³ I thank my God every time I remember you. ⁴ In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy ⁵ because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:3-6

Welcome to the Second Session of the 56^th Synod of the Diocese of Tasmania. It is a joy to meet together with lay and clergy representatives from every corner of the Diocese. From King and Flinders Islands in the North and the Huon in the South, from the West Coast to Break O’Day in the East. We come together to seek the Lord, to confer together, to hear about our ministries, to consider our challenges, to celebrate God’s goodness, and to plan for the future.

I am especially grateful for the lay people who are here, giving their time to serve the wider church. We welcome you and invite you to participate as much as you are able in our meeting together. I am grateful too for the youth representatives of the Synod. We are so thrilled that you are here and again invite you to speak up and contribute to our deliberations. We need your voices.

Synod is about partnership. We each have our roles to play, as we bring our spiritual gifts to bear on our ministry and leadership. Each Parish and sector ministry, each chaplaincy and school has a unique context with unique mission challenges. But Synod reminds us that we do not labour alone, but alongside each other in partnership in the gospel. Paul was very aware of this as he wrote to the Philippian church. He was not a solo missionary, nor was the church in Philippi all on its own. Rather, Paul gives thanks to God for their partnership, their fellowship, their communion in the Gospel, right through his association with then. They were in this together, and so are we.

I am so thankful for your partnership and prayers and give thanks to God for them. I have been especially aware of this in recent days as we have begun to address our challenges around redress, but also in the development of our renewed shared Vision that we will launch at this Synod. We genuinely do this work together and it is a great joy.

Like the Apostle Paul we are confident not just in our collective partnership and efforts, but also in the God who enables and sustains us. Paul says of the Philippians that he is confident that the God who began a good work in them, will be faithful to bring it to completion on the Day of Jesus Christ. That same faithful God is still at work in the Diocese of Tasmania as he was when we got underway 183 years ago, and he will still be working in and through us, achieving his purposes with us, when Jesus comes again. That is such a comfort when we feel so weak and unable to meet our challenges. We express our confidence in him.

I am trying something different with my Presidential Address this year. It comes in three parts: one on Thursday, one on Friday and one on Saturday. We will look back to the last 10 years in the first part. In the second part we will take an honest look at where we are now and particularly focus on the challenge of redress and what that will mean for us. In the third part we will look to the future with hope as we launch our renewed Diocesan Vision and Strategic plan – Tasmanian Anglicans 2031.

PART ONE: WHERE WE HAVE COME FROM

I want to begin by reflecting on the last 10 years of our life together. Back in 2016 we began work on developing a Vision for the Diocese that was launched at our Synod in 2017 – “A Church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus”. What we said then remains true today, that many different people are “for” Tasmania – it is a strong community with many who are working for it – but the church can do, what no one else can do, and that is: make disciples of Jesus. This has been our aim over the last 10 years.

We put our best foot forward, and God has shown himself to be faithful to us as we have followed this plan. Here are some highlights.

• A number of our Parishes embraced the disciple-making mandate and have seen significant growth. This is especially where people introduced a disciple-making pathway to help people move towards faith.
• There has been more evangelism in the diocese over the last 10 years, with many of our churches now regularly using evangelistic courses like Alpha, Christianity Explored, Taste and See and the like. This was helped along by the Hope25 campaign which really focussed our evangelistic efforts.
• Over the last 10 years we have seen our clergy team renewed. 28 of our 36 rectors have been appointed to their roles in that time. There has also been a significant drop in the average age of the clergy, moving from 63 in 2016 to 49 in 2025. We have appointed full time Rectors to 8 Parishes that previously were either led by ESM teams, volunteer or part-time clergy.
• We have seen positive changes in our wider leadership pipeline, with more trainees, more people studying theology, and some moving into the Ordination stream. We have seen 26 people ordained as deacons and 31 people ordained as priests. We currently have three ordination candidates in training, and 5 enquirers in this year’s process.
• Our Chaplaincy team has doubled in the last 10 years, and we have secured state-wide contracts for the provision of chaplaincy in the Tasmanian Health Service and in the Prisons.
• Anglican Camping is also very strong with more camps operating this year than we have had before. It is especially pleasing to see the growth in the Leaders in Training (LiT) Camps from a small group back in 2016 to two camps this year, where our highschoolers are trained in studying and teaching the Bible.
• We weathered a global pandemic and showed that we were able to adapt to very unusual circumstances and continue to operate as a church, and we now have a number of digital church resources.
• The culture of safety seems well embedded in our church, with us recently getting a positive assessment of our safe church processes in an independent external audit.

