IMPACT
2023

Celebrating God at work across our network

Reach Australia
Thousands of healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches

Praise God

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.

In gospel partnership,

Scott Sanders

Our year at a glance

gospel workers equipped with leadership skills

new churches launched

164

leaders in ministry received coaching

spouses of pastors were equipped for longevity in ministry

churches analysed how they're going through consults

apprentices & church goers in our emerging leaders program

124

podcasts, ebooks & articles to equip church leaders

1.1 k

at our National Conference

Our year at a glance

gospel workers equipped with leadership skills

new churches launched

164

leaders in ministry received coaching

spouses of pastors were equipped for longevity in ministry

churches analysed how they’re going through consults

124

podcasts, ebooks & articles to equip church leaders

apprentices & church goers in our emerging leaders program

1.1 k

at our National Conference

We want to see more growth and change across Australian Christianity

We pray that transformative leadership development will lead to doubling the number of Reformed evangelical Christians in Australia by 2035. That looks like churches growing by 5% a year. This is an urgent and important shared task given Australian churches are currently declining by 1.2% p.a*. To paint the picture – in a church of 100, instead of losing one person a year, five people invite a friend to join them.

Our goal is to see 750+ healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches by 2030. Here’s how:

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.

Centenary Evangelical Church in Brisbane launched in 2023

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.”

The Team Development Program helped Kellyville Anglican Church invest in important but non-urgent priorities

“The fruit of the Leadership Development Program has been huge for understanding what a good change management process looks like.

– Dave Keun (Senior Minister)

Listening to our podcasts helped Lighthouse Church make their kids program more effective

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.”

Here are the top resources from 2023:

We’re a network of churches
working together

Check out how God worked through all of us in 2023 and our aims for 2024.

Church planter assessment

15 potential planters went through a rigorous assessment process to confirm if they’re suitable to start a new church. In 2024 we’re hoping to have 25 potential planters willing to get assessed.

Planting Bootcamps

16 people preparing to plant went through Planter Bootcamp to help them think strategically about reaching their local communities. In 2024 we want to send 12-14 church planting teams through bootcamp.

Leadership Development Program

32 senior church leaders started our two-year program so they can better lead and grow their church. We’re on our way to reach our goal of 60 senior leaders developed in 2024.

Team Development Program

Two programs were piloted in 2023 and had 35 gospel workers from 14 churches participate, all getting equipped to be effective and collaborative church leaders. We’re looking forward to having 40+ people developed in 2024.

Church consulting

We facilitated 58 churches to help them ask the hard questions about how their church is going. We’re hoping to do 60 in 2024.

Coaching

164 church leaders (senior leaders, team members, wives) got coached by a peer in our network. Coaching is critical to walk alongside gospel workers as they embed change in their churches. We are aiming to see over 200 coaching relationships in 2024.

Learn to Lead

38 ministry apprentices and church volunteers received 10 masterclasses from experienced gospel workers. They were equipped to lead healthy teams at their churches. In 2024 we are planning to extend the program into a two year program with 54 delegates.

Planting Incubators

43 Bible College students met quarterly with a church planter to discuss senior leadership and planting opportunities. In 2024 we are hoping to see this increase to at least 60 people in incubators with strengthened relationships with Bible colleges.

National Conference

1,100 attendees met to encourage each other and get equipped to courageously seek to reach the lost across Australia. In 2024 we hope to pack out the venue with 1,400 church leaders.

Women in Leadership Network

This network launched in 2023 with 300+ women getting updates to see more women mobilised for ministry. In 2024 we're expanding with a national advisory group, doubling our networking lunch, a podcast series and female patrons.

Wives Network

39 wives of pastors and planters spent time away together in small groups to be equipped to serve God in their unique situations alongside their spouses. In 2024 we’re aiming to see 50 pastors’ wives join us for these times away.

Resources

We produced 82 podcasts, 2 ebooks, 16 videos and articles to help church leaders grow mature disciples biblically, faithfully and practically. In 2024 we plan on producing 92 podcasts, 8 major tools and 24 articles.

Gospel Future Fund

15 potential planters went through a rigorous assessment process to confirm if they’re suitable to start a new church. In 2024 we’re hoping to have 25 potential planters willing to get assessed.

Leadership Pipelines

We've been working with 17 church leaders across the country to help understand and build their leadership pipelines. Our goal for 2024 is to see them begin to train other pastors across the country.

Questionnaires

101 people completed online questionnaires to start a conversation about their strengths and growth areas for gospel work and church planting. This year we plan to have 150 people take a questionnaire to start a conversation about their future plans.

Reach Digital

We supported 46 churches in their local mission by doing some heavy lifting for them with their branding, website design and databases. We're excited to be working with 50+ churches in 2024.

A large group eating lunch at the Reach Australia National Conference 2023

Church Starter

We provided a platform for 28 Christian projects to raise support, funds and awareness about their work.

Ministry Grid

We continued to simplify leadership training for 68 churches so that they can easily empower willing volunteers to be effective leaders. In 2024 we are creating more resources to do the heavy lifting of lay leadership development for churches.