Rory Shiner
Providence Church Perth
We found it really fruitful. It grew us as leaders, it was insightful and flexible enough to be adapted to our specific needs.
It's a blessing to be poured into, and to share a journey with fellow pastors that will help us all see Jesus known and grown throughout Australia and beyond. We're better together.
You get lots of good input from people who have been in ministry for a long time, along with peers. People on your side, asking you hard questions and helping you implement change.
It’s helped us put together a thoughtful process to help people engage with the gospel. We want people to become Christians - how do we get there?
One of the biggest things has been understanding my own personality, who I am, and how I think and relate. I've developed so much in the tools I have to handle difficult situations.
One of the nice things has been meeting people from all over Australia. Just hanging out with people trying to do the same thing I'm doing. Having a cohort of people not just in your own denomination or town has been marvelous.
There's a lot of change going on in our church, and Reach has helped us navigate all those decisions with wisdom. It's been really helpful getting outside eyes to help us think through things.
Through the program I've learned that I think God has put me in the right place to do the job. I've learned that I'm more negative than I probably need to be. I've learned that I thought I was good at delegating, but I need to work better at it!
We’ve grown so much that we’ve started a new church down the road. So many people are coming to Christ.
Being part of the network has been wonderful. Gathering with like-minded people regularly really fires you up to keep going. The program is well worth the investment. It's going to set you up for many, many years of faithful ministry.
An Australian network with shared convictions
Theological rigour with practical application
Sustained input from experienced church leaders and peers
Matt Dodd
Vic Park Presbyterian Church Perth
I am truly grateful for all that it has taught me. It’s really helped me understand myself better, my people better and the work that God has entrusted to all of us better.
It’s been fantastic to get together thrashing around ideas. Very, very practical to help people be captured by the gospel and brought into his kingdom, to grow into disciples.
It’s been great to think about church with a bunch of other people who are in similar circumstances. Doing it together, the fellowship you have is absolutely tremendous.
We’re in a church of about 40 people. Being able to view the church in terms of a pathway, even for a small church, is really, really good.
Really helpful in making us intentional, thinking about what our priorities are - making sure we’re keeping the gospel at the forefront.
Immensely helpful. We weren’t trained at college to be able to manage a church and think deep into leadership, teams and HR. Deliberate training in those areas has been helpful.
In regional ministry there’s not a lot of time or headspace to think this stuff through. It’s helped us be deliberate in the way we lead ministry.
The course has given me the space to consider how to better lead myself, dissect who I am and my values, and assess what’s best next for our church with the vision in mind.
I had no idea of the extent to which I would benefit. It hasn’t just been good for me organisationally, it’s also kept me fresh spiritually. We’ve been nurtured and cared for.
Totally worth the investment of time. You get not only the theology that sits behind it, but quality practices to implement in your context. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. It’s principles.
A comprehensive church health consult
Monthly coaching
Leadership cohort intensives
Gather three times for four-day retreats with the same cohort of 12–16 church leaders from a variety of denominations and contexts across Australia. Build deep relationships, share the wisdom of your ministry experience, and gain practical, hands-on tools you can apply straight away in your leadership.
After the intensives, you can continue your development by joining a Leadership Pipeline Cohort—an ongoing group of leaders committed to developing others, building healthy teams, and raising up gospel workers around the country. With 3–4 online sessions each year, you’ll have regular opportunities to ask questions, tackle challenges, and keep growing in a collaborative, gospel-minded environment.
Intensive One: Leading Yourself
The first intensive creates space to reflect on the gospel convictions that shape ministry and to examine how each leader operates as a person.
Conversations explore communication, mission, vision, and values, and begin to surface the patterns and blind spots that follow leaders into every room they enter.
Intensive Two: Leading Others
The second intensive turns to the relational and organisational dimensions of leadership. Explore what it looks like to develop leaders rather than just manage them, apply pathway and ecosystem thinking, delegate well, and build teams where people thrive.
Discussions engage with growing a leadership pipeline, leading change, strengthening the serve areas of a church, and helping men and women leading well together.
Intensive Three: Leading for Growth
The third intensive surfaces the growth barriers that are particular to each leader's context and asks what it takes to lead through them.
Pastors reflect together on what courageous leadership looks like in practice, how ministry can be multiplied beyond any one person, and what faithful, strategic growth requires of a leader.
Contact us to find out more or for the dates of intensives two and three.
Ross Wilson
Southside Presbyterian Church Brisbane
One thing that’s been helpful for me is helping our church move through the next stages of growth. And how I, as a leader, can inspire others to move in that direction.
I’m from a small denomination, so I was looking for relationships and connections that can help me have longevity in ministry.
