The Australasian Religious Press Association Conference
Sydney - 9 August 2002

Opening Reflection - The Reverend John Henderson
General Secretary
The National Council of Churches in Australia

This afternoon I bring you a greeting from the National Council of Churches, and its President, Dr Lance Steicke.

Your conference is only just beginning, and I notice that you are meeting under the title, "Out of this world?" with the subtext, "media at the interface of church and society."

I wish you joy with that theme, and the purpose of your meeting here in North Sydney. I want to ask you, however, to consider whether the primary interface between church and society isn't the people of the church - the ?a?? - rather than the media. You will always be troubled whether you should address the world, or the membership of the church. They are not mutually exclusive, of course, but there will always be ambiguity about your target audience.

For this, and for other reasons, I think your job is quite difficult, and at times, quite thankless. You will rarely satisfy all your constituents - the church hierarchy, church members, the general public, or the secular press. As religious media you will always be a little off-beat, out of the main pack. You will rarely be resourced sufficiently to do the job as well as you would like, supposing you have been able to define what the job is. Your readers, listeners, and watchers will be as fickle as the rest of consumer society. I suspect that most, if not all of you, have asked: "How can we possibly compete?"

There is a more profound reason, however, that I think your job is very difficult. What you have is fundamentally an unsellable product. You may not agree, but I think St Paul, in the reading you have just heard (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), does agree. I'm not talking about trying to sell the institution we call church - although God knows that is hard enough, with all its foibles, peccadilloes, divisions, and sometimes wanton foolishnesses. If you follow the old adage that 'any press is good press', then I suppose you might applaud some of the recent media attention. I am also not talking about trying to sell the agencies of the churches, whose unstinting service has become so much part of the scene that they no longer capture the public imagination unless there is some controversy like injecting rooms. It is quite disappointing that on the one hand churches are easily pilloried and on the other, that credit is rarely given for their sacrificial work.
What I am referring, however, is the word of Scripture: "the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." I know that this is contentious ground among us, including within the organisation I represent, the National Council of Churches. It is frequently our very understanding of the cross of Jesus Christ that divides us. What does it really mean? How central is it to our theology? To listen to some Christians, and some Christian media, you would think, "Not much!" It's rarely mentioned, and its shame and embarrassment are glossed over. People prefer to hear about heroic human endeavour, natural good intentions, spiritual successes and human interest stories. We chase sporting heroes and high profile personalities. In this there isn't much to separate the religious press from the secular press, except that we are usually not nearly as scintillating, and suffer certain moral restrictions on the kind of images we portray.

But when do we stop at the cross and make it our centre-piece? It really doesn't sell. Many of our logos have the cross at their centre, but how much of our text dares to reflect it? When do we boast about the cross, as St Paul does? When do we admit to foolishness and weakness? Are we busy trying to beat the others at their own game, to be wiser than the wise and stronger than the strong? Wouldn't we love a Murdoch or a Packer among the church press, to really get things humming!

It can be so disempowering to be a religious professional. As a parish pastor I often conducted weddings, and would be invited to the reception. I worked hard at those weddings, and developed strong relationships with the couple. And yet it was often palpable that the family were waiting for me to go so that the party could really begin. Is that how it is with us? Are we the wowsers that have to be tolerated, but everybody is quietly glad when they don't have to bother about us? Is that the deflating truth of our engagement with the world? Is that why we are 'out of it', as your theme might suggest? Do we really have so little to bring to market? Just a little foolishness, with a dose of weakness? Are we the bridesmaids of society, who never get to be part of the real action?

So my thoughts go out to you, in your most difficult of tasks, beset on every side by complications, lack of resources, disinterest on the part of the wider audience, and a message that is often unpalatable. To cap it all off, if you are an official arm of your church, you are restricted by its public policies. Is there freedom for the Christian media?

Well, so far this isn't much of a pep talk, and Margaret may well choose not to invite me back. I have never thought, however, that the purpose of the church was to give a pep talk and to provide easy solutions. We are to listen to and speak the Word of God. That's our business. There will be varieties in the way we understand God's Word, and that's why there's an ecumenical movement, and a National Council of Churches, to help us learn that our variety needs not be divisive. We are to find ways of understanding each other and of working together.

As the newish General Secretary of the National Council, I find that presenting the Council in the media is fraught with all the same difficulties I have just described, with even less resources. Tied as I am to 15 member churches, finding consensus on common material is a Herculean task that considerably slows down our response. By the time we get an agreed statement the issue is past and no one is listening any more, not even you, the Church press.

Friends, we need to gather our courage, and whatever faith we have, and reassess our core task. I am aware of many interfaith issues confronting us, and the need to assess the religious question in society. Before coming here today I asked what kind of meeting this is, and I was told that this is a gathering of Christian press, even though your title is the Australian Religious Press Association. This is an anomaly, and it will press upon you soon enough, if it isn't already.

The gift and task we share as Christians revolves around a central point - that God sent his Son into the world, and that Son, in both his divine and human natures, died on the cross. He did this out of love for humanity, love for you, so that we could share in his life. This involves forgiveness of sin, resurrection, and eternal life. This faith is interpreted and expressed in varying ways throughout our church communities. Our shocking and seemingly unsophisticated core faith begs many profound philosophical and religious questions, but remains our motivation and reason for being. However adept we become in interpreting it for our contemporary society, it must remain at the centre.

1 Corinthians calls it the "foolishness of the cross to those who are perishing." Our strength is what others see as a laughable weakness. Despite our frequent embarrassment and the temptation to join the rest of the gang in the search for marketable success and smart logic, we insist on "Christ crucified … the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength."

I know that people will say there are other wisdoms in the Bible, other ways of speaking of God's relationship to the world and to humanity. There are different paradigms and streams, and we shouldn't become fixated on one to the exclusion of all others. I believe, however, that all of them relate specifically to Jesus Christ, whom this passage places at the centre of our shared Christian reality, the core of our faith and our message.

This is what we proclaim: "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Unless we use whatever resources we have to do this, we have no business calling ourselves Christian. May God bless your conference, and your work in his service. Amen.

12 August 2002