All of this is cause for much thanksgiving to God. When people ask me about the Diocese, I can truthfully say that we are in good heart, and that God has been faithful to us as we have tried to be faithful to him.

It is also true that we didn’t achieve all the things we hoped to achieve in that time. Here are a couple of things that are disappointments.

• Our Sunday attendances post-Covid have not recovered to the extent that we had hoped. We are slowly building back up but it is taking time.
• Our Church planting plans were slower than we expected. We wanted to see a several new churches started in the last 10 years, and while we have tried, we have only seen two congregations begun. But again, there are some encouraging signs and God willing by the end of this year, we expect to see our Brighton Church led by Joel and Tegan Gillie and our Glenorchy City Church led by Neeraj Gautam meeting on Sundays, a new congregation in East Launceston and a small gathering in Perth, making disciples of Jesus in those places.
• While we have talked a lot about disciple-making, that culture has still not been embedded in enough of our parishes. We want every Parish to embrace disciple-making at their heart, and so we need to focus a bit harder on it, effectively communicating how disciples are made and what a mature disciple of Jesus looks like.
• While it is encouraging to see young people and families well integrated in some of our parishes, there are still too few of our parishes reaching them. We have a good Children’s and Youth Ministry Strategy, but it is not yet implemented in enough places. I am pleased to see a motion in our papers about it.
• lastly, we have made some progress with releasing women into leadership positions, but we still have more work to do raising up and deploying women for all kinds of leadership roles.

Late last year a small group of leaders reflected on all this, and we have learned a few things. We learned that everything rises and falls on the quality of our leaders. When leadership is strong, we grow and develop, and where it is weak or problematic, then things decline. We learned that revitalisation of parishes is possible but requires time, persistence, a culture of cultivation and the support of like-minded people. We learned that prayer proved powerful when it was concentrated and intentional, but it needs to become far more consistent and embedded in the everyday life of our parishes and ministries. You will see these learnings reflected in our renewed Vision to be launched at this Synod.

I am reminded of Paul’s words a little later in Philippians, in chapter 3, where he writes of his own life of faith:

¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

God has been faithful to us as we have sought to be faithful to him. We give thanks for all that has been achieved, and all that he has enabled us to do. We don’t get discouraged by our failures but use them to spur us on to the future. Like the apostle Paul we know that we have not yet arrived at our goal, and so we press on and strain forward to what is ahead, trusting in God’s continued faithfulness to us.

Tomorrow I will outline some of our present challenges, especially as we face our redress obligations and what that might look like for us. And on Saturday, I want to present the fruit of some work that has been unfolding for last couple of months as we have prayerfully reflected on the past and sought the Lord’s leading for the next 5 years of our ministry here together.

PART TWO: WHERE WE ARE NOW – REDRESS

Yesterday we began by thinking about the past, thankful for the Lord’s leading us into our Vision and sustaining us over the last 10 years. Tonight I want us to spend some time looking around at the challenges that are presently before us.

I want to acknowledge the weight of this season. We face some serious challenges as a diocese in 2026 and beyond. As a church we find ourselves still grappling with the sins of past generations and their ongoing impact. Child sexual abuse is a far reaching crime, that not only affects the victims of it, but their families and friends, and the communities in which it occurred, and then on to all the communities that are linked to them. It is like ripples in a pond.

We lament the damage done to people who were in our care, whose lives have been impacted by the breaking of sacred trust. The very people who should have provided protection, solace and care, perpetrated unspeakable atrocities on their vulnerable victims. Our hearts break for the young men and women who experienced these things or knew about them and whose lives have been shattered by these crimes. We are ashamed that our church allowed this to happen, and that we failed to protect people in our care. Our first thoughts should always be for these survivors of abuse and how we can respond to them.

Our redress journey has been unfolding over the last decade since the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In 2018 we engaged in a season of lament and repentance as a Diocese. We lamented our failures to care for young people and repented again for the abuse that occurred in our church.

