Since the Internet has broadened our religious horizons, cosy village parish churches are seen as outdated, and have become increasingly difficult to maintain. But in adapting to these rapidly changing circumstances, Australian Church communities have invented many new forms of church gathering and worship. Innovations suggested by overseas "mother" churches have often been adopted in city churches, but there has never been any dearth of uniquely Australian ways of celebrating Christ in our far-flung Great South Land.
After all, Australian churches have always been "emergent" and "messy" churches. From the very beginning of non-indigenous settlement in Australia, Christians were faced with the need to adapt their worship and Christian lifestyle to the harsh realities of a land devoid of homeland comforts. Our churches began with perfunctory, enforced military ceremonies, policed by drunken redcoats. Our colonial ancestors had no venerable clergy, few ornaments and vestments, and no church buildings except those they built from scratch, with hard labour. Spat out by mother England, these illegal immigrant settlers built fortress parishes and took refuge in them, while Australia's many indigenous peoples looked on in wonder at the mad ghost people who insisted on staying in one place and destroying the bush and its creatures, instead of sensibly and cleanly following seasonal food sources. The European invaders believed that they could reproduce the churches of their homelands, but this was impossible. Australia and its indigenous peoples have influenced and shaped every Australian immigrant Christian church community in subtle, unforeseen, powerful ways. As a result, Australian churches have acquired superb resilience, and a well developed capacity to adapt to change.
