AU Church Directory

The Sunday Test: A Manifesto

By Vinay Koshy, Editor

There are 13,329 active Christian churches on auschurches.com.au. I catalogued every one myself. Most of them are counting the wrong thing.

Published: 2026-07-12. Vinay Koshy is not a pastor, denominational employee, or academic. This manifesto is written from a first-person, active-Australian-church-member perspective.

Here's what I believe. A church is healthy when it forms Christ-followers whose Sundays, weekdays, workplaces, and homes all look like they belong to the same person. Bums on seats never told anyone that. Attendance is a lagging indicator, and discipleship density is the leading one that almost nobody in Australian Christianity is measuring.

I've sat in churches across the east and west coasts of this country. I've been at Hillsong-scale services where you can spend a year attending without a single person learning your name. I've walked into small congregations where a new face gets a polite hello and a locked cliquey circle. I've been welcomed into ethnic congregations where the discipleship is genuinely serious, and then watched the same congregation stay so inward-facing that the gospel never leaves the four walls of the building.

The problem shows up in the numbers. 44% of Australians ticked "Christian" in the 2021 Census. Fewer than 15% attend weekly. Melbourne runs at 27.9 churches per 100,000 people, denser than most Australian pastors realise, and denominational headlines still overstate their own numbers by 25 to 50%. We're a country with plenty of churches and a small pool of people forming actual disciples inside them.

What I'm against

I'm against apathy in church leadership dressed up as ministry. I'm against the megachurch that measures itself by concert production and Instagram followers. I'm against the mainline parish that hasn't discipled a single person in a decade and still runs the same Sunday liturgy because the roster demands it. I'm against Sunday-as-entertainment. I'm against TikTok-as-evangelism. I'm against small groups being treated as optional because the sermon "was enough."

Most of all, I'm against a version of Australian Christianity that leaves people with big gaps in what it actually means to follow Christ, and then sends them shopping for a better preacher when the discontent finally surfaces.

I keep meeting Christians who tell me they're looking for another church. When they're honest, the reason isn't that the current pastor is boring. The reason is that church has stopped speaking into their real life. Their work, marriage, kids, vocation, gifts, and neighbours all sit outside the four walls of the building, and church has trained them to sit still and consume instead of forming them for any of it. So they blame the preacher, move down the road, and start the cycle again.

Where this site sits

That's the ground the site sits on. Auschurches.com.au is the only comprehensive independent directory of Australian churches I know of. 13,329congregations across every state, every ethnic community, and every denomination we could find. I don't work for a denomination. I'm not a pastor. I'm not a theologian. I built this because I could see the problem and nobody else was answering the call.

The five questions

Starting this quarter, I'm publishing The Sunday Test. Five questions every Australian Christian should ask before joining a church:

  1. Does this church clearly preach the Bible and centre everything on Jesus?
  2. Will this church help me grow in holiness, not just knowledge?
  3. Does this church strengthen my love for God and my love for people?
  4. Will this church help me use my gifts and serve, rather than just attend?
  5. Does it support me and or my family and vocation in everyday faith?

The full landing page for each question, with the "why we ask this" rationale and observable signals, is at /the-sunday-test.

Every quarter I'll aggregate signals from the 13,329congregations we track and publish what the data shows about how Australian churches are actually doing on discipleship density. Reports keep individual church names anonymous. This site will never surface per-church public shaming data. Aggregated evidence, private feedback, honest questions. That's the shape of it.

Who this is for

What I want is to give ordinary Australian Christians a way of asking the right question before they hand a church five years of their life. And to give pastors a mirror they have never had.

If you're in an evangelical, Reformed, or Pentecostal church in Australia and you've felt this same discontent, this is for you. If you're a pastor who suspects your congregation's attendance graph is telling you a story about numbers rather than disciples, this is for you too.

I'm doing it because I can see it, and nobody else is.

Frequently asked questions

What is discipleship density?

Discipleship density is the proportion of a congregation being actively formed into Christ-followers whose Sundays, weekdays, workplaces, and homes all look like they belong to the same person. It measures formation, not footfall. A church of 200 with 40 people in serious formation has higher density than a church of 2,000 with 60 in formation. The Sunday Test frames five questions that surface this density from observable signals.

Why is attendance a lagging indicator?

Attendance measures how many people showed up last week. It says nothing about whether those people are being formed. A congregation can grow numerically for years while producing zero disciples, and the attendance graph will only reveal that damage after the disciples-shaped hole has drained the community. Formation shows up in a leading indicator (how the church disciples people this month), and attendance follows years later.

What are the five questions of The Sunday Test?

(1) Does this church clearly preach the Bible and centre everything on Jesus? (2) Will this church help me grow in holiness, not just knowledge? (3) Does this church strengthen my love for God and my love for people? (4) Will this church help me use my gifts and serve, rather than just attend? (5) Does it support me and or my family and vocation in everyday faith?

Who publishes The Sunday Test?

Vinay Koshy, editor of auschurches.com.au. Vinay catalogued all 13,329 active Christian churches in Australia listed on the site and writes The Sunday Test from a first-person, tribe-insider perspective as an active Australian church member. He is not a pastor, theologian, or denominational employee.

Will Sunday Test reports name individual churches?

No. Aggregate patterns only. Reports break down denomination and region across the 13,329 churches auschurches.com.au tracks, but never publish per-church public scores. Individual churches may see their own private snapshot in a future self-audit product; congregation-level anonymity in public reports is a permanent design decision.

Who is The Sunday Test for?

Two groups. First, Australian Christians (evangelical, Reformed, and Pentecostal) who want a better question than "is the preacher any good?" before joining a church. Second, pastors of Australian congregations who suspect the attendance graph is telling them a story about numbers rather than disciples, and want a mirror they have not had.

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