It is unsurprising to me that what followed that season of lament and repentance was the call on us to begin making some tough decisions about how we were going to administer justice to survivors of abuse by paying redress. In 2018, this Synod made a courageous decision to sell properties that were either surplus to use, or where no congregations or very small congregations of people met for worship. In the end we sold 73 properties including 50 church buildings. It was an enormously painful time as communities grieved the loss of our heritage. Each closure and deconsecration of those 50 churches was like a funeral as we said goodbye to the history of those places. Thank you to all who weathered those decisions and especially to those who carried out and participated in those deconsecration services.

We were aiming to raise $10 million in that first round, believing that that would be our redress contribution. However, due to some changes to the law and the greater number of civil cases we found that the estimate had risen to $23 million in 2020 and to $36 million in 2023. You will remember that this Synod made decisions to release other funds and to levy parish investments to meet these demands.

By the end of 2025 we had already paid out $20 million to survivors. We have done this willingly. We want survivors to experience restorative justice, recognition and support through these payments. By restorative justice we emphasise the personal healing and restoration that comes to a person through the exercise of justice. So many victims of abuse were not believed or recognised at the time, and so we hope that payments help them feel seen, and that they can access the support that they need. We also know that a survivor receiving a direct apology from the church leads to the greatest experience of restoration and continue to offer that to people who come to us for redress.

As you no doubt know, we now have updated advice on our liability for claims, that represents a significant increase. This has been driven primarily by an increase in the expected number of survivors coming forward, an increase in the proportion of survivors looking to civil litigation rather than the National Redress Scheme, and a calculation of higher average payouts for these settlements. We now expect that we will need to identify a further $60 million over the next 15 years to make the redress payments.

Due to our previous work, we had already identified $14 million of those outstanding funds, so now need to embark on the task of identifying the next $46 million. The Redress Working Group has recommenced its work, and the first thing we have done is work on a set of Principles to guide our work. These will be reported separately elsewhere, but the overarching principles are to keep working towards our Vision and strategic plan, to fulfill our obligations to pay redress to survivors and to do so in a timely manner. Under these there are other principles like protecting and promoting live giving, letting the past pay for the past, and consulting with local leaders about our strategies.

The Redress Working Group have identified that we are able meet the challenge from our asset base and we now have the task of prioritising those assets according to the principles. We have also made a commitment to consult with Parishes to obtain their perspectives on the priorities of those assets rather than imposing decisions on them.  We are working with the Trustees to request them to extend a line of credit to the diocese, so that we can meet our redress obligations as they fall due, without having to use any assets unnecessarily. No doubt some hard decisions will need to be made about the future of some of our ministries. Every single ministry will be affected in some way or another, and we will be looking to you for creative and imaginative solutions to our ministry challenges.

The task before us is huge, and if we end up having to pay out that amount of money, the Diocese of Tasmania will be dramatically reshaped. We won’t be able to rely on the assets that have supported us in the past. The challenge for every Parish will be to move from reliance on legacy assets funding ministry, to supporting their ministry by “live” giving, and at the same time prioritise our Vision and our main work of being a church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus.

I said in my pastoral letter that we could look at this as a financial challenge, but that I think it is better understood as a discipleship challenge. God is calling us to greater dependence on him. He is calling our churches to greater generosity. He is calling us to give to the mission of Jesus in our generation. We are being pruned, and I know that while that is painful, it will lead to greater growth on the other side. The faith question is: “will we trust him?”.

It is too early for this session of Synod to be making any decisions regarding redress. But this is a meeting of Parish and ministry leaders. We have a role to play in communicating about this and leading with clarity and confidence. People in our Parishes are feeling all kinds of things including anxiety, fear and anger. I want to invite you to help us lead well in these days and affirm that God is faithful and we can trust him. Remember that one of our Vision convictions has been that “God is our provider” and can supply all our needs, while we are stewards of these gifts.

I invite you to keep engaged in the Redress challenge, to keep praying for the Working Group, to think creatively and faithfully about how your parish might contribute to this, and to keep trusting in the Lord to do his work among us.

I recently reminded the clergy of this text from 2 Corinthians 1

⁸ We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. ⁹ Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. ¹⁰ He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, ¹¹ as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.

