This month, the 16th National Assembly meeting of the Uniting Church is being held. Assembly meets every three years, rotating around state capitals. This year, the plan was to meet in Brisbane—but last year the decision was made to meet online.
The papers for the July 2021 meeting of Assembly are available to read online at https://uniting.church/16thassemblyresources/
Each Synod reports to the Assembly. The report of the Synod of NSW and the ACT includes a section that provides a description of “who we are” as the Uniting Church in this Synod.
That description uses data from the 2016 NCLS results and also a single respondent Census of Congregations (2019) which included an estimate of average worship attendance and an actual headcount.
I thought it was worth extracting this part of the Synod report and hinting it a wider airing. So, when we look into the mirror of these surveys, what do we see? What is the Uniting Church like, right across Australia.
The 2019 Congregational Census reported that the NSW—ACT Synod has 23570 worship attenders each week, including 2896 children under 15 and 2556 youth and young adults aged 15-30. There are 533 local churches oversighted by 375 church councils and 85% of congregations participated in the census.
80% of our churches were monocultural (more than 80% one group), 14% multicultural with one group making up 50-80% and there were 6% of churches where the largest ethnic group made up less than 50% of the population.
In 2019, just 14% of congregations had direct relationship with Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, although we know from the 2016 NCLS that 26% of churches conduct an acknowledgement of country in worship.
Just 12 churches had a weekly average of more than 150 people in worship.
31% of churches had no children, 34% had less than 5 children, but there were also 29 congregations had more than 20 children involved in congregational life, 6 of which had more than 50. 40% of churches had no young adults, 30% had less than 5, but 36 congregations had more than 20 young adults and 3 had more than 50.
As reported to the previous Assembly, the 2016 National Church Life Survey (NCLS) surveyed 10,183 adults and 392 children (8 to 14) from 275 local Churches across the Synod. The 2021 NCLS will be conducted in August-September this year.
The average age of UCA members was 66, compared to the average age 38 for the Australian population at the same time. In 2016 70% of NSW-ACT UCA attenders were over 60, compared to 21% of the wider population. 63% of NSW-ACT UCA attenders were women and 37% were men.
That’s who we are, according to these surveys. Ask yourself, as you look into the mirror: do you recognise yourself?
An Informed Faith 
Unfortunately, what I see in the mirror is a sad face. The UCA has led the way in so many amazing ventures; however, as person after person talks to me about the abuse they have suffered working in the UCA, I wonder what has happened to our much-vaunted ethos of compassion and justice. Not until we in the UCA repent of our hubris about how we lead the way on compassion and justice will there be any possibility of an effective mission. If we were back in the time of the prophets one of them would have already entered the centres of UCA leadership wearing a yoke and calling for radical repentance and change from some of the evil deeds perpetrated. I do not say this lightly, but with a heavy heart, as story after story ways on my spirit.