Earlier this week, the creation of The Gospel Coalition Australia was announced, with a group of 13 Australian pastors coming together to promote unity amongst reformed evangelical churches across the country. The announcement sparked intense conversation on some social media channels. Eternity approached CS Tang, one of the members of the newly formed group, to get a few more details about its purpose and formation. And while CS Tang noted that he is not the leader of the Gospel Coalition in Australia—such a leader will be determined when the group meets for the first time in August—he spoke to Eternity on behalf of the other council members.

Will you be affirming the confessional statement and theological vision for ministry of TGC in the US?

Yes, we already have.

All the council members will maintain, and defend if necessary, the articles of the confessional statements and theological vision.

This is the link between TGC Australia and the ‘original’ TGC. Apart from our shared doctrinal commitment, we are completely autonomous organisations.

I would have thought the reformed evangelicals in Australia already work quite well together. Why do we need something else that promotes unity within this circle?

Reformed evangelicals are often good at turning up to the same conferences, and acknowledging that we are ‘in this together’ in a vague way, but we’re not always quite so good at actually working together on the ground (we do this better in some parts of our country than others!). Our hope is simply that TGC Australia might be a helpful umbrella to encourage likeminded people to work together.

In your opening statement announcing the formation of The Gospel Coalition Australia, you refer to a need for “real gospel partnerships”, which posits the question: did we have unreal gospel partnerships before? And what do you think ‘real gospel partnerships’ look like, that we haven’t had before?

Our concern is to encourage people to work together on the ground for the sake of the gospel. That’s what we mean by ‘real gospel partnerships’ – a togetherness that expresses itself in people working together across traditional denominational boundaries to do evangelism, plant churches, serve their community etc. We’re not saying that this has never happened before or trying to criticise anyone – we’re just saying that we want to see more of this happening.

The reformed movement is a very small part of Christianity, and possibly shrinking according to reports. The number of pentecostals in Sydney, for example, now exceeds Sydney Anglicans for the first time. Do you agree that the reformed component of Christianity is shrinking as a proportion of Christianity?

Wow – that’s quite a question!

Is Reformed Christianity on the decline? It really does depend on how you define ‘Reformed’! If we use the TGC Foundation Documents as a rough definition of what we mean by the word, then there are people with a Reformed evangelical understanding of the gospel and its implications in many different churches and denominations. Although it’s very hard to measure these things–it doesn’t really work to just compare the sizes of denominations without talking to the people within them about what they believe and preach and how they live–there are plenty of anecdotal indications that Reformed evangelical understandings of the gospel are on the rise among Australian churches across denominations, not on the decline. And in parts of the world I travel to, reformed evangelicals are planting churches and growing faster than any other groups.

So, when you say “real gospel partnerships”, are those partnerships going to be formed across the breadth of Christianity in Australia, or only within the reformed evangelicalism circle?

TGC Australia is all about drawing people together as a ‘centre-defined’ group, driven by people who are committed to the understanding of the gospel set out in the Foundation documents, so that we can work together effectively and in a God-honouring way. As has been the case in US, and a growing number of countries across the world, we expect this to draw people together from a real variety of church backgrounds, and to serve as a blessing and a stimulus for many people who would disagree with us on some of our defining commitments.

The issue of women and TGC has already received some comments since your announcement, so can I ask you, was it a conscious decision not to have women on the council? If so, is that based on a theological view? Can you talk me through that decision here in Australia?

The Council of TGC Australia is made up of a group of pastors who have affirmed the Foundation Documents of TGC. These documents reflect a complementation position (that the elders, including the senior pastor, leading local churches should be men). The Council (at least as it’s presently constituted) is a group of pastors and former pastors, which is why there are no women on the Council. That said, we’d also want to add that we’re huge enthusiasts for all God’s people, both men and women, to be using their gifts in his service and contributing their wisdom to the life of his people; hopefully that enthusiasm will be evident in what we do! We also affirm that there are many Jesus-loving Christians who take a different position on this. We esteem them as brothers and sisters in Christ even if we disagree on this matter.

Your council members at the moment are ‘founding members’. Will there ever be a time where women might be represented on the council?

It’s hard to answer that question definitively as we haven’t discussed it yet! However, whilst the Council remains a group of Pastors, that would seem to be unlikely.

TGC’s existing website has a very large Sydney following, but how do you think TGC Australia will be translated into our Australian context?

Both in Sydney and across the rest of Australia, many people go to the TGC website for reliable and helpful content and comment. We want to augment that by developing content which is more directly relevant to our Australian context, and in particular, to encourage a new generation of young Australian evangelicals to think and write. Beyond that? It’s hard to say. We have no desire to duplicate anything which we in Australia are already doing well – our focus will be on encouraging new gospel partnerships and initiatives which enable people who treasure the gospel to work together more effectively for the honour of the Lord Jesus Christ.