The Apostle Paul had encountered very significant problems in his ministry. He describes the pressures there as “beyond his ability to endure”. He found them so great he “despaired of life itself” and it felt like he had received “the sentence of death”. Paul’s challenges seem even greater than the ones we currently face. But what I want you to notice is the purpose Paul saw in his trials. He says that this happened “so that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead”.

Could it just be, that the Lord intends to use our current trials to grow our trust in him? Could he be pruning us to make us rely more on him and his unlimited power? After all, he raised Christ from the dead, how much more will he sustain our ministry even if all of things we humanly rely on, are stripped away? Can we, with Paul, assert with confidence that as he has delivered us in the past, he will deliver us again?

To respond to this invitation from the Lord, I want to invite the whole Diocese to observe a day of Prayer and Fasting on 1^st August this year. I don’t want that day to only be about asking him to help us find the money for redress, but rather a day to seek the Lord for our reliance on him. I want us to worship him, to confess our sins to him, to pray for our mission and ministry, to seek his blessing on our lives, to express our dependence on him, and to call out to him in our need. I invite you to fast for 12 hours from 7am to 7pm to help focus our prayers. You are welcome to do that at home or join in with others at three locations: at Burnie Anglican, at St John’s Launceston and at St David’s Cathedral in Hobart. You might like to host something more locally if those are too far away. Main services will be held at 9, 12 and 5pm, but there will be a focus for prayer each hour. You can come for an hour or for the whole day, on anything in between. But let us come together before the Lord and respond to his invitation to rely on him.

Paul’s sure hope was set on God. His confidence was buoyed by the prayers of the Corinthians for him. He knew that one day, the Lord would answer those prayers, and many would give thanks for his gracious favour. Let us be those people of prayer, so that in years to come, God’s gracious favour to the Diocese of Tasmania, in response to the prayers of his people, will be told around the world for his glory and our good.

PART THREE: THE FUTURE – LAUNCHING TASMANIAN ANGLICANS 2031

We began on Thursday night reviewing the past, remembering God’s faithfulness to us over the last 10 years. Last night we looked at the big challenge of redress that is currently before us as a Diocese. This morning we look to the future, as we launch our renewed Vision and Strategic plan – Tasmanian Anglicans 2031.

Let us hear from God’s word in Ephesians 4:11-13

¹¹  Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up ¹³ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

God’s aim for the church is both unity and maturity. The faith and knowledge of the Son is the focus of our unity and connectedness. Attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, is our goal for maturity. All of this springs from the equipping of the saints for service and the building up of the body, by those who have been gifted to lead us – the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor teachers. What a glorious aim for the church – unity and maturity.

We have been working out our Vision over the last 10 years, but know that God has not finished with us yet! He has more to do in and through us and the task is huge. Thousands of Tasmanians live in spiritual darkness. Young people are battling with identity and mental health issues. Many people are struggling with life. Our world is uncertain. Our church is facing serious issues of credibility and financial challenge. Yet, the opportunities to serve our community with the good news of Jesus are boundless. We have the chance to use our resources to meet the spiritual, emotional, and physical needs we see around us. God wants us to continue to grow towards unity and maturity as we serve him.

I am pleased to bring this fresh expression of our Vision to you, which is the fruit of work over the last 6 months as a small vision group, the Ministry Leaders and the Diocesan Council have prayed, thought, learned, and listened to the Lord about where he is leading us. We want Tasmanians to encounter the life-giving message of Jesus and to become his disciples. We want his disciples to grow in maturity as they serve him. This plan lays out our focus and priorities for the next 5 years to achieve this.

I invite you to join me as we are equipped together for these works of service, so that the body might be built up.

Tasmanian Anglicans 2031

We are Tasmanian Anglicans and we still want to be a Church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus. This Vision statement from 2017 is well known and encapsulates a picture of who we want to be. We want to be a church for this great state of Tasmania – a church that is for Business, Government, Healthcare, Education, Media, the Arts, Families and Individuals that make up Tasmania. We will always want to be making disciples in these spheres and among these people, until Jesus returns. The job is not finished until he brings it to completion.

Core Convictions

Our Vision continues to be driven by our core convictions:

Jesus Christ is the head of the Church
And he has sent us to make Disciples
By Word, Prayer and Service, in the power of the Spirit
Led by fruitful, godly men and women
Trusting that God is our provider, and we are stewards of his gifts.

