He leads one of the most closely watched local churches in the English-speaking world. Archbishop John Wilson has been Archbishop of Southwark, south London and Kent, since 2019, and before that spent seven years as Episcopal Vicar for Evangelisation in Leeds.
In 2023 he launched Called to Bear Fruit, a synodal renewal process to equip parishes to evangelise, form disciples and inspire witness. The fruits are hard to ignore.
This year more than 590 adults stood at the Rite of Election in St George’s Cathedral, the highest in a single year since 2011, from 112 parishes, and strikingly young, with half aged 35 or under. But, as Archbishop John Wilson admits, he did not come to Southwark to manage decline.
He said so when he was installed in 2019, and he has been repeating it ever since, most recently delivering his plenary talk at the Archdiocese of Sydney’s annual clergy conference in front of nearly 230 priests, deacons and seminarians, and at the most recent Scholarship at the Cathedral event on 13 August.
“It’s not a numbers game,” the archbishop said. “Numbers are not the most important thing, but to see the church alive and vibrant, that’s a real sign of hope.”
Renewal before restructuring
His process of evangelisation within his archdiocese was very nearly called something gloomier.
“I originally wanted to call it Pruning to Bear Fruit, pruning for mission and somebody told me, you’re too pessimistic,” he said.
The renaming turns out to matter, because the distinction underneath it is the heart of the thing.
“We are not simply restructuring, because if you restructure without renewing, you just decline. That’s my experience. So, we wanted to renew, and put all our resources at the service of renewal.”
Southwark began with a survey across its clergy. Some of the results were sobering. One question, about whether respondents knew what was expected of them at work, scored strikingly low.
“I thought, gosh, how does a priest not know what he’s meant to be as a priest? It’s there in the ordination,” Archbishop Wilson said. But when the archdiocese drilled into the answers, the picture changed entirely.
“What they actually meant was: I know what to do as a priest, but in this context, in this parish, facing these challenges, I’m struggling to know what to do.”
It was not a crisis of priestly identity. It was a gap in knowing how mission applies in their parishes. Closing it became the work.
After the clergy phase the archdiocese opened the consultation to the lay faithful. Thousands responded, producing 15 action points. The priority that came back loudest surprised him less than it moved him: young people.
“That speaks really powerfully about how much people love the church, and love the Gospel, love the Lord, and want to pass that on to future generations.”
Giving the work away
The implementation vehicle is the Agency for Evangelisation and Catechesis, which Archbishop Wilson established after his appointment. Its most consequential output is a network of lay people: deanery mentors and parish leads in evangelisation and catechesis, gathered under the name Some Definite Service, after St John Henry Newman.
“I think the most important thing that we’re doing is we are giving confident, appropriate leadership roles to lay people to fulfill their baptismal vocation, and to work in collaboration with their local clergy for the service of the mission of the church.”
For a priest already stretched, he said, the offer is simple. “It’s like saying to a priest: look, would you like someone to help you with catechesis, who we will form? Maybe a little team of people. What priest is going to say no?”
The point is not to remove the priest from teaching, he stressed, but to free him toward a more sacramental and pastoral role and away from administration.
“The biggest resource we have in the diocese is our people.”
A word for Sydney
Asked what he would say to an archdiocese preparing for Eucharist28, Archbishop Wilson didn’t hesitate.
“Believe in the power of the Eucharist. Believe that when the Lord Jesus said this is my body, this is my blood, he meant it. And expect great things. Have expectant faith.”
Great things, he was careful to add, are usually not the demonstrable kind.
“A great thing might be that someone for the first time says a prayer. A great thing might be that someone for the first time crosses the threshold of a church. Great things are often the things in an individual’s heart.”
Archbishop John Wilson’s full conversation is available on Grace Abounds, the podcast of the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
