During August, four members of the BUV Support Hub leadership team travelled to Darwin for the Transpacific Baptist Leaders gathering. Meeting at the Combined Churches Training College for Indigenous Australians, Nungalinya College, Baptist leaders from each state joined together with their counterparts from NZ, Samoa, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu – 32 participants in total. Due to visa issues, leaders from PNG and Fiji were unable to attend.

One of the highlights of meeting at Nungalinya College, was participating with the students in their chapel each morning and hearing a simple worship song sung individually by indigenous students in their tribes language (there are over 250 indigenous languages in Australia). The college is dotted with beautiful and meaningful Indigenous artwork, produced by students with the help of the college teaching staff and the grounds hold not only quiet places and trails for reflection (like the Way of the Cross and Garden of Eden) but also many amazing bush-tucker plants that can be appreciated through a bush-tucker guided walk.

The 3 day meeting was packed with content with the major topics being Church Planting and Leadership Development with our very own DoMM, Rev Daniel Bullock, leading the latter session. We also learnt from other participants on church revitalisation, discipleship, Next Gen ministry and from our BUV Head of Mission Catalyst and Ordination, Rev Beth Jackson on women in leadership.

Our friends from New Zealand presented a case study on the rebuild of Oxford Terrace Baptist Church in Christchurch, post the major earthquake in 2010-2011 that destroyed the church. The church went through a long and arduous reimagining, planning and rebuild of a new space designed not only for worship, but also incorporating places for shared community housing and work. Seven years later they officially opened the new church with remnants of the old church columns found in the rubble used in the design. In the Pastor’s words, “this process was a lesson in never wasting a crisis!”

We also heard from Elliot Keane, Baptist Mission Australia’s First Nations Engagement Facilitator in a fabulous night session and Andrew Turner, Director of Crossover, shared the concept of ‘Public Church’ – looking at our churches from an outsiders / newcomers perspective and making it an inviting and safe place to come. Looking through this lens may mean some significant and challenging changes to the way we do church.

Some of the takeaways for our BUV staff were around different models of church revitalisation, more wholistic views of networks, empowering and incorporating next gens and leaders in decision making for future church and leadership development models.

It wasn’t all work – we had an afternoon at Crocodylus Park getting pretty up close and personal with very dangerous creatures!

Praise God for the opportunity to come together as leaders and shepherds of Baptists through the Pacific region to connect, collaborate and learn from one another.