• Jesus Christ is the head of the Church …

Our confidence is founded in the fact that God is working out his purposes, and that his church will prevail because Jesus is its Lord and Head. We respond in humble service to his Lordship in the power of his Spirit.

• And he has sent us to make Disciples …

Jesus commissioned his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations”. We believe he has also called us to this task in our generation, preaching Christ crucified for our sins and risen from the dead for our redemption, living faithfully, and waiting expectantly for his return.

• By Word, Prayer and Service, in the power of the Spirit …

The Holy Spirit is the power for disciple making, to bring people new birth and then to maturity. Our work is to lovingly serve people in Jesus’ name, to pray for God to draw them to himself, and faithfully preach and teach the word of God from the Bible.

• Led by fruitful, godly men and women …

God uses the gifts of godly faithful leaders, “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up”. We need gifted men and women to lead us, and to call all our lay people to serve him to the full and multiply our ministry.

• Trusting that God is our provider, and we are stewards of his gifts.

God provides our daily bread and all the resources that we need to do this work, while we care for them and steward them wisely. This is an especially important conviction to hang on to, as we face our redress challenges.

Our Mission

United and underpinned by prayer, our mission is twofold:

1. To build resilient mature parish ministry, and
2. To reach out to our communities

One of our reflections on the past 10 years was that when we prayed, God moved. When we were diligent and focussed in prayer, there was greater fruit. And so we want to renew our commitment to prayer in this plan; to pray more intentionally; to pray more fervently; to pray more consistently; and to undergird every single thing we do by praying to the Lord who raises the dead.

We have simplified our focus onto two things:

1. To build resilient mature parish ministry
   We recognise the primacy of our local congregations engaging in our disciple-making ministry in their communities. We support one another in this work by sharing resources and by mutual prayer and encouragement.
2. To reach out to our communities
   We want to extend the love of God into our communities by our work with and alongside our Mission Agencies, Anglicare, our Schools, and through our Chaplains.

Our Strategic Priorities

We have many things that we do, but over the next 5 years we want to make sure that we prioritise the following four things:

1. Maturing our Parish Ministry
   This is where people become and grow as disciples of Jesus.
2. Developing our Leadership Community
   Under God, everything depends on the quality of our leaders.
3. Growing our Children’s, Youth and Young Adult Ministries
   We want to reach and retain the next generation.
4. Extending our Community Reach
   Bringing God’s blessing to every part of the Tasmanian community.

Let’s break each of these down.

1.   Maturing our Parish Ministry

Over the next 5 years our aim is that every parish will:

1. Understand how to make disciples and implement a local plan
2. Have a functioning welcome and integration strategy for all ages
3. Aim to grow by at least 5% each year through conversions and those returning to church
4. Adopt a model of ministry effective for their context
5. Actively support global mission
6. Intentionally support new churches or congregations across the diocese

This is a picture of Parish maturity. We want our parishes to practically know how to make disciples of Jesus and to have real plan to do so.  We want to make clear what a mature disciple looks like, so we know what to aim for. We want our churches to welcome people and retain those who visit us, for their first experience, possibly on our website and then as they come through our doors. We want to join a movement of Christians across Australia praying that we grow by conversions by 5% each year, which will make us put evangelism at the forefront of our work and our prayers. Different kinds of ministry is effective in different contexts, in the city and in rural areas, in smaller churches and larger churches, and we want to adapt well to our context. We know that a commitment to global mission grows a commitment to local mission. And we want to see new churches planted in partnership with others.

How we will know we have done it:

1. Parishes will report their disciple-making plans
2. Parish annual returns will measure our progress
3. Parishes will report on their global mission and church planting support
4. 6 new churches or congregations will be established in the diocese over the next 5 years.

Remember that prayer undergirds everything and so:

Every Parish will develop and implement a prayer strategy for growth and maturity and help individuals to grow a robust and active prayer life. We will pray consistently for 5% annual growth through conversions. We will regularly pray for global mission and our new church plants.

