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I have recently been looking at how many Chinese churches there are in Sydney – and how many English congregations there are in particular. Some people argue over the definition of what constitutes a Chinese church, but here I’m going with a list compiled by a Chinese parachurch organisation. And this is what I found…

This first graph is broken up into the different regions of Sydney (eg. North, North West, South, etc.). The red line graph shows you the number of Chinese churches in each of those regions. The bar graphs show you the number of congregations in each of those regions, broken up into the different languages (eg. English, Cantonese, Mandarin).

Some larger and more established churches will have multiple congregations, and others that are smaller or newer will only have one congregation – this accounts for the difference between the line graph, and the bar graphs.

This next graph isolates just the Chinese churches. Here I’ve presented it as a pie graph, so you can see the distribution of Chinese churches as a proportion of the whole.

I also have that in a bar graph form here, in case you find that better suits your purposes. The bar graph is useful for comparing with the following two graphs…

This bar graph shows how many English congregations there are in the different regions of Sydney. Be aware that some churches have two English congregations. And bilingual congregations with English as one of the languages do not count.

In some regions, there are very few English ministries! But even the bars that seem quite healthy can actually be deceptive. And this becomes clear with the next graph…

This one shows you the need for English ministry. These are the Chinese churches that currently do not have an English congregation.

While some churches have one, and sometimes even two English congregations, quite a few churches don’t even have one. But they will increasingly feel the need to set up an English congregation to reach the second generation…

What is also interesting to note is that regions that seem strong in the previous bar graph (eg. the North and North West) still also have a great need for English ministries!

This next set of small pie graphs show you the English ministry situation for the Chinese churches in each of the eight regions in Sydney. The numbers inside the pie graphs indicate the number of churches with, and without English ministries.

Here you can see which areas are really in need of English ministries – the South, the East, and surprisingly the North!

And this last pie graph shows you how things are going as a whole in Sydney in terms of English ministry.

The Chinese churches that do have English ministries are already finding it hard to get pastors to serve in them. But this graph shows that even if we do fill all those current vacancies, we still have a long way to go to serve the needs of all those Chinese churches without English ministries! And that’s not even to take into account the extra Chinese churches we need to plant to reach the Chinese of Sydney…

[ PS: Melbourne was cold for the ANZCCOE conference ... so I ended up with the 'flu the last few days! ]