You’ll learn from godly pastors and leaders. You’ll meet and find encouragement from others in the same boat. It’s worth every ounce of time and energy.
The best thing I’ve done post-college. It’s helped me mobilise others for ministry and helped me lead better at church. I’m feeling further equipped for the future.
Such a blessing. Encouraged and feeling pumped and hopeful for what God’s going to keep doing through the program. Such a blessing. Encouraged and feeling pumped and hopeful for what God’s going to keep doing through the program.
The impact for us has been building leaders. We’ve been more deliberate about raising up new leaders and equipping them. We’re actually seeing the fruit of that.
If you think you’ve got it all together, don’t come. You’ll be challenged in your heart, in your convictions and in your practices.
With your denomination you get accountability and a theological framework. With the Development Program, you get training in how to lead a church that holds to those convictions.
Our church had been wanting to grow for a long time, and I didn’t have the skills to help it grow. I needed better leadership skills to make changes that were lasting.
It’s fantastic. It’s been really beneficial for our church and seeing growth and developing leaders at church. How do we work well together as a team and not just silo ourselves?
Here are the costs over the two years for your church to be involved:
$13,000 + GST for the full two year program.
Here’s a breakdown of roughly the value of each part of the program.
If cost is a barrier, please reach out. We would love to find a way to make it work. This is a program made possible by people who believe in investing in you for your church.
Some pastors are supported by one or two members of their church who cover the cost of the program. Get in touch to explore how this could work in your context.
Cohort intensives are generally held 6 months apart.
Get in touch for specific dates of upcoming cohort intensives.
The Reach Australia network is made up of over 450+ churches from over 12 denominations. We are a national, reformed and evangelical movement with shared convictions.
Under God, the leaders of churches are key to the vibrancy and progress of the church in Australia. Our vision for thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying churches means we must work together across denominations. In fact we believe that a network can do things other structures are not set up to do. We’re excited to serve pastors from across Australia including Presbyterian, independent evangelical, Reformed, Baptist, Anglican and others who affirm our biblical convictions.
We have churches of different sizes in the network, from new churches launching with 30 people to large churches with over 2,500 people regularly gathering, including many churches in regional and remote parts of Australia. One size of ministry doesn’t fit all. Different sized churches suit different contexts and will reach different people.
As a network, we’re committed to equipping churches of all sizes. That could look like helping churches to grow bigger or multiplying lots of smaller churches.
Reach Australia is committed to planting more churches – 300 by 2030. These churches invariably start small and will grow.
Being married to a church leader can bring great joy and also unique challenges. Our Wives Network, with a program parallel to the Leadership Development Program at no extra cost, recognises these challenges and the importance of investing in ministry couples. The Wives Network includes access to a free 3-day getaway, free coaching, free coaching training, and partial subsidy to a 4-day leadership getaway.
We long to encourage and equip gospel ministers to become spiritually vibrant, theologically driven, evangelistically urgent, practically skilled leaders, and to lead churches that also display these attributes. Our framework outlines five key gospel convictions that lie behind everything we do. These principles are like a thread through the cohort programs we run for pastors; they are the basis for the consulting we do with churches. You’ll find that we theme our conference around these ideas. Read the Reach Australia Framework ebook.
It’s not an imperative that staffing and organisational structures move to an ‘M’* or any other ‘purpose driven’ model. We’re keen to help facilitate robust conversations about what is most helpful for churches in their contexts, as they seek, under God, to lead healthy, evangelistic, multiplying churches.
Churches and pastors in our network have different opinions about organisational models. The Reach Australia framework encourages churches to break down complex church life by thinking of church life in two ways: first, as a pathway seeking to move people from death to life in Jesus (this enables both a people and systems/structures analysis); second, aiming to see both individuals and the church pursue various outcomes.
What does this look like? It varies across the network based on local context, lifecycle of the church and leadership capacity. Some of the churches in the network have structured around outcomes and others use a congregational model to see people move from death to life.
As a network, we encourage churches to be intentional. Every church needs to reflect on the effectiveness of the model and structures they are using, and we want to encourage and enable churches to make change if it’s helpful. Churches need to have regular robust conversations about their structures and organisational systems in all contexts – small and large churches, regional churches and city churches.
* We’ve broken down what a disciple looks like into five things (deep in word, on mission, serving others, belongs in community and loving God). Many churches in our network have structured their churches with an outcomes focus.
The Team Development Program is designed for anyone leading a significant ministry in their church, and for both men and women - associate pastors, ministry directors, and other key ministry staff.
The program is only open to churches where the senior pastor is already involved with the Leadership Development Program.
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