St Marks Coptic Church Community Engagement Plan

This community engagement plan focuses on St Marks Coptic Orthodox Church which is located in Arncliffe, New South Wales. The study aims at looking at the challenges facing the church and the needs that will solve the challenges facing the community.

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St Marks Coptic Church Community Engagement Plan
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Introduction
This community engagement plan focuses on St Marks Coptic Orthodox Church which is
located in Arncliffe, New South Wales. The church was built in 1978 under the leadership of Fr.
Moussa Soliman (Meawad, 2016). The church has experienced massive growth over the years,
and currently, it serves over 1000 families across the whole of Sydney.
St Marks Coptic Orthodox Church has been a good supporter of the community
programs. St Marks Coptic Church NSW owns a college for educating servants named Coptic
Orthodox Theological College which was started in 1982. The church also has a Sunday school
for teaching small students about Christian Faith and preparing them to be Christ lovers. The
church helps the community in several ways that include, offering children liturgy, St. Marks
Education Centre, and organized sports programs for the community that contains gymnastics
and Judo (Mclver, 2018, pp.45). The study aims at looking at the challenges facing the church
and the needs that will solve the challenges facing the community.
Community Mapping
According to the 2011 census, there were 24,693 Coptic Australians. Most members of
Coptic Australians are of the Coptic Orthodox Church. Currently, the Coptic Orthodox Church
has around 100,000 members, where 70 percent of these are found in Sydney. St Mark, the
church, contains an Upper room church for conducting English services and a second Sunday
school building. There are a lot of services offered by the church and therefore, the interest to
know more about it (Tam & Clarke, 2015). According to the church's website, the church has
built a foundation of love, and they believe people who follow the teachings have seen the grace
of God and blessings will be showered upon them tremendously.

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Christianity is the most common religion in Australia, with 52% of the total population as
per the 2016 housing and population census. However, around 30% of Australians indicated that
they had no religion in 2016. The percentage number of Christians had reduced from 88%
percent in 1966 to the current 52%. The percentage number of people who had opted out of
Christianity in the last 25 years before 2016 was a massive 8.2%. Amongst those who reported
having no religion, 39% of them were young adults aged from 28 to 34 years. These adults again
had a higher percentage of affiliation to other religions apart from Christianity of 12% compared
to the adults. This pattern was similar to the people in the age brackets of 35 to 49 years, an age
similar to the youthful parent, suggesting that the youth had followed the footsteps of their
parent's beliefs. People with over 65 years had the highest number of Christians with an
impressive 70%. On the other hand, men who had reported to be Christians in 2016 were 50% of
total men compared to women's 55 %( Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Likewise, Men had
the highest percentage of people who said they had no religion. They had 32% compared to
women's 28%.
The church community and its Fathers are welcoming to anyone from any background
that is interested in joining their faith. Apart from experiencing the massive growth, several
challenges have faced St Marks Coptic church. According to the 2016 census, in the last two
years, a lot of people had opted out of Christianity, and this is a challenge that is affecting St.
Marks Coptic church. Although the church has experienced a huge growth of followers since it
was created, the majority of its believers are older adults of years 60 and above. This might have
been caused by the perception created by the community about churches nowadays (Stevens,
2015, pp. 19). This leads to a lack of young believers who are an essential part of the church's
community.

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A study conducted on the adverse community of Australia showed that 66 percent of
them believe the saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves’ (Bouma & Halafoff, 2017).
Bible illiteracy is a challenge to St Marks Coptic Church and makes all other activities and works
of the church even more difficult. The fact that there is a lot of Bible illiteracy amongst
Christians proves that people by far are not reading the Bible.
The other challenge affecting the Church community of St Mark's Coptic Church is the
source of income. The church has several community-based projects that are being run by the
funds that majorly come from contributions by the church members. The position is vulnerable
since the population majority are the older people, and they are at their last stages of life.
Additionally, voluntary work is a significant boost for St Marks's Coptic Church (Mclver, 2018,
pp.64). Youths being more energetic, they should be at the forefront of helping the church, and
this comes as a challenge since the number of teens attending church is decreasing at a massive
rate.
Needs analysis
To thrive as a community, St. Mark's Coptic Church need to address several needs
relating to the challenges discussed above. The number of young people attending the church
needs to be increased so that there will be continuous growth of the church in the coming years.
Mark Howard (2012) said that youth needs the church, and the church needs youth. The church
needs to teach the youth that the church is not for adults-those who have married and have their
children. The youth should not be segregated for the community’s sake and theirs (Vos, 2017).
The youth are a vital part of any church community, and the reality is that they need Jesus in
their lives, whose teachings are given at St. Mark's Coptic Church.

