We thank God for your partnership in seeing churches that are growing spiritually and in number. We want to see active church memberships reflecting their local communities, celebrating regular conversions, serving sacrificially and urgently praying for the lost in their region and throughout the world.
We’re praising God that in 2023 we saw 8 new churches launch and over 67 church leaders equipped through our development programs. These can just seem like numbers, but they’re people and churches working towards seeing individuals transformed with the gospel. I want to introduce you to some of these people throughout this Impact Report.
Reach Australia was established to see growth and change across Australian Christianity. From the start, the desire was to see Reformed evangelical churches grow through conversions and spiritual deepening. Since then, we’ve seen church members keen to start new churches and revitalise existing churches. By 2035 we’re praying that there will be 750+ healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches across Australia.
How are we going to do that? Under God, through church leaders and their teams working together to stir each other towards transformation as a network. It’s hours of praying, planning, and conversations highlighting the importance and urgency of Jesus’ command in Matthew 28: ‘to make disciples of all the nations’. Teams working out how to reach not only a suburb, but a region with the good news of Jesus.
What has this looked like in 2023? You’ll read stories below. But it often looks slow. The results take time. But in God’s goodness it looks like people making first-time decisions to follow Jesus; prodigals returning to church; and active members growing in their knowledge and love of God. And a bunch of people trying new things to reach the lost.
As a network, it means lots of coaching conversations. It means leaders taking time to reflect on their own practice. Leaders working hard to share what they’ve learnt from their context. A humble dependence on our gracious God, who is the one who gives growth. It’s taking hold of the privilege of being ‘fellow workers’ building on the foundation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
This Impact Report is just a snapshot of all that God is doing amongst your Reach Australia network. We would love you to be praying for the new churches launching in 2024, for the 90+ leaders being developed in Australia and New Zealand, and the army of people giving and praying for the work of Reach Australia.
Starting new churches
New churches are five times more effective at drawing people in who either have no history with church or who haven’t been to church in a very long time.
We want to plant 300 new churches by 2030.
Strengthening existing churches
We can’t start new churches unless our existing churches are healthy. We need evangelistically urgent, spiritually vibrant, theologically driven and practically skilled church leaders to make mature disciples in ever-increasing number.
We want to develop 750 church leaders by 2030.
Ben Ho was listening to the Reach Australia podcast and driving through the suburbs where his church was hoping to plant. It suddenly dawned on him – “Hey, maybe I should be the planter?!”
A year later, Ben’s church and three others joined together to plant Centenary Evangelical Church. Ben and his wife Faith have been supported through the Leadership Development Program, bootcamps, planter assessments, coaching and a strategic marriage weekend away.
“We can’t believe it’s been four months since we’ve opened our doors! We’ve grown from 80 in the launch team to about 150+ on average on a Sunday. Many are locals looking for a church to be a part of, but there are also non-Christians and the non-regular church goers who are coming, which we’re super excited about!
We had our first baptisms two weeks ago, with three men getting baptised, including one Iranian who was previously a Muslim.
I’ve been pastoring a church for quite a while, but I didn’t have the skills to start a church from scratch. The learning curve has been quite steep. Reach Australia has been really helpful with so much stuff – how to set culture, have clarity of vision, and getting coached. The process of being pushed and having all my buttons pressed has been super helpful.
Please pray for God’s grace to keep supplying all we need and to see people come to and grow in Christ!”
Dave Keun: “The fruit of the Leadership Development Program has been huge for understanding what a good change management process looks like.
One of the changes we made was around our welcoming. We used to just have people rostered on to say hello as people walked in, but there was no follow up and no system in place. If you sat next to the right person at church you got welcomed well, but for other people no one spoke to them.
Over the past year we’ve built teams of volunteers and clarity around newcomer pathways which has helped our retention rate improve significantly. We had a first time visitor a few Sunday nights ago an he commented to me about our welcoming; “I’m so impressed with the welcome we’ve received.”
As a staff team we’ve been also keen to uncover our blind spots – areas we’re not doing well. Having some outside voices come in through the Team Development Program was helpful in uncovering these areas and helping us as a team voice them to one another.
One of the most helpful sessions for us was getting out of the rut of the seven-day cycle. As a result, we’ve been investing time on those important non-urgent things that always seem to get left by the wayside week in week out.
We’ve been working hard on our calendars, working hard on our priorities and what we need to do to get those long term priorities done. It’s helped us to be sharper and more focused. It’s been a real joy to start to see those things happen amongst the team.”
Lighthouse Church’s intern Jeremy Kidd listened to the Reach Australia podcast series on Mission and then decided to make changes to their kids holiday program. The changes led to an influx of new people to church.
“The Reach Australia podcast series on Mission made me stop and consider why we even do Summerfest (our summer holidays kids and youth program). What does success look like? What outcomes should we be measuring, and how does that affect what we do?
These questions led us to make some specific changes this year – leading to an influx of new people coming along to church on Sunday. The final day of Summerfest was a church service where parents could join in.
Praise God, we had 53 visitors this year, and 20 of them were visiting our church for the first time.”
Church Planter Assessment
Planting Bootcamp
Leadership Development Program
Team Development Program
Church consulting
Coaching
Planting Incubators
Learn to Lead
National Conference
Women in Leadership Network
Wives Network
Resources
Reach Digital
Leadership Pipelines
Questionnaires
Gospel Future Fund
Church Starter
Ministry Grid
God uses his people to provide for his ministry, and we’re so thankful for the 270+ people and churches who gave to Reach Australia last year. You know who you are.
We also praise God for the 180+ people who pray regularly with us each week.
In 2024, we want to see another 12 churches planted and another 60 senior pastors equipped to lead their church better so more people hear the gospel.
Behind every number in this Impact Report are people who need Jesus.
We need healthy churches because we don’t want anyone to perish.
If you’d like to be a part of what God is doing through Reach Australia this year, please give below.
We spend 100% of what we’re given to help pastors be equipped to love, care and grow their members. We pray it’ll lead to people coming to know Christ and God being glorified.
Imagine the power of generosity in the Australian church as we share our wisdom and resources. Picture churches growing, new churches launching and people praising God in the most challenging circumstances.
If you would like to be a part of what Reach Australia is doing in a more significant way, please email Natasha at [email protected] to talk about where there is the most need. We’re so thankful to God for all those who support us.
ABN: 92 139 724 806
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