Phillip Jensen is an Australian cleric of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and the Dean of St Andrew's Cathedral. He is the brother of Peter Jensen, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney.
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Jensen spent the early years of his life living at Bellevue Hill, a suburb in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. His first public statement of faith came at a Billy Graham crusade in 1959. He married his wife Helen in 1969.
Jensen studied theology at Moore Theological College from 1967 to 1970 and won the Hey Sharp prize for coming first in the Licenciate of Theology (ThL), the standard course of study at that time. In the years just after his graduation from Moore College, Jensen worked at St Matthew's Manly and with John Chapman at the Department of Evangelism (now known as Evangelism Ministries). Jensen became Anglican chaplain to the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1975 and Rector of St Matthias' Centennial Park, in 1977. It was from this time that Jensen developed a reputation as a deeply conservative minister in his Calvinist theology yet radical and iconoclastic in his ministry style.
Basing his university ministry around expository preaching and "walk-up evangelism", Jensen and his "Campus Bible Study" revolutionised student ministry. The result was a large number of conversions, large student gatherings at UNSW and the growth of St Matthias' Church from a group of 20–30 in 1977 to well over 1000 by the mid 1990s. Forthright, sometimes brusque, Jensen gained many supporters and detractors.
Jensen's work at UNSW included the creation of the Ministry Training Strategy (MTS) which took willing young men and women and trained them in practical ministry skills, preparing them for church ministry, ordained or otherwise. He Jensen also founded the Australian Christian Publishing house Matthias Media to allow the publication of Christian literature by Australian authors. During the period of 1974 to1991 Jensen was also involved in the management of the Katoomba Christian Convention.
It was the strong growth of the MTS strategy in other universities and churches throughout the 1980s and 1990s that saw student numbers at Moore Theological College grow from around 150 in 1985 to over 400 in 2004. Many of these graduates are now rectors of Anglican churches in Sydney and leaders in many evangelical churches throughout Sydney and the world. He also authored the Two Ways To Live gospel tract and founded The Briefing, a sometimes polemical magazine that mixes conservative Evangelical and Calvinistic theology with intellectual rigour in a distinctively Australian style which is still published by Matthias Media. He has also been involved in the establishment of some independent evangelical churches and facilitated links between them and the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.
In 2003 the chapter of St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney appointed Jensen as Dean of Sydney. His appointment brought accusations of nepotism on the grounds that Jensen's brother, the newly elected Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, was a member of the cathedral chapter responsible for his election. Peter Jensen, however, did not take part in the final secret ballot to appoint his brother as dean.
Jensen has spoken publicly against secularism, syncretism, intellectual relativism, gambling, same-sex relationships and Roman Catholicism.[1] He is an opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate within the Anglican Church of Australia. He has been criticised in the secular media.[2]
It is now widely recognised that Jensen has been influential in shaping Anglican Church League policy. He and a number of other influential Sydney Anglicans have promoted lay administration of the Lord's Supper and offered opinions on the future structure and functioning of the Anglican Communion in the light of the ordination of practising homosexuals to the episcopacy.
Jensen's attitude to traditional Anglican styles of cathedral worship has drawn criticism, especially from defenders of classical sacred music such as the Tallis Scholars' director, Peter Phillips, who accused him of "vandalising" Anglican culture.[3] Jensen has defended his changes in the cathedral's style of worship on the grounds of attempting to broaden the demographic of the congregation. Jensen, as with most Sydney Anglican clergy, has discarded use of the cassock, scarf and surplice but, idiosyncratically, has revived use of the Geneva gown. Choral Evensong on Sunday evenings has been replaced with "The Bible Talks" (renamed City Night Church in 2009) and a more contemporary style of gathering. Jensen has stated that the cathedral choir continues to play an active role in the life of the cathedral, though others point out that its opportunities for performance have been much diminished, a conflict which led to the departure of the previous music director, Michael Deasey.[4] The St Andrew's Cathedral School's Girls' Vocal Ensemble was, for the first time, allowed a regular opportunity to sing in the cathedral, but this has since changed. The liturgy in St Andrew's Cathedral has undergone considerable change since Jensen's appointment as dean, though according to him and his supporters it remains grounded in the theological outlook of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 with its emphasis on the confession of sin and salvation solely through the merits of Christ.