2.   Developing our Leadership Community

Here is our focus:

We will:

1. Develop resilient leaders through an effective leadership formation program
2. Develop lay leaders for parish and diocesan roles
3. Identify, recruit, and mobilise new clergy and vocational ministers
4. Send clergy and missionaries to serve in other contexts

We know that under God, everything depends on the quality of our leaders, so we must invest in them, in their development and growth. We will redesign our leadership formation and development programs so that our leaders will be more effective. This will apply to both clergy and lay leaders. We will work hard on our leadership pipeline, raising up new leaders for the task ahead, praying that God will move people to ordained and other vocational roles. We will continue to send workers out to global harvest fields, especially in partnership with CMS and BCA.

How we will know we have done it:

1. Positive assessment of our leadership formation program
2. More lay leaders being involved in parish and diocesan roles.
3. Deployment of 15 new clergy and 15 new vocational ministers across Tasmania by 2031

Our prayer strategy for leadership is as follows:

Every ministry leader will have a prayer team in place, supporting them in ministry. We will faithfully pray for God to raise up leaders for the harvest.

3.     Growing our Children’s, Youth and Young Adult Ministries

We will:

1. Build on and refine our Children’s and Youth Ministry Strategy
2. Help parishes to implement the next steps for their local context
3. Train and deploy leaders of all ages for discipling children and young people
4. Increase the retention of children, youth and young adults in our parishes
5. Support the growth of Anglican Camping Tasmania

Reaching and retaining the next generation of Tasmanian Anglicans is going to be a strategic priority for the next 5 years. We have a good children’s and youth ministry strategy, but it needs to be refined and built upon. We need to help Parishes that have fallen behind in reaching young people to keep working at this. We need more leaders to serve on Anglican camps and in youth and children’s ministry. We need to make sure that the transition points from being a child to a youth, and a youth to a young adult, will be carefully supported. We want to see our Camping ministry which is so effective, continue to grow to reach more young people for Christ.

How we will know we have done it:

1. Formed 10 new youth ministries across Tasmania by 2031
2. Doubled the number of young people in our churches
3. Increased numbers of children and young people attending Anglican Camps

Our Prayer focus will be:

All our children’s, youth, and young adult ministries will have a prayer strategy for growth and maturity. We will commit to pray for Anglican Camps while they are happening.

4.   Extending our Community Reach

We will:

1. Strengthen mutual partnerships with Anglican schools and other education providers
2. Strengthen referral pathways between Anglicare, chaplaincies and local churches
3. Expand our community impact through chaplaincy
4. Empower our people to serve and be a public witness to Jesus in their communities
5. Develop a strong public voice in our world

We have a huge opportunity to extend our community reach through the excellent work of our schools and chaplaincies and through the work of Anglicare. We want to develop those partnerships so that they can be aligned as possible. We want to strengthen our referral pathways of people who served by Anglicare and Chaplaincies to our local parishes, so that real connections can be made. We know there is more opportunity to provide chaplains to our hospitals, prisons and other workforces so would like to see chaplaincy continue to grow. We want our members and our diocese to witness to Jesus in the public square.

How we will know we have done it:

1. Anglican agencies will be seen as organisations of choice for volunteering by our Parishes
2. There will be more referrals between agencies and parishes
3. and an Increased number of chaplaincy positions

Again we want to undergird these ministries with prayer:

We encourage our Anglican agencies, schools and chaplaincies to have a prayer strategy to support their work. We will regularly pray for the Tasmanian community.

This is our Vision for the future and our workplan for the next 5 years. The first step is to invite you to pray for this vision, that it might be a reality. The second step will be to come and join our Parish Vision Implementation Workshops, the first of which will be in Devonport on 27 June and Lindisfarne on 25 July. Here will we help you being to put some actual steps in place to put the Vision into practice. Remember that one of the principles of our redress response is to put the Vision first. This is our priority to be a church for Tasmania, making disciples of Jesus.

I invite you to join me as we are equipped together for these works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

In a moment you will receive a copy of the Vision document. We will invite you at your tables to have a read and share the things you are excited about and daunted about. And then we will have an opportunity to pray.

Our God is able to do all of this and more if we call on him and submit ourselves to his will. We invite all Anglicans to pray to the Lord to enable this vision for his glory. 

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)

Vision Prayer

Gracious God, in love you gave your Son for the world. Help us to be a Church for Tasmania, as in obedience, we make disciples of Christ.

In the power of the Holy Spirit, may our parishes, agencies, schools & chaplaincies grow in maturity in Christ and bless our world, in the name of the risen Jesus.

Amen