When Steve became senior pastor of SLE Church in 2023, he stepped into a growing English-speaking Chinese church of about 300 people in Brisbane — and a problem. Everything flowed back to the pastors. The church was vibrant and full, but the strain was showing.
“I felt the tension of holding everything together but knowing I was also holding us back,” Steve recalls. “If someone wanted to serve, it always came to us,” he says. “We knew everything that was going on, but hardly anyone else did. People slipped through the cracks.”
The load was exhausting for the staff and frustrating for the congregation. Steve could see people eager to serve, but stuck waiting on him.
The opportunity
After more than a decade as assistant pastor, Steve stepped into senior leadership just as the church sent off 35 members — including the previous senior pastor — to plant Centenary Evangelical Church.
Despite the loss, SLE was still growing. About 300 people gathered across two services, and the morning congregation had already outgrown its 135-seat hall. But growth was no longer scalable. Every ministry decision, from rosters to leadership appointments, still came back to the pastors.
“I’d put things in the too-hard basket,” Steve admits. “That sense of being alone in leadership was heavy.”
Something had to change — not just for sustainability, but for the health of the church.
The change
A turning point came when Steve began connecting with other pastors through the Reach Australia network. Those relationships, formed during the Leadership Development Program, helped him see that he didn’t have to figure everything out on his own.
“Hearing how others had restructured and released leaders gave me courage to do the same,” he says.
That insight began to reshape the way he led. For years, Steve had been at the centre of everything — leading groups, filling rosters, making decisions that never seemed to end.
He realised he needed to move from doing the ministry himself to growing people who could do it with him.
“It was heartbreaking to let go of groups I’d led for years,” he says, “but handing them over meant more people could hear God’s word and grow in Christ than I ever could have managed alone.”
As leadership was shared, decision-making flattened out. “We were passing more responsibility to ministry leaders,” Steve explains. “They had their teams, and now they were the ones to recruit others.”
It wasn’t just structural, though — it was deeply personal. Steve stopped asking how to work harder and started asking how to shepherd better.
“I kept wondering, how do we grow without killing ourselves in the process?” he recalls. Through the program and the wisdom of others, he saw how good systems could serve gospel growth for the long haul.
The impact
As decisions stopped bottlenecking at the top, the church found fresh momentum.
The young worker’s ministry, once stuck under Steve’s guidance, has been freed to plan, pray, and reach peers with new energy.
Another member — affectionately known as “the consultant” — moves quietly between ministries, helping teams think and care more deeply for people. What began as delegation is becoming genuine ownership.
That same spirit has spilled into mission. Twice a year, around forty people join the church’s Life Course to explore Jesus — a mix of believers bringing friends and those hearing the gospel for the first time.
In the past year, about eight have come to faith, double what the church once saw.
And then there was the man from China who first arrived with sharp questions about politics and truth. Over months of honest conversation, he came to see that only Christ could be trusted — and was baptised soon after.
“People have been so supportive,” Steve reflects. “They’ve trusted us through the changes, and God’s been very kind. It’s so encouraging to see teams flourish in ways I couldn’t — they’re doing the things I was stuck on.”
Now the church is looking outward again. With services already full, the team is exploring a third congregation as a step toward future planting.
Steve is working more closely with the Mandarin-speaking side of the church, building trust and partnership so both can grow together.
“If we were still leading like we did in 2019, I’d be banging my head against a wall,” he says. “There are still big challenges, but I’m not carrying them alone. God’s been gracious — ‘oops’ isn’t in his vocabulary.”
A snapshot of change
- Attendance: 300 → 350 over two years (including 35 sent to a church plant)
- Life Course: 50–60 participants each semester
- New believers: 8 people came to faith this year, twice the number seen before 2023
- Services: exploring a third congregation
