[The following letter was sent to Melbourne's leading newspaper, 'The Age' following two articles by a leading Anglican laywoman, Dr. Muriel Porter].

Muriel Porter's diagnosis of the ill-health of Australian mainline Christian churches (The Age August 8 & 9) is long on negative rhetoric and short on positive directions.

This week I am meeting with the senior pastor of a Pentecostal church in Melbourne - Waverly Christian Fellowship - that grew by 1,000 (yes)

people last year. The respected National Church Life Survey tells us more Australians now worship in Pentecostal/ Charismatic than Anglican churches. The largest Anglican congregation in post-war Victoria meets at St. Hilary's, Kew. The largest Baptist Church in our nation's history (Crossway, formerly Blackburn Baptist) sees over 2,000 people attend each Sunday. The 30 largest congregations in Australia are larger than any in the 200 years of our history...

But Dr. Porter is right: too many smaller churches are struggling to survive.

Why and why? As a consultant to churches across denominations for the past twenty years, I've learned that churches grow if they are cognizant of the following needs/factors:

[1] Churches must have the kind of 'missionary zeal' Dr Porter refers to but must translate that into energetic programs of training laypeople to share their faith.

[2] The issue of 'ordination' needs drastic revision: every Christian is 'ordained to ministry.' Clergy must be willing to share leadership and ministry-prerogatives with their people.

[3] Dr. Porter says she's on 'innumerable church committees'. Growing churches have more people in Christian growth and discipleship groups than on committees.

[4] Preachers - indeed public speakers in any field today - are competing with media communicators. Growing churches realize that if Australians watch an average of 20 hours' television a week, they're going to compare - albeit unconsciously - their pastors with gifted public figures.

[5] We live in a consumer culture, and churches must accept that reality. Denominational loyalty for Babyboomers and Generation X'ers is almost non-existent. They will go where the faith-community has preaching and programming that meet their needs.

[6] Dr. Porter makes the excellent point that the church's structures need to change. Older institutions of any kind suffer from what sociologists call 'the routinization of charisma'. Tradition is a good servant, but a very bad master!

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Rowland Croucher is the director of John Mark Ministries, consulting with churches across all the Christian denominations. He is the author of 12 books on issues of the Church's health and spirituality.