appreciate those of you who have shown your commitment to the governance of the Diocese by your unfailing presence at the 2023 Synod, the 2024 Special Synod and now this second session of the 54th Synod. Welcome to those amongst you who are attending Synod for the first time, Synod like all aspects of our life together as God’s people can only thrive as it is renewed in each generation and across cultures.
Let us approach our Synod with the confidence that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church will through the presence of the Spirit enlighten our hearts and minds – our thoughts and our speech to the glory of God the Father. Amen
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