When a Bold Step Was Needed

I have made cautious decisions all my life, which is probably why this one still catches me by surprise.

When I was minister on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, there was a persistent idea that surfaced every now and then. There had once been a drive-in theatre on the beaches and, after it closed, one entrepreneurial leader had the thought that maybe this was the land to buy. Maybe this was where a regional church should go. I remember thinking it was imaginative, certainly, but not convincing. We already had three or four neighbourhood churches stretched along the coastline. It seemed to me that our task was to strengthen those congregations, not gather everything into one new centre.

Then a new land release was announced. A great swell of people was coming. The future shifted shape almost overnight. And I found myself changing my mind, which is its own kind of risk when people know where you have stood. I suggested we look again at our strategy and think seriously about where this church was heading. We considered a number of options, including doing nothing, though mercifully that one did not last long.

What emerged was the boldest option of all. We would sell everything. Sell three churches. All the ministers’ residences. We would let go of what we had in order to build a regional church. not on the old drive-in theatre, but on eight acres of land in another strategic location (actual photo above).

I was not mainly afraid of the money, though there was plenty of money involved. I was afraid people would scatter. I was afraid that, in the space between one thing ending and another beginning, we would lose momentum and never get it back. That can happen. People can drift in quiet ways. A little uncertainty here, a little hesitation there, and before long what once held together has loosened.

But there was very little opposition. People were ready, it turned out, for a bold step. That surprised me too. And then the building project came in five hundred thousand dollars under budget, which felt improbable. When does that ever happen? On a church building project, no less.

And then there was that first day. People came, and not reluctantly either. They came eagerly, as though they had been leaning towards this place before they had even seen it. Someone said to me, on that first day, “I feel like I’ve been here all my life.” I have never forgotten that sentence. It landed in me as a kind of answer to the fear I had carried. We had risked losing our centre, and instead people arrived and felt, somehow, at home.

I’ve moved on but nearly twenty-five years later it is still going well.

I still think caution has its place. But there are moments when caution begins to close the future rather than protect it. This was one of those moments. I was scared to risk everything, but I do not regret that we did. Sometimes the only way to open the future is to trust it enough to walk boldly towards it.

Daily writing prompt

Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

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