A Uniting Church coeducational independent day and boarding school on Kaurna Country, Adelaide, South Australia
Early Learning to Year 12
As an ordained Uniting Church Minister, I am still called upon to lead and preach in local congregations around Adelaide on a Sunday morning. It is often a sad and disheartening experience as many local churches are aging and in decline. And yet, as Chaplain at Westminster I have a ‘good news’ story to tell. I am in a community of 700 families, the Chapel is full five times a week and there is keen embrace of the opportunity for reflection upon faith, if not an embrace of narrow church doctrine. The acronym ‘SBNR’, standing for ‘spiritual but not religious’, is descriptive of Australian people generally, and certainly of what I find in the Westminster community.
People in churches struggle with this gap, with the loss of status and attendance of organised religion. They hanker for the days when churches were full at 10.00 am on a Sunday and enjoyed a role as key and healthy social institutions. And, by and large, I think that respect for the faith and the work of churches still exists. But the churches’ call to “come here, join us and practice your faith” in weekly attendance at a local building set aside for this purpose seems not to meet the need and so increasingly falls on deaf ears. For one factor alone, people’s lives are very busy and weekend time precious.
And yet we know that people still reach, however feebly, for the hope of faith. How do we bridge the gap between people’s evident faith and declining church attendance? I think, together, we must find the ways of allowing the practice of faith in everyday life, in the places where we live and work. This is the approach of chaplaincy; a role to facilitate faith in the living of daily lives. At Westminster, the school week begins with a reflection for staff, School assemblies open with a devotional prayer and the Chapel itself invites quiet reflection as integral to weekly routines. A place for faith where life is. Perhaps it’s a model that better suits contemporary lifestyles.
Rev Phil Hoffmann
Chaplain