It is with pleasure that I present the 2024 Annual Report for the Baptist Union of Victoria. This year has been another great year across our Baptist family in Victoria, as we work towards our vision of being a union of flourishing churches, with Christlike followers who join with God in transforming society.
Pleasingly, it seems that our union is moving closer towards this goal with a larger percentage of participating churches (62%) rating themselves as flourishing in our Flourishing Church Survey than the year prior (55.1%). As a Support Hub, we will continue to make every effort to support our churches, their pastors and congregations to flourish.
In 2024, our theme for the year was Being and Sharing the good news of Jesus and many of the resources we produced from the Support Hub were based on this theme.
During the year, we focused our discernment on two issues – one issue facing our union and one issue facing the communities in which we live and worship.
- Improving our Intercultural relationships across the union
- Loneliness – how can our churches impact the loneliness epidemic in our society
It’s true that we are a culturally and linguistically diverse union, but as our cultural mix grows, we wanted to focus on how we can do even better interculturally, within and between our congregations and churches, learning to fully embrace all this brings.
As well as discussing this topic through our discernment process, I also held Listening Lunches inviting every cultural group represented within the Union – 56 pastors attend through the year, and it was an opportunity for me to hear their good news and their struggles, as well as an opportunity for me to share some of our plans more closely.
A catalyst for this was our preparations for the retirement of Rev Meewon Yang, our Multicultural Consultant who has served the BUV for 26 years and has been integral to the growth of our culturally and linguistically diverse family. We farewelled Meewon from ministry in December and whilst she will be missed by many, we look forward to serving our intercultural churches with a new and collaborative Support Hub staffing model.
Many other wonderful things took place during 2024 which you will read in the body of this report – we welcomed new churches, new faith communities and new campuses, we ordained and commissioned new pastors for ministry, we firmed up our pastoral accreditation processes, conducted church reviews, developed a church planting cohort, and so much more. Most importantly we focused on being a union of prayer with union wide prayer meetings, a prayer week and daily prayer for our churches.
I want to take this opportunity to thank three groups of people – firstly the Pastors, leaders and volunteers of our Victorian Baptist Churches – your faithfulness and servanthood continues to inspire me each day as you serve the communities of people within and surrounding your churches. I also want to thank the BUV Union Council for the time they sacrifice and the wisdom they provide in guiding the governance of the Union. And lastly to the team of staff from the Support Hub who work faithfully and diligently to ensure we are moving towards our goal and vision of being a union of flourishing churches, with Christlike followers who are joining with God in redeeming society.
We look forward to 2025 and all it brings as we grow together.
REV DANIEL BULLOCK
Director of Mission and Ministries