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St Mark’s Church has Coptic Orthodox Theological College that teaches new clergymen
who later graduates as priests of the church to spread the gospel to believers. The church offers
volunteer teachings of scripture to various schools around the community. The majority of these
volunteers come from their college. Currently, there are more schools, and the number of these
volunteers has not been enough to serve many of the schools.
There is a need for the church's surroundings to be always clean. The church should be
viewed as a peaceful place to escape the stress of day to day life and clutter that fills our lives
every day. A clean church will reflect this statement. Additionally, a neat church will always act
as the first impression, which is everything, for new members.
The funds raised by the church need to be well accounted for by the leaders. One person
should not be left to control the money raised by the whole congregation. The church should
remember to put all the money in the works that ‘glorify God', which is always the sight of
everything done in the church.
Prioritizing Community Needs
1. Developing a Bible-reading culture to the community members.
2. Ensuring that the church's environment is kept clean to attract new members.
3. Planning on proper ways to spend the income.
Goal Setting
The church should consider looking for volunteers to teach liturgy and find a way that
every student in the schools will be reached and taught about the Bible. The goal will help reduce
Bible illiteracy, which is amongst the challenges affecting the church. Another goal that should
be considered is keeping the church environ0ment clean. The majority of cleaning work should
be done by the youth and volunteers from the community. St. Mark's Coptic Church conducts

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weekly Bible studies, youth meetings, and fellowships. The church should organize youths
attending the meetings to take a few minutes to clean the church at least two times a week. They
should also consider holding a church clean-up day and sharing the message to all small group
leaders in the church to help reach all the members.
In addition, church leaders should consider allocating some money out of the church
funds, which should ensure that whatever happens to the capital is controlled, maintained, well-
structured, and elucidated (Vos, 2017). The church should opt to make cheap and
straightforward software that will offer money management tools for St. Mark's Church's uses.
Conclusion
Churches are facing multiple challenges currently in the world. St Marks Coptic Church
NSW, which has experienced massive growth and expansion since it started, has also been a
victim of the same. The challenges discussed should be taken care of before they become a
difficulty that won't be eradicated. The leaders of the church should ensure, first that the
members of the church encourage their family members to attend church so that the tradition
continues to the future generations. Youths should be supported spiritually and shown the
importance of having Jesus Christ in their lives. These are the most important people in the
church today, and the leaders should take their time to come up with new ways to involve the
youth in the church. The funds available should be used appropriately by the management of the
church.
To help the community, the church should come up with programs where members can
volunteer in various positions they can help whenever they are free. Unity is strength, and when
the leaders of the church put their efforts together, the goals will be achieved in no time. If the
church does not have enough clergymen, they should go out and look for aspiring students and

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encourage them to achieve their goals. I would propose that St Marks Coptic Church NSW to
offer scholarships to these students willing to get into the priesthood there will be enough
clergymen in the future. Meeting these goals will help St Marks Coptic Church NSW grow more
prominent and help the community better.

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Bibliography
Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017. Census of population and housing: Reflecting Australia—
Stories from the census, 2016.
Bouma, G.D. and Halafoff, A., 2017. Australia's Changing Religious Profile--Rising Nones and
Pentecostals, Declining British Protestants in Superdiversity: Views from the 2016
Census. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 30(2).
McIver, Robert K. "Theological Education in Australia: The Past and Present as Possible
Indicators of Future Trends." In This article was originally published as McIver, R.
(2018). Theological education in Australia: Past and present as possible indicators of
future trends. Colloquium: The Australian and New Zealand Theological Review, 50 (2),
43-68. ISSN: 0588-3237. 2018.
Meawad, S.M., 2016.Mcl Liturgy as Ethicizer: Cultivating Ecological Consciousness through a
Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Ethos.2016
Stevens, K., 2015. 2014 Statistics. ANZTLA EJournal, (14), pp.9-22.
Tam, S.M. and Clarke, F., 2015. Big data, official statistics and some initiatives by the
Australian Bureau of Statistics. International Statistical Review, 83(3), pp.436-448.
Vos, G., 2017. The idea of biblical theology as science and as a theological discipline.