Church Witness

Transforming Stories  
In February 2022, the Northern Rivers – particularly in the Lismore area – was hit with a historic record high flood. Our Baptist churches responded generously, financially and on the ground, as the hands and feet of Jesus. Consequently, we had enough funds to plan a longer-term approach with our Disaster Recovery Framework – relief, recover and resilience. In 2024, two years after the flood, we progressed our initial ‘relief’ and ‘recovery’ phase to the ‘resilience’ phase (our final phase). This is new ground for us as an Association of churches and, through prayer, community-based assessments, and multiple projects, it was discerned that addressing the mental health component would be a primary focus of the resilience phase. The Narrative Therapy project, that was called ‘Strong Together’, was a pioneer project facilitated by our Church Witness team and a narrative therapist. Over 20 individuals directly participated in co-authoring the book but there are thousands of people who were directly and indirectly impacted. The impact is multiplied as it is now made accessible nationally and internationally through narrative therapy centres and symposiums. This project is paving the way for other mental health focused initiatives in the future and as we transition out for sustainability. 

(Read more about this story here or watch a video report on it here.) 

Church Witness network
Our community engagement workers are some of the busiest members in our churches. They are practice-discerning, high empaths and strong activists. That is why forming a network was always going to be challenging and so we had to focus on why we are forming a network. After a listening workshop in 2023, we experimented with running workshops for 2024 that are common needs amongst our network with a regional-relational approach. An example of this was a ‘cultural intelligence’ workshop that was facilitated by Baptist Mission Australia. Cultural Intelligence was an identified subject area for collective exploration and growth during the 2023 listening exercises. The feedback was positive and we hope to continue with this collaborative approach. 

Intercultural Ministry:

Be Fruitful and Multiply.  
We launched the P’RU (be fruitful) program in the latter half of 2024, which was a close collaboration with Morling College and Baptist Mission Australia (BMA). The heart behind it is to provide a culturally safe and culturally relevant approach to leadership development with our First Nations and CALD leaders. After spending time researching and surveying nationally, we launched a pilot cohort in semester two. We had 10 participants, representing 8 cultural groups and 8 churches. There was linguistic fluency of over 18 languages between the participants and the facilitators themselves, which illustrated the communication complexities and beauty. This is why P’RU is a 3-phased approach, with the pilot cohort doing only the first phase, because it aims to break down formational needs into clear and culturally-paced phases.

This developmental approach integrates the realities of our current limited systems with the growing cultural diversity of our churches. From our limited database alone and my on-the-ground data collection, it shows a growth from 2023 to 2024 in the following areas: number of strategic cultural engagements (around 300 to 500) number of CALD churches (76 to 90), number of CALD leaders (85 to 115), percentage of CALD representation in new church plants (over 50% conservatively), increase in financial contributions, increase in denominational event participation and increase in accessing our leadership resources. P’RU program isn’t just a brand new “project”, instead P’RU seeks to integrate current viable systems we already have into a flourishing formational-developmental pathway for CALD leaders, for the future of our churches. 

In essence, P’RU provides a lens through which migrant experiences can be understood, processed, and transformed into impactful ministry that both uplifts individuals and fosters community resilience. This reflection does not only enhance personal growth but also cultivate a more responsive and compassionate approach in ministry. 
Jonah (2024 P’RU Participant – Karenni people group)

A Circle of Trust.  

On 15 February 2024 we launched our first Intercultural Circle (IC) gathering. The purpose of this ‘circle’ of CALD leaders is to provide a strongly relational network where prayer, collaboration, mutual learning and future ideation are cultivated. Though 2024 focused primarily on Sydney, the strategic goal is to localise these circles across different regions – particularly in high CALD density Local Government Areas. Over the six IC gatherings, we had a regular of 30 participants with the highest attendance being over 40. These CALD leaders primarily come from three Sydney regions – Transform Southern Sydney, Greater West for Christ and the Ryde City area. Apart from breaking bread and prayer, we also explored mutual growth areas by having presentations and discussions around subject matters that are highly needed in CALD contexts. For example: emerging generations in CALD churches, war and conflict (newly arrived Palestinians from Gaza shared their testimony), educational-formational needs, etc. This ‘circle’ allows us to sit together equally, as we welcome each other, pray for our highest needs and build each other’s confidence as we imagine a God-sized dream for our churches. 

Church Witness:  

Baptistic Way of Community Advocacy. Facilitated by the Church Witness Team, a collaboration with our Baptist partners (A Just Cause, Baptist Association, BaptistCare, Baptist World Aid, Baptist Financial Services, Baptist Mission Australia and Morling College) saw a completion of our First Nations led Listening Workshops. Over the four workshops, 72 people participated with an average of 52 attendees at each workshop. It was appropriately helpful as a lead up to The Voice Referendum to collate our resources to help our churches. This high engagement was also reflected during Common Grace’s Aboriginal Sunday campaign that saw 53 Baptist churches participate. Throughout the year, we also engaged in other advocacy matters regarding conversion practices ban, gambling reform and affordable housing (through Sydney Alliance).

Disaster Response Towards Resilience. In 2023 we primarily focused on the resilience phase following the two major floods which hit the Northern Rivers and Western District regions in 2022. Through a localised participatory approach, we were able to address post-disaster mental health matters. Resiliency projects included commissioning a narrative therapy project, as well as exploring faith-based approaches to addressing presenting issues like increased suicide and PTSD.

Converge 2023. Converge is an annual gathering of Baptist leaders advocating to our nation’s political leaders for a more just Australia. The focus for 2023 was the Myanmar conflict, due to its severity and the Myanmar diaspora’s request for advocacy. Out of our three key asks, the very first ask is now implemented by the government: sanctioning the Junta’s two primary financial institutions—the MICB and the MFTB. This will limit the Junta’s capacity to trade and divest from companies doing business with the military. 

Intercultural Ministries:

There was one main focus for our intercultural ministries – from a local, regional, state, national and strategic viewpoint – which was to establish relationally-built intercultural circles. An intercultural circle is a combination of the functions of an advisory group and a community of practice, regarding cultural intelligence. 

In 2023, at a local level, we focused on relationship building and management. Mapping of key relationships, leaders and networks was the main activity. We covered 300 strategic engagements, amongst 85 key Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) leaders, across over 40 CALD churches. We also discovered over 30 CALD-based existing networks. 

A regional approach guided us to work in three key regions to enable support for our CALD churches: Greater West For Christ, Transform Southern Sydney and in the Ryde area. An internal intercultural circle (Baptist Ministry Centre) was also created.

Nationally, we collaborated across State and Territory based Associations/Unions to form the Intercultural Communities Taskforce – a delegated body by the National Council. Currently, we have two important projects that have national strategic value: 1) Create a Baptistic intercultural intelligence framework and 2) Establish a CALD emerging generation working group, based on priority areas they have defined.

True healthy interculturality occurs if God’s mission is driving it. So, a select handful of people, in collaboration with Baptist Mission Australia, explored engineering an intercultural mission pathway for our CALD churches. As the world comes to Australia, and the diaspora communities are interconnected globally, there is a great opportunity for us to explore intercultural mission – yes, to be future ready, but also to be faithful in our Gen1K vision.